Growing Independence & Fluency

Growing Independence and Fluency Design

“Fairy Tales and Fluency for Me and for You”

Rationale: The goal of this lesson is to guide students towards reading fluently on their own. Reading fluently means that having the ability to read nearly all the words on a page as sight words. Over time, students will be able to read at a faster pace, and this improves reading comprehension and allows the reader to read with more expression. Students must first be able to decode words in text in order to become fluent readers. In this lesson, students will learn the strategies and skills it takes to become a fluent reader through explicit modeling and guided practice. Students will use the strategy of crosschecking after repeated readings of a decodable text to gain fluency and independence in reading.

Materials: Cover-up critter, pencil and paper for teacher, stopwatch and timer for teacher, You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You: Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together by Mary Ann Hoberman, fluency checklist, partner reading progress sheet.

Procedures:

Say—“Today we are going to learn about how to improve our fluency when reading. Can anyone tell me what the word fluency means? Fluency is when you read words quickly and automatically with expression. When we read with fluency, we comprehend more of the story and the story becomes more exciting, too. To become fluent readers, we must be able to recognize a large amount of sight words, or words that we know automatically, without having to decode them. To gain sight words we have to practice reading through a method of repeated reading where we decode, crosscheck, mental mark, and reread.”
Say—“We have cover-up critters to help us decode, which means to read an unfamiliar word. For example, let’s look at the word street. Write the word on the white board. I am going to use my cover-up critter to decode this word. I will cover up all the letters except for the first s. /s/ … /s/ … /s/. Then I will uncover t. /t/ … /t/ … /t/st/. Next, I uncover the letter r. /r/ … /r/r/r/ …/s/t/r. Then I will uncover the ee. /ee/ … /ee/ … /ee/ s/t/r/ee. Finally, I will uncover the t and blend all the phonemes together. /s/t/r/ee/t/ … /s/t/r/ee/t/ … street. This word is street. Let’s use the word in a sentence: ‘I live down the street from my best friend Emma.’”
Now I will show the students the difference between reading a sentence fluently and not reading it fluently. I will write the sentence “I like my new friend.” I will read it very slowly at first to show them how a reader who is not fluent would read it. “I went to my ffffrrriiiiennd’s hoouuussee.” Then I would read it more fluently and faster to show how a fluent reader would read it. I will read it very smoothly, and with expression. “I went to my friend’s house.” Say-- “Did anyone notice the difference in how I read this sentence? Could you tell that one was smoother than the other? Right, the smoother reading was a more fluent reading and that is how we want to read! It is easier to understand when it’s read faster and smoother, right? That’s right! Now I want you to try and read faster and with expression this time!”
Say—“I want you to read the book You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You: Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together by Mary Ann Hoberman. This book is full of exciting stories in which wolves are tamed, trolls are transformed, and peas are triumphant. Let’s all read on to see what happens! Remember, reading silently means reading in your head without whispering or moving your lips.”
After having the students read silently to themselves, pair them up in partners. Say—“You and your partner will now use a stopwatch, a reading rate chart, and a fluency checklist to take turns reading the fairy tales to each other. You will each read three times. You will take turns being the reader and then being the one with the timer. Use the stopwatch to time your partner while they read and record their time on the reading rate chart. When you are the one with the stopwatch, be careful to hit start as soon as your partner starts to read and stop it as soon as he or she is finished reading. Record all three of the times on your chart. After your partner has read one story, make sure you fill out the fluency checklist along with the reading rate chart. This will help you and your partner see your improvements!” Before the students begin reading, the teacher will model how to fill in the chart and use a stopwatch. The teacher will then observe the students reading the book. He or she should walk around the room and answer any questions the students may have while also checking to make sure they are correctly filling in the charts.
After the students are done reading, the teacher should collect the data for him or herself in order to analyze and assess how the students did and who still needs to work on what. For each individual student, observe their reading and mark improvements needed and miscues. Then, the teacher should ask the students comprehensive questions. He or she should ask questions such as:
1. How are these fairy tales similar to ones you have read before?
2. How are these fairy tales different to ones you have read before?
3. Who were the main characters of each fairy tale?
To assess students’ readings, I will use the following checklist for fluency:
1. Did he/she read smoothly?
2. Did he/she show facial expressions?
3. Did he/she have voice changes?
4. Does the student have an overall understanding of expression?

Name__________

Time after first reading__________

Time after second reading________

Time after third reading __________

References: “Moving into Fluency” by Caroline Shea https://chs0025.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/growing-independence-and-fluency

“Swimming into Fluent Reading” by Mary Margaret Grammas https://annamungenast.wixsite.com/mysite/growing-independence-and-fluency

I grew up with both of these girls and it was great to reference their lesson designs!