5 Reasons Educators Love To Use ClearFluency

We all want kids to read with fluency: that magic triad of accuracy, speed, and expression. 

Why is fluency so important? 

Primarily because it’s the bridge between decoding and comprehension. When children begin reading fluently, they start to transition away from learning to read and begin reading to learn, a skill they will use for the rest of their lives, inside and outside the classroom.

Countless studies have shown that reading aloud—and receiving immediate feedback on accuracy, rate, and expression—is the quickest, most effective way to build fluency. But it’s a big ask of teachers to provide this one-on-one feedback to every student in a classroom. 

Meet ClearFluency^TM, a K-12 digital reading tool that actually listens to students read aloud and assists them when they struggle with a word or sentence. With real-time, corrective feedback, students can hear themselves improve and build confidence in the process. 

ClearFluency provides an extensive, age-appropriate library of high-interest texts and diverse representations to engage every learner. What’s more, students build comprehension organically when they are asked to think about what they’re reading as they’re reading it.     

What Teachers Are Saying About ClearFluency

We believe in ClearFluency, mainly because our teachers love using it and give us the most amazing feedback. Here are five ways teachers have told us ClearFluency has helped them grow their students into capable, joyful readers.   

1. ClearFluency makes it easy for students to track their progress. 

Most students want to improve their skills, especially when doing so is presented as a fun challenge. That’s why ClearFluency uses color coding to show students precisely where they are doing great and where they need to improve. 

"The students love the color-coded words in ClearFluency,” says Sally Easley, EL Coordinator at Esperanza Charter Academy in Louisiana. “They can see the words they know, the words they need a little work on, and the words they need a lot of work on. And when they reread that same story a second or third time and hear the progress they’ve made, it’s amazing."

Connie Hibbits, Instructional Reading Coach for Buchanan County Public Schools in Virginia, agrees that having students track their own progress is powerful and motivating. “It's fun to go back and listen to students’ first recordings and then listen to a more recent one and hear how the fluency, tone, and expression have changed. That's my favorite.”

2. ClearFluency models fluent reading. 

At any time while using ClearFluency, students can ask the program to read a sentence, paragraph, or whole selection aloud. Hearing others read aloud is a phenomenal way to build fluency because students are exposed to appropriate pace and expression. They’ll also see that fluent reading facilitates comprehension and generally makes content more engaging. 

Speaking of one student who was struggling, Sue Mayo, Instructional Coach for Barnegat Township School District in New Jersey, shares, “ClearFluency was really helpful for him because he could hear the correct pronunciation when it read to him. It’s giving him confidence, and his reading is improving. When I gave him a fluency assessment, he went from making 21 errors to six errors in just two weeks.”

While most students can benefit from hearing texts read aloud before they read them themselves, this feature has been particularly helpful to English learners, notes Laura Contreras, EL Teacher at Lafayette Middle School in Lousiana. "When the students hear words spoken by the program and then repeat them, they know they are speaking English correctly, so they feel more confident," she shares. 

3. ClearFluency personalizes learning for every student.

Every student has their own unique level of fluency, and ClearFluency responds to each student’s specific strengths and challenges. As Mary Sargent, Assistant Principal of Connor High School in Kentucky, notes, this tailormade feedback is something every teacher would love to give but can’t when they’re managing a full classroom. 

“ClearFluency provides each student with individualized instruction,” says Sargent. “In a class of 20 students, there’s no way a teacher would be able to provide that level of one-on-one support. ClearFluency helps students with immediate feedback on errors and private playback of their reading. Our students who have used ClearFluency are now more confident readers and more proactive in their studies.”

4. ClearFluency gives students choices. 

Most ELA teachers have heard students say, “I would have really liked this book if I didn’t have to read it for school.” 

Studies tell us what teachers already know: when students have some choice over what they read, they are more likely to engage. Student choice is something Sue Mayo has found particularly helpful in motivating her students. “They tell me, ‘I just love ClearFluency so much because I get to choose what I read,’” she reports. 

Not only does ClearFluency have an extensive library and partnerships with celebrated children’s publishers to ensure that students will find texts they want to read, but we also have advanced filters so teachers and students can easily build libraries based on interests.    

When students see that their teachers trust them to manage their own literacy journeys by choosing the texts most appealing to them, they’ll start to trust themselves as well.   

5. ClearFluency helps students at all reading levels succeed. 

While ClearFluency is an invaluable tool for children reading below grade level to improve quickly, it also motivates students at or above grade level. 

“I knew ClearFluency would be great for our struggling readers,” says Sue Mayo, “but our gifted students love it too. One of my top students was so excited because her goal was to read 144 words per minute, and she got to 142. She said, ‘I just need two more! I'm going to do it!’ That was motivating for her.”

When virtually every classroom contains a mix of skill levels, ClearFluency is a tool that truly can adapt to and motivate every student who uses it. 

ClearFluency Is Here to Support Teachers 

Helping educators nurture the next generation of strong, passionate readers is why we do what we do, and we love hearing teacher feedback on the success they see in their classrooms with ClearFluency. 

Want to learn more about ClearFluency, the flexible digital reading solution that will help your students engage more meaningfully with your core ELA curriculum and grow into confident, joyful readers? 

Let’s chat!

Note: ClearFluency used to be called Reading Assistant Plus. In many of these quotes, “Reading Assistant Plus” has been replaced with “ClearFluency.”