Improving

Student Achievement in Reading Fluency in Kindergarten

Amy L. Frankforter
Huntington Elementary School, Lincoln Public Schools
Advisor: Sue Rasmussen

A Kindergarten classroom teacher at Huntington Elementary School in

Lincoln, Nebraska generated this project to improve reading fluency through daily
practice activities, goal setting and progress monitoring strategies, drawing on the
research of Robert Marzano, Dale Schunk, Jan Hasbrouck and others. The questions
the research sought to answer were:
1. Will goal setting and progress monitoring increase reading fluency?
2. Are students more engaged in reading when they have a goal to meet?
3. Will achievement of goals improve confidence in reading?
Hasbrouck (2014) and Schunk (2006) provided key strategies for this project:
repeated oral reading, goal setting and feedback through progress monitoring.
Students set long-term goals for reading fluency and practiced a sight-word or a
consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word list daily. The students graphed their
progress each week.
Students became more confident and engaged in reading activities while
working to meet their personal reading goals. Fluency grades on report cards did
not improve as a result of this project, perhaps due to the inexperience of
kindergarten readers. Goal setting and progress monitoring were successful for
increasing student engagement and motivation and will be implemented next year.