How to Raise Reading Scores for Your School

Improving Reading Fluency is the Key
to Raising Reading Scores

For struggling readers, a primary cause of their poor reading scores is low reading fluency. For these students, the #1 way to raise their test scores is improve their reading fluency with a systematic, intensive phonics program.

Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly, and automatically so that most of the attention can be given to comprehension.

Good reading fluency is a requirement for good reading comprehension. Low fluency readers have poor comprehension, and this causes them to have low reading scores.

If you have students with good spoken English comprehension but poor reading comprehension, the problem is usually low fluency reading.

Identify Your Low Fluency Readers

Identifying your low fluency readers is easy. Just listen to them read some moderately challenging text (or you can use our free Reading Fluency Test).

Look for two types of low fluency readers: Guessers and Plodders.

Guessers

Guessers are whole word memorizers who lack the phonics decoding skill to sound out new words.

When they try to read a word they don't already know they will guess, usually by substituting a different word starting with the same letter and with similar length. Or sometimes they'll just skip the word altogether.

This causes poor comprehension because they are not reading what the text says. They are changing the meaning by substituting incorrect words and leaving words out.

In addition to poor comprehension, Guessers are in big trouble because they have no way to independently learn new words that are not already in their vocabulary.

Plodders

Plodders read slowly and laboriously, word by word. They are better off than Guessers because at least they are sounding out new words instead of guessing and skipping.

The problem with plodders is their phonics decoding skills are too weak. They give so much attention to figuring out individual words that they can't keep track of the meaning, which causes poor comprehension.

Guessers and Plodders enter a cycle of learning failure where they fall farther and farther behind as they move into higher grades. The only way to break this cycle and raise their test scores is to improve their reading fluency and comprehension with a strong phonics-based intervention.

Your School Has a Lot of Low Fluency Readers

If your school is typical, you probably have a lot of low fluency Guessers and Plodders.

To get an idea of how many low fluency readers your school might have, take a look at the latest national reading scores from 2017. In the U.S., the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) conducts national reading tests for 4th and 8th graders every two years.

Here are the latest national 4th grade reading scores for 2017:

Most of your Below Basic and many of your Basic readers have low fluency. You should identify students in your bottom 30% to 50% for reading fluency improvement, not just the very worst readers.

Target Your Guessers and Plodders
to Raise Reading Scores

For low fluency Guessers and Plodders, the only way to raise their reading scores is to teach them with an intensive, systematic phonics program, like the Ultimate Phonics Reading Program.

For students who guess and skip, they need to learn the phonics system of English and how to sound out words accurately based on the spelling.

For students who read slowly, they need a lot of controlled reading practice so they learn to sound out words quickly and automatically.

A program like Ultimate Phonics, with thousands of expertly organized words and sentences, acts as a training program to turn slow, halting readers into fast, accurate readers with good comprehension and higher test scores.

• Inexpensive
• One-time charge
• Easy to get started
• Suitable for any age
• Requires minimal teacher training
• Ideal for intervention or supplementation