Effectiveness
Fluency Formula™ was found to have potentially positive effects on fluency and potentially negative effects on comprehension.
Program Description
Fluency Formula™ is a supplemental curriculum designed to promote reading fluency for first- through sixth-grade students. The program emphasizes automatic recognition of words, decoding accuracy, and oral expressiveness as the foundation for building reading fluency. A daily 10- to 15-minute lesson is delivered in the classroom. Students participate in whole-class, small-group, and individual practice activities using workbooks, read-aloud anthologies, library books, fluency activity cards, and audio CDs. The curriculum encourages at-home practice and includes a Fluency Formula™ Assessment System, which allows teachers to assess student fluency using one-minute grade-level passages and a timer.
Research
One study of Fluency Formula™ met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The study findings are based on data from 128 second-grade students in two suburban school districts in the Northeast. The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Fluency Formula™ to be small for fluency and comprehension. No studies that met WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed alphabetics or general reading achievement.
