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Growing Independence and Fluency

Fabulous Fluency!

Rationale:

Establishing fluency in reading should center around accurate and effortless word recognition. In other words, fluent readers have the skill of automatic word recognition. Increasing fluency among readers inherently increases their ability to comprehend whole texts, which leads to a deeper enjoyment of the reading experience. The best method to improve fluency is repeated reading. This lesson will allow the students to apply strategies such as crosschecking while reading an engaging, whole text. 

 

Materials:

  • Pencils

  • Stopwatch for each student

  • Copy of Julius the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes for each student

  • Peer Fluency Sheet for each student

  • Reading tracker

  • “Jan went to the movies with her mom” and “They ate popcorn and candy” on the board for the teacher to model

 

Procedures:

  1.  Say: It’s time to become fluent readers! What do you all think that it means to be a fluent reader? (allow time for responses) Those are good answers! To be fluent readers means that we are reading quickly and easily without messing up on many words. When we can read quickly and easily, we are able to enjoy the story we are reading more!

  2. Say: Let’s read the sentence on the board! (Jane went to the movies with her mom) I will read it, and I want you all to tell me if I sound like a fluent reader. J-j-j- /a/- /a/-/a/-n-n, Jan, w-w-w-/e/-/e/-n-n-t-t to the m-m-m-/o/-v, no wait, m-/oo/-v-es, moves with her mom. Jan went to the moves with her mom! Wait, no that doesn’t make sense. She went to the moves with her mom? Ohh she went to the movies with her mom! Jan went to the movies with her mom. What word did I get stuck on? Movies. I forgot that ‘ie’ makes the /E/ sound. But I used the context of the sentence to figure out the word I wasn’t sure about. This is called cross-checking which is a very important tool to use to become fluent readers. I read the entire sentence and it sounded funny, so I looked back at the word I struggled with and realized it made an /E/ sound. Make sure you use cross-checking if a word sounds silly in a sentence!

  3. Say: Did I sound like a fluent reader when I read that sentence? (allow time for a response.) No I didn’t! It took me a long time to sound out a lot of words before I was able to read them. Here is how a fluent reader would have read that sentence: ‘Jan went to the movies with her mom.’ See! Quick and easy to understand! Now it’s your turn. Read the second sentence (They ate popcorn and candy) until you can read it easily.

  4. Say: Today we are going to read Julius the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes to practice our fluency. Lots of you all have baby brothers and sisters, and I bet you were all very excited when they were born. Some of you may have been a little nervous when your parents first told you, though. This is the story of Lilly, a little girl who is so excited to have a baby brother!... until he’s born that is. Lilly gets very jealous of the attention that new baby Julius gets from their family. She wants to know when she is getting her room back, and can’t bring herself to think that his sweet, pink nose is anything but slimy! What do you think will happen between Lilly and newborn baby Julius? Do you think that she will warm up to her baby brother, or will she stay jealous and grouchy to him forever?! I want each of you to read the story once silently to themselves to see what happens between Lilly and baby Julius.

  5. Pass our Peer Fluency Sheets and stopwatches. Say: Okay now that we all are familiar with the story, I want you to break into your pairs so you can show off your fluency to your partner! You will take turns reading the book. You will each read the book three times while your partner times you each time you read the story. I want the partners timing to be very good cheerleaders and encourage the reader that they’ve got this! During the first reading, partners only need to use the stopwatch and listen. During the second and third readings, I want partners to use the stopwatch as well as look out for the following things: Is the reader getting faster with each reading? Does the reader seem to read more smoothly each time? Does the reader have good expression? Is the reader remembering more words each time they read the story? Once one person has read the story 3 times and their partner has timed and answered these questions, switch turns and let the other person read 3 times.

  6. Have one pair of students volunteer to model how this partnered reading will go to make sure that all students understand how to perform the repeated reading and fill out the Peer Fluency Sheets.

  7. Collect the Peer Fluency Sheets after the repeated readings are complete and calculate fluency using the formula: words x 60/ # of seconds.

  8. Instruct each student to individually write a short paragraph about the story and include a picture if they wish of what they learned or their favorite part of the story.

  9. While students are working on this comprehension writing assignment, call up each student individually to read a few sentences aloud at the teacher’s desk. Take note of words per minute as well as if the students fluency seems to have improved. The students will also answer the following questions about the story: What did Lilly say to Julius when her parents weren’t looking about numbers and letters? Why didn’t Lilly’s parents want to leave Julius and Lilly alone together? What was Lilly missing from her tea party? How did Lilly feel about Julius after Cousin Garland visited?

 

References:

Miss Price’s Reading Site:

https://sarahpricelessondesigns.weebly.com/independence--fluency.html

 

Claire Koenig:

http://csk0009.wixsite.com/eportfolio/growing-independence-and-fluecny

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