Reading Fluency Teaching Resources

Explore reading fluency teaching resources created by teachers for teachers! This collection of printable worksheets, digital reading center 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 recognizing sight words.

Packed with curriculum-aligned and differentiated resources, this collection of resources has been carefully curated by the expert ELA teachers at Teach Starter to ensure each one is classroom-ready to save you ample time on lesson planning.

New to this part of the ELA 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 being able to recognize individual words but also being able to read entire sentences and paragraphs with ease and comprehension.

Developing fluency skills early on in elementary 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 in the course of 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

During the primary grades, students are 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 practice their phonics skills.

A beige bubble with a woman's face on it and text that reads Teach Starter Teacher Tip. When working with students on their reading fluency, I always teach them to chunk their words together and not read each word as if it were in isolation. I use swoops under words to signal where students should take a breath while reading. — Teach Starter Resource Producer Brittany Collins

Guided Reading

Working with small groups of students who are at a similar reading level is a common strategy starting around first grade, and guided reading may continue into third or fourth grade — 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 second or third grade? 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 Theater

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 practice 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 grade 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.