Effective Strategies to Improve Oral Reading Fluency for Older Students

As one of the five pillars of literacy defined by the National Reading Panel, reading fluency is a critical part of effective instruction in elementary classrooms. But as students transition into middle and high school, fluency instruction often disappears, replaced by an emphasis on comprehension strategies, content knowledge, and independent reading.

This shift reflects a common assumption: by middle school, students are expected to already be fluent readers. However, today’s teachers and literacy experts tell a different story. Many older students continue to struggle with accurate, automatic, and expressive reading, which directly impacts their ability to comprehend increasingly complex texts.

While fluent reading is highly correlated with reading comprehension at all grade levels, it's often absent from the secondary literacy conversation and secondary teachers are rarely trained to identify or support dysfluent readers.

So why is fluency missing in middle and high school — and what can we do to change that?

In this blog we will address why reading fluency and fluency work are still important for older struggling readers, what the research says, and what secondary teachers can do to incorporate fluency work in their classrooms.

Why Is Reading Fluency Important?

Reading fluency is generally defined as the ability to read words accurately, with automaticity, appropriate rate, and prosody (reading with expression). It is often considered the “bridge” to reading comprehension because it connects word reading with understanding what those words mean in context. To cross that bridge successfully, students must also have a strong grasp of vocabulary knowledge.

Unfortunately, this bridge is often incomplete for many adolescent readers. While they may have basic decoding skills, they struggle with fluency due to a lack of automaticity and word knowledge — particularly with multisyllabic and morphologically complex words.

What Does the Research Say About Improving Oral Reading Fluency for Older Students?

Knowing how to support struggling readers with fluency is essential for all teachers, including secondary. The research can help us understand both why older students struggle with the components of fluency and what instructional strategies are most effective in helping them improve. By examining high-quality research closely, we can highlight practical, evidence-based methods teachers can use to support students in becoming more fluent, confident readers.

Automatic Word Reading

Research by Kearns and Al Ghanem (2019) shows that struggling adolescent readers often have difficulty segmenting and decoding longer words, which negatively impacts both fluency and comprehension. Because many grade-level texts are densely packed with complex academic words, these gaps create an increasing barrier to reading comprehension.

Studies have also found that explicit instruction in syllable types and morphology can significantly improve older students’ ability to decode and understand complex words automatically (Goodwin & Ahn, 2010; Nunes & Bryant, 2006).

Additional research by Nunes, Bryant, and Barros (2012) further confirms that word recognition plays a critical, mediating role between phonological skills and comprehension, and that automaticity with morphologically complex words is essential for fluent reading. J. Bowers (2020) also argues for a greater instructional emphasis on morphology, pointing to its particularly strong impact on fluency and comprehension in older students.

Repeated Reading

When it comes to building fluency, researchers have explored a range of approaches that support different stages of student development. One widely studied method is repeated reading, which has long been supported by the National Reading Panel (2000) and researchers such as Sharon Vaughn.

In this approach, students practice reading the same text multiple times with feedback to build oral reading fluency (ORF). Repeated reading can be especially effective in intervention settings and for students who need targeted support with automaticity and rate. However, research suggests that its effects are strongest for oral fluency performance and may not consistently translate to gains in silent reading comprehension, particularly in older students.

Wide Reading

As students progress and require more exposure to academic language, other researchers, such as Savvas Learning Company author Elfrieda “Freddy” Hiebert (2025), advocate for wide reading as a complementary strategy.

Wide reading involves engaging with multiple, thematically connected texts that provide repeated exposure to high- and medium-frequency academic words across diverse contexts.

Hiebert emphasizes that this approach supports automaticity, vocabulary development, and background knowledge, all essential for comprehension. Importantly, she highlights that wide reading can be especially helpful for linguistically diverse learners because it gives them a chance to see words used in different, meaningful ways that connect to their own lives, while also helping them better understand and use those words.

Reader’s Theater

Another evidence-based approach that supports structured fluency instruction and student engagement is Reader’s Theater. This instructional practice involves students rehearsing and performing scripts aloud, typically without costumes, props or theatrical lighting, thus emphasizing expressive reading and comprehension.

Reader’s Theater naturally incorporates the repeated reading needed to build fluency, but it differs from standard repeated reading in that it provides an authentic purpose for reading. It’s especially effective with older students who may be reluctant to engage with more conventional fluency activities. By offering a social, performance-driven context, it enhances motivation, prosody, and confidence.

Research by Keehn, S., Harmon, J., & Shoho, A. (2008) and Young and Rasinski (2009) shows that Reader’s Theater can significantly improve reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension when scripts are age-appropriate and connected to academic classroom content.

In a quasi-experimental study, Kariuki and Rhymer (2012) found that sixth-grade students who participated in Reader’s Theater performed significantly better on comprehension measures than their classmates who received more traditional reading instruction, highlighting the value of combining repeated reading with meaningful text engagement.

Recent research also suggests that combining Reader’s Theater with phrase-cued texts can accelerate fluency development even further. In a 2025 study, Rodgers et al. found that this pairing improved not only students’ prosody, but also their accuracy and rate, which are key components of fluent reading.

Phrase-cued texts (texts where natural pauses and phrasing are visually marked with slashes or spacing to guide expressive reading) provide an additional scaffold that helps students build reading fluency.

Importantly, students were more engaged when the scripts were culturally responsive and age-appropriate, making this approach particularly powerful for older, diverse learners. The study highlights the value of blending explicit scaffolding with authentic, social reading experiences, reinforcing Reader’s Theater as a meaningful and effective fluency intervention in secondary classrooms (Rodgers et al., 2025).

Improving Reading Fluency in the Secondary Classroom

Research clearly shows that fluency instruction isn’t just needed by readers in elementary. For secondary readers who struggle with automaticity, vocabulary, and prosody, fluency work must be intentional, scaffolded, and relevant. Here's how secondary teachers can bring the research into their classrooms.

Teach Syllable Types and Morphological Patterns Explicitly

Secondary readers who struggle with decoding multisyllabic and morphologically complex words can have difficulty reading and comprehending complex grade-level texts. Teachers can support these students by explicitly teaching common syllable division patterns and integrating morphology instruction, focusing on prefixes, suffixes, and roots, to give students tools to decode unfamiliar words. Teaching students to utilize these strategies in a multisyllabic word-reading routine can promote their ability to tackle larger words effectively.

Use Repeated Reading Strategically

Repeated reading remains a valuable tool for students who struggle with rate and accuracy, particularly when used in a targeted way. Teachers might implement this practice with short, high-utility texts such as songs, poems, historical speeches, or excerpts from current units across content areas. Partner reading activities can help students receive feedback on their pacing and expression while building reading stamina. To maximize the impact, teachers and students can use fluency rubrics that assess rate, accuracy, and prosody — not just how fast students can read — ensuring the focus remains on automatic, expressive reading and comprehension.

Build in Wide Reading Across Subjects

To support vocabulary development and reading comprehension, secondary teachers can also embed wide reading opportunities across content-area classrooms, including science, social studies, and math. This might involve creating a collection of thematically connected texts that complement the core instruction, such as news articles, blogs, informational excerpts, and literature. Using a text-set approach, i.e. a collection of resources about a single topic, theme, or question, allows students to encounter the same academic vocabulary in varied, authentic contexts, reinforcing word knowledge and background understanding.

Incorporate Reader’s Theater

Though often associated with elementary classrooms, Reader’s Theater is a powerful fluency strategy for older students, especially when tied to existing grade-level content. Teachers can adapt texts into scripts that connect to core-program content, such as dramatized historical events or literary scenes. Through rehearsing and performing scripts, students practice expressive reading and deepen their comprehension of the text. Reader’s Theater also helps build confidence, providing a low-stakes yet engaging format for oral reading practice.

Add Phrase-Cued Texts for Additional Support

Phrase-cued texts can be a helpful scaffold for students who struggle with phrasing and prosody. These texts include visual markers such as slashes or added spacing to indicate natural pauses and phrasing within a sentence. Teachers can model how to use these cues to guide fluent reading, supporting students in understanding and replicating appropriate expression. Over time, the scaffolding can be gradually removed as students become more fluent and confident in their oral reading.

Empowering Older Students Through Fluency Instruction

Improving reading fluency could be the key to helping your struggling older readers, but it requires intentional, evidence-based strategies. By focusing on explicit instruction in syllable types and morphology, strategically using repeated reading, incorporating wide reading across subjects, and leveraging activities like Reader’s Theater and phrase-cued texts, educators can effectively support the development of accurate, automatic, and expressive reading.

These methods not only enhance fluency but also build vocabulary and comprehension, empowering secondary students to engage with complex texts and succeed academically.

References

• Bowers, J. S. (2020). Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 32(3), 681–705. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09515-y
• Goodwin, A. P., & Ahn, S. (2010). A meta-analysis of morphological interventions: Effects on literacy achievement of children with literacy difficulties. Dyslexia, 16(4), 295–316. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.406
• Hiebert, E. H. (2025). Unpacking automaticity: Scaffolded texts and comprehension. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 68(4), 369–379. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1394
• Kariuki, P. N., & Rhymer, S. A. (2012). The effects of readers’ theatre-based and tradition-based instruction on sixth-grade students’ comprehension at a selected middle school. ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED537896.pdf
• Kearns, D. M., & Al Ghanem, R. (2019). How do middle school students read multisyllabic words? Remedial and Special Education, 40(3), 145–155. https://doi.org/10.1002/rem.12210
• Keehn, S., Harmon, J., & Shoho, A. (2008). A study of Readers Theater in eighth grade: Issues of fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 24(4), 335–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573560802004594
• National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). U.S. Government Printing Office.
• Nunes, T., & Bryant, P. (2006). Improving literacy by teaching morphemes. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511610591
• Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Barros, R. (2012). The development of word recognition and its significance for comprehension and fluency. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 959–973. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027412
• Rodgers, E., D'Agostino, J. V., Levin, J. R., and Rasinski, T. (2025) Pairing phrase-cued text with readers' theatre: Effects on reading prosody and automaticity. Journal of Research in Reading, 48: 153–174. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.70002.
• Young, C., & Rasinski, T. (2009). Implementing Readers Theatre as an approach to classroom fluency instruction. The Reading Teacher, 63(1), 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1598/RT.63.1.1