Relation between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension

Purpose: Relate oral reading fluency performance to reading comprehension in students of the Elementary School. Methods: The study included 97 students, distributed in three groups: Group I (GI): composed by 32 students from 3rd grade level; Group II (GII): composed by 28 students from 4th grade level and Group III (GIII): composed by 37 students from 5th grade level. The oral reading of a text was recorded and analyzed observing the pauses made by the students, auditory perceived by judges, speed reading measured by the number of words correctly read and reading comprehension assessment. Results: Students of Group I and III presented relation between reading comprehension and number of words correctly read per minute, which did not occur with the students from Group II. The GII and GIII showed negative relation, not significant between the number of pauses and reading comprehension. Conclusion: The data showed that oral reading rate is related to the reading comprehension, however, the number of pauses showed no significant differences between reading comprehension for most grade level analyzed.