Fluency
Fluency: what you need to know
Fluency in Kindergarten reflects how easily and accurately students can read the words they have been taught. It shows up when students can recognize letters quickly, blend sounds efficiently, and read simple words and sentences without effortful decoding.
Fluency is not a separate skill that is taught in isolation. It develops as students become more accurate and automatic with foundational skills.
As students progress through Kindergarten, they:
- A2.6: read short sentences fluently, including those with explicitly taught words, with increasing accuracy, to support comprehension
What’s new in the 2026 Curriculum?
In the 2016 Kindergarten Program, fluency was not clearly defined. In the 2026 Kindergarten Curriculum, there is greater specificity about what developing fluency looks like in practice and what students are expected to do. Fluency is now described through observable behaviours, such as reading words and short sentences with increasing accuracy, allowing educators to more clearly identify and support student progress.
Transitioning to fluency in Grade 1
In Grade 1, students move from reading short, controlled sentences to reading longer, connected text. This requires increased automaticity with word reading so that decoding becomes more efficient.
Students are expected to read with greater accuracy and smoother pacing. As word reading becomes more automatic, students are better able to focus on understanding what they read.
Teaching fluency
Fluency develops through explicit instruction in foundational skills combined with many opportunities to practise reading.
Instruction focuses on building accuracy and automaticity in key subskills, such as phonemic awareness and letter sounds, so that reading becomes more efficient. As these skills become more automatic, students are able to read words and simple sentences with greater ease.
Students need frequent, structured opportunities for oral decoding. Reading words and short sentences aloud, using what has been taught, allows them to practise and consolidate their learning
Instruction includes clear modelling, guided practice, and immediate feedback, with many opportunities to respond. Practice is cumulative and aligned to instruction so that previously learned skills are continuously reinforced.
Assessing fluency
Universal screeners include multiple measures that tap fluency with foundational skills. These tasks capture how accurately and automatically students can perform skills that support their growth towards fluent, proficient reading.