Growing Independence and Fluency

Floating in Fluency

Growing Independency and Fluency Design

Sarah Elliott

Rationale: The goal of this lesson is to get students to read more fluently by quickly being able to recognize nearly all words by sight. This will allow students to focus on the understanding and comprehension of what they are reading with ease and expression. Fluency is a very important skill for students to learn so that they can become fluent and efficient readers. Through repetition, modeling, cover-ups, cross checking, and practice students will use this lesson to become more independent with their readings!

Materials: A stopwatch for each pair of students, pencils for each student, cover-up critters, fluency chart, fluency checklist for each student, sample sentences for the teacher to model, white board, expo marker, and class set of the book “Saturday is Swimming Day” by Hyewon Yum.

Procedures:

Say: “Hello Class!! Today we are going to work on something called fluency and how to use it. Fluent readers read accurately, automatically, and quickly. How do you think we can all be fluent readers? (answers) Great ideas everyone! We want to be fluent readers so that reading can be more fun because we can focus on what is happening in the story instead of trying to decode words.”
Say: “Now let’s remember what we do when we get stuck on a word. Anyone? That’s right, we use a cover-up critter to help us break up a big or long word. Let’s try that with the word float on the board. Start by covering everything else but f. “F /f/” Now uncover the l.” L says /l/” “So we have /f/ and /l/. That says /fl/.” Uncover the oa. “oa says /o/. So now we have /floa/.” Uncover the rest of the word. “The last part is T says /t/. So let’s put everything together, fflllooaattttt, that’s right! We just sounded out the word float!
Say: “Now I am going to write a sentence on the white board and read it. Let's look at the sentence: I like to float in the pool. I am going to read this sentence for you and you are going to tell me if you think I am a fluent reader. I /llll/i/kkk/, lick I mean like, /tt/o/, to, /ffff/llll/oooaa/t, float, /i/n/, in, the /ppp/oooo/lll, pool. I will now reread the sentence so that I become more familiar with the words and what they mean. I can do this to check that the words make sense. I knew that lik did not sound right in the sentence. I remembered that i_e says /I/, and then I corrected it to like. I like to float in the pool. After rereading, it was much easier and faster to understand the sentence. This strategy of rereading is called cross checking and can be very helpful to becoming a fluent reader. So if you get stuck on a word like we did with this sentence, we can cross check and then use a cover-up critter to figure out the word. Now put your hand on your head if you think I read that sentence as a fluent reader? (response) No you are right, I had to decode and cross check to figure out like. If I was a fluent reader I would read it like this: I like to float. I read that sentence with no stopping or trouble just like a fluent reader does. Now let's turn to a partner and practice reading this sentence until it i s fluent!
Say: “To help us practice our fluency we are going to read the book “Saturday is Swimming Day” Every Saturday one little girl has swim lessons and every Saturday she has a stomach ache. She won't get in the water, but one day something changes. What changes her mind? Will she swim in the water? You’ll have to read to find out! Read the story by yourself and the pair up and read the story aloud with a partner.
*Put students in pairs* Each pair will get a copy of the book, a stopwatch, a pencil, and a fluency checklist. Say: “Now we are going to play a fluency game” The students will play rock, paper, scissors to see who will read first and who will time first. Then, the student with the stopwatch is going to time how fast their partner reads the first three pages. They will record the time on the sheet that I have handed out to you. While they are reading, also make some marks for words that your partner misses so we can calculate their words per minute! After writing it down, switch jobs with your partner! Do this three times each. As you listen to your partner read, I want you to listen to how their reading changes mark on your fluency checklist when they make a mistake (saying a wrong word, not knowing a word at all, or skipping the word) *The teacher will walk around and observe* *Take up fluency checklists when they are done with the activity*
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 us see how you progress with your reading fluency.
Say: “Now to review one last time I am going to have each of you come up to my desk and reread the section one more time. *Time the amount of time it takes to read the section* *Use this information to calculate the words per minute* Record their words per minute number on the fluency checklist and chart. Get them to bring up their record sheet with them so I can attach it to their assessment sheet.

Assessment: I will assess them by recording their reading progress in words per minute visual and on the checklists.

Reading Comprehension Worksheet:

Does the little girl like swim lessons at first, why?
What made the little girl finally get in the water?
How does the little girl’s feeling towards swim lessons change as the story goes on?

Fluency Checklist:

Title of Book: __________________________________

Student’s Name: ____________ Date___________

Partner's Name: ______________________________

After 2nd Reading After 3rd Reading

_________ _________ Remembered more words

_________ _________ Read faster

_________ _________ Read smoother

_________ _________ Read with expression

Time: Time:

(Words x 60) / seconds = WPM

0 - - - - 10 - - - - 20 - - - - 30 - - - - 40 - - - - 50 - - - - 60 - - - - 70 - - - - 80 - - - - 90 - - - - 100