Assessing Fluency: The Key to Unlocking Reading Growth

Fluency is one of the most critical components of reading success—and one of the easiest to overlook. (For an overview of fluency, including what it is and why it is important, see our blog post What is Reading Fluency (and Why Does It Matter)?) When we assess fluency, we’re looking at accuracy (reading words correctly), rate (the speed at which words are read), and prosody (the rhythm and expression with which words are read), each of which plays a vital role in helping students bridge the gap between decoding words and understanding what they read. 

Why Assess Fluency Regularly?

Fluency is the bridge between decoding and comprehension. If students aren’t fluent readers, they struggle to focus on the meaning of the text because so much of their energy is spent on figuring out words. Assessing fluency regularly helps you:

• Track progress over time.
• Identify areas where students may need additional support.
• Ensure students are building the skills they need to read confidently and understand deeply.

In this post, we’ll explore how to assess fluency effectively, including using oral reading fluency (ORF) measures for accuracy and rate, as well as ways to evaluate prosody. Whether you’re new to fluency assessments or looking for a refresher, this guide will help you get started and make sense of the data so you can support every reader in your classroom.

Assessing Accuracy and Rate with Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)

Oral reading fluency (ORF) is one of the most common ways to assess reading fluency. ORF is a quick and effective tool for understanding how well your students are reading, and it can give you valuable insights into their overall reading development.

Let’s break it all down: why you should assess ORF regularly, how to administer and score it, and what to do with the results.

How to Administer ORF

1. Select an unpracticed, grade-level passage (ideally 100–200 words).
2. Have the student read the passage aloud for one minute while you follow along, marking any errors (mispronunciations, substitutions, omissions, transpositions, or words not read within three seconds). If a student self-corrects within three seconds, you do not count it as an error. Nor do you count insertions (adding a word), repetitions, or speech/pronunciation differences due to dialect or accent.
3. When the minute is up, count the total number of words read and subtract the number of errors.

The result is the student’s Words Correct Per Minute (WCPM) score. It is helpful to get into the habit of graphing the student’s WCPM scores after each assessment to visualize their growth over time.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say a student reads 120 words in one minute but makes 10 errors.

• Total words read: 120
• Errors: 10
• WCPM: 120 - 10 = 110 WCPM

You can take the information from the assessment and place it on a norms chart. Norms charts are great tools to evaluate a student’s WCPM against grade-level expectations. Click to see a norms chart by Hasbrouck and Tindal (2017). Using that chart as a reference, imagine the student you assessed above was a third grader and that you assessed them in the Fall. The norms chart will show you that that particular student is above the 75th percentile for fluency norms. If, however, these were results from a Spring fluency test, the student would be barely in the 50th percentile. 

One thing to keep in mind about ORF and norms referencing is that the score is like a thermometer reading—it can tell you if the student is fluently reading at grade level, but the test doesn’t tell the teacher why. To figure that out, further diagnostic assessments would be required.

What Grades Should ORF Be Assessed?

ORF is typically assessed regularly from grades 1–5. Upon entering first grade, a student’s ORF should be assessed. Then students who are making adequate progress should be assessed three times per year (beginning, middle, and end). A student is making adequate progress if they fall within 10 WCPM of the 50th percentile for their grade. If adequate progress is not being made, more frequent progress monitoring may be needed. 

For older students, especially those struggling with comprehension, ORF assessments can still be a valuable tool. If a middle or high school student struggles with comprehension, assessing their fluency can reveal whether difficulties in accuracy, rate, or prosody are contributing to the issue. Students in grades 6+ should also be regularly monitored and assessed if they are reading below the expected levels for their grade. 

Assessing Prosody: The Art of Fluency

Prosody—reading with expression and appropriate phrasing—is harder to quantify than accuracy or rate. Because of this, it is often overlooked in progress monitoring and formal assessments. However, it’s just as important when it comes to comprehension, so it should be looked at closely in the classroom.

How to Assess Prosody:

1. Choose an independent-level passage for the student to read aloud.
2. Use a prosody rubric to evaluate their reading. The characteristics you are looking for in a prosodic reading rubric include stress/emphasis of words, phrasing, intonation, expression, and pauses. Click for a basic example you can find online that details categories of performance for each of these elements of prosody.

Listening for the characteristics outlined in the rubric helps teachers identify students who may be struggling to read with ease and expression. Then, when nonprosodic reading is detected, work with the student on specific strategies to improve their prosody. (To read our blog post about strategies to address nonprosodic reading, see the post Addressing Nonprosodic Reading: 5 Engaging Strategies to Boost Fluency.)

Diagnosing Dysfluency

As we mentioned before, fluency assessments give you a snapshot of student performance (the temperature), but they don’t explain the underlying causes for any dysfluency that might exist. Dysfluency can stem from:

• Phonemic awareness deficits: Trouble identifying and manipulating sounds in words.
• Decoding difficulties: Challenges with sounding out unfamiliar words.
• Vocabulary gaps: Limited word knowledge can slow reading.
• Language syntax issues: Struggles with understanding sentence structures.
• Content knowledge: Lack of background knowledge about the text’s topic.

So when you notice dysfluent reading in a student, take note of certain characteristics that can help you identify the areas in which the student needs the most support.

• Inaccurate reading: Frequent word errors may point to deficits in phonics knowledge and/or skills, multisyllabic word reading, a deficit in high-frequency words that are recognized on sight, a lower-than-average oral vocabulary, or inability to monitor reading accuracy? When students do not accurately decode the words in front of them, consider diving more deeply into these areas and doing some targeted work to strengthen the skill for which they show a deficit.
• Slow reading: A sluggish rate could indicate weak word recognition or processing speed. This may be the culprit if you notice students decoding words sound-by-sound rather than in larger meaningful chunks, taking several attempts to accurately decode a word (rather than demonstrating automatic word recognition skills), lacking in background knowledge required to understand the text, or demonstrating the urge to speed up or slow down in ways that hinder comprehension. In these cases, further work in decoding and word recognition may be needed to help students achieve an appropriate reading speed.
• Non-prosodic reading: Monotone or choppy reading can significantly impact reading comprehension. Does the reader fail to pause at punctuation or natural phrase boundaries? Do they lack syntactic knowledge of English that would help them read in meaningful phrases? Do they lack expression when reading or focus too much on word identification? If these are the culprits to fluent reading, more explicit instruction in prosodic reading may be necessary.

Assessing fluency is like checking the temperature of your students’ reading health. ORF assessments (accuracy and rate) and prosody evaluations can show where a student stands, but they’re just the beginning. To truly help struggling readers, teachers must dig deeper to uncover the causes of dysfluency and create a targeted plan to support their growth.

By understanding ORF and prosody—and regularly assessing both—you’re not just teaching students to read; you’re giving them the tools to become confident, lifelong readers. Stay tuned for more posts in our fluency series, where we’ll explore strategies to build fluency in every classroom!

Register for our on-demand webinar, 'The Fluency Files: Cracking the Code to Smooth, Skilled Reading' for more tips in this series on fluency instruction. Fluency is the game-changer your students need, and it’s time to make it a priority!