Effects of Fluency Instruction on Literacy Skills in the First Grade Classroom

The effects of fluency intervention strategies on students’ fluency rate, comprehension, and word identification were the focus of this study. Both the experimental and control groups were first grade classes, taught by the same teacher, at a primary school in central Georgia. The study was conducted over a 15-week period. The results of the study were inconclusive. The Lexia Comprehensive Reading Test was used at the beginning and end of fall semester. While the experimental group showed expected progress in comprehension, fluency rate, and word identification, there was no statistical difference in the achievement of both groups. Both groups improved an effect size of .67. One threat to validity could be the timing of the Lexia posttest, which was given six weeks earlier for the experimental group. Further research could be conducted to explore the effects of fluency instruction on the achievement of first graders