Help! IEP Goal for Reading Speed/Fluency?

Charles will read 4th grade reading level materials (name materials) at 100 words per minute with less than five errors. Charles will answer 80% of a variety of questions on the materials correctly.

Thanks for your response. Do you know of somewhere where I can find the speed that an “average” fourth grader should be reading at. (Or is it unreasonable to expect an LD student to read at an “average” speed? I would like to set the bar VERY high so that there is no questions about continued IEP qualification next fall 2002 when we come up for our 3 year re-qualification. Can I justify an “average” speed goal (if I can determine what average is!)

I honestly would *not* worry about having to set the bar too high. I used to worry about it but speed just didn’t happen even when everything else was coming together. I don’t offhand know an average speed, though.

I am a Reading Specialist and consider a reading rate of 80 words read at an even flow with 90% accuracy, a minimum goal. My goal is towards 95% accuracy read in an even flow.

Thanks for your response. Is that 80wpm dependent on grade level? That is, is there a different wpm for 3rd, 4th, 5th grade? Thanks. Kathleen

Fluency involves a lot more than speed. The speeds I gave are an average - I wouldn’t worry about setting the speed bar high - it’s the accuracy/fluency bar I look at. Does it sound like the reading is making sense? Is it flowing naturally?

I can read choppy at near 200wpm and have difficulty making sense of the passage. Think about weight training. Set the weights too heavy and you get injury not growth. Let his performance set the first bar and gradually raise from there - he’ll be competing against himself - the best opponent.

Good luck. Ken

It seems that you want a test for the child to fail, in order to keep the extra help on the IEP. For those not fighting the system it may seems strange to aim at failure, but yes, when dealing with a bureaucracy, you have to use their strange rules to play the game.

If you look on the educational research database ERIC and look for reading speed, you can certainly find some ridiculously overblown claims of speed that will serve your pruposes in this test.

When you’re actually teaching him, I do hope you stress meaning and information and enjoyment, and forget about rushing through and stressing about speed.

Katheleen,

I just got back from my son’s IEP meeting and was told that 100 wpm with five or less errors (not as sure about the amount of errors) was considered normal. H e is in third grade. My son reads at 70 wpm which is a big improvement from 35 six months ago.
Beth

So Beth

What has your son been doing for the past 6 months that he has doubled his reading rate from 35 wpm to 70 words per minute? Sounds like great progress!
Kathleen

Kathleen,

It is hard to totally separate out the effects of different things we’ve done but here is my best guess. We started doing Neuronet right after he was evaluated by the district. I thought at the IEP meeting that was maybe six weeks after we had started NN that his reading speed was faster than they were saying but of course had no idea. I tested him at home and he already could do the first two benchmarks (out of four). So I think Neuronet had an immediate effect.

I also followed some of the suggestions on this board as far as keeping him reading at the same level for fluency. It helped too.

Then in the late summer I saw another major jump that corresponded to auditory-motor integration with Neuronet exercises. This is something the therapist said would happen.

We also did PACE along the way but, like you, I don’t think it improved fluency to any great degree. I did see improvements with multisyllable words and more automatic decoding which translated into better reading but those sorts of problems are different than reading speed. My child, unfortunately, has problems with both.

According to the Neuronet therapist, he still has problems with visual-auditory integration which is impacting his automaticity in reading. We are now trying some other strategies and am hopeful he’ll get there, especially given the progress we’ve seen.

Beth

It actually has been longer than 6 months. He was tested for reading speed by the school district in January of this year and retested this month. So that is more like 10 months. Still, we are pleased with his progress.