Growing Independency and Fluency

FLUENCY WITH FROGS

Rationale: Reading fluency is of incredible importance to developing the ability to comprehend texts. Fluency is where students recognize nearly all words as sight vocabulary. As a result of this, students will hopefully be able to develop fluency in more challenging texts. The goal of this lesson is to aim in teaching students to become fluent readers by using strategies such as fast reading, decoding, crosschecking and rereading. Students will work to improve their fluency rate by reading decodable texts. These texts have been proven to improve the development of fluency.

Materials:

Stopwatches for each student
Paper
Coverup critters
A class set of “Where Is My Frog?”
Fluency chart to track words per minute
Peer checklist for each student
Dry erase markers
Sample sentences

Procedures:

Say: “Today we are going to work on our reading fluency! Does anyone know what being a fluent reader means? It means improving our reading skills in order to become smoother, more efficient readers! Being a fluent reader also allows us to understand fully everything we read and what happened in the story. Being a fluent reader allows us to understand all the words in a story!

Say: “To start our lesson, I want us all to look at a sentence written on the board: The frog jumps over the lily pad on the pond. I am going to read this sentence and I want you all to tell me if I sound like a fluent reader, ‘Tthhee (the) ffffrrrrooooggg (frog) jjjjuuuummmpppss (jumps) ooooovvveeerrr (over) tthhee (the) lllliiiiillllyyyy (lily) pppaaaaaddd (pad) ooonnnn (on) tthhee (the) pannnn (pond)’.When I get stuck on a word I will try my best to finish the rest of the sentence. If I am still stuck on that word, I use my cover up critter. I uncover the first letter of the word, and continue to do this with each of the following letters in the word. ‘Oh! The word is pond! It makes sense because the previous part of the sentence talks about a frog and a lily pad!’ I figured this out by using crosschecking by rereading the sentence to help me figure it out. I now know the correct way to say that word, and I tuck it away in my brain for the future. Here is another sentence I want you to try with a partner! ‘They are serving chicken fingers for lunch today’ Try this sentence until you can read it fluently!”

Say: Let’s think back to the first sentence we read together. What word did I get stuck on? Pond! Does anyone remember how I said it? That’s right! I pronounced it like pan. It would not make sense for a frog to be hopping over a lily pad on a pan, now would it? It would make much more sense for a frog to be jumping on a pond, not a pan. I reread the sentence because it did not make sense to me. This is called crosschecking, which is very crucial to becoming fluent readers!
Say: “I want us now to read a book called ‘Where is my frog?’ I want you all to try to read the book by yourselves. In this book, it tells the story of a pet frog on the lose. This frog creates havoc wherever he hops to. A boy chases him everywhere, creating many crazy situations! Let’s individually have quite reading time and each read the story.”

Once the students finish reading, they will need to be partnered up. Say: “Now that you all have a partner, I want you both to use the stop watches I passed out, a copy of Where Is My Frog, a reading rate chart, and a fluency rate checklist to read and build your fluency. You will each take a turn being the reader and being the timer. Each partner is going to read 3 times and be the timer 3 times.

Say: While your partner is reading, the timers job is to use the stopwatch to time them. You also need to mark how many mistakes your partner makes. If they make a mistake, that’s okay! We need to see what mistakes we make in order to become more fluent readers. Our mistakes will make us better! When your partner finishes reading, subtract the number of words that they missed from the total number of words in the book. Write that number down and the amount of time it took your partner to read from start to finish. When you and your partner have both read 3 times, I want you both to discuss the book.”

Say: “What did you notice about the different times you read, and when your partner read? Did your reading change? Did their reading change? Did you remember more words? Did you read smoother, or faster? I want you to also mark these changes on the paper your fluency is recorded on.

When the students are finished reading and discussing their fluency with their partner, students will come to the instructors desk and read the first 3 pages to the instructor. They will also bring you their record sheet so you can keep it on file. As the students read, the instructor will time them using the formula to calculate their words per minute, Say: “Okay everyone, now that you have had practice with your partner, I want you to come show me your fluency skills! I am going to call you each up one at a time, and I want you to read the first 3 pages of Where Is My Frog to me.”

Reading Comprehension Worksheet