Growing Independence and Fluency

Curious About Fluency

A Fluency Lesson

By: Hannah Tarwater

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Rationale: This lesson is designed to help students become more fluent readers. Fluent readers have almost all of the words that they are reading in their sight vocabulary. Therefore, they can focus on reading accurately, at a good speed, and with the right expression. Then, both the readers and listeners can comprehend what they are reading and focus on the meaning of the story or passage instead of decoding each individual word. In order to reach this goal of fluency, students will do group repeated readings with the teacher. During this time, teachers will teach and model fluent reading and crosschecking for the students. Students will learn to read fluently and use key strategies to help them with words they struggle with by the end of this lesson.

Materials: pencils, stopwatch, coverup critters, Curious George Goes to the Zoo book for each student and teacher, projector, white board and marker, partner evaluation worksheet.

Procedure:

1. Say: Today, we are going to learn how to become more fluent readers. Now everyone already knows how to read, but can you tell me the difference between when I read, “I-I-I j-u-s-t-t-t f-f-f-o-u-n-n-d-d a d-o-t-t-t, no a p-o-t of g-o-l-d” (read very slow and boring) and when I read, “I just found a pot of gold!” (read at a good pace with excitement). [Work with student responses to the question] Right, the first time I read it super slow because I had to decode each of the words and I didn’t read it with much expression. The second time, I knew all the words, and I read it at the same pace I would talk at. I read it with excitement, and it wasn’t as boring. The second time I read this with fluency, and that’s what we are going to learn to do today. We want to read with fluency by knowing all of the words automatically so we have to practice by repeated reading.

2. Say: We already know how to use our cover-up critters to help us read unfamiliar words, but sometimes we have words that we can’t just decode. They aren’t normal words so we have to do something called crosschecking. For example, we learned that normally ow = /O/ but sometimes our words break the rules. [Write the sentence, “I want a cow so I can get milk” on the board] This says, “I want a /c/ /O/ cow?” [Pronounce it with a long o as in snow] Now that doesn’t make sense and I might try to figure it out with the help of my cover-up critter but I will still end up with ‘cow’ [Again, pronounce it with a long o] What I should do is finish the sentence: “I want a cow so I can get milk.” Oh, it must be a cow since they are getting milk from it! If we finish reading our sentence and look at the context, we can normally figure out our unfamiliar words and remember them the next time we see them. We call this crosschecking, and crosschecking will help us to become more fluent readers.

3. Say: We will practice reading fluently by all reading this story about Curious George and his trip to the zoo. [Children will pull out their cover-up critter and be given a book. Teacher will display pages of book from projector on board] This monkey’s name is George, and he is very curious about everything, just like some of you! His friend, the man in the yellow hat, shows him a book with a lot of animals in it, but Curious George wants to see them in person, so they go to the zoo. But there’s a lot of ways for George to get into all kinds of trouble at the zoo! What do y’all think will happen? [Respond to students predictions] You will read silently to find out what will happen to Curious George! [The teacher will give them a few pages to read at a time and display them on the projector. Then, they will give more predictions as to what they think will happen next]

4. Say: Now that we have finished reading through it one time, we are going to read it a few more times taking turns with our reading partner so we learn the words better and can read it with more fluency: faster and with more expression. [Pass out partner evaluation worksheets] Each time your partner reads, I want you to think about how they improved by checking the box if they read faster, more accurately, with more expression, or smoother. We will only talk about the things they did well and will not say mean things to each other when our partner reads to us. We want to be encouraging and kind! I will be calling each of you up to my desk at some point so you get to read about Curious George with me! Don’t forget to use cross-checking: if decoding the word isn’t working, finish the sentence to figure out what the unfamiliar word is.

5. Do: As students are reading in pairs, teacher will call up each student one-by-one to read individually. He/she will take miscue notes and time their reading to test for reading speed and fluency. He/she will ask one or two open-ended questions after they are done reading and talk about some of their miscues to help them as they go back and read more to their partner.

6. Say: Now that you have all read to me and your partner a few times, can someone tell me what their favorite part of our story about Curious George was? [Let students respond] Let’s talk about what we found today. Did anyone’s partner use cross-checking and get the tricky word figured out that way? [Let students respond and give examples] Raise your hand if your partner read with less mistakes the second or third time around. What about reading faster? With more expression? And smoother? See, everyone got better when they cross-checked and read the story multiple times because the words just jump out at you. That means that all of you are becoming more fluent readers which is awesome! [Have students turn in their partner evaluation worksheets at the end]

References:

Book: Curious George Visits the Zoo by Margret Rey & Alan J. Shalleck

Worksheet: Making Sight Words by Bruce Murray (page 342)

Olivia DiChiara, “Dragons Love To Be Fluent” https://oad0004.wixsite.com/mysite/contact

Peer Evaluation Worksheet:

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