The complete question
I am a special education teacher and work with a number of dyslexic students whose accuracy is improving faster than their fluency. Will some dyslexic students always have poor fluency? Are we expecting them to be as fluent as the non-dyslexic?
Expert answer
Teachers are commonly finding that they are able to remediate a child’s accuracy, but that the child continues to lack fluency. There are specific strategies to help improve fluency; for example, as reported by the National Reading Panel, repeated oral reading with feedback and guidance, is an effective strategy.
However, we still do not have the answers to your last questions. A few studies of young children have shown improvements in fluency — but we not yet know if this will be lasting. Fluency is a critical issue and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is devoting much effort to better understanding the nature of fluency and how to improve fluency for all children.
Finally, we do know that children who are not fluent fail to show activation of an area in the back of the left side of the brain called the word form area. Recently, we have been able to demonstrate that effective reading instructions brings about some improvement in fluency and in increasing brain activation in the word form area. A very hopeful finding, but an early one. We still need to learn much more and we are.