Key Stage 4 (KS4) Reading Fluency Project: the importance of teaching fluency
Many struggling readers in Key Stage 4 lack the fluency required to extract meaning from demanding KS4 texts. While they may have adequate phonic knowledge, their accuracy and automaticity is not yet good enough to allow them to decode at a sufficient rate to approach more challenging texts with fluency and, as a consequence, their ability to comprehend the text is weakened. Their cognitive load is burdened with the demands of crunching through the words on the page, and as a result, there is little cognitive space left for comprehending demanding texts. Moreover, they lack the prosody needed to make sense of the words and phrases they are reading. The cumulative effect of the challenges they face can be demoralising, resulting in students lacking the motivation they need to read more and preventing them from getting the practice they require to improve.
Read the Reading Fluency Glossary produced in collaboration between the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and HFL Education for more detail on the terms ‘accuracy’, ‘automaticity’ and ‘prosody’.
For a more detailed description of the terms used in the Key Stage 3 (KS3) Reading Fluency Project, read our blog ‘Reading Fluency: how do I teach that?’
Key Stage 4 (KS4) Reading Fluency Project: core teaching strategies
The Key Stage 4 (KS4) Reading Fluency Project skilfully incorporates the strategies of modelled expressive reading, echo reading, repeated reading, performance reading, text marking, challenging text selection and modelling comprehension skills, to improve the trajectory of KS4 students towards age-related expectations in reading.
Precise assessment data is collected at the start and end of the 8-week project for participating students so accelerated progress can be clearly tracked and celebrated.
For a more detailed description of some of the strategies used in the Key Stage 4 (KS4) Reading Fluency Project and links to academic research that informed our approach, read our blog ‘A field guide to reading fluency: a reader's digest of our work to date’
What will I learn by participating in this project or programme?
You will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to implement the project successfully to support those students who are working below year group standards in reading and will be able to share this learning with colleagues to ensure that improved progress is secured for more students beyond the initial project student group.
