Racing to Read
Growing
Independency and Fluency
Rationale:
The purpose of this lesson is to teach the importance of comprehension while
reading. Most beginning readers spend a majority of their time decoding words
and don’t spend enough time comprehending what they are reading. These type of
readers need to work on their fluency, which is the ability to recognize words
accurately and automatically. Fluency can be learned though repeated reading of
decodable texts. Fluent readers can use less time decoding and more time for
comprehension.
Materials:
-Stopwatches (for each set of partners)
-
pencils
- copy
of fluency racetrack for each student
-
sentence strips with decodable sentences (Andy
and his dog went to the park./ The
boy had a bad dream last night. / The
girl did not want to play in the sand box.)
- copy
of Tin Man Fix-It (for each set of partners)
Procedures:
1.
Introduce the lesson by reviewing crosschecking as a
self-help strategy. “Remember that when we read a sentence sometimes after
reading the sentence it might not make sense because we accidently read a word
incorrectly? Here is an example: ‘She is mad and wants to go ham.’ Did that
sound right? No! It should say ‘She is mad and wants to go home.’ When we read
and something might not make sense after reading it, we should go back and look
at the whole sentence to see what we may have read incorrectly. Reading aloud is
a great way to figure out if something makes sense or not. Today we are going to
practice being fluent.
We are going to continue to become even better readers as we work on fluency. .
.reading faster. This skill will also help you understand words better
because we will not have to try so hard to read the words. One way to
become more fluent is to read the same text more than once, trying to read
faster each time as you become more familiar with the book.
2.
“It is very important for readers to read quickly and
smoothly. In order for a reader to do this usually they have to read and reread
the text.
Sometimes when I read a sentence once, I don’t understand
what I read or I read it really slowly. Today we are going to practice
reading one book a few times to see if we can get faster. I want you to practice
reading as fast as you can, but I don’t want you to skip any words or read them
incorrectly.” I will put one of the sentence strips on the board; first I will
model how a beginning reader will read the sentence by decoding every word
slowly, then I will model how a fluent reader may read the sentence, quickly and
smoothly. “The first time I may read a sentence it may sound like this, ‘An-d-y
a-n-d h-i-s d-o-g w-e-n-t t-o t-h-e p-a-r-k.’ If I read it again it may sound
smoother the second time. ‘An-dy and his dog w-ent to the p-ar-k.’ If I read it
one more time it may sound very smooth. ‘Andy and his dog went to the park.’ Do
you hear a difference from the first time I read it and the third? That is what
we will be practicing today!”
3.
Have the students try this with the other sentence strips but with partners.
“Practice reading the sentence strips out loud to your partner. Start slow, like
I did, in order to read all the words correctly and then re read the sentences
so you can practice getting quicker and smoother. Make sure you take turns.” Do
this with the 2 remaining sentence strips.
4.
Hand each set of partners Lee and the Team and do a book talk. “Now you
are going to read Lee and the Team.
Lee is a boy who plays baseball. He and his teammates are late for a game but
nobody will listen to Lee when he says that they need to hurry up. Will
Lee’s team show up late to the game and have to forfeit or will they make it on
time? You’ll have to read the story to find out.”
5.
“I want each student to read the book one time to your partner. Read it slowly
so you can make sure you read each work correctly. When you are done close the
book and wait for further directions.”
6.
Now I will pass out a stopwatch and a fluency racetrack to each pair or
partners. “The goal of this lesson is to see how fast you can read the book in
order to pass all three checkpoints on the chart to get all the way around the
racetrack. Each one of you will read the book Lee and the Team again, but
this time your partner will use the stopwatch to time you. You will write your
first time on the first checkpoint mark on the worksheet; this is your ‘Starting
Time’. You will continue to read Lee and the Team and time each other two
more times until you have gone through all the checkpoints and have gone all the
way around the racetrack. We are hoping to have a shorter time the third time
than we did the first time!”
7.
“Now that we have read and reread the text I hope everyone was able to
comprehend what we were reading. I want each student to come up with 2 or 3
questions about Lee and the Team that they can ask their partners in
order to see if they understood the meaning of the book.”
Assessment:
I will
walk around the room and observe the pairs of partners as they are practicing
repeated readings with the sentence strips and to see if fluency is developing.
I will assess the racetrack charts to see if their times are improving. Listen
to each student read the whole text of Lee and the Team, to me, to see if
they are reading quickly and smoothly.
References:
Decodable text: Lee and the Team
Amanda
Palmer, Speed up!
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/constr/palmergf.html
Meg Miller, Speedy Readers.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/begin/millermgf.html