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Oral Reading Fluency (ORF)

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Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) tests are a test of how fast a student reads. Literally, how many words per minute can the student competently read out loud… for 8th grade and beyond, a student should be able to read 145 words per minute. There is some data out there about how fast a high school student should read. The 145 is something we’ve decided to go with – your district may have something different.
I get a lot of parents who ask me why this is even something we test. Who cares how fast someone reads out loud? They probably read faster when they are silent… which is probably true.
The ORF doesn’t really test how fast someone can speak or even read out loud. It tells the proctor if the student is an automatic reader. Automaticity in reading basically means that the student is no longer reading word for word, but is, instead, chunking ideas together. An automatic reader may not even read every word on the page, but still fully understand the concepts the author is putting forth. A reader who is not automatic, will have to read every word on the page – and still may not get the main idea of the passage because they spend so much time working on each and every word in the passage.
At the high school level, the concept of automaticity is debatable. Some students function quite well reading 120 words per minute. Some students do not function very well, yet read at 200 words per minute. There is some research about reading too fast and that those who read over 150 words per minute should be taught to slow down. My anecdotal evidence says that if a student is reading below 120 words per minute, they are going have problem being academically successful.
According to someone who attends all sorts of RTI conferences, most high schools are not using an ORF test as a screener for their students. Many of those, do not do one at all, nor doing any intervention to help increase their automaticity. The belief is that by the time someone gets to high school, the fluency window is closed. They need to focus on comprehension and vocabulary. With those skills the student may be able to overcome the fluency issue. Are they correct? The latest data I can find for high school is very limited and old. If you have access to recent data that includes 10th grade students, please email me.
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Debbie said…
This is fascinating to me. My kids are all great readers but I can see that anything to improve the reading skill would help throughout life.
6:15 AM
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