The Impact of Repeated Reading on Fluency and Comprehension

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether repeated reading interventions improve third grade students’ fluency and reading comprehension. Third grade students with a rating of basic in comprehension as assessed with Anne Arundel County Language Arts Benchmark 1 and at risk according to the DIBELS oral reading fluency (ORF) and retell fluency (2002) used a strategy called repeated reading (RR) over the course of four weeks. This was done in order to determine whether the technique would increase students’ fluency and comprehension of text. Pretest and posttest scores from the County Language Arts benchmark 1 and 2 (comprehension) and from the third grade passages on DIBELS ORF were compared with these of other basic students in the group who did not receive the repeated reading strategy in order to determine whether the students who read the text more than once increased their fluency and comprehension scores. The data shows that repeated reading was successful in improving students’ comprehension scores based upon differences in their pretest versus posttest performance on the Anne Arundel County Language Arts Benchmark 1 and 2. Statistically significant results were obtained for African American students only when the pretest and posttest results from the DIBELS Oral Reading Fluency and Retell assessments were compared. Research into repeated reading should continue as there was some improvement in the performance of students on an individual basis, suggesting that additional time for implementation may influence reading comprehension and fluency growth.