Fluency Part 6 Neurological impress method

The Neurological Impress Method (NIM).

Before the reading the reading guide should ask the child to scan the cover and title of the book. The reading guide should then ask the reader to look at the illustrations and think about similar life experiences. After browsing through the book and discussing each picture he/she is then asked to predict what what he/she thinks will happen in the story.

The reading guide then reads the story to the child by modeling fluent and expressive reading. This will familiarise the him/her with the flow of the language. It makes the reading much more predictable because the meaning of the story will have been dealt with before he/she has to to read. The reading guide then discusses various aspects of the story with the child to clarify and elaborate on interesting features. Unfamiliar vocabulary is also identified and explained.

The next step involves reading orally in unison. The child should be directed to keep pace with the adult reader even if some of the words are not read correctly. If the child happens to trip on a word he/she must catch up to the reading guide to maintain the reading flow. This will develop the ability to read ahead rather than reading word by word. It also enhances fluency because the reader must predict and sample larger chunks of text to maintain the pace and flow.

Often unskilled readers are quite surprised by how quickly their reading improves after only a few sessions.

Fluency Part 5 Highlight Phrases

Fluency is not just about reading words accurately and with speed, it also includes prosody and comprehension. Prosody is reading with expression and it includes using appropriate intonation, pitch, modulation and pausing. There would seem to be a close relationship between prosody and comprehension.

A major problem that can minimise reading comprehension is slow word-by-word reading. This style of reading eats up limited working memory resources and stifles expressive reading. One effective way to maximise working-memory resources and to enhance prosody is to chunk the reading by reading whole phrases rather than individual words.

This can be done by using a highlighter to highlight phrases on a photocopy of a storybook page (or a highlighted word doc.). The reading guide then models the reading by reading each phrase and using the appropriate expression. The child then reads by following the expert reader's example.

Fluency Part 4. Prefixes

Following on from part 3.

In the previous blog we looked at the root words to develop chunks of meaning within words. We discovered that the identification of the root word could be used to help make the reading of some longer words more automatic. 


There are also parts of words that are meaningful such as prefixes. Prefixes are added to the beginnings of words to change their meaning. Thus, developing an awareness of prefixes and root words can enhance your child's ability to decode word's and their meanings. In fact, if your child learns  re-, in-, dis-, un- he/she will have a key to the decoding of approximately two thirds of all English words that have prefixes.


One activity that you could be used with your child is to set up a cork pin board with collection of words that have been discovered in your  reading together sessions. 

N.B. Make this a fun activity - reading at home should be enjoyable. Make it into a game, you could call it word detective.

Fluency Part 3 Words within words

One way to develop fluency is to look for words within words.. For example, the word 'updated' has 'date' as its base word with the 'up-' as a prefix and 'ed' as a suffix. The word 'updated' can be made easier to read when the word within-the-word (date) is recognised automatically and the affixes are tacked on.


The more information that readers have to process the slower the reading will become and the less fluent it will sound. However, reading is made easier when information is processed in larger chunks. The larger the chunk the more efficient the reading will become.

Good readers look for cues while they are reading. They sample the text for the best cues that will enable them to work out the word by touching the fewest possible bases.  Α good  reader may apply a number of sampling strategies. They may predict words by sampling the first letter and/or consider the overall shape of the word to confirm to correct their predictions. Sometimes they will see a word within a word and recognise it automatically. This process minimises the amount of information that needs to be processed and enables fluent reading to take place.

One useful method to help children do this is to use the 'L' plates or two 'L' shapes pieces of plastic to focus attention on a word within a word. Often, the other letters in the word will interfere with the identification of the root word so this masking technique is used initially to enable focal attention. To make the 'L' plates take an ice-cream container lid and cut out two small 'L' shapes. Invert one of the 'L's to form a rectangle so that they can be adjusted in relation to one another to fit neatly around the root word and mask the affixes. In the example below the word 'flapping' was masked to show the root word 'flap'.

Initially, this process should be modelled by the adult. The child should then use it to do the same independently. Eventually there will be no need to keep using the 'L' plates and the reader will recognise the root words automatically.

Sleep time (really ground breaking stuff!)

In the last Blog (last night) I discussed using routines and bedtime stories and how effective this was for a couple of our grand children (Now you know, no good keeping secrets on cyber-space!). It just so happens that a couple of our other grand kids were sleeping over for the night tonight. Now the bed time reading routines can work well to a point, but when  they are so excited about sleeping over you need to pull out the big guns. I mean the 'Fair Dinkum' really big guns like Ernest Borgnine reading a story online. Now, if what I said last night doesn't work then follow-up with this.

So, after reading some bedtime stories and they still won't go to sleep then drag out the laptop and goto storyonline online http://www.storylineonline.net/ and let the kids listen to top actors reading interesting books. This works much better than valium and they can hear what good fluent reading sounds like. Now we are really getting back on to the fluency topic!

I just had to be a bit spontaneous - this stuff is literacy as it happens! A sort of literacy news flash! Something really ground breaking!!!