By the end of my first year of teaching, I realized
that improving my students’ reading fluency
was the most important work I could do with them.
Through research, I learned that repeated reading
was the most widely used method for helping weak
readers improve their reading fluency (Samuels,
1997). I chose to use timed repeated reading because
Samuels found it was an excellent motivating
device for students when they recorded the gains in
their reading times. As students kept track of their
progress, their success encouraged them to work
harder. I encouraged students to set goals for themselves,
a practice that Therrien (2004) called an essential
component of repeated reading. For many of
my students, recording their repeated reading times
gave them their first concrete signs of reading success.
Samuels reported that in order for students to
develop automaticity in reading, they needed decoding
instruction and time to practice their decoding
skills, which timed repeated readings provided. In
addition to improving reading fluency and word recognition,
repeated oral reading also improves reading
comprehension when it is used in the context of
an overall reading program (NICHD, 2000). When I
added timed repeated reading to my instruction, my
students showed substantial gains not only in their
reading fluency, but also in their comprehension and
word recognition skills.