25/08/2026
Meet Year 4 Teacher Liv Hansen who is delivering high-quality instruction at St Albans Impact School.
Over two days at St Alban’s Impact School visit, Liv modelled both whole-class and small-group reading instruction approaches that support success for every learner, including those with diverse learning needs.
As a team, they carefully select engaging, high-quality texts connected to inquiry learning, giving students opportunities to access increasingly complex and authentic texts.
During Reading, to support fluency, Liv uses powerful fluency strategies: echo reading and cloze reading, which help prepare students for successful paired reading and choral reading.
Liv explains, "I feel strongly that echo reading is the best approach and everyone is engaged. It is pitched to their level and they can be successful."
Echo reading is particularly effective for students with dyslexia, English language learners, and those who find reading challenging. Students first hear the text read fluently while following with their eyes before reading it themselves. This helps build confidence, accuracy, and understanding.
As students become more confident decoders, Liv introduces cloze reading. Students actively participate by filling in missing words as they read together, encouraging them to think about meaning and sentence structure.
Together, these approaches:
- Support access to more complex texts
- Scaffold success for all learners
- Build confidence and engagement
- Lead to successful choral reading
Liv uses all these strategies to build fluency: echo, cloze, paired and choral reading with her class. What have you tried? Add your thoughts to the comments below.
Want to see high quality instruction in practice, book in to come to the next Impact School Days in Christchurch. Our Dunedin Impact School Balaclava is coming up. Look out for Willow Park in Auckland as well. For more information, follow the link: https://shop.learningmatters.co.nz/collections/impact-schools
