EVIDENCE-BASED FLUENCY INTERVENTIONS FOR ELEMENTARY STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

Being a competent reader is fundamentally important for being successful in school as well as in adult life. Reading is the area in which students with learning disabilities (LD) struggle the most, as more than half of students with LD exhibit difficulty in reading as their primary disability. Teachers are critically important for helping students with LD to become better readers. Teachers should focus on teaching fundamental reading skills. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of reading fluency for students with LD and provide information about two effective fluency interventions, repeated reading and peer-assisted learning strategies (PALS). When students with LD cannot read fluently, they lose their motivation and interest in most school activities connected to reading. There is a strong connection between reading fluency and text comprehension, and students with LD usually cannot establish strong comprehension skills due to their deficits in fluency skills. Fluency instruction should start in early grades because researchers have repeatedly shown that students between first and third grade benefit most from explicit and systematic fluency instruction. Research indicates three effective fluency teaching methods. The first method involves using a model or audio material through which fluent reading is modeled for students. The second method mainly focuses on reading the same passage several times, and the third method is related to providing immediate and corrective feedback when monitoring how students read. Repeated reading and PALS are two of the interventions comprising the aforementioned effective teaching methods for fluency instruction, and they are research-based reading interventions for students with LD.