Fishy About Fluency!

Kendall Woody

Rationale: In order to comprehend reading, you have to be a fluent reader. Students must practice expression, pace, and comprehension if they want to read effortlessly and automatically. Effortless word recognition allows students to reflect on what they are reading. Through reading, decoding, crosschecking, mental marking, and rereading, students will be able to confidently improve their reading rate and grow into fluent readers. Students will gain fluency and independence in reading by crosschecking after reading decodable texts and repeat readings.

Materials:

Timer/stopwatch for each pair of students
Sample sentences on white board for teacher to model
Peer fluency sheet (one for each student)
Reading rate forms for teacher
Teacher Fluency Checklist (one for each student) with attached comprehension questions
Pencil for each student
Class set of Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy

Procedures:

Say, “We are going to achieve one of our goals in becoming a fluent reader in class today. Does anyone know what a fluent reader is? (Calls on students to answer). A fluent reader is someone who is able to read very quickly and smoothly because they are able to recognize the words. If we can recognize the word, then we can better understand what we are reading because we instantly know each word’s meaning. It makes reading so much more enjoyable!”
Say, “Now let’s look at a sentence written on the board: ‘I flew on a plane for the first time.’ Everyone put your listening ears on. I want you to tell me if I sound like a fluent reader when I read this sentence aloud to you. ‘I f-f-f-l-l-l-e-e-e-w-w-w, f-l-ew, oh flew.I flew on a plan for the first time. Oh wait, that doesn’t make sense. It must be plane. I flew on a plane for the first time.’ Did you notice I got stuck on a word when I read the sentence? To figure out what that word was, I reread the sentence from the beginning and tried what I thought the word plane said, plan. That did not make sense, did it? To fix myself, I went back and reread the sentence to figure out which word made the most sense. This strategy of rereading is called crosschecking, and it is super important to use when we are learning to become fluent readers! Since I figured out these hard words while reading, it helped me become fluent. Here’s how a fluent reader would have read the sentence: ‘I flew on a plane for the first time.’ I read the sentence effortlessly which meant that it was much easier to understand. I want you to turn to your partner and practice reading the second sentence on the board. ‘We went to the park at school.’ Read it aloud to one another until you read the sentence fluently.”
Say, “Now let’s think back to when I read the first sentence and got stuck on the word plane. In order to figure out what the word was, I had to reread the sentence from the beginning and try to figure out what the word plane said; I pronounced it like the word plan. The sentence was confusing, so I reread the sentence to figure out what the word should say to make the sentence sound correct. This is called crosschecking, and it is very important to use when we are learning to become fluent readers!”
Now, pass out a book to each student and put them in pairs. Say, “We are going to practice being fluent readers by rereading Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy. In this book, Junie B. is very excited for pet day at her school. She can’t wait to bring her dog for everyone to see, but then she finds out that dogs are not allowed! She doesn’t have any other pets to bring, so what is she going to do? You will have to read to find out.”
Students will read the first chapter silently to themselves. Then, they will reread the chapter to their partner without helping them or getting frustrated.
Pass out the recording sheets and stopwatches to each pair of students. Say, “We are going to play a game to test everyone’s fluency. Put your listening ears back on to understand how to play. Reader 1 is going to start the game off and Reader 2 will be in control of the timer. Reader 2 is going to time how fast Reader 1 reads the first two pages. Reader 2 will then record the time on the sheet that I have handed out. You and your partner will switch places after Reader 1 is done. You will each do this three times. As you listen to your partner read the pages, I want you to be listening for how their reading changes each time. Do they remember more words? Read faster? Read smoother? Read with expression? Please mark these changes that you notice on your paper.” Before the students start reading, model how to fill in the fluency checklist and how to use the timer/stopwatch.
When students are finished with their partner work, have students come to your desk one at a time to read the first two passages to you. They will bring their record sheet so you can attach it to the back of their assessment sheet. As they read, you will time them on the paragraph read-aloud and use the formula given to record how many words-per-minute they read.