Emily Cate Stewart
Rationale:
It is necessary for students to become fluent readers. Without fluency students are do not comprehend as well. Students should be able to read smoothly instead of reading slowly word to word. A great way to improve student’s fluency is by having students reread and using one minute readings. It is important for teachers to make sure that their student’s reading is fluent so that when they read alone, they are actually getting something from it.
Materials:
Teacher and Class set of Bud the Sub (Educational Insights)
Stopwatch for each student
Charts for each student
Pencils
Procedure:
1.Tell children that reading should be fast and fluent and not slowly and broken up. Give the students some examples of reading, one sentence fluently and one sentence slowly without using fluency. “Class I’m going to read one sentence fluent and one sentence that is not being read fluently. Tell me which one you think is fluent. Sentence one: BBBBBuuuuuuddd iiiisssszz aaaaa sssssssssssuuuubb. Sentence two: Bud is a sub. “Which sentence do you think is fast and fluent the first one or the second sentence?” That’s right the second one was better because it was read faster and more fluent or smoother. The second sentence was also easier because instead of focusing on each individual word I read the sentence as a whole. Ask for a volunteer to read the sentence fast and fluently, then the teacher will reread the sentence slow decoding each word and then ask the students which one sounded better. “The one that the student read was much better because you could make sense of what he/she was saying because they weren’t going too slow.
2.“Today we are going walk the talk, and what I mean by walk the talk is we are going to read in the same manner we talk.“ “Okay, so when we talk we talk pretty fast? we don’t normally talk slow do we?” So, when we talk we don’t normally drag out our words, we talk at a normal speed. We are going to catch up the speed of our reading to the speed of our talking. We’re going to see how fluently and smoothly we can read out of our book and chart how fast we read compared to how fast we talk. We are going to read a book called Bud the Sub. Bud is a sub.. Gus is the driver of the sub. Gus dips Bud below the water. Gus runs the sub into a tug boat. Will everyone on the tug boat be okay? We’ll have to read to find out what will happen next. We will all get into groups. Once we are in small groups, I will give each group a chart, a book, and a stopwatch. I will read the book at a talking speed and chart myself at one minute. Then we will put a line on the charts where the normal speed is and each student will get to keep trying to get close to the line or above the line.
3.“I want you to mark on your charts each time you read for one minute, mark the number one words you you read each one minute trial. If you try a little harder each time then you will be able to mark more and more words on your chart. This should help to make you a more fluent reader.
4.After all of the children have finished their charts we will will put the results on a main chart in front of the whole class, keeping it anonymous of course.
Assessment:
For assessment have the children raise their hands after they have timed themselves three times. Help each child by giving them pointers to reading more fluently, suggesting cover-ups.
References:
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/explor/montgomerygf.html
Bud the Sub. Educational Insights.
Beth Montgomery Wow! What a speed reader!
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