by Elfrieda H. (Freddy) Hiebert 
Let’s look at three hypothetical students—Adam, Belinda, and Ceci—who have similar oral reading rates but very different opportunities to read in their classrooms. For comparison purposes, we’ll keep their reading rate constant at the 15th percentile, even though students who read more tend to increase their rate over time. We’ll see where each student stands at the end of third grade.
- Adam averages 7 minutes of reading daily across the primary grades. By the end of third grade, he will have read about 154,000 words as part of classroom reading instruction.
- Belinda averages 12 minutes daily over the three primary grades. She will have read about 280,000 words by the end of third grade.
- Ceci averages 17 minutes daily. She will have read almost 375,000 words.
Now consider four words that occur about 20 times per million words of text: pretend, remind, admit, season. These are common across content areas, appear frequently in primary texts, and remain important in later grades. Once readers are automatic, they can often figure out unfamiliar words in context. But becoming automatic requires having seen at least some words several times—ideally in different kinds of texts. Many English words have nuanced meanings. In Stone Soup, herbs are used to season the soup; in an informational text, season refers to changes in the year. To develop the flexibility needed to understand these meanings, students must meet words in varied contexts—not just in repetitive, leveled readers where the same word appears in similar sentences with the same
meaning.
Here’s how often our three students are likely to have encountered the four critical words in their school reading by the end of third grade:
| Daily Reading Time | Words Read by End of Grade 3 | Likely Encounters with Target Words* | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam | 7 minutes | ~154,000 | ~3 times |
| Belinda | 12 minutes | ~280,000 | ~6 times |
| Ceci | 17 minutes | ~375,000 | ~7.5 times |
Should we expect Adam, with only three encounters over the primary grades, to recognize admit fluently in a fourth-history text describing when his state was admitted to the Union? Probably not.
Researchers don’t yet know the exact number of encounters needed for automatic recognition of words with specific features across contexts. But we do know that statistical learning—meeting words in varied contexts over time—is critical for building reading fluency and meaning. As Seidenberg (2017) writes in Language at the Speed of Sight:
Readers become orthographic experts by absorbing a lot of data, which is one reason why the sheer amount and variety of texts that children read is important… Major statistical patterns emerge as the child encounters
a larger sample of words.” (p. 92)
Yes, learning letter–sound correspondences matters. But students also need many, many chances to apply this knowledge in authentic texts.
Every minute matters. By the end of grade three, the student reading 17 minutes a day over the primary grades will have encountered critical words 2.5 times more often than the student reading only 7 minutes a day. That difference doesn’t just affect test scores—it shapes whether students develop the automatic, flexible reading skills they need for lifelong learning.
Volume matters. Make reading time varied, frequent, and abundant.
Related: Explore TextProject’s Teaching Toolkit on Reading Stamina
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