"Flying Through
Courtney
Norgren
Growing
Rationale: Fluency is important
because students should be able to read with automatic word
recognition.
Students should read effortlessly and with expression. In this
lesson students
achieve fluency through repeatedly reading the text.
Materials:
Stopwatches for each pair of
students
A flying plane reading chart
for each student (this includes a plane trying to
make its way up into the air. Each time a student reads, you move the
plane to
the number of words they read in that minute)
A copy of the book Doc in the Fog for
each student
Procedure:
1. Now that we have learned all
of our letter correspondences, it is time to
become the best readers we possibly can. In order to be the best
readers,
we have to try to make our books sound interesting and read without
pausing
very much. This is called expression and fluency. We are
going to
try to say all of our words with emotion and to read them very fast,
without
messing up.
2. I am going to read you all a
sentence in two different ways, I want you to
listen carefully and tell me which sentence sounds the best. Read
one
sentence sounding out each phoneme, short and choppy, and then read it
again in
a normal reading voice. The dddoooggg gggooottt fffeeeddd. Now
here is
the sentence a second time, The dog got fed. I will read the sentence
fluently
by blending and articulating each phoneme. Which sentence sounded
best?
That's right, the second one did. That's because I read it the
best that
I could.
3. We will read “Doc in the
Fog.” This book is about a wizard named Doc; he can
change things into other things with his magic. What do you think he’ll
make
appear? Allow each student to read the book to themselves.
4. Now, we are going to try to
read this book even better and faster. We
are going to do something called quick reads. We will read for a
minute. After we do that, we will count all of the words we read
in that
minute. Then, we will move our plane on our chart to that number
of
words. We are going to try to get our plane all the way up to the
sky.
Model for the children by setting a timer and reading for a
minute. Then,
count the words and move your plane accordingly.
5. Put the students in pairs
and allow them to read while a partner times for a
minute. They will then count the words and move the planes.
Each
reader will do this 4 times.
6. Assess the students by
recording their first reading and comparing it with
their last reading. The students should have been able to read
more words
per minute during the last read.
References:
Cushman, S (1990). Doc in the Fog.
Wright, Madelyn. Race for
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/persp/wrightgf.html
Sweat, Keri. Race for
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/sweattgf.html
Return to Passages Index