Developing fluency and comprehension

Once children can decode confidently, their reading lessons focus on developing reading fluency and comprehension. Reading comprehension is the ability to read a text, process it and understand its meaning. It relies on two, interconnected abilities: word reading (being able to decode the symbols on the page) and language comprehension (being able to understand the meaning of the words and sentences).

Over a week, children in Year 3 to 6 take part in daily reading lessons focused around the same text. Year 2 follow a similar model within one weekly lesson. All reading lessons focus on developing fluency, exploring new vocabulary as well as reading comprehension. The weekly texts used are a mix of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Strategies used to develop fluency:

Paired Reading	Children develop their fluency by taking it in turns to read aloud to each other. They discuss where expression and intonation should be used and challenge each other to improve as the session goes on.
ECHO reading	Echo reading is a strategy to help children develop expressive, fluent reading. In echo reading, the adult or confident reader reads a short segment of text, sometimes a sentence or short paragraph, and children repeat it back.
Text Marking	Children read through a text and write symbols on their copy identifying where characters speak and the key punctuation marks in order to aid their comprehension through meaningful expression.
Performance reading	Children work together to plan how to read aloud a passage of a text, script or poem to an audience with expression, fluency and meaning.