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Running head: IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING

Impact on Student Learning

Lisa Reagan

Youngstown State University

Introduction

A fluency assessment was administered to Kaliyah E. in two sessions. Kaliyah is nine

years old as of the beginning of January. She is in the third grade at Volney Rogers Elementary

School. The assessment was given through two sessions of orally reading one-minute probes to

assess the five dimensions of fluency. The five dimensions consist of a score on the student’s

accuracy, phrasing, smoothness, pace, and lastly, volume and expression. The first reading of the

assessment was on January 28th, while the second reading of the assessment was conducted on

April 1st. The assessment allowed to find Kaliyah’s strengths and weaknesses in her reading

fluency.

First Assessment

One-Minute Reading Probe. The first assessment of the One-Minute Reading Probe

was administered to Kaliyah E. on January 28th, 2019. Kaliyah was able to read 41 words per

minute on a third grade leveled passage. The passage about a man named Hamaguchi has a total

of 172 words. While Kaliyah read 41 words correctly, she reached a total of 54 words throughout

the minute that it was timed. According to the Fluency Accuracy and Automaticity Scale,

Kaliyah scored 89% accuracy which means the reading is at her frustration level. Her

automaticity was between the winter and spring words per minute for first grade, being between

25 for winter and 50-60 for spring. On average, a third-grade student should be reading at 93

words per minute by the winter of the school year. She had several miscues, where she read the

words harvest was “har,” lined as “liked,” hundreds as “hungry,” and everyone as “anyone.” She

self-corrected the word fine, originally pronouncing the word as “fin.” It seems that Kaliyah was

able to identify that the word fine is a CVCe word with a long /i/. Another aspect to consider is
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IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING
the prosody exhibited during the passage, which is the “appropriate use of volume, pitch,

juncture, and stress” (Reutzel & Cooter, 2016). Kaliyah was able to depict intonation and paused

172
172

137.6
137.6

103.2
103.2

68.8
68.8 58
58

41
41
34.4
34.4

0
0 January 28th, 2019 April 1st, 2019
January 28th, 2019 April 1st, 2019

for the majority of the periods and commas. Overall, Kaliyah seemed to be challenged by the

third-grade reading passage, but she did show a generally good amount of prosody throughout

the passage.

Multidimensional Fluency Scale. The reading was scored with the Multidimensional

Fluency Scale (MFS) to interpret the readings of the probe. This scale measures the accuracy,

volume, expression, phrasing, smoothness, and pace of Kaliyah’s reading sample. Kaliyah

received 2 out of 4 points for accuracy. Kaliyah was able to read 41 out of 46 of the words read

accurately. She read four words incorrectly, while she accurately self-corrected one word. She

had a few failed attempts at self-correction as well. Her volume and expression were scored as 2

out of 4. According to Reutzel and Cooter (2016), the student’s prosody is measured through

expressive intonation and natural pausing, which can assist in making a final judgment of the

student’s fluency.” She did speak in a natural sounding language in some areas. Though, she
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seemed to have a focus on pronouncing the words correctly, rather than reading with an

expressive tone. She did have adequate volume, but she would lower her voice with uncertainty

when she read unfamiliar words.

For word phrasing, Kaliyah received 3 out of 4 points. While her phrasing had some

choppiness, she was able to identify the appropriate stress and intonation of the words

throughout most of the passage. She did exhibit some mid-sentence pausing due to sounding out

words and she seemed to omit a few pauses for commas. Kaliyah received a score of 2 out of 4

for smoothness. Kaliyah displayed several pauses and hesitations when presented with unfamiliar

words to sound out, which seemed to affect her performance on the probe. Lastly, Kaliyah scored

a 3 out of 4 for the pace of the reading. She showed a mix between fast and slow reading, which

seemed to be based on her ability to decode the words in the passage. Kaliyah seemed to have

her main strengths in phrasing and pace in fluency, while she would benefit from interventions

3.2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

2.4
2 2 2

1.6

0.8

0
Accuracy Volume and Phrasing Smoothness Pace
Expression

and strategies to improve her accuracy, volume, expression, and smoothness of her fluency.
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IMPACT ON STUDENT LEARNING
Interventions

The two interventions chosen to improve Kaliyah’s fluency growth were repeated

readings and reader’s theaters. Both were implemented several times between January 28th and

April 1st. To be exact, Kaliyah participated in each intervention eleven times throughout that

period of time, while she is still continuing interventions until the end of the semester. The

repeated reading strategy can be used to improve a student’s automaticity, particularly their

reading rate and accuracy (Reutzel & Cooter, 2016). The strategy seemed to help Kaliyah read

with more ease, especially after she had read the same reading several times. After she

completed a reading within the timed minute. The student graphed each reading for her to see her

own progress. When starting a new reading, her rate of words per minute decreased slightly. As

she read each reading multiple times, her reading rate and automaticity would improve greatly.

According to Reutzel and Cooter (2016), the reader’s theater strategy can be used to improve

reading fluency. This strategy was implemented several times, using scripts that Kaliyah and the

other student would be assigned parts. Kaliyah really enjoyed reading the readers theaters and

taking on a role to play, which improved her fluency with the exception of unknown words to

sound out. Overall, it appeared that the interventions were improving her fluency. She seems to

read with more confidence in her ability to decode words, but she is still making errors with

unfamiliar words. Kaliyah particularly enjoyed the reader’s theater partner plays that were

implemented throughout the semester. She really enjoyed taking on a role and acting out the part,

which certainly made her appear to have growth in prosody and smoothness.

Second Assessment

One-Minute Reading Probe. The second assessment of the One-Minute Reading Probe

was administered on April 1st, 2019. Kaliyah read 58 words per minute of the same passage used
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for the first reading. The total of words in the passage is 172. According to the Fluency Accuracy

and Automaticity scale, Kaliyah scored 92% accuracy which is between her frustration and

instructional level. Her automaticity was at a second-grade level, around the average for fall of

the school year which is 53 words per minute. She presented some miscues throughout the

reading, mistaking the words hundreds as “habbers,” stacks as “shakes,” tonight as “night,” and

village as “vanilla.” She self-corrected one word which was lined, as she mistook the word for

“liked.” It seems that Kaliyah most likely thought the word was “liked” due to her originally

recognizing it as a different sight word. Kaliyah seemed to read with appropriate intonation and

pausing throughout most of the passage, with the exception of miscues. Kaliyah showed much

improvement in her fluency after the interventions, which seemed to have impacted her learning

in a positive way.

Multidimensional Fluency Scale. The second assessment again used the MFS to

interpret her score on the five components of fluency. Kaliyah received a score of 3 out of 4 for

her accuracy, which shows improvement from her previous score. This means that she read with

92% accuracy in the words she read, which in the minute she correctly read 58 out of 63 words

in total. Kaliyah had five miscues, along with one self-correction. This percentage is considered

to be “good” accuracy. Kaliyah’s volume and pitch also improved, with a score of 3 out of 4

points. This means that she was able to use natural sounding language throughout the majority of

the passage, with some expressionless reading when encountered with unfamiliar words. The

volume of her voice was appropriate throughout the reading. She received 3 out of 4 points for

phrasing, which remained the same score as the first assessment. She exhibited some pauses and

choppiness when presented with unknown words. For smoothness, Kaliyah received a score of 3

out of 4. This result showed improvement from the first assessment. She presented occasional
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breaks in smoothness when having difficulty with specific words. Lastly, Kaliyah’s reading pace

remained 3 out of 4. She exhibited a mixture of fast and slow reading, most likely due to miscues

and self-corrections.

Improvements and Areas for Growth

Kaliyah showed many improvements during the second assessment. Kaliyah showed

improvement in her words read per minute, reaching 17 more words than she did on the first

reading. Her accuracy rate of the words read improved from 89% to 92%. She started with

automaticity that averaged to between the middle and end of first grade, but she increased to the

beginning of the second-grade level. Some words that she struggled with for both readings were

hundreds, harvest, and lined, but she self-corrected the words harvest and lined during the

second reading.

For the MFS, Kaliyah showed improvement in the areas of accuracy, volume, expression,

and smoothness. On the first assessment, each of these areas were scored as a 2 out of 4, while

on the second assessment she scored 3 out of 4. For accuracy, Kaliyah showed an improvement

in word recognition with an increase to 92%. She was able to self-correct words that were

unknown on the first assessment. For volume and expression, Kaliyah improved by reading in a

more natural language with some expressionless. She was able to read at an appropriate volume,

which likely shows more confidence in her reading. For smoothness, Kaliyah improved by

having less “rough spots” and exhibited some occasional breaks in smoothness with difficulty on

certain words. Kaliyah’s scored remained the same for phrasing and pace. Overall, Kaliyah

seemed to show great improvement, now reaching a score of 3 out of 4 on each dimension of

fluency.
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While Kaliyah showed improvement, she could benefit from further fluency intervention

to increase her fluency in each dimension to a 4 out of 4. Therefore, she could benefit from

interventions that would help her improve accuracy, volume and expression, phrasing,

smoothness, and pace. Another challenge that Kaliyah seems to exhibit is reading the words per

minute on the norm for her grade level. Therefore, it seems that her most needed area for

intervention would be to improve her automaticity and accuracy rate for a grade level passage.

Support for Student Growth

Kaliyah would benefit from further interventions and strategies that will help her

continued growth for fluency, particularly accuracy and automaticity. The repeated reading and

readers’ theater interventions seemed to improve her fluency. While both interventions could be

continued, there are also other interventions that could be implemented to help further her

fluency growth. One of which could be assisted and partner readings, which could be

implemented with a student that is at a similar level for fluency. The students could work

together to help each other, reading the same text together in unison for support or one student

can listen and provide feedback (Reutzel & Cooter, 2016). Another intervention that could be

used is explicit fluency instruction. This intervention can be used to teach students how to self-

regulate and monitor their own reading (Reutzel & Cooter, 2016). This method would be helpful

to Kaliyah in teaching her how to improve her own reading and how to monitor her own

progress. Explicit fluency instruction and assisted and partner readings would be great strategies

to improve Kaliyah’s fluency by providing feedback and learning to self-regulate her reading

fluency.

Conclusion
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The One-Minute Fluency Probe and MFS were very beneficial in finding out specific

data about Kaliyah’s fluency. Both of which helped find her areas of strength, as well as, some

challenges that she presents while reading. Readers’ theaters and repeated readings seemed to

help Kaliyah improve her accuracy, volume and expression, and smoothness. Although, more

interventions could be implemented to help further her fluency growth. Explicit fluency

instruction and partner readings could aid Kaliyah in her fluency growth. It seems that it would

be most important for Kaliyah to improve accuracy and automaticity to reach the norm for her

grade level. Overall, Kaliyah showed great improvement in just over a few months, so her

fluency growth seems to be very promising in becoming a fluent reader.

Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B. (2016). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction in an

era of Common Core Standards: Helping every child succeed (5th ed.). Boston, MA:

Pearson Education.