Fluency Through Practice and Performance (Building Fluency)

Discover engaging and practical strategies for incorporating fluency instruction into your daily reading routines. This resource provides teachers with step-by-step processes for teaching fluency, a continuum of lessons that gradually release responsibility to the student, tips for family involvement, and ideas for community-building with other classrooms. Incorporate this research- and standards-based resource into instruction today and help all students become fluent readers!

About Shell Education
Rachelle Cracchiolo started the company with a friend and fellow teacher. Both were eager to share their ideas and passion for education with other classroom leaders. What began as a hobby, selling lesson plans to local stores, became a part-time job after a full day of teaching, and eventually blossomed into Teacher Created Materials. The story continued in 2004 with the launch of Shell Education and the introduction of professional resources and classroom application books designed to support Teacher Created Materials curriculum resources. Today, Teacher Created Materials and Shell Education are two of the most recognized names in educational publishing around the world.

Dr. Timothy Rasinski is a professor emeritus of literary education at Kent State University and was previously director of its award-winning reading clinic. Dr. Rasinski is the author of numerous best-selling books, articles, and curriculum programs on literacy education and has co-authored many resources for Shell Education including, but not limited to, Greek & Latin Roots: Keys to Building Vocabulary, Starting with Prefixes and Suffixes, Practice with Prefixes, Vocabulary Ladders: Understanding Word Nuances series, Getting to the Roots of Content-Area Vocabulary series, Idioms and Other English Expressions series, Close Reading with Paired Texts series, Rhymes for the Times: Literacy Strategies through Social Studies, as well as TCM’s curriculum resource Building Vocabulary series.

Dr. Rasinski is a frequent, well-known presenter nationwide and in 2021 and 2023 was named one of the top 2% most-citied scientists in the world. His scholarly interests include reading fluency, word study, reading in the elementary and middle grades, and readers who struggle. Dr. Rasinski served a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association and was co-editor of The Reading Teacher, the world’s most widely read journal of literacy education. He has also served as co-editor of the Journal of Literacy Research. Dr. Rasinski is a former president of the College Reading Association and has won the A. B. Herr and Laureate Awards from the College Reading Association for his scholarly contributions to literacy education. In 2010, Dr. Rasinski was elected to the International Reading Hall of Fame, and in 2019 Dr. Rasinski was recipient of the International Literacy Association’s highest honor—the William S. Gray Citation of Merit—for his contributions to the field of literacy.

Lorraine Griffith, M.A.Ed., is a teacher and has also been conducting classroom action research in the area of reading fluency with Dr. Timothy Rasinski in a 4th grade classroom.