Can Anyone Tell Me What The Average Reading Rates Are For A

The fifth grader should be reading much faster. The 8th grader is within norms but still quite slow. Listen to them read for a short while and you may get insights into what is slowing them down. Often, when a child makes too many errors - especially on the “little” words (if, am, there, these, of, from, etc.) - all sense gets lost and rate deteriorates rapidly.

Besides speed, how does their reading sound? Does it sound like sense? Is there comprehension? What about errors?

All of these factors need to be analyzed before rate alone can be said to be a problem.

Now to answer - on the average the 5th grader should be orally reading above 140 with good intonation.

The 8th grader - a tad faster.

Is 140 wpm normal for oral reading or silent reading? The rates I posted were silent reading rates, so would the rate be faster? My 5th grader has fairly good comprehension, is definatly an auditory learner ( remembers anything said to her such as in a lecture format) but has difficulty with multi syllable words and very little intonation when she reads orally. My 8th grader has difficulty with comprehension- was tested for dyslexia and while she didn’t quite meet the diagnosis criterea, she has many of the symptoms. Any suggestions on how to improve their reading speed and older child’s comprehension?

The cause for most comprehension issues are poor decoding skills. I would highly recommend you check out the book Reading Reflex, (Phono-Graphix) it will help both of your daughters. There are other programs out there that may help them but they are older and deserve to read possibly faster than the other programs. If you want to try it and need help, email me and I will help you. They probably both have a problem understanding that more than one letter represents a sound and how to decode MS words. You may found, as I have, that kids are clueless that there are short sounds to the vowels as well as long. I think that this is because the alphabet is forced on them and made so important that when they see an ‘a’ in a word, they automatically say the sound /ae/ instead of the short sound of ‘a’. I had a 15 year old boy just the other day, read the word cat and then decoded it as /c/ /ae/ /t/. He looked at me strangely and said ,’wait a minute, the word is cat, the a is sound /a/, and he was off and running. He just needed to understand the code, when to say the short sound and when to say the long sound. In two hours of teaching PG, flying through the book, this boy who never read more 10 pages of a reading assignment, read ” The Death of the Red Mask” by Poe. On my last day, one hour and a half, he read 50 pages in his assignment summer reading book and was as happy as a lark. PG can be very fast if the student and the program, ‘clicks’.

What I have written concerns oral reading rates. Silent reading is another question altogether.

Actually, they are both slowish. My district expects 6th graders to read, I think, 110 wpm, 5th grade about that same rate, too. When I used to time many students in a general ed., many read 150 wpm, some over 200 wpm in 5th grade.

Silent reading is faster. I agree, 140 may be average for 5th grade, orally. The 110 wpm my district uses is a minimum competency.

Please, please read Shay’s comment and follow her suggestions. First knowledge/understanding/control, THEN speed.

You wouldn’t put your sixteen-year-old behind the wheel of a car the first time and yell at her every time she slowed down below 60, would you? Of course not. First you would have her practice at five to ten miles per hour in the parking lot until she can control the vehicle, turn and stop. Then you would practice for a long time on quiet streets at twenty to thirty. Then you would add the complexities of traffic. Finally, AFTER she knew what she was doing at low speeds, you would take her out to practice high-speed driving. Of course in driving it’s rather obvious that if you go for speed without any knowledge and control you’ll kill yourself. In reading it’s a little more subtle, but if you go for speed without any knowledge and control you’ll make a mess of the reading and have other lifelong problems.

The issue of reading speed came up when I was doing my MA in Education. It turns out that a large number of *adults*, including college students, never get above 250 words per minute absolute maximum.
Also, ALL of us have varied reading rates — faster for easy reading for pleasure, slower for more challenging work near our instructional level, and a snail’s pace for difficult science and math concepts. Those average adults and college students with a maximum rate of 250 wpm probably were reading their textbooks at 125 wpm or less.
This is not that bad!! If you read 125 wpm, you take one to two minutes per page. That means if you *really* sat down and studied for three hours, you could do 100 pages — a novella or half to a third of a moderate-length novel every night. And that would be enough to keep up with the reading demands of any high school or college I have ever seen.
In fact, the schools I have seen recently, from junior college to Ivy League, have been dropping their reading requirements lower and lower, and I was flabbergasted when a professor apologized for assigning us a novel but said it was OK because the print was large — this should matter in university??

**Anyway, the issue which I continually see in keeping up with the reading demands of school or college or grad school is NOT lack of reading speed, but doing other things besides reading.**

And this gets back to the original point: if your reading is comfortable and pleasant at a moderate speed, you’ll read your books because they are interesting and you want the information for class or (hopefully) because you are motivated to learn for the sake of learning. And there is time to do this at a moderate reading speed.
If you have been forced to rush with tongue panting and every nerve screwed up to the max to get a high reading rate on tests, you will not find reading pleasant and enjoyable so you will not do it if you can find any way to avoid it. Or if you’ve done repeated reading until you can recite articles of no interest to you by heart without even looking at the page, you will probably not find reading a highly motivational activity and will avoid it.

See the journal article, approximately 1980. “How Fast Are the World’s Best Readers” (should be listed on ERIC) for a complete disproof of “speed-reading” claims, a realistic measure of real reading rates in various situations, and an article that is both scientifically well-grounded and funny.

Concerning comprehension with older student…
If your child is an auditory learner or at least has a strength in this area, I might suggest they realize this and key in on it. For example, they may remember more of what they read if they read it orally. Have her “chunk” the amount she reads. We know the brain remembers more if it is given information in chunks. On a side note, there is much information out there on the brain and “how” it learns. The more kids understand this information the more empowering it is for them. I share this information with my students on a daily basis as I want them to understand the “control” they have. Your children are at the years when they should be learning “how to learn”. The information is out there. I have a list of excellent resources if you are interested.
After reading a paragraph, see if she can paraphrase what she read. Again do it orally so she can “hear” her thinking. I had 2 students that were very visual. They could read a paragraph but not remember what they had read. I had them section off a blank paper into large squares (about2”x2”). After each paragraph they were told to draw a sketch of what they read. I was trying to get them to visualize what they were reading. We had AMAZING results. Although the pictures meant nothing to me, the students were able to talk at length about their learning.
Another idea that has worked with my middle school students…
Kids tend to have difficulty taking notes or outlining. I find they just copy sentences. I have them draw a line down the middle of the paper. on the left they write the main idea or topic the paragraphs are about (most texts have done this for us through use of color text). Then on the right they can write only words or phrases (you may need to limit to 10). At the end of the section they can cover either the left or right side and verbalize their learning.
I would focus more on the comprehension then the speed at this point. The speed for you older daughter is reasonable. I had a student that could not get past 110 words per minute as they needed the time to process to comprehend. I have seen students read 200 words per minute and not have a clue as to what they have read. hope this helps….Nancy wrote:
>
> Is 140 wpm normal for oral reading or silent reading? The
> rates I posted were silent reading rates, so would the rate
> be faster? My 5th grader has fairly good comprehension, is
> definatly an auditory learner ( remembers anything said to
> her such as in a lecture format) but has difficulty with
> multi syllable words and very little intonation when she
> reads orally. My 8th grader has difficulty with
> comprehension- was tested for dyslexia and while she didn’t
> quite meet the diagnosis criterea, she has many of the
> symptoms. Any suggestions on how to improve their reading
> speed and older child’s comprehension?

Concerning comprehension with older student…
If your child is an auditory learner or at least has a strength in this area, I might suggest they realize this and key in on it. For example, they may remember more of what they read if they read it orally. Have her “chunk” the amount she reads. We know the brain remembers more if it is given information in chunks. On a side note, there is much information out there on the brain and “how” it learns. The more kids understand this information the more empowering it is for them. I share this information with my students on a daily basis as I want them to understand the “control” they have. Your children are at the years when they should be learning “how to learn”. The information is out there. I have a list of excellent resources if you are interested.
After reading a paragraph, see if she can paraphrase what she read. Again do it orally so she can “hear” her thinking. I had 2 students that were very visual. They could read a paragraph but not remember what they had read. I had them section off a blank paper into large squares (about2”x2”). After each paragraph they were told to draw a sketch of what they read. I was trying to get them to visualize what they were reading. We had AMAZING results. Although the pictures meant nothing to me, the students were able to talk at length about their learning.
Another idea that has worked with my middle school students…
Kids tend to have difficulty taking notes or outlining. I find they just copy sentences. I have them draw a line down the middle of the paper. on the left they write the main idea or topic the paragraphs are about (most texts have done this for us through use of color text). Then on the right they can write only words or phrases (you may need to limit to 10). At the end of the section they can cover either the left or right side and verbalize their learning.
I would focus more on the comprehension then the speed at this point. The speed for you older daughter is reasonable. I had a student that could not get past 110 words per minute as they needed the time to process to comprehend. I have seen students read 200 words per minute and not have a clue as to what they have read. hope this helps….Nancy wrote:
>
> Is 140 wpm normal for oral reading or silent reading? The
> rates I posted were silent reading rates, so would the rate
> be faster? My 5th grader has fairly good comprehension, is
> definatly an auditory learner ( remembers anything said to
> her such as in a lecture format) but has difficulty with
> multi syllable words and very little intonation when she
> reads orally. My 8th grader has difficulty with
> comprehension- was tested for dyslexia and while she didn’t
> quite meet the diagnosis criterea, she has many of the
> symptoms. Any suggestions on how to improve their reading
> speed and older child’s comprehension?