Hi Carson,
Great question, and so timely with the newest Deep Dive into Secondary Literacy! Let’s unpack a couple of pieces of your question. First of all, keep in mind that struggling with decoding/fluency is not mutually exclusive with struggling with comprehension. Meaning, a student may struggle with one or the other, or both, which is especially likely in middle school.
To answer your question in the simplest way, what you need to determine is if this student’s comprehension difficulties are only- or primarily- caused by decoding and fluency concerns, or in addition to broader language comprehension difficulties. One quick way to check this is to read the passage aloud to him. Did this help his comprehension? If not, then his intervention needs to concentrate on both language comprehension and word-reading skills.
Keep in mind that reading with slower-than-expected fluency is an indicator, but not a guarantee, that students may struggle to understand a text. That is to say, if your student is reading those multisyllabic words you mentioned he struggles with a bit inefficiently but correctly, and his overall reading rate is a bit slow but mostly accurate, then it is entirely possible that he may still understand the text that he is reading. This might especially be true if he finds the task and topic interesting and engaging, or is otherwise motivated to perform well. However, fluency inefficiency- even when comprehension does not appear to be compromised- may make reading more effortful for the student and thus less enjoyable. So the student may still benefit from fluency practice regardless.
You have taken a great first step in taking an oral reading fluency (ORF) score and identifying that his score is a bit slower than average (the 50th percentile baseline we would like students to hit by the winter of 6th grade is 145 WCPM, according to Hasbrouck and Tindal’s 2017 data). While this is a great data point, it doesn’t tell a complete story. Using a rubric to judge student prosody and discussing the text with your student are typically better indicators of their comprehension than looking at their ORF rates alone. If a variety of comprehension questions (meaning, both those that require recall of important details as well as those that target the broader takeaways of the passage) aren’t available, a quick informal test is to ask the student to summarize or retell the text that they just read.
Your next step would also be to gather diagnostic information. This additional information helps you make sense of why your student may be struggling and determine what additional support he needs. You have already identified that your student is struggling with multisyllabic words. Does this mean that your student is slower to read multisyllabic words- perhaps having to inefficiently break the word into parts and then decode it? Or does he often misread longer words? Or both? Similarly, was your student reading at a faster reading rate, but misread several words, bringing down his WCPM? Is this a consistent ORF rate for him, or was it perhaps a particularly challenging text? Was he reading with appropriate prosody (expression, phrasing, attuning to punctuation, etc)? And, even more directly to your point, did he understand the text he read at that rate?
If your student is misreading words (multisyllabic or otherwise), then he should absolutely receive intervention in the needed area(s). Even if a student is performing adequately on comprehension despite misreading words, this again does not negate the need for intervention in this skill area, because misread words affecting comprehension is a matter of when, not if. For example, if a student misreads the word paddle as ‘puddle’ in the following context, she may be able to answer questions about the boy’s name, the type of boat he is riding in, etc. A teacher may not realize that the student doesn’t actually understand the predicament that the character is in unless that specific question is asked.
Noah stepped around the paddle near the dock before climbing into the canoe. He didn’t realize it was still on the dock until after he had pushed off.
You’re off to a great start in better understanding the source(s) of your student’s reading challenges. I hope this gives you some ideas for next steps; thank you for taking the time to ensure your student is getting the targeted instruction that they need!