Development of Instructional Practices

The effectiveness of two instructional approaches for the development of reading fluency in second grade children was compared:

FORI. This approach is based on Stahl & Heubach (2005) Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI) and involved the scaffolded, repeated reading of grade-level texts over the course of a week following a specific lesson plan.
Wide Reading. This approach is based on Kuhn et al. (2006) that also involved scaffolded instruction, but which incorporated the reading of three different grade-level texts each week. This also follows a specific lesson plan.

Findings:

Two classroom studies showed that children receiving wide reading instruction showed better reading fluency by the end of the year compared to controls. However, both FORI and wide-reading approaches showed similar benefits for reading comprehension skills. Children in wide reading classrooms displayed higher self-concept than controls and the effects of the program emerged sooner than for FORI classrooms.

Schwanenflugel, P.J., Kuhn, M.R., Morris, R.D., Morrow, L.M., Meisinger, E.B., Woo, D.G., & Quirk, M. (in press). Insights into fluency instruction: Short- and Long-term Effects of Two Reading Programs. Literacy Research and Instruction.
Kuhn, M. R., Schwanenflugel, P.J., Morris, R.D., Morrow, L. M., Bradley, B. A., Meisinger, E., Woo, D., & Stahl, S. A. (2006). Teaching children to become fluent and automatic readers. Journal of Literacy Research, 38, 357-387.

Recommendation:

We recommend the wide reading approach for promoting the development of reading fluency.