The Effects of the Secondary Fluency Routine on the Fluency and Comprehension of Struggling Secondary Readers

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to examine the effects of the Secondary Fluency Routine (SFR), an intervention designed by the researcher and derived from research-based practices described in other studies, on the oral reading fluency and comprehension of middle school students enrolled in reading intervention classes. Thirty-nine seventh- and eighth-grade students enrolled in reading intervention classes qualified for the study. Students in the treatment classrooms were provided the SFR intervention, which consisted primarily of repeated reading and choral reading, for approximately 10 minutes daily for a period of 18 weeks. Meanwhile, students in the comparison classrooms participated in independent reading for the same 10 minutes. Participants were pre- and posttested using the GORT-5. The researcher employed a series of repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) on all outcome measures, including rate, accuracy, fluency, oral reading index (ORI), prosody, and comprehension to examine main and interaction effects. Main effects were detected on all measures, but there were no interaction effects. To further explore the nature of the effects and for practical significance, pre- and posttest data from the GORT-5 were analyzed in six separate paired-samples t-tests, and mean difference effect sizes (Cohen’s d) were calculated. Both groups made gains on most of the outcome measures, but the mean difference effect sizes in the treatment group for the comprehension and ORI measures were moderate (approaching large), which was greater than the effects in the comparison group. Overall, the SFR appears to be a viable intervention for secondary struggling readers. Limitations, implications for action, and recommendations for future research are also discussed.