“If you don’t read well, the whole academic proposition isn’t going to happen.” —Dr. David Paige

In this episode of the UnboundEd podcast, Alice Wiggins sits down with Dr. David Paige. They discuss what fluency is, why it’s important, how it develops, and how teachers can support students struggling with fluency.

While listening to this episode, you’ll learn about:

• Why Dr. Paige transitioned from a career in business to education and literacy research
• How Dr. Paige defines reading fluency
• Why fluency is important to reading
• Characteristics of disfluent readers
• What we can do to support and develop students’ word recognition
• How teachers can incorporate fluency work if they aren’t already doing it
• Why prosody matters
• Why it’s beneficial for content teachers to implement choral reading

Dr. David Paige is an Associate Professor of Education at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. After a 20-year career in business, Dr. Paige began his educational career as a special educator in Memphis, Tennessee where he taught reading and math for five years to children with mild to moderate learning disabilities in both pull-out and collaborative class settings. Dr. Paige completed his doctoral studies at the University of Memphis and his research interests are framed around literacy issues, particularly those concerning the role of oral reading fluency in adolescent children from poverty.

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Something to Reflect on from the Episode

“Prosody creates a cognitive architecture that supports comprehension.”

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