Effective methods for building automaticity to improve the fluency of young readers.

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to create a teaching method that can be used to improve automaticity in Kindergarten students for increased reading fluency. Reading and Literacy Instruction are essential parts in an elementary classroom, with it being imperative to begin in a child's early years. Through personal teaching experience, I have seen children achieve fluency in reading through automaticity (fast, accurate, effortless word identification). Unfortunately, automaticity is frequently unfamiliar to early education teachers. Through the review of several theories for improving automaticity, I have discovered there is no standard practice for early education automaticity improvement. With my research, I wanted to answer the question, “What are the most effective methods for building automaticity to improve the fluency of young readers? My efforts involved applying a variety of automaticity improvement strategies in my own Kindergarten classroom. The classroom I teach provides a good cross section of socioeconomic students, as well as an equal mix of sexes. The testing took place at a public school in a general education kindergarten class, during the language arts hour. A valid informal test was administered to ensure the ability to apply to future classes. The findings of my testing show the benefits of how early intervention can help build a more confident student who will feel immediate success at the beginning of his educational path, while also showing how the implementation of mixed methods for teaching automaticity will increase the fluency sight word level in reading for Kindergarten students, thus proving automaticity is of key importance for developing readers to become fully competent and fluent.