Reading Fluency Teaching Resources

Explore reading fluency teaching resources created by teachers for teachers! This collection of printable worksheets, digital activities, Google Slides templates and more has been designed to help build students' foundational language skills, from understanding what to do with silent letters to recognising sight words.

The expert teachers at Teach Starter have carefully curated this collection of resources — all aligned with the Australian English curriculum — to ensure each one is classroom-ready. Explore the collection to find the best activities to add to your lesson plans now!

Are you new to teaching this part of the curriculum, or just looking for fresh ideas to engage your students? Read on for a guide on what reading fluency is, how to teach it and how to improve it!

What Is Reading Fluency?

We'll start at the very beginning — defining the topic at hand.

Reading fluency refers to a reader's ability to read words accurately, quickly, and with appropriate expression. It involves not just ensuring your students are able to recognise individual words, but also teaching them to read entire sentences and paragraphs with ease and comprehension.

Developing fluency skills early on in primary school is crucial as they will directly affect a child's reading comprehension and overall academic performance.

If a student struggles with reading fluency, they may have difficulty understanding the meaning of what they are reading, which can make learning and retaining new information more challenging.

How to Teach Reading Fluency — Tips From Our Teacher Team

Teaching students to read fluently isn't something that happens overnight of course. It involves different strategies that build on one another during early literacy instruction.

Here are a few of the methods that are used in combination with one another to help kids grow their fluency skills:

Phonics Instruction

Early years students are just beginning their journey with reading fluency by learning the basic sounds of letters and how to blend them together to form words. Phonics worksheets, games and other activities all come together here to help students practise their phonics skills.

Guided Reading

Working with small groups of students who are at a similar reading level is a common strategy starting around year 1, and guided reading may continue into year 3 or year 4 — depending on your teaching style and your students' needs. During guided reading, teachers choose books that are appropriate for each group and provide support and feedback as students read aloud.

Repeated Reading

Teaching year 3 or year 3? You may may ask students to read the same passage multiple times to build fluency. This can involve choral reading (where the whole class reads together) or individual reading.

Reader's Theatre

This popular strategy involves students acting out a story or play they have read. This helps them to build fluency and develop a better understanding of the text.

Partner Reading

You may want to pair students together to read a passage out loud to each other. This allows kids to practise reading fluently while also getting feedback and support from a peer.

Independent Reading

Encouraging students to read on their own at their own pace is one of the best ways to get kids hooked on reading and, of course, to build fluency. This can involve letting students choose their own books or assigning specific books to read. Encouraging students to read regularly, providing them with a variety of reading materials at their appropriate reading level and giving them feedback and positive reinforcement can all contribute to developing strong reading fluency skills.

No matter the year you're teaching or the strategies you're using, teaching reading fluency will require you to observe how well your students can read aloud and how smoothly they can read silently.