Digital Reading Fluency Training for Primary School Students—Concept and First Results

Abstract

Good reading fluency is of tremendous importance for private and professional life, and it is important to acquire this skill at school. Primary school in particular builds the foundation for this ability. A typical approach to training reading fluency is reading aloud methods. The Readers' Theatre is considered an effective method in this context. For intensive reading fluency training, students should practise reading also outside the classroom. This paper presents a digital learning tool based on the Readers’ Theatre for individual and personalised reading fluency training to be applied in school and especially out of school at home. Aspects of interactive storytelling that increase learning motivation and engagement in a game-based context and aspects of adaptive learning for (partially) automated, individualised, and personalised training are integrated in the concept. The concept was implemented as a prototype and tested with 15 students of a third grade. Usability tests and ethnographic interviews were conducted to assess acceptance of the approach. This paper reports on the conception, development, and evaluation of the prototype reported in the context of corresponding evaluations. Based on the findings, the paper discusses readiness of the approach for future use in schools linked to learning activities at home.