Clarissa Williams
Growing Independence and Fluency
Go!Go!
Gadget
Clarissa Williams
Growing
Independence and Fluency
<!--[endif]-->
Rationale: When
children first start reading, it is very slow and drawn out. One of the
goals of reading instruction is for students to read fast, accurately,
and automatically. In order for students to do this they must learn how
to decode words. This lesson will help students read faster and more
fluently by letting them read and reread and read with partners and
practice assessing each other.
Materials:
Procedures:
1. Introduce the lesson by saying that in order to
become a successful reader, you must be able to read fluently.
Fluency is when you are able to read fast without stopping to sound out
each word. You recognize the words automatically and you read
them with no problem. Once you become fluent readers, the all
books will begin to make more sense because you do not have to try so
hard to read each word. One way that we can work on fluency is by
reading a text more than once. Each time you read the text, you
get faster because you are becoming more familiar with the text.
Today we are gong to practice fluency by reading a text more than once
and seeing how every time we get better.
2.
First, let us review the steps that we take if we are not able to
read a word. The first thing that you do is the cover-up
method. Remember when we went over this? Let us use the
word ship to practice. First we would cover everything
except for the vowel i. The i makes the /i/
sound. Now, what is it called when two letter make one
sound? Right a digraph. Next, we would uncover the sh which
makes the /sh/ sound and say /shi/. So we would then uncover the p
that makes the /p/ sound and put the word together to get ship.
Lastly, we would read the sentence with the word ship to see if
it made sense. Now that we have done our review, let’s move on.
(Did you see the big ship?)
3. Demonstrate reading a sentence with fluency and
without fluency. I am going to write a sentence on the board and
I am going to show you how to read it fluently and how to read it
without fluency. (Write on the board I love to play
outside!) Teacher reads it I l-o-v-e to p-l-a-y o-u-t-s-i-d-e.
Could anyone understand what I just read? Not very well
right? Now I am going to read it again. I love to play
outside! Now does it make sense? It did because I did not
have to spend so much time on each word. This is what we are
going to be working on today, reading so that the words begin to flow
together.
4. Now, we are going to do some practice. Pass
out class set of Tiny Goes to the Library. This book is
called Tiny Goes to the Library and what I want you to do is to read
through the book a few times on your own and then we are going to have
a discussion about the book. I will be walking around while you
read so raise your hand if you need any help. Also allow each student
to come to the reading table and read it twice to you and record their
times. You could also practice some sentences together.
Read this sentence. (Hold up sentence strip
that says I enjoy swimming in the pool.) OK,
now read it again. One more time. Which
time was the smoothest? Right! The last time.
You were becoming more fluent with reading the sentence.
Now let’s try the next one.” (Hold up second sentence strip and
repeat steps for the first sentence).
5. When the
students are finished, I will ask them questions to see if they
comprehend what they read. I will ask: What type of animal is
tiny? What happens when Tiny arrives at the library? What did
Tiny do that was such a big help?
6. I will then divide the students into
partners. I will explain how to fill out the fluency checklist
for a partner. The checklist includes (on the second and third
time my partner: remembered more words, read faster, read
smoother, read slowly, stopped many times, and did not stop at all
during reading). The students will begin reading with their
partners. Each person will read through the story once. On
the second and third reading, their partner will check all that apply
to the readings. The partners will then switch tasks.
7. For assessment, each student will come to my desk
and read the book aloud. They will bring with them their
checklists. I will do a one-minute reading with the student
assessing his/her fluency. I will have a progress chart for each
student, and I will mark the progress from the one-minute
reading. Each time that a fluency test is done, the progress will
be charted. The charts will be posted in the classroom.
References:
Kristin Herren. “On Your Mark, Get Set, Read!!!”.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/guides/herrengf.html
www.auburn.edu/rdggenie
Smith, Mavis. Tiny Goes
to the Library.