Growing Independence and Fluency
Racing Readers!
Rationale:
Students
must become fluent readers in order to read faster, smoother, and with more
expression. This lesson helps students learn to read quickly, smoothly, and
expressively through teacher modeling and guided repeated readings. By gaining
these tasks, students will be fluent readers. Fluency refers to a student’s
ability to read words accurately and automatically.
Materials:
·
Multiple copies of “How Much is That
Guinea Pig in the Window?” by Joanne Rocklin
·
Progress chart for each child. This will be a racetrack with a racecar that goes
around the track. There will be numbers around the track to indicate how
many words each student reads. The students will stop their car on the number
that represents how many words they read. This
will be represented by words X 60/seconds.
·
Cover-up critter
·
Stopwatch
Procedures:
1.
Explain to students that you are going to work on becoming fluent readers.
“Today we are going to learn how to be fluent readers. This means we will be
able to read quickly and smoothly. To do this, we will need to decode and blend
words. This will allow us to read and understand words that we have never read.
We will practice reading over and over until we become fluent readers.”
2.
“How do we decode?” Write the word dance on the board. “When we decode a word we
always start with the vowel sound, then go back to the first letter and work
through the word one sound at a time. For example, if I read the word
dance I would start with looking at
the vowel a = /a/, then go back to the /d/ sound. /d/ /a//n/ /c/e.” Now,
have the students practice decoding other words such as
bat, sip, Sam. “Now, lets try a sentence.” Have students read the sentence:
My dog is big. The teacher will then
read the sentence along with the class Mmyyyyyy doooogggg isssss biiiiggggggg.
3.
When we
sound out the letters of a word together like s – a – d, it is called blending.
Have the children tell you
which way to say ‘sad’ is easier to understand: s–a – d, or sad. They
should say the first, more flowing way.
It is more fun and easier to read if we
could read smooth and not choppy. This means we would read more fluently.
So now, let’s practice together, the first two times we will read the sentences
on the board to ourselves, covering up or cross-checking if you need to. The
third time read your sentence out loud. Now, I will walk around and monitor to
make sure you are doing this correctly with your partners.
Assessment: “Now
we need to practice reading fluently and using our decoding skills.” The
students will get into pairs. Each partner group will have a copy of “How
Much is That Guinea Pig in the Window?” a racetrack progress report, and a
stopwatch. Have the students read each take a turn reading the book to their
partner. Then have them repeat the activity. On the second read, the partner who
is not reading will use the stopwatch to time the student who is reading. The
students will read one on one with me and I will test their knowledge on their
readings. I will use the formula words X 60/seconds.
References:
Catherine Moore:
The Fast and The Fluent.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/insp/mooregf.html
Jordan
McWilliamsyou’re your mark, get set, read:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/connect/mcwilliamsgf.html