Science of Reading: The Podcast S10 E3: Finding fluency at the heart of comprehension, with Doug Lemov
Oct 22, 2025
Doug Lemov, a former teacher and the chief knowledge officer at Teach Like a Champion, dives into the crucial connection between fluency and comprehension, especially in middle and secondary education. He emphasizes the importance of reading whole books to enhance understanding and cautions against relying solely on vocabulary context clues. Lemov argues for intentional teaching strategies, including expressive read-alouds and close reading, to combat disfluency in students. He highlights that deep empathic connection to texts can unlock profound comprehension.
59:01
Attention Is The Reading Foundation
- Attention is foundational to reading because focused stamina enables comprehension of challenging texts.
- Doug Lemov warns that phones have rewired students' attention and we must rebuild reading stamina intentionally.
Fluency Predicts Comprehension
- Fluency combines accuracy, automaticity, and prosody and strongly predicts comprehension.
- Lemov cites research showing fluency explains about half of comprehension variance in students.
Check Working Memory Before Teaching Skills
- Test whether working memory is consumed by decoding before blaming comprehension skills.
- If decoding uses working memory, prioritize fluency so students can free resources for meaning.
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Intro
00:00 • 2min
Doug Lemov's background and Teach Like a Champion work
02:12 • 2min
Why middle grades matter for reading
04:36 • 2min
Purpose and genesis of the new book
06:55 • 2min
Why classroom videos accompany the book
08:43 • 4min
Seven core arguments overview
12:43 • 19sec
Rebuilding attention and stamina
13:02 • 2min
Fluency's central role in comprehension
15:00 • 55sec
Background knowledge versus transferable skills
15:55 • 1min
Teaching vocabulary as essential knowledge
16:56 • 2min
Writing to strengthen reading and thinking
18:57 • 3min
Why students must read whole books
21:56 • 2min
Teaching close reading of complex text
23:59 • 3min
Why fluency is often overlooked
27:24 • 2min
Reading at the speed of sight and working memory
29:15 • 3min
Prevalence of disfluency in older students
31:53 • 3min
How to assess and remediate disfluent readers
34:34 • 3min
Phase reading: balancing read-aloud, oral, and silent reading
37:29 • 2min
Using read-alouds to build internal prosody
39:20 • 3min
Interactive read-alouds and classroom example
42:32 • 2min
Making reading social to counter phones
44:47 • 3min
Deep empathic reading as highest comprehension
47:54 • 4min
Books' unique power to produce deep immersion
51:37 • 2min
Bringing science-based teaching together to ignite joy
53:40 • 3min
Outro
56:21 • 3min
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In this episode of Science of Reading: The Podcast, Susan Lambert is joined by Doug Lemov, former teacher and school principal, to discuss how teachers can identify when disfluency is actually the root cause for students’ struggles with comprehension—and what they can do about it. Using his new book, The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading, to guide the discussion, Susan and Doug address building attention stamina, the argument for reading whole books, and the value of expressive read-alouds. Finally, Doug ends the episode asserting that humans are meant to live in community, and that a deeper level of comprehension is unlocked through deep empathic connection to text and the experience of reading with others.
Show notes:
- Listen to Season 2 of the Beyond My Years podcast for solutions to common teaching challenges directly from seasoned educators.
- Connect with Doug Lemov:
- X: @Doug_Lemov
- Resources:
- Read: The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading
- Watch: Gabby Woolf’s Dr. Jekyll Lesson and the Power of Reading Fluency
- Listen: ”Phonology as a settled science”
- Listen: ”The plea to preserve deep reading, with Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.”
- Listen: ”Writing the way to better reading, with Judith Hochman, Ed.D.”
- Listen: ”The joy of reading aloud, with Molly Ness”
- Download: cComprehension 101 Bundle
- Submit your questions on comprehension!
- Join our community Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/scienceofreading
- Connect with Susan Lambert: www.linkedin.com/in/susan-lambert-b1512761/
Quotes:
“If you're not a fluent reader, you can't be a deep reader.”—Doug Lemov
“The research is clear that when you start to read expressively externally, then your internal reading voice while reading silently is much more expressive and therefore infused with more meaning.”—Doug Lemov
Episode Timestamps
03:00 Introduction: Doug Lemov
05:00 The importance of the middle grades
07:00 Book: The Teach like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading
13:00 How to build attention stamina
16:00 Background knowledge and vocabulary
19:00 Writing’s impact on memory and reading
22:00 The value in reading whole books
25:00 Embracing smaller writing assignments
27:00 Fluency deep dive
30:00 Working memory
35:00 Troubleshooting fluency
39:00 Expressive reading
41:00 Read-alouds
44:00 Reading as a social act
52:00 The argument for books
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute