Reading Races: Boost fluency and energise learners

Research shows a direct correlation between reading fluency and comprehension. This is why we track fluency as a key marker of student progress. A reading race is a great way to help students to practice their reading fluency and have fun, all at the same time.

The concept is simple. Put students in pairs or teams. They then have one minute to read as much as they can from a text. Whoever reads the most, wins. And – that’s it!

I usually do a reading race at the end of a reading lesson, after we’ve already read the text as a group and have done some vocabulary and comprehension work. The task works best to drive up fluency; don’t use it too early, since you want to ensure meaning is gained first.

Here’s a PowerPoint slide I use for reading races. I’ve embedded a one minute timer, and then I’ll mark on the slide where each team reaches during their attempt. The big white box gives me space to write down who is in each team:

So far, so simple. But there are more things you can do to supercharge this task, and drain extra value out of the activity:

• Pre-teach difficult words by focusing on pronunciation and meaning.
• Once in their teams, give students a few minutes to practice. You’ll be surprised how enthusiastically they practice together once there is some competition on the line!
• During the task, when one team is reading, have other teams make notes of any errors – skipped words, or words incorrectly pronounced. After the minute is up, any errors other teams can describe incur a 1-second time penalty. This means non-reading teams listen to the readers carefully.
• After the first round of readings, invite teams to attempt the reading again, challenging them to beat their personal bests.

Reading races turn reading tasks into exciting, energetic challenges. Students love pushing themselves to read with ever greater fluency.