Growing Independence and Fluency
Devon Henderson
Rationale: Students who are able to recognize words rapidly, accurately and automatically are better able to comprehend text than those that have a difficult time decoding. Many times the students who have a difficult time decoding read very slowly and tediously in order to avoid making mistakes. This lesson is designed to help students increase and vary the pace of their reading speed.
Materials: Fuzz and the Buzz (Educational Insights), chart with a path through the forest (marked off in intervals of 20 for how many words the student can read in 1 minute) and a carrot at one end, rabbit dicuts, velcro (to attach to the chart and one side of the rabbits, stop watch, marker to write names on rabbits
Procedure:
1. Review the correspondence u=/u/. It will be helpful to the
students because this correspendence is used a great deal in the book that
will be read in this lesson.
Give a book talk on Fuzz and the Buzz. This book is about a little
bear by the name of Fuzz. One day he was outside playing and disturbed
some bees. They got very angry with Fuzz? What do you think
will happen?
2. Read two or three pages from the book Fuzz and the Buzz in
a very slow manner.
3. Now ask the students, What did you think about the way I was reading
the book? Was it hard for you to understand what was happening?
Was it very exciting to listen to? I did not think so either.
It is very hard to understand what is happening in a book if you read it
very slowly and spend a lot of time reading each word. In this lesson
we will work on speeding up the pace of our reading. Now let me read
it again at a faster pace. Was that better? Were you able to
understand the story better than you did the first time I read it.
Great! Now it is your turn to try.
4. Here we have a Speedy Reading Rabbit. He wants to see how
many words you can read out loud in one minute. I have here rabbits
with each of your names on them. They want to get through the forest
to find the carrot at the end for them to eat. Do you think you can
help them? In order for the rabbits to reach the carrot you have
to read 60 words in one minute. Dont worry. You do not have
to do it on the first try. Each time you read we will put the rabbit
on the chart by the number of words that you read. You want to get
your rabbit a little bit closer every time you read for one minute, so
that means you should try to read a little bit faster each time.
Does this sound like fun!?
5. Have the students read the book five times, each time recording
how many words a minute they read.
6. For assessment, chart the students progress each time they read.
After the last reading is recorded compare the degree of improvement that
the student has shown.
Reference:
Eldredge,J.Lloyd (1995) Teaching Decoding in the Holistic Classroom.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey,Prentice Hall,p.67.
Lesson Design by Christie Davis www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/insights/cdevisgf.html
Fuzz and the Buzz (Educational Insights)
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