Acting Out

• An important part of reading fluency is the ability to read with inflection and emotion, so bring the words to life by turning a favorite story into a play to act out. Choose a story that contains dialogue or just trade off on playing the narrator, but be sure that your child's part is manageable and exciting to her. Making the words as dramatic as possible will turn reading fluency practice into an enjoyable game. Add props or costumes if you'd like or even ask siblings or another parent to act as the audience for your child's performance.
  
  

Listen Closely

• If your child grows frustrated with reading practice, take a break by popping in an audio book. What she doesn't know is that she is practicing reading fluency while she follows the words in her own book, especially as she hears the inflection and dramatic reading performed by a professional. Once she has heard the book read aloud, she will better grasp the overall story and be able to translate that into her own reading. Let her read aloud a favorite portion of the book after the audio book is finished, either alone or with the recording.
  
  

Punctuation Function

• One of the major problems children have with reading fluency is the ability to separate words into meaningful chunks instead of just reading as long as their breath holds out. Teaching children the meaning of punctuation marks will help them realize that some words belong together in a meaningful unit to make sense. Choose a story and read a small portion, starting with just a sentence. Have your child repeat you as you slide your finger along under the words she is reading so she can see the effects of punctuation while she mimics you. Read the sentence again at the same time as she catches onto the inflection of the sentence. Work up to longer sections of text as she becomes more familiar with the separations punctuation marks make.
  
  

Poetry in Motion

• Poetry is a perfect tool for teaching reading fluency because it often comes already separated into neat lines and may even include rhyming to help students develop a sense of rhythm while they read. Choose a poem to teach for an entire week, so your child has the chance to become very familiar with the words while practicing intonation. Start by reading the poem to your child, being careful to model correct phrasing and intonation. Print out a copy of the poem for your child and have her cut it into sentence strips, with one line or sentence per strip so she can practice the lines individually without the distraction of the other words.