Growing Independecy and Fluency

Rationale: Reading fluency needs to become natural to the reader in order to become an expert in reading and reading comprehension. Reading fluency means reading with automatic word recognition. This skill can be obtained by reading, decoding, crosschecking, mental marking, and rereading. Through this process students will gain automatic word recognition and improve their reading rate. When readers can automatically recognize words with little to no effort, they can work toward understanding the message of the text. Once readers have gained this technique, their reading comprehension will improve drastically.

Materials:

-Stopwatch (one per partner pair)

-Pencils

-Cover up critter

-Fluency checklist

-Peer fluency sheet (for each student)

-Class set of the book: When You Give a Mouse a Cookie

-Comprehensive worksheet (for each student)

Procedures:

Say: “Today, we are going to learn how to become a fluent reader. A fluent reader can read a book quickly and smoothly with expression because they can automatically recognize the words they are reading. It is important to be a fluent reader because you will be able to comprehend what is going on in the book, which makes reading more fun!”
Say: “Now, let’s practice fluency with a repeated reading by reading the sentence I have written on the board. The board says- “My favorite cookie is chocolate chip.” I am going to read the sentence aloud to you, but I just want you to listen this time. I want you to think about if my reading is fluent or not. (slowly) “MMMM-y fav-orrr-t coooo-k-eee is CHHH-o-k-let CHHH-ip.” Was that fluent? Did I read with any expression? No, that sentence did not make sense because I was not reading with fluency. Listen again as I read the same sentence. (reread better) “ My fff-a-v-orrr-it ccc-ooo-k-i-ee is chh-o-c-o-l-a-t-e chh-i-p.” That was better, but it still was not fluent. When I noticed that my sentence did not make sense, I re-read the sentence to figure out what the sentence was saying. This strategy is called crosschecking and I want you all to do this when you see that what you read does not make sense. I am going to read the sentence one more time (perfectly). “My favorite cookie is chocolate chip.” I read the sentence effortlessly because I am a fluent reader. By re-reading the sentence and using my reading strategies, I was able to read the sentence with fluency.
Say: “It takes practice to become a great reader. When I first read the sentence, it was difficult because I had never read it before. But, when I read it again, it was a little easier because I had previously decoded the words. The third time I read it I was able to master the sentence and become fluent. Now that we have learned what a fluent and a non-fluent reader is, we are going to practice our fluency. We will practice by reading the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” In this text, a mouse gets a little taste of a chocolate chip cookie. The mouse really likes the cookie and wants more. He then asks for a glass of milk to go along with his cookie. The mouse keeps asking for thing after thing. When will he stop asking for things? Is he getting what he is asking for? Let’s read to find out!”
Say: “We will work in pairs to begin working on our fluency. I am going to assign you a partner (Assign everyone to a partner and give each student a peer fluency sheet and a timer). Whoever is not reading first will keep track of the time with the timer. (Demonstrate how to work the timer). When it is your turn to read, you will read three times, and then your partner will read. The first time you read, you will not be timed. The partner will just listen. The second and third time that you read, your partner will time you. The partner in charge of keeping time will write the time down and tell if his partner read with fluency and efficiency. This partner should also write down any differences between the second and third reading.

After both partners have read three times, I want you to talk through what you wrote down. After you finish reading and recording, discuss the book with your partner. Did you like it? Is it what you expected to happen? When you are finished, you should go back to your seat and fill out your reading comprehension worksheet and turn it into me.”

5. Assessment. Collect materials. Say: “Great job reading you guys! Now I want you all to answer a few questions on a sheet of paper to see what we remember about the story we just read. While y’all are writing, I am going to call you to my desk one by one so that I can hear you read fluently too.” *ask students comprehension questions when they read one on one*

Fluency Checklist:

Title of Book: _________________________

Students Name: ____________ Date: ______

Partners Name: ____________

After 2nd Reading After 3rd Reading

________ ________ Remembered more words

________ ________ Read faster

________ ________ Read smoother

________ ________ Read with expression

(Words x 60)/seconds= WPM

0 ----- 10 ----- 20 ----- 30 ----- 40 ----- 50 ----- 60 ----- 70 ----- 80 ------ 90 ----- 100

Correct Words Per Minute