Mining For Fluency!

By: Catherine Wiley

Rationale: In order to fully develop the reading comprehension skill, students must learn how to read fluently. Reading fluently means that a student has developed the skill and ability to read at a quick, even pace with expression. Repeated readings are one of many ways that are able to help students transition from slow decoding to effortless and quick reading. This lesson will teach children how to utilize strategies that will build sight words. The methods used and addressed in this lesson are repeated reading of text, crosschecking for meaning, and graphing progress during paired partner reading. These tools will engage, motivate, and help students make progress towards fluency and comprehension.

Materials: A copy of The Red Gem Mine for the whole class, class set of stopwatches, whiteboard with example sentence on the board, white board markers, fluency graphs for each student, fluency checklists, reader response form, comprehension questions

Procedures:

1. Say: Okay class today we are going to learn how to read quicker, smoother, and remember what we are reading all at the same time! We will do so by learning to read fluently. I know that is kind of a silly word, but reading fluently means that we will learn to read quickly and smoothly. It is important that we learn to read fluently, so that we can remember and focus on what the words that we are reading mean instead of breaking apart the word and figuring out how it is pronounced.

2. Say: Now that we know what reading fluently means, I am going to model how to read a sentence fluently and how to use what we call crosschecking. [Show the sentence written on the board that says “The dog barked loudly!”] Say: “The d-i-i-g barked loudly” Hm, do digs bark? Oh, that says dog! “The dog barked loudly.” Did you notice how I got stuck on the second word in the sentence? I continued reading the sentence and used the other words to let me know that the tricky word was “dog” and not “dig”. Let’s read the sentence again, and I want you to listen how it blends together very smoothly! “Ttthhheee dddoooggg bbaarrkkeedd lloouuddllyy!” [Read sentence one more time. Say the sentence at a normal pace.] Say: This is how to read fluently! It is much easier to understand what we are reading when we are able to read fluently.

3. Say: Now it is time for you to practice your fluent reading. I am going to bring everyone a book called The Red Gem Mine and you all may quietly go find a place in the room to read it at a fast, smooth, and even pace. Read it over a couple times, so that you are able to practice and help your fluency skills!

4. Booktalk: Pete owns a red gem mine with his mule, Jake. Pete keeps digging and digging in order to find red gems, but all that he is able to find are rocks. Frustrated, Pete’s mule Jake keeps getting mad at him because Pete is not making enough money to have enough oats to feed Jake. Will Pete be able to find some red gems in his mine, and make his mule happy?

5. Say: Once everyone has been given an opportunity to practice with their book a couple of times, we will regroup and then you will all break off with a partner. I will give each group a stopwatch and a checklist sheet. You will time your partner for one minute while they read, and then once time is up you will count how many words that they read in the one minute. After you count how many words that were read, you will use our little checklist sheet and write down the number of words each of you read on the little space provided. You will do this for 3 rounds, so 3 times! Once your partner has completed their third round, the other partner will do 3 rounds.

6. While students are timing each other and completing the checklist rounds, I will walk around the room to ensure that students understand and are following directions accurately.

7. Once all 3 rounds are done for each student, I will meet with students one by one and explain to them what the number of words that they read has to do with fluency. I will show them a little chart with a gem at the end of the chart. The chart has increments of 5 and goes up to 85, so that once they slowly increase their fluency they will finally reach the gem at the end and have “mined for fluency”. I will put a mark on their individual chart and motivate them to keep increasing their word count with practice.

Assessment: I will assess my students by documenting their reading times and keeping them in a folder which I will update as their reading charts improve. I will ask comprehension questions that I have created for the The Red Gem Mine book in order to assess their fluency and comprehension skills. The comprehension questions will be: Who did Pete buy the red gem mine from? Why doesn’t Jake like to eat hay? How does Pete discover that there are red gems in his mine? Who wants to buy the mine from Pete after he discovers that there are red gems in it?

References:

Google Photos

file:///Users/catherinewiley/Downloads/Red Gem Mine.pdf

https://kab0077.wixsite.com/kalliebasdenslessons/growing-independence-and-fluency