Growing Independence & Fluency

Swimming to Fluency

Growing Independence & Fluency

Carly Grisham

Rationale: Reading fluency is the ability to recognize words quickly, accurately, and automatically without the need to consciously decode every word. Fluent, automatic, consistent reading is necessary in order to become a successful reader. This independent reading will aid comprehension, expression, and speed of one’s reading. In this lesson, students will learn to read fluently through the tools of reading, decoding, crosschecking, mental marking, and rereading. Students will gain confidence in their reading ability and become more fluent, independent readers.

Materials: Stopwatches for each pair of students; a copy of The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister for each student; a fluency chart for each student; a peer evaluation sheet for each student; cover-up critters for each student; sentences written on Smart Board: “The other fish were amazed of his beauty” and “Please give me one of your shiny scales” [keep covered until necessary]

Procedures:

Explain, “Who wants to be an awesome reader? Well I have a secret for you! In order to become the best readers we can be, we must be fluent. Being a fluent reader means that you can read effortlessly, you recognize words as soon as you see them, and you can read without hesitation. To become fluent readers, we must have a large sight word vocabulary, or words that we know automatically, without decoding. To gain sight words we have to practice reading through a method of repeated reading where we can decode, crosscheck, mental mark, and reread.”
Model, “Do you remember what crosschecking is? [Have students raise hands and tell what crosschecking is] That’s right! Crosschecking is checking to see if the words in a sentence make sense. I’m going to show you how it is always necessary to crosscheck when we read a word in a sentence that we don’t know. For example in this sentence, [Show the sentence ‘The other fish were amazed of his beauty’], I might read ‘The other /f//i//s//h/…hmm that doesn’t sound right, let me finish reading, were amazed of his beauty.’ Hmm the other blank were amazed of his beauty. Since the story is about fish, that must be /f//i//sh/! Now I know to mental mark the s and h to make /sh/. Now I need to reread the sentence now that I know the word so I can remember what the story is about: The other fish were amazed of his beauty.”
Model, “Now I’m going to show you the difference between a fluent and non-fluent reader. Let’s look at the sentence [Show the sentence from the board ‘Please give me one of your shiny scales.’] A non-fluent reader might read it like this: P-pp-lll-ee-a-s-e g-i-vv-e mm-eee o-nn-e of yy-o-u-r shhh-i-i-n-y ss-c-a-a-lll-e-ss. Because I read it so slowly and stretched out, it is hard to know what I read. But if I read it again, I might be able to read it a little faster and smoother: Pp-ll-ea-s-e g-i-vv-e mm-e one of your shh-ii-n-y sc-aa-les. That time was a little better, but it still wasn’t quite as fast and smooth as a fluent reader. I’m going to try to read it one more time [read smoothly and with expression]: Please give me one of your shiny scales. That time the words flowed together and it was easier to understand what I said! That is how a fluent reader would read it. Now you try reading the sentence fluently: Please give me one of your shiny scales.
Fluent readers are not just born with lots of reading talent. It takes a lot of practice to become a great reader! When I read the sentence ‘Please give me one of your shiny scales,’ for the first time, it was really difficult because I had never read it before, and I spent time decoding words. When I read it for the second time, it was smoother because I had already decoded it. When I read the sentence the third time, I added even more smoothness and expression to my reading. I became fluent in reading by rereading, and that’s how you can become fluent too!
Say, “To practice reading fluently, we’re going to read the book The Rainbow Fish! This is a story about a beautiful fish that had scales shinier than all the other fish in his school. The other fish loved his scales so much that one of them even asked if he could have one, but Rainbow Fish told him no. Because Rainbow Fish won’t share, nobody wants to be his friend anymore. What do you think is going to happen? Will Rainbow Fish learn to share? Will he find friends? You’ll have to read the book to find out!”
Children will be given a copy of the book and a cover-up critter. Say, “Now we’re going to practice reading fluently through rereading, and we’re going to split into partners! I will read the first two pages of The Rainbow Fish to demonstrate what we will do.” Explain to the class that each time you read a passage you become more familiar with it. “Now it’s your turn! [Assign which partner is 1 and which partner is 2 and hand out stopwatches] First, partner 1 will read aloud while partner 2 times them. Then, you will switch roles. After reading aloud, talk about what you read with your partner. Then we’re going to read aloud again, while our partner is looking at our checklist and seeing if we read faster, with more expression, remembered more words, and read smoother. Then, we’ll switch partners again. We will do this 3 times. Remember to write down your partner’s times on the checklist too!”
Assessment: Once the students have finished three rounds of repeated reading, have each student turn in his or her checklist. The teacher should then call up students one by one and perform repeated readings with each student. The teacher will configure reading fluency through words x 60/time in seconds to get number of words per minute. The teacher will then graph the student’s progress on the fluency chart as he or she improves. In between each round of repeated reading, give praise or encouragement to students on aspects of fluency that they have improved and make suggestions when needed. After three rounds have been completed, ask a few comprehension questions: Why do the other fish not want to be friends with Rainbow Fish? What kind of scale did Rainbow Fish give the little blue fish? How did sharing his scales make Rainbow Fish feel?

Peer Evaluation:

References:

Dunn, Morgan. “Marching Through Fluency.” http://lmd0015.wix.com/literacy-designs#!projects/cm8a

Murray, B. (2012). Making Sight Words: Teaching Word Recognition from Phoneme Awareness to Fluency. Ronkonkoma, NY: Linus Publications.

Pfister, Marcus. (1999). The Rainbow Fish. NorthSouth.

Stone, Mallie. “Bear Necessities For Fluency.” http://mvs0002.wix.com/msstonesstudies#!growing-fluency/c6mc

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