Reading fluency performance of elementary-school fifth-grade students

ABSTRACT Purpose: to characterize and compare the reading fluency performance of public- and private-school fifth-grade students. Methods: a total of 44 elementary-school fifth-grade students of both sexes, aged 10 to 11 years, participated in the study and were divided into Group I (GI, with 25 public-school students) and Group II (GII, with 19 private school students). They were submitted to the Assessment of Reading Fluency Performance (ADFLU). The performance analysis was based on the number of correct words per minute, incorrect words per minute, total reading time, and reading speed. The data analysis was made with statistical tests, with significance set at p-value ≤0.05, for the inter- and intragroup comparisons. Results: in the analysis per group, there was a significant difference in the total reading time between the texts in GI, and in the reading speed between the texts, in GII. In the comparison between the groups, all variables had a significant difference, with a better performance in GII. Conclusion: the reading fluency performance of public- and private-school fifth-graders was characterized. The performance of the private-school students was superior to that of the public-school students.