Growing Fluency

Rational: This lesson will help students develop fluency in more challenging and longer texts. Fluent readers can blend words correctly, read quickly, and read effortlessly. We want to motivate readers to read and reread decodable words in texts, learning to recognize them without having to decode. During this lesson students, students will be practicing will be practicing their fluency, reading silently, and reading with a partner. They will then read independently with you, and you will graph their progress. You will also be going over miscues in between readings. This lesson allows teachers to be able to track their students’ progress and ability to read fluently and independently. 

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Materials: Sample sentences on a white board for modeling, stopwatch for each pair of students, pencil for each student, fluency checklist for each student, fluency timesheet, cover-up critter, comprehension questions for each student, chart to record words per minute while they are reading, and a class set of Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal. 

 

Procedures: 

1. Say: We are going to be learning and practicing how to read fluently with expression today! Being able to read fluently means we can understand the words that we are reading being able to understand the plot. If we become more fluent, we can not only read well but also read out loud with expression. To be able to read fluently we have to practice and that is what we are going to do today!

2. Say: Let’s review before we begin! Do you remember what we do when we get stuck on a word? We use our cover-up critters to help us sound out and blend the word (Write a sentence on a board). I will read the sentence on the board She has /gate/ friends. /Great/ friends? That does not make sense. Oh, it must be /great/, the girl has great friends. Did you notice how I got stuck on the third word in the sentence? I read all the way till the end of the sentence then I went back and reread it with the word I thought it was, /gate/. Then I went back and reread it with a word that made more sense in the sentence which is great. This strategy of rereading is called cross checking, and it is really, and it is important when we are becoming fluent readers. If a fluent reader were to read the sentence it would’ve sounded like this “She has great friends.” The sentence was easy to understand because I did not have to stop and fix a word, I read it with no trouble! Now we are going to read the next sentence to a partner, you can see it on the board “I have a great feeling about this plan!” Practice reading to each other until you can read it fluently without stopping.

3. Say: Now it is your turn to practice reading fluently! We are going to read some of the book Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal silently first, then in partners. In this book Junie B. wants to have a sleepover with her friend Lucille’s house, before she can sleepover her parents went over rules to follow, do you think she will follow the rules?!? Let’s read to find out!

4. Students will read the whole book silently to themselves. After, they will each read the whole book to their buddy. They cannot help their partner read while they are listening.

5. Say: (After students are paired) Each partner has a copy of our Junie B. Jones book, a stopwatch, a pencil and a fluency checklist. Each partner will read the chapter of the story 3 times. You can choose who is going to read first and who gets to time first. The first time reading, the reader will read while the other person listens. Then the first person will read again, and the other person will be the timer for times 2 and 3. Then timer student will record how long it will take for the reader to read each story. Each student should listen to the reader and made a mark on your fluency checklist when they make a mistake (saying a wrong word, not knowing a word, or skipping the word). Do they sound smoother and follow punctuation rules? Do they get more accurate? Can they read with more expression? Once the first is done the partners will switch position and the other partner will read while the other person times. Does everyone know what to do? Okay, great, begin! (The teacher will walk around and observe, take up fluency checklists when they are done with the activity). 

6. Say: Now we will calculate our words per minute. (Tell them the number of words in the book). Take the number of words that you had a mistake with and subtract it from the words in the book. Do this for both the second and third time. This lets me see how you are each progressing with you reading fluency. We can also see which reading was the smoothest and fastest for each of you based on the numbers!

7.     Say: To make sure that everyone has comprehended what they have read I will call each one of you up to my desk individually to ask you to read the section one more time and ask you questions about what you had just read.  [Time how long it takes to read the section, use this information to calculate the words per minute. To do this, multiply the number of words read by 60 seconds. Then, divide this number by the number of seconds it took to read the section. Record their words per minute number on the fluency checklist and chart. The student will be able to move Junie B. further up the page on the chart like it is taking off. They can move it forward each time they progress with their words per minute. The goal is for Junie B. to be able to make it down the chart, or for the children to be completely fluent on their own].

 

Checklist:

-       Did he/she read smoothly?

-       Did he/she show facial expression?

-       Did he/she have voice changes while reading?

-       Does the student have an overall understanding of expression?

 

Fluency Checklist will be filled out for each reading partner:

-       Title of book: 

-       Students Name: 

-       Partner’s Name: 

 

Make a Check if the Following is true after the 2nd and 3rd Readings: 

-       Remembered more words: 

-       Read Faster:

-       Read Smoother: 

-       Read with Expressions:

 

 

Reading Tracker:

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0 -  -                     - 20 - - - 30 - - - 40 - - - 50 - - - 60 - - - 70 - - - 80 

 

Correct Words Per Minute: 

1.     After the students are done reading, collect the data yourself and assess how your students did and who needs to still work on reading fluency, also observe the class to help you come to your conclusion. 

Comprehension Quiz: 

1.     What rules are Junie B. given?

2.     What size house is Lucille’s? 

3.     Does Junie B. end up following the rules? 

 

Sources:

Maggio, Jordan. Let’s Get Fluent with Junie B. Jones. https://jzm0160.wixsite.com/mysite/growing-ind-fluency-design

Park, Barbara. Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal. https://www.amazon.com/Junie-Jones-Party-Animal-No/dp/067988663X