Maximizing Repeated Readings: the Effects of a Multicomponent Reading Fluency Intervention for Children with Reading Difficulties Shengtian Wu 1 & Kasee K. Stratton 1 & Daniel L. Gadke 1 # California Association of School Psychologists 2019 Abstract Repeated reading (RR) is one of the most widely studied reading fluency interventions. The procedure has been studied independently, as well as in conjunction with up to five different add-on intervention components. Such add-on interventions target skills, including syllable segmentation, grammar, and vocabulary, each of which has been identified as essential to becoming an effective reader. However, despite the importance of each of these skills, no study has evaluated the combination of all previously explored add-on components into a single reading fluency intervention paired with RR. A multiple baseline with withdrawal (ABAB) single subject design methodology was used to evaluate the effectiveness of a multicomponent reading intervention with three students experiencing reading difficulties. Visual analysis indicated clear positive effects of the interven- tion. Additionally, using non-overlap of all pairs, strong effect sizes were detected for the intervention across all participants. Implications for practice, limitations, and future directions are all explored. Keywords Reading fluency . Repeated reading . Curriculum-based measurement Learning to read is one of the most crucial early academic skills for children, yet more than a quarter of fourth-grade students and a quarter of eighth-grade students present with below average basic reading skills (National Report Card; NRC 2015). Unfortunately, these scores do not re- flect an improvement from previous years, with fourth- grade students’ overall skills remaining the same and eighth-grade students ’ reading scores dropping from 2013 to 2015. Almost three decades ago, Mathes et al. (1992) reported reading difficulties as the most common referral concern for children with learning disabilities, which continues to be true with 67% of the fourth-grade and 64% of the eighth-grade students with disabilities displaying below average basic reading skills (National Assessment of Educational Progress 2015). Despite years of available evidence-based reading strategies, research on advancing reading performance must continue in efforts to meet the needs of students and educators. Reading Fluency Reading fluency, once considered the most neglected aspect of reading skills (Allington 1983), has received increased interest from researchers following the National Reading Panel’ s (NRP 2000) report on the importance of reading fluency. Historically, reading fluency has been defined as fast and ac- curate word reading with proper expression (LaBerge and Samuels 1974). LaBerge and Samuels (1974) also suggested once reading fluency is mastered, readers are able to focus on reading comprehension because their attention can be directed toward the meaning of text. In short, they suggested an in- crease in reading fluency should lead to improvement in read- ing comprehension. Based on Ehri (1995, 1998), readers go through four stages of development of reading fluency: pre-alphabetic, partial al- phabetic, full alphabetic, and consolidated alphabetic stage. In the pre-alphabetic stage, limited knowledge of letters and sounds lead readers to remember words by appearance. For example, because the last letter of Bmy^ and Bmonkey^ are the same, readers in the pre-alphabetic stage often consider the two words as the same. While readers understand each letter has sound in the partial alphabetic stage, readers tend to rec- ognize words by their most salient parts, often the beginning or final letters. For example, when readers know the word Bget,^ they may read Bgo^ and Bgive^ as Bget.^ In the full * Kasee K. Stratton kstratton@colled.msstate.edu 1 Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Foundations, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS 39762, USA Contemporary School Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-019-00248-x