Growing a Garden of Fluency
Growing Fluency
Rationale:
The goal of this lesson is to help students learn to automatically recognize
words. Students can read faster and become fluent with rereading and speed
reading practice which is part of fluency. This lesson will help students
understand reading with speed and fluency by providing them with the opportunity
to assess and record their reading progress and then have a partner record their
readings.
Materials:
Copies of My Garden by Kevin Henkes (one for each student), Sentence on
the board: I chase away the rabbits so that they don't eat all the lettuce.,
Stopwatch (one for every two students), Cover-up Critters (one per student),
Time chart for each student.
Directions for cover up critter: You
will need a colored popsicle stick and two googley eyes for each cover-up
critter. Turn the Popsicle stick horizontally and glue the eyes on one end.
Directions for graphs:
Each graph will have one stem with increments of 5 or 10, depending on how much
progress the goal is set to achieve, going from the grass to the sun. Each
increment will need a small square of Velcro. Each child will have an object
that they would like to grow in their garden with a piece of Velcro on it. The
child will move his/her object up the stem to show their progress.
Procedure:
1. Say: "Hello everyone! Today we are going to learn about how to become
more fluent readers! To be fluent means to be able to recognize words
automatically without having to stop and decode them. When you are able to do
this, reading becomes more fun because you are able to understand what you are
reading much better!"
2. Say: "Today we are going to use cover up critters to help us read a
word we don't know." Write the word check on the board. "If I came to
this word in a story and did not know it, I could use my cover up critter to
help me figure it out. I would first use the cover up critter and my finger to
cover every letter but the vowel, because I want to first figure out what the
vowel says. Here, the vowel is e, and I know the e says /e/. Next,
I uncover the first two letters ch. Together with the e, I know
have /che/. Last, I uncover the final two letters, ck, and add them all
together. I know that the word is check. Use the cover up critters at any
point during your reading to help you learn new words!
3. Write the following sentence on the board: I chase away the rabbits so
that they don't eat all the lettuce. Say: "I'm going to read this
sentence out loud as if I were decoding it. Now, I'm going to read the
sentence again, but a little faster this time." Last, read the sentence at a
normal rate. "Which time sounded the best when I read the sentence? The last,
correct!" Explain to the students that the last time sounded much better and was
easier to understand because it was being read more fluently. The first reading
was slow, choppy, and hard to understand, but the last was fluid and smooth.
4."Now you are all going to have a turn to practice reading fluently! I will
pass out to each of you a copy of My Garden. I want you to practice
whisper reading the book to yourself for a few minutes. This book is about a
little girl who is daydreaming about what she would grow in her garden if she
had one. What does she want to grow? Read to find out!"
5. Once the students have had enough time to read the story several times say, "Now
that you have had time to read the story, I want each of you together with a
partner. One of you will be the timer while the other will be the reader. The
timer will time the while they read the entire passage. You will then write down
how many words the reader read on a time chart and how long it took them to read
the words. You will do this three times, and then switch roles." Pass out a time
chart to each student and a stopwatch to each group.
6. While the students are timing each other, walk around and make sure they are
assessing each other correctly, following all directions, and staying on task.
7. Once all of the groups are finished, I will take turns calling the students
up to my desk to review their reading results help them set reasonable and
attainable goals. We will graph their results using a growing flower. After we
graph where they are today we will set a goal for where they need to get to by
the next time we do the activity.
Assessment: Students
will be assessed using their flower graph over a period of time.
Ask comprehension questions.
References:
Over the River and Through the Hills to Fluency We Go - Kendra White
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invitations/whitegf.htm
Henkes, Kevin. My Garden. Greenwillow Books, 2010.