Growing Independence and Fluency

DRAGONS LOVE FLUENCY

Rationale:

In order for students to become expert readers, they must learn to read with fluency. Fluency is the ability to read effortlessly with automatic word recognition. Success in reading fluency helps the student read faster, comprehend the story better, and show expression while reading. Fluency also involves recognizing new words as sight words and adding them to our sight word gallery in our head. This lesson will encourage students to apply strategies such as crosschecking and decoding to improve their fluency. They will also monitor and promote progress through repeated readings.

Materials:

White board

Expo Marker

Coverup Critter

Peer Fluency Checklist (for students and teacher)

Stop Watches

Class set of: Dragons Love Tacos By: Adam Rubin

Procedures:

Say “Good morning students. Today we are going to learn about reading fluency. Does anyone know what it means to have reading fluency? *give time to answer* It is when you can read smoothly and comprehend the story. It involves learning new words and adding them to your sight words. If you learn to read with fluency you may begin to love reading because of how easy it becomes.”
Say “Becoming a fluent reader takes a lot of practice but is worth it. Let’s learn some things we can do when we struggle with a new word. First, we can use a cover up critter. Lets try with the word clap. What sound does the c make? correct /c/=c *do this with each letter* Great, now let’s blend them together c-l-a-p clap!
Say “Now it’s your turn to read with fluency. You might not be great at it the first time but like I said it takes practice. Now lets all get out our cover critters.” *Pass out and give a book talk then have the students read it silently at their desk* The book talk should be short and make the reader interested in what might happen in the story.
Say “Now I want you to get in pairs and read the story together. I gave you guys a fluency checklist at the beginning of class we are now going to use that to test our partners fluency. One of you will be the reader first and the other will be the timer. You will read aloud 3 times and be timed then you will switch roles. Listen to the timer for the one-minute mark, you will use the stop watch I passed out to keep time. Please keep track of their time on a sheet of paper.” Then walk around and make sure the students are keeping on task.
The teacher will collect the data at the end and use the assessments to decide if students need extra help or remediation. Once all the papers are collected ask some open-ended questions about the story to check if the students were comprehending what they were reading.

Fluency Checklist (copies for each student)

Name __________ Date__________

I noticed that my partner:

After 2nd time: After 3rd time:

( ) ( ) Remembered more words

( ) ( ) Read faster

( ) ( ) Read smoother

( ) ( ) Read with expression

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

References:

Kristen Peacock / Diving into fluency

http://kristinp08.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/growing-independence-and-fluency

Click here to return to applications