Growing Fluency

Rationale:

Fluency is a skill that is needed to be able to read for understanding. To read fluently means to recognize words quickly and accurately. This allows students to read with expression. Reading with expression will capture interest and motivate children to read. Reading fluently allows for more opportunities for reading comprehension since less time is spent figuring out words or sentences. Therefore, children have to read fluently to comprehend what the passage is saying.

Materials:

Dry erase board and marker
Paper with decoding words [ e.g., slug, grow, and plow]
Book: A Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Graph of bud/flower [words read times 60 divided by total seconds it took to read the text]
Stopwatches
Pencils
Reading comprehension questions

Procedure:

1. Say: “The goal of reading is to understand and learn from what we read. To do that, we have to be able to read fluently. This means that we cannot decode every word that we read. We have to have the words in our memory so that we can read them quickly. [write sentence, “The dog ran to the barn.” on the board.] It is easy for us to read this sentence as “The dog ran to the barn.” When you become more fluent, you can read the sentence with expression. Let’s practice reading it like this: [Read in a concerned voice with a worried expression] “The dog ran to the barn!”

2. Say: “Some-times we come to words that we do not know. This is when we need to use our coverup critter. Take it out and get ready! I’ll show you on the board. [write the word “bug” on the board and demonstrate using the cover up to decode.] Let’s look at this word. We see the vowel u in the word. We know that the u by itself will say /u/. Let’s start at the beginning. [cover up all but the b and have the class say the /b/ sound.] And our vowel /u/, bu. And the g, bug. Bug! I have a piece of paper for you. Use the cover up critter to decode these words. [slug, grow, rake].

3. Say: Say: “Okay! Using our cover up critter will help with words that we immediately do not know. Sometimes we have to go back to a word that we thought we read correctly, and we have to see if it made sense in the sentence. Look at this sentence. [write, “We will plant seeds in the pot.] What if I read it like this, “We will plent seeds in the pot.” Does that make sense? Do you plent seeds in the pot? No! I would go back and read it as “We will plant seeds in the pot.” That is called cross checking.”

4. Say: “Now are going to pair up. I have already determined the partners. Get with the person I call out for you and read this book together. We are going to read about, a caterpillar who is known as the Very Hungry Caterpillar. He loves eating, and so he begins to look for some food. He eats and eats a bunch of fruit! Read to find out what happens. I am going to give each pair a stop-watch. This is so that you can record each other while you read the book. Start the timer when your partner begins reading the book and end the timer when he or she finishes. Record the time on the paper I am giving you.”

5. Say: “Okay, that was very good! You read the books and recorded the time. Now we are going to do this again. This time you are still timing your partner, but you are also making notes on the words they get wrong. If they mess up on a word, write when he or she said.

6. Collect all time and fluency rubrics.

7. Assessment: While the students are reading, walk around and make notes on a clipboard. Use the formula [words read times 60 divided by total seconds it took to read the text] to calculate words per minute. Graph how fast students read while checking for reading comprehension with the graph of a flower growing from a bud to a full-grown flower. [Located at bottom of page] Give students a worksheet with reading comprehension questions to assess their understanding of what they read.

Reading Comprehension Questions: