How to Calculate Oral Reading
Rate
You will need:
- a stopwatch--or a watch with a second hand
- a calculator
Oral reading rate is most often given as the number of words read correctly
in one minute (wpm). It is found by a straight forward method that can
be applied to any GE level passage. Follow these steps:
- Select a reading passage that is one or two GEs below the learner's
present oral reading GE level. If you have not given a graded oral
reading mastery test, chose a passage one or two GEs below their Word
Recognition GE. The purpose is to see how fast a learner can read
material that is at their independent reading level.
- Count the words in the passage.
- Have learner read the passage once through orally so that both of
you can see that there are no troublesome words.
- Tell the learner to read the passage once more, but that this time
you are going to time the reading.
- Record the time in seconds and compute the following:
words per minute = (number of words in passage
÷ reading time (in seconds)) x 60
