Home run reader

Home Run Reader

Growing Independence and Fluency

Rational:

Practice is a very important part of learning how to have fluency when you read. Fluency is very important because it leads to reading faster, smoother, and with more expression. Fluency can also lead to having better comprehension of the story and better automaticity of the words. Today we are going to practice fluency by using repeated readings, one-minute readings, cover-ups, and crosschecking.

Materials:

Class set of the book Lee and the Team by Sheila Cushman, Educational Insights: Carson, California, 1990

Class set of the fluency checklist (has a space for reading faster, remembered more words, read smoother, and read with expression)

Class set of speed record sheets (there are three spaces on this sheet to write how many words each child reads each one minute time frame)

Class set of stop watches

Chart for the teacher to use when graphing the students reading progress

Dry erase board and marker

Procedure:

1.) Introduce the lesson by saying: "I know that we have all been working on our reading skills, and today we are going to learn about something called fluency. Fluency is when we are able to read words and groups of words smoother and faster. Fluency is very important to have when you are reading because it can make the stories that you read more interesting and you might even be able to understand the story better as you read."

2.) "I know that sometimes we all get stuck on a word that we don't know, so I am going to show you how to use cover-ups to figure out a word." (Write the word pop on the board.) "If I have the word, pop and I can't read it, then what do you all think that I should do? That's right I am going to cover-up all of the letters but the vowel o. I am going to think in my head what does the o sound make, /o/. Then I am going to uncover the letter before the /o/ sound and I am going to think about what sound the letter p makes, /p/. Now I am going to combine my two sounds /p/ /o/. Next, I am going to uncover my third letter, which is p. I am going to think about what sound the p makes, /p/ and add all of my sounds together /p/ /o/ /p/. And now we have the word pop. Great Job everyone!"

3.) "Today, to help with our fluency I am going to read to you a sentence out of our book and I want everyone to listen closely to how I read the sentence." (The sentence is, The team sits in the weeds. It will be written on the board.) "T-h-e-e t-e-e-a-m s-s-i-i-t-s i-i-n t-h-e-e w-e-e-e-d-s. (Do a cover up example on the word sits) Now I am going to read this sentence one more time. And I want you to tell which sentence you think sounds better. The team sits in the weeds. Can anyone tell me which one they thought sounded better? That's right, the second sentence. Good job."

4.)" I am going to hand everyone our book for today, Lee and the Team. Our book Lee and the Team is about a boy named Lee who is in charge of his baseball team. There is only one problem, Lee can't get his team to get up and run. All of a sudden Lee has an idea to get them up, but you will have to read on to find out what his great idea is."

5.) "I know that everyone is ready to read our new book and so what I would like for everyone to do now is look at the fluency checklist that I handed out so that we know how to use them. Everyone is going to get in partners and you are each going to be listening to each other read the story. I want everyone to read this story three times while your partner listens. After your partner finishes reading the story for the second and third time, I want the listener to bubble in what they improved on. You can mark that they improved on their speed, their smoothness in reading the words, remembered more words, and even read with more expression. Remember we are only giving positive feedback to each other. I am going to be coming around and watching each of you read and I want all of the partners to be looking for what all areas your partner improved in."

6.) "I would now like for everyone to get out their stopwatches and their speed record sheets. We are now going to be timing our partners when we read our book. You are each going to read the story while your partner times you for one minute. When your minute is up, please stop reading and remember the last word that you read. You and your partner will count the number of word that you read in one minute. Please put the number of words that you read in the first blank on your speed record sheet. You will then swap roles and your partner will read for one minute while you time them. We are going to keep doing this until everyone has read the story three times and they have three different timed reading written down on their paper. Just be sure to fill how many words your read in that one minute."

7.) For an assessment I am going to call on each child to come and read me their books, one at a time. I am going to do one minute reading and record this data on a graph. I am also going to be observing throughout this lesson and taking notes of anything that I see. I will also have their fluency checklist and their speed record sheets.

Reference:
Lacey Adams, "Up Up and Away with Fluency"

http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/guides/adamsgf.html

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