How To: Increase Reading Fluency With a Group Repeated-Reading Intervention

Students who need to increase their reading fluency often do well with repeated reading, an intervention in which the reader repeatedly rehearses the same passage aloud while receiving corrective feedback (Lo, Cooke, & Starling, 2011). Repeated reading has traditionally been delivered in a 1:1 tutoring setting. However, schools faced with limited personnel resources would prefer to deliver interventions in small-group format (e.g., Vaughn et al. 2003), to provide academic support to a larger number of struggling students.

An effective group repeated reading intervention (Klubnik & Ardoin, 2010) has been developed that allows a tutor to work on reading fluency with up to 3 students in a group format. This tutoring package includes several components, with repeated reading as the 'engine' that drives student growth in reading fluency. A tutoring session using this group intervention will last about 15 minutes. Below are guidelines for implementing the intervention (adapted from Klubnik & Ardoin, 2010).

Preparation. To prepare for each tutoring session, the tutor creates or obtains these materials:

• 1 student reading passage: This passage should be 150 words or longer and at students' instructional level. Instructional as defined here means that students are able to correctly read at least 90% of the words in the passage (Vaughn et al., 2003). Copies of the passage are made for each student and the tutor.
• 1 copy of the Group Repeated Reading Intervention Behavior Rating Scale.

Procedures. The group repeated reading intervention has 4 components: passage preview, repeated readings, phrase-drill error correction, and contingent reward:

Passage Preview. The tutor reads the practice passage aloud once while students follow along silently, tracking their place with an index finger. During this initial read-through, the tutor stops several times at unpredictable points and asks a student selected at random to read the next word in the passage. (NOTE: This 'assisted cloze' strategy -- Homan, Klesius, & Hite,1993--ensures that students pay close attention to the tutor's modeling of text.)

Repeated Readings. The tutor next has the students read the practice passage aloud 3 times . For each read-aloud, the students engage in sequential reading: First, one student reads a sentence, then the second reads a sentence, and the third reads a sentence--with the process continuing thus in round-robin fashion until the passage is completed.  When a student misreads or hesitates in reading a word for 3 seconds or longer, the tutor states the correct word. At the beginning of each repeated reading, the tutor selects a different student to start the reading, to ensure that by the end of the 3 readings, each student will have read each sentence in the passage once.

Phrase Drill Error Correction. During each repeated reading, the tutor writes down any word that students misread or hesitate in reading for 3 seconds or longer. At the end of each reading, the tutor reviews these error words with the students. For each error word, the tutor points to that word in the passage, ensures that students are looking at the word, and asks them to read the word:

• If students read an error word correctly the first time, the tutor advances to the next error word.
• If students misread or hesitate for 3 seconds or longer on the error word, the tutor pronounces the word correctly and has students read the word aloud together (choral responding). Then the tutor has students read aloud a phrase of 2-3 words that includes the error word--performing this action twice. (NOTE: If a sentence contains 2 or more error words, the tutor models each word, has students correctly read each word, then has students read the entire sentence twice.)

Contingent Reward. At the start of each tutoring session, the tutor reviews with the group the 3 behavioral expectations from the Group Repeated Reading Intervention Behavior Rating Scale:

• When asked to read aloud, I did my best reading.
• When others were reading, I paid close attention.
• I showed good behaviors and followed all directions quickly.

The tutor reminds the students that they can earn a reward if they observe these behavioral expectations.

At the end of the session, the tutor rates each student's behavior on the Group Repeated Reading Intervention Behavior Rating Scale. Any student who earns a top score (3 points) on all rating items receives a nickel (Klubnik & Ardoin, 2010), sticker, or other modest reward.