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Growing Independence and Fluency Design

ESCAPING TO FLUENCY!!

 

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Rationale: To understand any text at hand, students must be able to read fluently. Automatic word recognition and faster, smoother, more expressive reading are what characterizes fluency. When developing fluency, students will devote cognitive resources to comprehension rather than decoding and or word recognition. To develop fluency, students must read and reread decodable words in a connected text. In this lesson students will read, decode, crosscheck, and reread to improve their fluency. The teacher will provide models and scaffolding to aid the students’ in their fluency gains. Improvement will be measured by the formula- words read x 60/seconds. This formula will be used to determine the students’ words read per minute (WPM).

 

Materials

white board

expo markers 

class set of The Good Egg Presents: The Great Eggscape! by Jory John

partner critiquing fluency sheet

stop watch

pencil 

time sheet

reading comprehension questions sheet 

 

Procedures

 

  1. Explanation- 

(I will explain to students what being a fluent reader means) “It is so important that we become fluent readers. When you read fluently, not only will your reading levels grow but your love for reading will too! Fluent reading sounds nice and smooth.  It is very easy to understand what you are reading when you read fluently.  A story is read fluently when it is read at an appropriate speed for listening, there is accuracy in word recognition, and there is expression used by the reader when needed!  Knowing all of these things is going to help you become a fluent reader, which is what we all want to be! When we are fluent readers, we can understand what happens in a story better.  A good way to become more fluent is to read the same thing over and over. By reading a story more than once, you can become familiar with words that you did not get the first time. Today, we are going to get some practice with repeated readings so that we can escape to fluency!!!

2. Model-

Say: “First, show how a reader who doesn’t have fluency can become fluent. If I come across this sentence [write sentence on board]: “I listen to music” and I am not fluent, I may have to decode a couple of words. The first time I see this word [point to listen] I might try to put together each sound /l/ /i/ /s/ /t/ /e/ /n/....lis-ten, I lis-ten to music, no, I listen to music. I don’t say that t. Now that I have that tricky word figured out, I’m going to try and read the sentence again. [Read sentence again slowly and without expression, but no difficulty]. That was a little better, but I bet I can read it more smoothly and even add some expression if I read it a third time. [Read sentence another time, adding emphasis]. There we go! I knew the words enough that time to add some expression because I understood what was going on in the sentence. Raise your hand if you liked when I read the sentence with my ‘happy voice’ (emphasis voice) better than when I read it with my boring voice!   (if students are still confused add another example)”

3. Crosschecking- 

Say: “When I read, “I listen to music”, I used one of the strategies that we have learned - crosschecking.  When I came to a word that I did not know, I made an attempt or guess, then went to finish reading the rest of the sentence. Then, I used context to make a correction and made “mental notes'' to myself about that word so I could remember it the next time I saw the word. 

4. Read Whole Text:

 Say: “Now, we’re going to read The Good Egg Presents: The Great Eggscape! by Jory John silently to ourselves. Reading silently is just like reading out loud, but instead of saying the words with your voice you say them in your head. When you read silently, there should be no noise coming out. This book is about Shel, an egg, who tells us about what eggs do in the grocery store before the store opens and they are bought! Let’s read the book to find out what happens during the eggs great ‘eggscape’!”

5. Guided Practice-

 Say: “If you did not know some of the words on the first reading, it is okay. We are going to read it more times so that you can get better! A good strategy to use when you come across hard words is crosschecking. Crosschecking is when you finish reading the sentence that a hard word is in and use the meaning of the sentence to see what the hard word might be. For example, if I saw the sentence [write on board] I didn’t know you were coming here! I might read it as, “I didn’t /k//n//ow/—k-now? Hmm… that doesn’t sound right but I’ll keep reading to see if I can figure it out—you were coming here! Oh! I bet it is /n//O/, not k-now. /n//O/ makes more sense. I didn’t know you were coming here.” (use another example if this concept is still unstable)

6. Partner Reading-

Say: “Now that you have had a chance to read your book silently to yourself and become familiar with any unfamiliar words, I want you to read the text aloud to a partner.  You can pair up with the friend next to you or the friend across the room, up to you. I am going to give you three minutes to find a partner quietly, go! (wait)”

“ I want you to read the text aloud to a partner. After one partner has read, the listener should help the reader by giving them any tips for reading more fluently the next time.  Then, after the second partner has read, the listener will do the same. It will make the listener listen for the qualities of a fluent reader, which will make them more familiar with them and hopefully promote fluency among themselves.  The partners will use the “partner critiquing fluency sheet” to share with their partner what they can work on in order to better their expression and or fluency.” (allow time for this)

“Each of you has a  time sheet and a stopwatch in your desk tool box. I am going to tell you how many words are in the book (#), write that number at the top of your time sheet. You will take turns reading The Good Egg Presents: The Great Eggscape! out loud to your partner, and they will time you to see how long it takes to read the book.  Write the number of seconds it took for your partner to read the book on your the time sheet, then use your feedback sheet to track your partner’s progress.  If they read faster, more smoothly, or with more expression, then mark that box on the feedback sheet. After your partner has read the book three times and you have recorded that information on both the time sheet and the feedback sheet, switch who is reading, and now the other person will mark on a different time sheet and feedback sheet. After you have both finished, bring your time sheet and feedback sheet up to me, and I will calculate your WPM.” 

 

 

7. Reader Response-

Say: “Since we have read the book multiple times now, I have a few questions for you to answer about the story.” (Hand out form with the following reading comprehension questions)

 

Reading Comprehension Questions

1. Who was the first egg we met in the story (name)?

2. What do the eggs do on the weekend before the customers come in?

3. Why doesn’t Shell like leaving the carton?

4. What game did the other eggs decide to play? 

5. Where did the eggs find Meg at? 

 

 

Assessment:

I will review each student’s responses to the reading comprehension questions and review the partner feedback and time sheets to assess each student using the following rubric:

This will give me an idea of where each student stands with their fluency skills!

 

  1. References- 

Bolan, Greg. “Champions of Fluency”. http://gregbolan.wix.com/reading-lessons#!page4/cfvg

 

The Great Eggscape! By Jory John & Pete Oswald [Video file]. (2020, March 25). Retrieved March 23, 2021, from 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZU5QDDKsg

 

Kirchharr, Alexa. “Flying to Fluency.” http://alk0018.wix.com/lessons-in-literacy#!fluency/c218n

 

Murray, Dr. Bruce. “Developing Reading Fluency.” 

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/fluency.html

  

Partner Reading Feedback Sheet. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/checksheet.jpg

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