Rationale: As students decode and start to read words automatically,
they become more fluent. Fluent readers enjoy reading because they no
longer struggle to read words. Fluent readers gain independence in
reading through practice and repeated readings. This lesson will help
readers practice to become fluent.
Materials:
- One stopwatch (per two students)
- Copy of What Will the Seal Eat?,
by Sheila Cushman and Rona Kornblum, Educational Insights 1991 (one per
child)
- Reading checklist
- Sentence strips with decodable sentences on them. (For example:
The
Seal needs to eat., The Seal leaps in the sea., and He eats a meal from
the sea.
Procedures:
- Introduce the lesson by explaining to the students what we will
be doing today. Today
boys and girls we are going to practice reading faster and also reading
for meaning. Quick reading and being able to comprehend the reading is
called fluency. Fluent readers are no longer challenged by reading and
begin to enjoy it. I know each one of you will enjoy to read the more
we practice your fluency.
- Does everyone remember what
cross-checking is? Sometimes while we are reading we read a word wrong.
Cross-checking is when the other words in the sentence help us know
that we read the word wrong. For example, 'We threw the bell back and
forth.' Does that sentence make sense? Let's look at it again: you
don't throw a bell. You throw a ball. Ok I just mixed up ball with
bell. By cross-checking I knew that the sentence did not make sense and
I fixed the problem.
- To practice reading and become
more
fluent we are going to read a book three times to see if we get faster.
First we are going to read a few sentence strips. Model reading
the first sentence strip, What-will-the-seal-eat?
Was that sentence very interesting? No it was not. Let's
try it again, 'What will the seal eat?' I am getting faster and
smoother at reading this sentence because I have practiced it twice.
Now I'm going to read it a third time, 'What will the seal eat?' See
how much better that sentence sounded the more I practiced?
- Now have the students break up into pairs and read the practice
strips
to each other. Have them read at least two different strips three times
apiece.
- Please stay in your groups and
find a quiet corner for you and your partner to practice reading
fluently to each other. Give each student a reading checklist
and each group a stopwatch.
- Explain to the students the process. One
of you will be the reader, while the other one will be the recorder.
The reader should begin at the beginning of the book and read for one
minute. The recorder should time the one minute and when the
stopwatch is at one minute tell the reader to stop. The reader will
point to the word he or she stopped on and the recorder will begin to
count the amount of words he or she read and then record that number in
the first blank of the reading checklist. After the reader read three
times and the amount of words read are recorded, switch places.
- Assess the students by walking around and observing their work.
At the end of the lesson have the students pass in their reading
checklist and review them to make sure they are improving and doing
their work.
References:
Faster Fluency. Allison Bagwell. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/encounters/bagwellgf.html
Murray, Bruce. Developing Reading Fluency.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/fluency.html
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