Choral reading is one of those practices that almost every primary teacher has used at some point. The teacher and class read a text aloud together, everyone joins in, and for a few moments everyone sounds like a fluent reader. It feels purposeful. It feels supportive. It actually sounds pretty good! But what does the research actually say about choral reading? The answer is not quite what many people expect. The evidence for choral reading itself is surprisingly thin. That doesn’t mean it...

Many schools think they are teaching fluency, but several common classroom routines are actually slowing it down. Cold extracts, unprepared vocabulary, round-robin reading, lack of modelling, and silent reading used as fluency practice are widespread misconceptions. Real fluency teaching is simple: prepare the text, model it, rehearse it, and repeat it. Small tweaks in daily routines lead to smoother reading, better comprehension, and more confident learners (Rasinski, 2010; Shanahan, 2012;...

How flashy schemes and catchy acronyms can make us spend less time following the science. In education, it’s easy to be dazzled by...