By It can be challenging for young readers to read at the right pace. Some kids read too slowly, while others read too fast. Reading too fast may seem like a somewhat unlikely problem. Having a child who reads too slowly can throw up obvious red flags, but parents and teachers aren’t always as concerned when a child reads too quickly. There are some definite problems with reading too fast, though. Children who read too quickly tend to think that “good readers are fast readers.” Listen to the example in the video below.

What do you think—does this sound like good reading to you? Download my FREE Quick Guide: “. 10 Ways to Help a Child Who Reads Too Quickly • Explain that reading should be at the same pace as regular talking—not too fast and not too slow. • Read a paragraph aloud to her twice and ask her to tell you which one is easier to understand. The first time, read it extremely fast with no expression and without stopping at punctuation.

Read Naturally's Reading Assessments Read. Word Warm-ups is a quick, timed, independent program for. The Six-Minute Solution A Reading Fluency Program (Primary Level) Gail N. Grades K-2 and Remedial Grade 3. Brief Description of the Program. The QuickReads intervention is designed to increase word reading efficiency and fluency. Read Naturally's research-based reading interventions have. All of my students who use this program regularly. Quick Phonics Screener; Reading Fluency.

The second time, read with meaningful expression at a normal, understandable pace. Can she hear the difference?

Was one easier for her to understand? • Acknowledge that she’s a good reader and can read very fast, but that you want her to slow down when she reads because you want to understand the words she is saying. • Record your student reading at a fast pace and then at a regular pace. She can listen to the recordings to hear the difference. • Instead of asking your student to point to each word, try having her use a piece of paper as a guide under the line she is currently reading.

See if the physical reminder of a piece of paper—and the act of having to move it as she reads—helps her slow down. • You could have a code phrase to remind her to slow down, such as “speedy bunny.” • Read a page to her at a normal pace, and then have her read it at her fast speed.

See if she can hear the difference. Cthulhu Investigators Companion Pdf File. Then read the next page to her, and have her match your reading pace. • If your child ignores punctuation, teach her to pinch her fingers together when she hits punctuation at the end of sentences. This is a good reminder to slow down for punctuation. • You can also try assigning a shorter amount of reading. Start with whatever amount she can cheerfully read at a good pace—then end there.

Praise her for reading at an understandable pace or with expression, or for any part of her reading that went well. It may be that she looks at the length of reading and just wants it to be over fast, so focusing on a shorter passage done with expression will reinforce the right habits. By taking turns reading each page of a story, you have the opportunity to demonstrate proper pacing for your child to emulate. Remember that child who reads too fast? Listen to what a difference it makes when that same child slows down to a normal pace. My 10 yr old has grown leaps & bounds in his reading since we started using AAR.

I’m blown away by how much his reading has progressed, but I was just realizing the other day that sometimes he reads too fast. He starts guessing at words or reading what he thinks it should say instead of what it does say.

Thank you for these tips to help slow him down! And I really appreciate the idea about breaking up a reading assignment that may be too long. He’s become very focused on how many pages he has left & he gets discouraged if he has too much ahead of him.

I need to give him & myself permission to not finish the lesson every time.:-). Faith, It might be that your student is reading faster than normal speech allows, which can do all sorts of things to how we sound when we read aloud. Once a student is reading faster than a regular speaking speed, it can take some practice in order to be able to read aloud well. On the other hand, it could be that your student is having difficulty with reading but has excellent comprehension so can make up for the difficulties. Either way, consider having him or her read aloud to you daily for 10 minutes or so and focus on reading smoothly, at a steady speaking pace, and aim for a high level of accuracy in reading.

Please let us know if you have further questions or if things don’t improve after a few weeks. My daughter is almost 14 and has always read quickly. She reads normally out loud now (she did not when she was four – she raced) but she gobbles up books that she reads on her own.

In fourth grade, her teacher accused her of lying because she said she had already read a chapter that other kids were still reading. Sowe did a “test” with her at home. We read a designated number of pages of the same book.

She finished more quickly than her parents. Then we asked her all kinds of questions – including details, like a recipe they mentioned in the text, which character said this or that, what color shirt was Joe wearing. She recalled everything easily. She really does read that fast, and she retains what she reads.

She absolutely LOVES to read. I often have wondered if her fast reading is a problem, and I wish she would slow down and savor good writing but maybe some day when she gets her hands on something beautiful, she will. She loves poetry too, so I have hope. Kasien, What we are trying to address in this blog post is how to help students for whom reading fast is a problem. However, reading fast is not a problem for some people. Some readers can read at a remarkable pace and have as high or higher comprehension than slower readers. Some fast readers like your daughter can comprehend fully without having to hear the words in their minds when they read silently.

Other fast readers lose some, or at times a lot, of the details of the book because of their reading speed. However, I caution her about poetry. Poetry is written for the sound of language as much as the meaning.

It must be heard, either aloud or in the mind, which requires reading at the pace of normal speech. Thank you, Candice! You bring up an excellent point about developing phrasing in your student’s reading. We discuss how to work on phrasing in detail in this blog post on. The post deals mostly with the slow, having to sound out every word, reading.

However, the work on phrasing applies to all reading. One of my students read neither fast nor slow, but his reading was so monotone that he had very poor comprehension.

Working with him on expression and phrasing made huge impacts on his comprehension. Hi robin — I’ve posted a list of different characters’ voices on the white board (alien, giant, bee, duck, queen, ‘tin-man,’ British, rapper) and let my students choose a voice they’d like to use when reading aloud. Sometimes they will sing part of a text (e.g. In the style of a rapper or opera singer).

These strategies help the “too fast” readers slow down in order pay attention to the words and punctuation marks in a text. I might decide to be the “conductor” during choral reading and ask the students to raise their voices when my fingers sweep up and lower them as my fingers scoop down. This is a good way to get them to practice fluency. I have rarely come across a child who reads too fast so they do not understand! I read very quickly indeed and always have done so from the time I was 5 and I am extremely grateful for this because I have always had time to read several books on a topic so I have done well in exams, taking down notes from a board etc etc.

As I missed a lot of schooling when I was older my fast reading stood me in good stead because I could read all my books and notes quickly so I wasn’t so behind!! I never had any difficulty with comprehension, In fact, in some ways it was easier because the whole story/topic was read completely in one go. Pat, There are many students who can read quickly and still have great comprehension.

However, many students are unable to read faster than a normal speaking speed without losing some comprehension. I am not speaking only of young or struggling readers here. I know many academically advanced high schoolers, college students, and college graduates that must read slowly in order to fully understand the material, especially difficult and complex material. I have noticed that these people tend to be more auditory in nature, and even when they read silently they still “hear” every word in their mind. Faster readers that still have good comprehension, however, I have noticed are more visual and they do not “hear” the words in their mind when they read. I have had experience with many students reading so fast that they could barely understand what they read.

It is a problem for many children’s comprehension and can become a hard habit to break. I am a reading specialist who works with small groups of Tier 2 second graders.

Many of my students believe that reading as fast as possible means they are better at reading than those who read at a slower pace. The concept of comprehension does not occur to them, even when they are reminded that the purpose of reading is to understand and to remember the content of a paragraph or a page of text. I believe part of the problem with beginning and emerging young readers who read too quickly is that the classroom teachers, particularly in first and second grade, do not regularly emphasize how important it is to read at a slower pace. Nor do they recognize that reading too fast quickly becomes a habit that is hard to break. As a result, the myth that “faster readers are better readers” continues to flourish in the early years of learning how to read.

Holly, Thank you for your great insight. You bring up some wonderful points here. I also think that students get the idea that good reading is fast reading because there is so much praise for how quickly a student can finish a book, “You read that whole thing in one day? Wow!” While such praise is well meaning, it never considers how much, or how little, the student understood what he or she read. A slower reader with full comprehension will get so much more from reading than a faster reader that barely understood what the book was about. I have a 10 year old deaf son who uses cochlear implants.

He was implanted at 7. So, teaching him to read using phoincs was not an option in the begining since he did not have access to sound. I’ve always read to him using voice and sign language. He has learned to read by sight. He is reading fairly well but after reading this article he is definitely a speed reader but gets extremely frustrated when I stop him to slow him down.

He is also struggling with reading comprehension. Now that he has implants he has access to most sounds and spoken English.

We read aloud together with his brother who is in 3rd grade by each reading one page of a chapter book. Do you have any tips or advice teaching deaf children to read? I don’t feel like he can comprehend what he reads if he reads by himself. He can figure out how to read words very well but I would not say he can decode. Jessica, Although AAR has been used to help many severely struggling readers (even adults), we don’t have a lot of feedback on your specific situation. We know of another mom using All About Spelling for a child who has cochlear implants (which gives him some access to sound, though limited), and we also have a deaf staff member.

(She had no hearing until age 11, and then got cochlear implants which gave her partial hearing). The mom using AAS mentioned that they use a total communication approach because his implant has not been as successful as most are. In their case, our program tied in well with their speech work.

Her son found the rules very helpful. Before, he could memorize ten words for spelling, but would forget them. The rules gave her son a framework and the sound cards gave them the daily listening practice that he needed; he would also lip read. She didn’t worry so much about him getting the correct pronunciation on sounds, because that is hard for him.

She would take good efforts there and work on getting them better. In his case, he did not yet have the auditory memory to say the word to himself and then spell it, so the mom would model the word and then he would spell it. For learning the sounds, lip-reading helped some, but the short vowel sounds are hard to hear and not so easy to see, as well as the r-controlled sounds.

So, in the beginning, the mom used a book called Tucker Signing Strategies for Readers by Bethanie H. Tucker that has signs for the phonetic sounds.

Here is the website,, that you might check out. The mom also incorporates some right-brain visual approaches. Our deaf staff member made a very interesting observation. She said that phonics is a deaf person’s dream. It eliminates the pressure of having to hear.

For example, AAR and AAS teach the syllable rules. These tell her that if she sees an open syllable (the syllable doesn’t end in a consonant) the vowel in that syllable is usually long. If it’s closed, the vowel is going to be short. This basic rule applies to many words, and means that she doesn’t have to hear a word anymore to know how it’s pronounced. She only has to see it on paper. In this way, phonics is going to play to a deaf child’s biggest asset, his sight. With our spelling program, you demonstrate the words first, and then let the student try them.

So, they have the opportunity to learn the rule, visually see how it applies to the word, and work with it kinesthetically as they apply the division and label the syllables. This can help reinforce their hearing/lip-reading of the word, and gives them additional strategies for remembering how to spell it. With lip-reading, our staff member couldn’t always tell the vowel sound, except by understanding the context of what was spoken, even though she knew of the concept of the different sounds before she had her implant. So this kind of rule would have made a difference to her learning-to-read experience. Reading comprehension can be caused to a number of issues, with reading too fast being one of them. The others are: – Fluency issues.

Students can figure out what they read but can’t read it fluently. If they are focusing on the work of reading, they won’t be able to focus on understanding what they read. Students rely on word-guessing strategies, and incorrect guesses lead to a lack of comprehension.

Some may also skip small words. – Reading too fast. Sometimes this is the opposite of fluency issues (but not always). Students think that a “good reader” reads very quickly.

Students who do this tend not to have time to think about the meaning of text. – Vocabulary issues.

Students may have the skills to sound out and read words that they don’t know the meaning of yet. This can happen especially with young, advanced readers. For example, think of a simple word like “milkman.” How many 21st century kids would have any idea what a milkman is?! – Lack of life experience. They can’t relate to what they are reading, again usually because of young age. A 10 or 11 year old may be able to read Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer (it’s listed as a 5th to 6th grade reading level), but huge parts of the book uses driving a car as a metaphor about life. Without the experience of actually driving, much of the book goes over the reader’s head.

Often the first time to solving comprehension issues is requiring the student to read aloud daily from a book they feel comfortable reading (even if it’s “easy”). When they read aloud to you you can more easily discern exactly what the problem is, and provide both immediate and ongoing help. Over time, the leads to reading becoming easier and easier reading means students want to do it more.

Sorry this is so long, but I hope you can find some help in here. Let us know if we can help further. Mia, Reading for 30 minutes is a long time for a 1st grader.. By choral reading, I think you mean what we call b.

This is a very useful technique for helping to build a child’s fluency and stamina. For your 4th grader, the tips outlined above can be very effective, especially recording him so he can hear himself read. Also, do you read aloud to your children regularly?

When you read aloud to them, you are modeling what good reading should sound like. You may ask your son to read like you do, with expression. If you are not reading aloud to your sons regularly, please consider doing so. My son was struggling with monotone, expressionless reading last summer, and it was effecting his comprehension. For a while I simply had him read aloud to me daily, and I would stop him and ask him to reread portions so he could “read the punctuation” and add expression.

It helped his comprehension, and over time it helped him to begin to enjoy reading. You might try something similar with your son. Maya, You are correct. Some children do try to read fast to either just get done with reading, or to hide the fact that they aren’t strong in it. Reading with full expression, which is in a large part reading the punctuation, is an additional issue as well.

It is very difficult, even for the person doing the reading, to get meaning if a passage is read in a monotone way that skips punctuation, especially ends of sentences. Reading aloud to your child with good expression is enough to teach it for some children, but some need explicit instruction and regular practice in order to get it. Thank you for commenting. I hope you have a lovely week. Though my son doesn’t necessarily read too fast, he has some strange habits when he reads out loud and I wondered if you could weigh in. Like too-fast readers, he often skips words and inserts words that aren’t there, almost like he takes a glance at the sentence and makes an assumption about what it says. He also inserts strange humming sounds in between words and often takes a breath mid-word.

Sometimes even mid-syllable. It’s really hard to describe without having someone observe himbut I was just wondering if you have any ideas. Many children do just that–they make assumptions about what a sentence says without reading all of the words. Some kids find it more intuitive to guess–they may be great at guessing based on comprehension skills, or from word shapes, first or last letters in words, and so on.

If you think his main struggle is with word-guessing, check out this article on how to break the word-guessing habit: Skipping small words is not unheard of (sometimes adults do this too). This often happens with high frequency, small “function words” such as a, the, an, etc because these are words we can’t really picture.

Misreading these words often doesn’t change the meaning of a sentence (and when my older kids missed occasional short words but the meaning of the sentence stayed the same, I didn’t usually address it. I did address it if the meaning of a sentence was changed, if I felt they needed to slow down, if they missed a lot of words, and when they were still beginning readers.) Skipping small words can happen because we can read more quickly than we can speak, or because of the way we read in phrases. It can also happen if a child is trying to read too fast and just needs to slow down. (When that’s the case, have the student point to each word–not just draw the finger quickly underneath, but point to and read each word. When he’s beyond the habit of skipping words, you can discontinue this.) But sometimes it can mean that a student needs more work. If you point to the word and he struggles to read it, that’s one sign he needs more work. Another sign a child needs more work is if he struggles with comprehension after reading.

The humming sounds and strange breathing seem like things someone would do if they were stopping to think about a word or about meaning. It could be that he made a guess and then something made him realize it wasn’t correct, so he’s stopping to try to figure out what he should be reading. He may not even realize he’s doing these things. I’d let him work through the sentence as he needs to, and then if he doesn’t catch his errors, have him try those words again. Then, sometimes you can have him practice reading for expression with a sentence or paragraph he has already read once–I’ll bet he doesn’t have the same sounds/breathing issues when he is more familiar with the passage.

Hi Chris, Good for you! I would try a couple of things: 1, Make sure they aren’t trying to read *faster* than required for the state tests. 2, use Marie’s example in her response comment to Alisa below where she says, “great readers have different reading speeds for different types of reading material.” You could explain that their “fastest” reading for the tests is not the same as everyday reading. [I’ve seen two types of timed tests–if the one they are working towards is mainly about decoding speed, explain that the tests want to see how fast they can physically read the words (decoding), but that we then need to choose a comfortable speed for understanding (comprehension).] 3, Are teachers, administrators, school board aware of the problem it’s creating? If not, it may be worthwhile to start some discussions on the matter. Maybe together you can brainstorm ways to help kids become more fluent (and therefore faster) in their reading without losing the comprehension.

My question is not about reading aloud – it is about silent/ personal reading too fast. I was sitting next to my daughter (7) this morning as she was reading silently. I noticed that she reads or skims the pages so fast that I couldn’t keep up with her turning the pages of the book.

She reads at least three novels a day and loves books, is an excellent writer and comprehends amazingly for her age. I also read aloud to her daily. Is her skim reading books on her own a problem? How can I get her to slow down and really engage in the characters and the text while she reads alone? Alisa, you have a voracious reader on your hands.

Most likely, your daughter is so thrilled with books that she is gobbling up the novels as quickly as she can devour them. I went through this stage as a young girl, and my own daughter did as well. This is a good problem to have!

Yet, you are wise to question whether she is reading too fast for good comprehension and engagement. If the books she is reading are easy for her, she may be able to read very fast and still comprehend. Find out her comprehension level by discussing the books with her. What types of problems does the main character have? How does the character solve these problems? Did the character change by the end of the story? Over a snack or dinner, discuss the characters motives and actions as if he or she were a real person.

This will give you insight into your daughter’s comprehension level. Keep in mind that at age 7, her comprehension will still be developing, whether or not she reads quickly or slowly, so have realistic expectations in this area.

If her comprehension isn’t as high as you would expect, you can tackle this outside of her private reading time. During reading lessons, ask her to read aloud to you. If all is well when she reads aloud, talk about how great readers have different reading speeds for different types of reading material.

They speed up for easy material and slow down for harder material. Magazines and easy novels may be read at a faster pace. Poetry, textbooks, nonfiction on unfamiliar topics, and more difficult novels should be read at a slower pace. Over a period of time, look at examples of different types of reading materials together and discuss how you would approach them. The next time you are reading a book that you are enjoying (but that you feel the need to slow down to understand), share the experience with her.

For example, “I’m reading this book on perennial gardening, and when I got to the part about amending the soil, I had to slow down to make sure I understood the difference between acidic soil and alkaline soil.” Or, “I’m reading a novel called My Antonia, and I am really savoring it. In fact, I’m reading it slower than I usually do, because I want to really enjoy the friendship between Antonia and Jim.” Model your thought process and how you read at different rates according to the type of book. This is so helpful. I am a voracious reader, as are at least 2 of my children–it’s like reading is an addiction, and you simply MUST read, read, read! Sometimes it’s almost as if the “act of reading” is as important as what you read. I think this can be both a good and a bad thing. Obviously reading widely is good, but the addictive part of it isn’t so nice, and sometimes comprehension isn’t as good as it could be.

I use different speeds of reading myself, as you explained, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought to explain it that way to my girls–just told them, “Slow down! You won’t absorb it well!” Thanks!

A Reading Fluency Program Increase reading fluency in just six minutes a day! The Six-Minute Solution: A Reading Fluency Program is a fast, fun, research-based way to increase fluency.

In same-level pairs, students do repeated readings of one-minute nonfiction passages as their partners note the number of words read correctly—an effective peer-monitoring and feedback system that keeps students motivated and on task. The Six-Minute Solution builds students' reading fluency—essential for text comprehension—and is a valuable complement to any reading curriculum or as an intervention program.

• ISBN / UPC: 159318591X • Item #: 128291 • Grade Level: K-9 and Intervention K-12 Description: Recently updated, The Six-Minute Solution is now available at Primary, Intermediate, and Secondary levels. All levels of this popular and effective program include assessment tools, reproducible charts, high-frequency word lists, and 25 passages at each grade level. Each level contains passages for students who read at, above, and below grade level, making it easy to differentiate instruction. • Primary Level.

For kindergarten through second grade students. Includes passages at kindergarten through third grade reading levels. As an added bonus, the Primary book also covers common phonic elements that are necessary for teaching young students to read • Intermediate Level. For third through sixth grade students. Includes passages at first through sixth grade reading levels • Secondary Level. For sixth through ninth grade students.

Includes passages at fourth through ninth grade reading levels. • ISBN / UPC: • Item #: 132484 • Grade Level: K-9 and Intervention K-12 Description: Recently updated, The Six-Minute Solution is now available at Primary, Intermediate, and Secondary levels.

All levels of this popular and effective program include assessment tools, reproducible charts, high-frequency word lists, and 25 passages at each grade level. Each level contains passages for students who read at, above, and below grade level, making it easy to differentiate instruction. • Primary Level. For kindergarten through second grade students.

Includes passages at kindergarten through third grade reading levels. As an added bonus, the Primary book also covers common phonic elements that are necessary for teaching young students to read • Intermediate Level. For third through sixth grade students. Includes passages at first through sixth grade reading levels • Secondary Level. For sixth through ninth grade students. Includes passages at fourth through ninth grade reading levels.

• ISBN / UPC: • Item #: 132492 • Grade Level: K-9 and Intervention K-12 Description: Recently updated, The Six-Minute Solution is now available at Primary, Intermediate, and Secondary levels. All levels of this popular and effective program include assessment tools, reproducible charts, high-frequency word lists, and 25 passages at each grade level. Each level contains passages for students who read at, above, and below grade level, making it easy to differentiate instruction.

• Primary Level. For kindergarten through second grade students. Includes passages at kindergarten through third grade reading levels. As an added bonus, the Primary book also covers common phonic elements that are necessary for teaching young students to read • Intermediate Level. For third through sixth grade students.

Includes passages at first through sixth grade reading levels • Secondary Level. For sixth through ninth grade students. Includes passages at fourth through ninth grade reading levels. Your email: We promise to never spam you, and just use your email address to identify you as a valid customer. How do you rate this product? Write a headline for your review here: Write your review here: Enter your name: (optional) Enter the code below: • Six Minute Solution Great Program Posted by Alice on 21st Jun 2017 I used this program when I taught high school special education to help my students with fluency and comprehension.

I now use it in an adult literacy program. I was so excited to get it. We purchased all three levels, because of the variety of student levels we have. I cannot wait to get it out to our tutors. • Great Fluency Program Posted by Alison on 29th Oct 2015 I really like that there are so many passages and that the program is so well explained. It was easy to get all my kids set up.

I do wish there were more assessments at each grade level, but I suppose I can use one of the practice passages instead. It was very expensive though. • You can pay for it, but you won't receive it. Posted by Bruce Ravenscroft on 25th Aug 2014 I cannot give a favorable review of the product, because I have not received it.

I was assured last week that the book was 'on the truck,' but it was not delivered that day or the next. At this point, all I can say is that the product may be good, but the service, specifically the delivery portion, is very poor. I have participated in an exercise using the product, and would like to receive it.

Please contact me so we can work together so I can receive the product for which I have paid. • Good product Posted by Unknown on 25th Mar 2014 It's a very good program.

I use it with select students. Its very costly is the only downfall.

• good tool/high price Posted by Unknown on 27th Jun 2013 Six Minute solution is a great tool for developing fluency and expanding world knowledge through reading nonfiction. It seems like it is overpriced though. • Intervention Special Posted by Unknown on 6th Feb 2013 Perfect for my teachers on campus for another reading intervention for our middle school kids. Great product! • fluency program Posted by Unknown on 5th Feb 2013 Lots of great material. The materials are nicely prepared. I do however, wish that there were more passages at low 1st grade or pre 1st grade.

The short vowel vs silent e passages are great, but there should be a lot more like those for the very beginner readers. • A Necessity for Teaching Reading Posted by Verneita on 13th Dec 2012 Wonderful book, research based, data driven, and user friendly.

• Love Six minute solution in the classroom and tutoring Posted by Natalie on 12th Dec 2012 This program is a great addition to your literacy program. It helps all kids practice reading, they love to help graph and see their improvement.