A quick one-minute read about once a week, charted over time. From Level 5 your child reads a short passage at their own level out loud for one minute, usually from a printed page with a finger under the words; before that it is a one-minute list of letters or words. You sit beside your child and mark any missed word as you go. A word your child fixes on the spot is not a miss. That is the whole job.
What we count
A miss is one of three things:
- a word read wrong
- a word skipped
- a word your child is stuck on for three seconds (you say it, and it counts as missed)
We do not count a word your child fixes on their own, going back to reread, adding a word, or saying a word with their own accent. The score is the number of words read correctly in one minute. We also show accuracy: out of the words your child read, how many were right. Accuracy comes first. The goal is 95 out of every 100 words right, and fluent reading is not fast reading.
What we compare with
The weekly read is compared only with your child’s own earlier reads. The grade-level check-up (below) is the one read compared with the published national oral reading norms by Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal (2017), for your child's grade and the point in the school year. We show a plain band: well below, below, near, or at or above the target, always labeled "compared to US national norms." For families outside the US we translate the school year, so a child in Year 3 in England is compared with US grade 2. The target is the middle of the national range. We aim for it and do not chase past it.
Kind by design
If a story is clearly too hard (no words right in the first line, or ten missed in a row), the read stops gently and is recorded as "not yet." Your child never sees a number: they see their hero and "You did it!" Every time. If accuracy is under 90 percent, we tell you plainly that the story was too hard for now and to keep going at the level your child is on. A one-minute read never changes your child's lessons.
Which passage. The weekly read uses a passage at your child’s own level that your child may have read before: the passage from the end of the last level, or sentences from steps your child has already practiced. That is the right text for tracking growth and the wrong text for a national comparison, so it is never compared with national figures. The reading check-up is different: it uses a brand-new story your child has never seen or practiced. We write our own check-up stories for every grade, check how hard each one is with standard readability formulas, and never give a child the same check-up story twice in a year.
The reading check-up. Once your child finishes Level 8 (reading at about a second-grade level), check-ups begin. A progress check-up comes about every four weeks: one brand-new story at your child’s reading level, which shows growth over time. A grade-level check-up comes about three times a year (start, middle and end of the school year): three brand-new stories written for your child’s school grade, and the middle score counts. Only the grade-level check-up is compared with national figures, because that comparison only means something on unseen grade-level text.
Why the score is the one-minute read. How many words a child reads correctly in a minute predicts understanding better than retelling the story or answering questions about it. In one well-known comparison, oral reading fluency tracked a reading comprehension test more closely (0.91) than question answering (0.82), fill-in-the-blank (0.72) or retelling (0.70) (Fuchs, Fuchs and Maxwell, 1988, as reported in Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp and Jenkins, 2001, Scientific Studies of Reading). It is not perfect, but it is a strong signal, and it takes one minute.
After the minute. Your child may keep reading for fun, and you can talk about the story together with three optional questions we provide. Understanding grows through conversation about what you read together. None of that is scored.
What it is not. This is a one-minute read, not a test, an assessment, or a diagnosis.
If a child’s one-minute reads stay flat across four reads of the same kind, even after every adjustment the program makes, we tell you plainly and recommend asking your school for an evaluation.
Privacy. No microphone and no recording. You do the marking. Only the one-minute read scores are sent to us.
References
- Norms: Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G. (2017). An update to compiled ORF norms (Technical Report No. 1702). Behavioral Research and Teaching, University of Oregon. For more on fluency, see Jan Hasbrouck's articles at Reading Rockets.
- Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., & Maxwell, L. (1988). The validity of informal reading comprehension measures. Remedial and Special Education, 9(2), 20 to 28. The source of the comparison figures above.
- Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. K., & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Oral reading fluency as an indicator of reading competence. Scientific Studies of Reading.
- Every other source behind this page: the full reference list, for specialists.
