Take
a Ride on the Reading
Railroad
…take
the Fast Track...
Rationale:
Reading fluency is a very important part in
reading
comprehension. When children first learn
to read, they concentrate on pronouncing phonemes and decoding words. Comprehension of the story can be difficult
in this phase of reading. After phoneme
awareness and decoding have been developed, fluency is the next step to
achieve. Fluency allows for students to
focus more on the content of a story rather than simply the words. Repeated reading is one of the most strongly
supported ways to develop fluency. By
repeating reading, students will learn to recognize words, and with
each
reading speed and comprehension will increase.
Materials:
- Curious
George Takes a Train by Margret and H.A. Rey’s (example book)
- Butcher
paper
- Strip
of Velcro tape
- Markers
- Die
Cut Trains with dots of Velcro on back
- Assorted
books about trains
Procedure:
- First,
review with the students the concept of cross checking to help them
understand the text if the sentence or word did not make sense.
Read them an example sentence written on the board. The man caught the little boy in his arms
when he fell from the tree. First read the sentence as
"The man cut the little boy in his arms when he fell from the
tree." Now cross check to see if that made sense. Would the
man cut the little boy? No. Oh, Caught. The man caught the
little boy in his arms when he fell from the tree. Make
sure that the student remember that using cross-checking can help them
understand words that may not make sense which will help them
understand the story much better. This strategy should help them
as they approach their fluency activity.
- Read
the beginning of Curious George takes a train slowly and choppily. Then address the students asking if they
enjoyed listening to what was being read? After
gaining a response, explain to them that we are going to work on
reading fluently today. Tell them that
fluent means to read correctly at a steady speed. It
makes reading more fun and helps you understand the story better.
- Explain
to them that you are going to read the story again and that you will
read with fluency and that is how you want them to learn to read today. Then read the story fluently as an example to
the students. Ask them again whether they
enjoyed the story and get their responses.
- Put
up a large piece of butcher paper with train tracks at the bottom and a
station at the end that reads FLUENCY ST. Along
the tracks place markers that have a number of words per minute and
along the center of the tracks place a line of Velcro.
Pass out the die cuts to the children and have them put
their name on the train. Explain to them
that each of them are going to set their goal at reaching Fluency
Station and along the way we will track their progress on the chart.
- Break
the children up into pairs and give each pair a stopwatch.
Have each person choose from the variety of books about
trains at the front of the classroom. Instruct
the pairs to take turns reading your book to your partner.
As you read, your partner will time you until you have
reached one minute. You write down the
page and word you stopped on.
- You
count and calculate the number and put up their trains in the right
place.
- Then
they will go back and read the story three times to themselves, keeping
in mind that this is a race between themselves and not anyone else.
Assessment:
To assess, take each child aside and time
them once more as they read for one minuteand then move their train up
so they can
see their
improvement. (Keeping in mind this could
be something that takes place over a week, repeating again and again to
show
their improvements)
References:
Naylor,
Katie. “Get on the
reading fast track.” www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/naylorg.html
Oglesby,
Kara. “Ribbit, Ribbit: Leap into Speedy
Reading” www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/openings/oglesbygf.html
Rey's, Margret
and H.A. "Curious George Takes a Train." 2002. Houghton
Mifflon: Boston.
(Back to Guidelines)
