Anna Kaye Whiddon
Stop, Drop, and Read!
Rationale:
As children start
to decode
words and read them automatically, they start to become fluent. As
fluent
readers, the children will start to become familiar with reading and
learn which
types of books they like, which will allow them to really enjoy
reading. Before
getting to this point, the reader needs to gain independence by
practicing and
re-reading books.
Materials:
Copy of Ants
in a Can for each student
Stopwatch for every two students
Sentence strips (The cat ran
fast up the
hill; My bat and ball are red.; The frog hit the rock hard)
Text from book typed on copying
paper (for
students to mark stopping place)
Markers
Pencils
Fire Ladder progress chart (a
fire ladder
that leads to a window with a fireman climbing to the top with WPM on
each
step; the student is trying to get the fireman to the top of the window)
1. Tell students the purpose
and goal of
the lesson. "Today we are going to try and read like fluent readers.
Being
a fluent reader is reading fast without having to stop to sound out
words. All
of you can read so well, but we are going to practice reading faster.
If we
read faster then we will be able to understand the story better and
enjoy it.
One way that we can make ourselves faster readers is to read a text
more than
once. Each time you read the text you will get better and faster
because you
will be more familiar with the words."
2. Teacher will model how a
fluent reader
reads. I will write a sentence on a sentence strip like "The cat ran
fast
up the hill" First, I am going to show you how a reader that is not
fluent
would read this sentence: Ttttthhhhe cccaaatt rrraan fffaassssttt uup
tthhe
hhiilll. Now I am going to show you how a fluent reader would read the
sentence: The cat ran fast up the hill. Can you tell a difference? What
are
some differences? Now I am going to read it one more time: The cat ran
fast up
the hill. The third time I read it the fastest because I was already
familiar
with the text.
3. Now we are going to read the
text Ants in a Can. This is going to give us
some practice on being more fluent in our reading. Book Talk: Ann wants ants for her ant farm, but they're
biting
her! We will have to read to see what happens to Ann and the ants.
The
teacher will pair students up with one official copy of the text, one
copy of
the text typed out, a pencil, and a stopwatch. Each student will read
the book
to their partner as the stopwatch is timing for one minute. The teacher
will
remind the students to remember to cross-check. This is a tool that
fluent
readers use, which helps them to understand the text better. If you do
not
recognize the word immediately, try to sound it out as best as you can.
Once
you have figured out what the word it, re-read the sentence to make
sure that
word makes sense in the sentence. The teacher will model how to read Ants in a Can fluently.
4. Now
that everyone has seen me read the text
fluently, I want everyone to practice with their partner. You will each
take
turns reading to one another and using the stopwatch to time. Each
student will
have one minute to read as much as the text as they can before time is
up.
Remember to read as fast and smoothly and do not skip any words. Once
the time
is up, each the partner timing will put a line where the reader start,
indicating the number of words read. The partner will count all of the
words up
until this mark, which will show how many WPM.
5. After
each partner has read, they will get to move
their fireman up his ladder, depending on how many words the student
read.
The
teacher will have each student up individually and
ask them to re-read Ants in a Can. I will note their fluency by making notes about
whether
they read smoothly, quickly, stopped rarely, or less smooth, less
quickly, or
stopped frequently. I will also ask the children questions to
test their
comprehension of the story.
Questions:
How did the ants start biting
Ann?
What did Ann do?
Did she keep the ants on her
farm?
Checklist:
_____Read Ants in a Can
_____Read smoothly, quickly, stopped
rarely
_____Able to answer
comprehension
questions
_____Worked with partner
cooperatively
Resources:
Murray, Geri Ants
in a Can
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/bookindex.html