Ready, Get Dressed….Read!!

Fluency Design
Sarah Sullivan
sulliss@auburn.edu

Rationale: To become fluent readers, students need to learn to read smoother, faster, and with expression. Also to be fluent, students need to read the words of the text accurately and automatically. The more students practice reading the more fluent they will be come. This lesson will help students become fluent reader through, repeated reading, timed readings, and one-minute reads.

Materials:
-Copy of Ella Sarah Gets Dressed for Each student

-Stop watch for each partner pair

-Pencil for each student

-reading progress chart.

Procedure:

1. Begin by telling the students about the lesson and what it means to be a fluent reader.  “Today we are going to practice becoming fluent readers.  To be a good reader, you have to be a fluent reader.  That means you can read fast without stopping and trying to sound out each word.  You can look at a word and know what it is right away with you pausing.  Reading fluently helps the story to make sense to you.  Today we are going to read our book more than once to help us become fluent readers. Each time you read, you will get faster, because you will be familiar with the book.”
2. Next I will read some sentences and you tell me if I am reading them fluently or not. “Tttthhhhheeeee cccccaaaatttt ccchhhaaassseeeddd tttthhheee mmmmooouuussseee” (not fluent). “Bob played outside with Joe” (fluent). “The pig ate a lot of food (pausing between words)” (not fluent). “Alright good job not lets practice reading just like I did reading the sentence smoothly and accurately”.
3. We are going to read the book Ella Sarah Gets Dressed with partners to practice our fluent reading. “In this book Ella Sarah is trying to get dressed everyone in her family has a different outfit they think she should wear but she has a different idea. Lets read the story and find out what Ella Sarah is going to wear.” It is important to remind the students to cross check when reading. If they do not recognize a word they should cover up part of the word and sound it out in pieces. They also need to make sure that the word makes sense in the sentence. If you cant figure out the word have you partner help you and if both of you cant figure it out ask me and I will help you. Model fluent reading for the students with the book Ella Sarah Gets Dressed.
4. Now the students will divide into groups of two each with a copy of Ella Sarah Gets Dressed and a stop watch. One student will be the reader and the other will be the timer. “Begin by seeing how many words you can read in one minute. Put a sticker on the word that you left off on so it is easy to remember where to stop counting. Write the number of words you read in one minute
5. I will walk around the room listening to the students monitoring their progress. 

Evaluation: I will have the students come up to my desk one at a time and show me their reading progress sheets that they filled out with their partner. I will then have the student do their one minute read with me watching out for problem areas such as skipping words, inserting words, and not reading smoothly. After they do this, I will check the students comprehension of the story asking them a few questions such as what does Ella Sarah want to wear and what do different members of her family want her to wear.

References: Read, Read Red Dog by Ashley Keel http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/catalysts/keelgf.html

Ella Sarah Gets Dressed