Growing Fluency

Every Trick in the Spell book

Fluent reading is reading in which words are automatically recognized. With automatic word recognition, reading becomes smoother, faster, expressive, AND students begin to read silently. Reading silently is more efficient than reading out loud because when you read silently you can read almost twice as fast. The goal of fluent reading is to have students read words automatically. Children will be assessed on their improvement by the formula (words read x 60/seconds) to determine the child’s wpm (words per minute). Repeated reading (which has the best track record for improving fluency) will be another resource used to support the child’s fluency rate.

Materials:

Class set of “The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches” by Alice Low (One per student); Stopwatches (one for every two children); Pencils; Dry erase board and marker; Speed read charts (one per student); Fluency Rubric (one per student); Fluency Chart –going up the blemishes on the witch’s face (# of words) to the top of her hat (assessment)

Speed Read Chart:

Name: __________________ Date: ________

Reading time: ___________

Fluency Rubric:

Name: ________________ Evaluator: _______________Date: _________

I noticed that my partner: (mark an X in the blank)

After 2nd After 3rd

Read Faster

Read Smoother

Read with Expression

Remembered More Words

1. Say: Today we’re going to practice reading fluently, with expression. In order to be successful, we have to learn how to read fluently. When we read fluently, we recognize words automatically which helps with understanding a story because you do not have to sound out each word. [Write the sentence “hit the red bag” on the board]. It’s normal to read this as hiiiiiittt theeeeee reddddddddd baagggggg. As you build fluency you will be able to read this more fluently. We will practice reading this with expression and adding an exclamation point at the end “hit the red bag!”

2. Say: When we read and we come to a word that we don’t know, we will use a coverup critter. [Give each student a cover-up critter. Write the word brick on the board. Model how to read the word using the cover-up stick] First, we look at the vowel. It says /i/. Now look at the b. /b/ Add the r sound. /br/. Put the /i/ and /br/ together to get /bri/. Now we add the /ck/ sound. We get br-i-ck. [Write the word "stick" on the board and sound it out together as a class].

3. Say: Remember that reading fast is not the only thing we need to do. Let’s look back at our sentence on the board. If I read “hit the red bag!” so quickly because I wanted to finish the sentence, I might not understand the sentence. We need to read so that we can understand. We can also crosscheck. [Write “the cat jumps of the bed” on the board] If I read, “The cat jimps off the bed,” I would think, you know, that just doesn’t make sense. The cat jimps? Jimps is not a word, this must be jumps.

4. [Divide the class in pairs and give all students the two reading rubrics] Say: Today we’re going to read “The Witch who was Afraid of Witches.” In this book, Wendy is a little witch who is afraid of her mean sisters! One special night, Halloween night in fact, she found out that Wendy can fly faster, cackle louder, and cast spells faster than all of her witch sisters! Can she find a way to out-witch her sisters? [Students will take turns reading and recording each other’s progress. The recorder will set a stopwatch and have the reader begin when the clock starts and they will stop when the reader finishes reading. This task will record the speed at which the reader is reading.]

5. After both have filled out the chart, have them read to each other again and have the recorder make notes about the reader’s fluency. The reader and recorder will switch again and repeat. Allow the students three readings by having both readers reading to each other again and each partner taking note on their fluency the third time.

6. Gather all of the time and fluency charts.

7. For assessment, have each student come to the reading corner and read an excerpt of “The Witch who was Afraid of Witches” aloud. Time each one individually, make miscue notes, and mark it on their fluency chart. Next, ask some comprehension questions to see if they understood the story

1. Why was Wendy afraid of her sisters?

2. What night did Wendy find out that she was a better witch than her sisters?

Reference:

If You Give A Mouse Fluency” by Emily Holliday http://egh00100.wixsite.com/mysite/growing-independence-and-fluency

click here to go to the communications index