Growing in fluency
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By: Sophie Zavaleta
Rationale: Growing in fluency is reading at a faster, smoother pace with expression. It is the ability to recognize words quickly, accurately, and automatically. It is critical for them to learn how to read fluently. When children can read fluently, their effort transfers to comprehension rather than the mechanics of reading such as decoding and blending. Students will learn to read fluently through reading, decoding, crosschecking, mental marking, and rereading. Students will improve their reading rate and grow into confident, more expressive, and fluent readers.
Materials:
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Stopwatch for each pair of students
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Class set of The Turnip by, Janina Domanska
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Sample sentences for teacher to model (on board)
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Peer evaluation worksheet for each student
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Cover-up critters for each student
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Printed passage of the story on one page
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Fluency chart (garden): printed out turnip from story to track fluency
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Comprehension worksheet for each student
1. Introduction
Say: “Today we are going to work on our fluency in reading! This means you are going to be able to read words easily and correctly. When we are fluent readers, we can better understand the text we are reading, and we get the chance to read the story with expression to make it more exciting or interesting! We are going to practice this today by reading the same book more than once. Each time we read it, we will be more familiar with the words. This is called repeated reading. Once we have mastered this book, all of you will feel more confident to read this book to your classmates, family, or even act it out!”
2. Procedures
The teacher will then model crosschecking and decoding by reading a sample sentence from the board. Say: “I want everyone to listen to me say this sentence” (Model reading a sentence fluently and non-fluently.) “The more often you read, the more fluent of a reader you will become.” (read 2 times, fluently and non-fluently) “The mooooreeee oftennn you reeeeadd, the moooreee flluuuuueeeennnttt you will becccoooommmee.” Did I read that sentence fluently? (wait for response) NO! I did not. How about this time “The more often you read, the more fluent you will become”. That time I read the word fluently and it was much easier to understand!
3. Say: Let’s learn how we will become fluent readers! What do we do when we see a word we don’t recognize? Do we just skip over it? No! One way to read a word that is unfamiliar to us is to use a “cover up”. For example, if you can across the word frog and did not know how to say it, we would cover up the fr in the word and the g, leaving just the vowel o. I will then think to myself “hmmm what does the o sound make?” /o/. Next I will uncover the Fr and think about the sounds they make and combine them to say the word /f/ /r/ /o/ and then I will reveal the last letter, /g/. Now combine the letters and their sounds to read the word- /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/, frog. Great job everyone! That is how you use cover-ups to read a word.
4. Say: Another reading strategy that we use if we do not know a word, is called crosschecking. When we are unsure about a word, we reread the sentence with the word we think it is to see if it makes sense. For example, if we read this sentence “For dinner I like to eat chicken.” If you come across the word “chicken” and were unsure what word it was, we would first try to decode it. If we could not successfully decode it we would try to put the word we think it is and read it in the sentence. When we reread the word in the sentence, we will see if it makes sense. If we thought the word was “cats” we would read the sentence and know that , No we don’t eat cats for dinner! Then we know that that word does not make sense.
5. Say: “To practice reading fluently, we are going to read the story “The Turnip”. This story is about a grandmother and a grandfather who grow a hugeeeee turnip that they try to pull out of the ground. They try to get help from all different kinds of animals like, a dog, a cat, geese, a rooster, a hen, a pig, and more. Do you think they will be able to get the turnip out of the ground?
6. Activities
Children will be given a copy of the book, their own cover-up critter, evaluation worksheet, comprehension worksheet, and one stopwatch per pair of students. Say: “Now we are going to practice reading fluently by working with a partner. Each of you will take turns reading the story, before we end you will each read it three times. Remember to crosscheck and use your cover-up critter to help you figure out words if you get stuck. While you read, your partner will time you by using the stopwatch. Record the time on the worksheet. Your partner will be listening closely to see if you are reading smoothly and with expression. Remember to use kind words when discussing with your partner, we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. After you finish reading and recording, discuss the book with your partner. You should go back to your seat and fill out your reading comprehension worksheet and turn it into me.
Assessment: Walk around the room to observe and monitor students’ reading and recording. Have the students turn in their worksheets when they are finished. Review to see if fluency improvements were made. Calculating words per minute can be helpful (Words per minute formula: (Words read x 60)/total seconds it took to read the text). Call each student to your desk to read the passage to you. (Be sure to put the passage all on one page so the reader isn’t distracted by the illustrations or turning the page). Time the student while he/she reads the passage. Once you calculate their words per minute, allow them to put the airplane onto the appropriate number. The goal is to get the student reading 85 words per minute which would put the airplane into the air! Before you end the lesson, review the answers to the reading comprehension questions to see how well the students understood the story.
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References:
Flying into Fluency by Ashley Kirkland
Books: Give me a clue Ginn and Company
Cover-up critters: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/materials.html
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Back to website:http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/
My email: Scz0002@auburn.edu
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