Reading - the final mile

[EdgeOfNowhere]

Is there any way to teach a child to be a fluent reader?

I mean once they know how to read but still read slowly, to reading fluently and effortlessly?

School say it just takes practice. But I think that's an easy / lazy thing for them to say. Not appropriate to say to a Y5 / Y6 child who has been practicing daily for 5 or 6 years.

Clearly not all kids make the leap to fluent readers.

If all it took was practice all pupils would leave the school fluent readers. All school would have to do is listen to the kids read.

I know exactly when I became a fluent reader. At the end of year 7 I won our form prize which was a £5 book token. I used it to buy a Star Trek book.

By the end of the summer holidays I had read about 20 of them all 300-500 pages long. Prior to that I was never engaged with reading. I am dyslexic and never liked to read. Finding something I loved made a huge difference to me.

I think my dyslexic DS might be the example that proves the rule. He was a fast and accurate reader from very early on, with the right phrasing and expression (I think, with hindsight, he was essentially code breaking).

But he had a reading breakthrough from being reluctant reader in year 4/5 to reading for fun in y6 and I put that down to him finding books he wanted to read and therefore doing more reading, becoming fluent and enjoying (some) books.

He's never gong to be an avid reader, but now in secondary his English is in the top third of the year.

No other subject is taught through practice (besides rote learning)

Because nothing else that children have to learn is as illogical as English spelling.

Memorising the 4,000+ common words which contain one or more unpredictably used letters is difficult enough (rough stuff). That's why only 1 in 2 speakers of English ever become proficient spellers.

The 60+ graphemes with more than one sound ensure that learning to read English is exceptionally time-consuming too, and why quite a few never become fluent readers either.

E.g.
a: and – apron, any, father
a-e: came – camel
ai: wait – said, plait
al: always – algebra
-all: tall - shall
are: care - are
au: autumn - laugh, mauve
-ate: to deliberate - a deliberate act
ay: stays - says

cc: success - soccer
ce: centre - celtic
ch: chop –chorus, choir, chute

e: end – English
-e: he - the
ea: mean - meant, break

[scream]

Some techniques that help with fluency and expression CAN be taught, particularly 'reading ahead' or seeing self-contained phrases as 'one unit' (like a phrase in a musical score) but it is rather time-consuming to teach, and will only come once a person (child or adult) is a competent reader.

When I first did voluntary reading support, I was asked to work individually with slower Yr6 pupils before they started secondary school, and I READ ALONG with the child some of the time, to give them the 'feel' for the text.

Fifty years ago I attended an evening class for 'creative writing' - which I was hopeless at! But a professional actress was brought in to read some of the texts, and she was AMAZING! Despite not having previously seen the texts, she brought them to life with appropriate voices, pace, pauses, volume etc, in a way few 'amateurs' could possibly manage.

Masha, just a heads up: there's more than one way to "celtic", "the", "says". Just to note a few you have listed.

Ferguson, I know what you mean, listening to a professional read aloud is fantastic, though, at that point it's less reading and more storytelling.

Been googling and found 'Stride Ahead' by the makers of toe by toe.

Here's a video showing you what its like

Has anyone used it? It seems like the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Stride Ahead is intended for older children (secondary age)