Rationale: Reading fluently is very important in improving reading skills.  The purpose of this lesson is to help children learn to read with expression.  Whole text will be used in this lesson to practice reading with expression.

Materials: chalk, chalkboard, enough age-appropriate decodable books for the class to work in pairs, pencil, paper

Procedures:
1. We will begin this lesson by reviewing some of the important parts involved in reading a book.  I will ask that students to tell me what kind of punctuation marks are at the end of a sentence.  Once we have talked about the different punctuation marks, such as the question mark, the period, and the exclamation poin, we will talk about the expressions that go with each punctuation mark.
2. I will model a sentence using each punctuation mark to the class. "What a beautiful day!, is an example of a sentence with an exclamaion point at the end, Welcome to the class., uses the period at the end, and Can I have something to drink?, uses the question mark." “Now we are going to come up with sentences, together, using the exclamation point, the period, and the question mark.”  After the class has come up with examples and talked about them, I am going to divide the students into pairs.  The students will come up with a sentence using the punctuation mark that I have given them. "I am going to pass out a punctuatuion mark to your group and I want your group to come up with an appropriate sentence."  The students will read their sentence to the rest of the class.
3. The partners will be of the same reading ability.  “I want each of you to stay with your same partners.  Choose one person to come and pick out a book for your group to read.”  Each partner will take a turn and read with expression.”  After one person has read, swap and let the other person read with expression”.
4. “Everyone did a great job today reading with expression.  Doesn’t it make a book more interesting when reading with expression”.
5. For assessment, I will have each student come up at different times during the day and read a decodable book with expressions.  I will mark the expressions that we need to work on, by using a checklist.
6. As a follow up activity I will have students write their own short story.  The story will need to have some of the different punctuation marks.
7. I will ask for a few volunteers to read to the class.  They will read their stories with the appropriate expression.

Reference:
The Genie Website; http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/fluency.html

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