Last month Peter explored the topic of time in his blog article, How Much Time Should Intermediate Classrooms Devote to Reading Instruction? He recommended 90-minutes of reading a day, with 45-minutes of the time devoted to silent reading and responding. To continue with the theme of time, we will explore the topic of silent reading fluency and how much time students need to complete a chapter of reading a day!
A Chapter a Day!
Walk into a middle-grade classroom during the silent reading time, and you are likely to see every student nose-down in a chapter book! There is something appealing about picking up the next book in the Magic Treehouse, Percy Jackson, or Hunger Games series that excites students at this age level. But just because students are choosing to read chapter books, doesn't mean they are successful at reading them!
As it turns out, time is a big factor in successful chapter book reading. Reading in chunks or chapters helps readers keep the story in their head. Readers who read to the end of a chapter get to a natural stopping place. They can more easily pick up the book later and continue reading if their last stopping point was at the end of a chapter. When readers get interrupted in the middle of a chapter, it is harder for them to remember what was happening in the book. They must take more time to recall what was already read before diving back into the reading. Some readers will wind up going back to the beginning of the chapter and starting again.
Knowing this, it is important for us as reading teachers to understand how much time is needed for our students to get to a natural stopping point in their reading and provide the necessary, uninterrupted time for silent reading in our classrooms.
To determine how much time is needed, we will look at the following data points:
- Average length of a chapter,
- Average oral reading and silent reading rates.
Average Length of a Chapter
Readers who are new to chapter book reading are still developing their ability to focus for extended periods and recall what was read. This is why chapter books for lower readers include shorter chapters, usually with wider margines and spacing, and a few illustrations to keep the reader engaged (think Magic Treehouse). As readers increase their stamina, skill, and memory, chapters become longer and include more words per page (think Percy Jackson).
The average length of a chapter book by grade level:
| Grade Level | Pages in a Chapter | Words in a Chapter |
| 3rd Grade | 2-5 | 500-1,000 |
| 4th Grade | 4-7 | 1,000-1,500 |
| 5th Grade | 6-12 | 1,500-2,500 |
| 6th Grade | 8-15+ | 2,000-3,500+ |
These figures are general guidelines.
How Much Time is Needed to Finish a Chapter?
In 2006, Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal completed an extensive study of oral reading fluency rates for students in grades 1-8. The data collected in that study provides mean oral reading fluency rates and includes fall, winter, and spring benchmarks. To keep things simple, we will just look at the fall benchmarks for students at the 50th percentile in grades 3-6.
It is estimated that a student's silent reading rate is about 25% higher than their oral reading rate. The table below shows Hasbrouck and Tindal's benchmarks and uses that data to predict a student's silent reading rate and time needed to complete a grade-level chapter.
| Grade Level | Oral Reading Rate (WCPM) 50th Percentile Fall Benchmark | Silent Reading Rate 25% above | Minutes Needed: |
| 3rd Grade | 71 | 88 | 6-12 |
| 4th Grade | 94 | 117 | 9-13 |
| 5th Grade | 110 | 137 | 11-18 |
| 6th Grade | 127 | 158 | 13-22+ |
Implications
In third and fourth grade, students will need at least 15-minutes of uninterrupted silent reading time to be able to finish reading a chapter in a grade-level text.
For fifth and sixth grades, students will need at least 20-minutes of uninterrupted silent reading time to be able to finish reading a chapter in a grade-level text.
I recommend doubling these times if you are asking students to respond to the text after reading, either through discussion or writing.
Conclusion
Call me a nerd, but I think this data on silent reading rates is super helpful! Teachers can use this data to more accurately schedule reading times across the day, make recommendations for at-home reading, and help students with time management and goal setting.
I also hope this data will help you set aside time for meaningful silent reading in your own life! After all, the best reading teachers are readers themselves! Adults should aim to set aside about 12-20 minutes of reading a day to complete one chapter in a standard adult novel, or 20-40 minutes for technical books and classic literature. Have I inspired you? I hope so!
Happy reading!
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Written by Sarah Collinge
Founder & President
Read Side by Side Publications, LLC.
References:
Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G. A. (2006). Oral Reading Fluency Norms: A Valuable Assessment Tool for Reading Teachers. The Reading Teacher, 59, 636-644.
