"Sailing to Fluency"

Madison Wolanek

 

Rationale: To comprehend text, students must be able to read fluently. Automatic word recognition and faster, smoother, more expressive reading characterize fluency. By developing fluency, students may devote cognitive resources to comprehension rather than decoding and word recognition. To develop fluency, students must read and reread decodable words in a connected text. Therefore, in this lesson students will read, decode, crosscheck, and reread to improve fluency. The teacher will provide models and scaffolding to aid the students’ 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:

• Partner Reading Feedback sheet for each student

• Stopwatches for each pair of students

• Reading time sheet

• Class set of Amelia Bedelia Sets Sail by Herman Parish

• Whiteboard and dry erase markers

• Class set of reading comprehension questions

 

Procedures:

 

• Explain: Say: To be the best readers we can be, we have to work on being fluent. Fluency in reading is being able to read words automatically, quickly, and with expression.  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 sail to fluency. 

 

• Model: Say: First, I’m going to show you 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 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.

 

• Crosschecking: Say: During the first reading, I used one of the self-help strategies that we have learned - crosschecking.  When I came to a word that I did not know, I made an attempt, 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. 

 

• Read Whole Text: Say: Now, we’re going to read Amelia Bedelia Sets Sail 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 Amelia Bedelia and her vacation at the beach. She takes a sailing trip with a girl she meets, but on one of their sailing adventures, they run into some trouble! Let’s read the book to find out what happens!

 

• Guided Practice: Say: If you did not know some of the words in this 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 coming here.”

 

• Partner Reading: Say: Now, I want everyone to partner up. [once students are partnered up, give each group a stopwatch, two feedback sheets, and two time sheets] Each of you has a Feedback sheet, a time sheet, and a stopwatch. First, I want you to count how many words are in the first chapter of the book, then write that number at the top of your time sheet. You will take turns reading the first chapter of Amelia Bedelia Sets Sail out loud to your partner, and they will time you to see how long it takes to read the chapter.  Write the number of seconds it took for your partner to read the first chapter on 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 chapter 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. 

 

Partner Reading Progress Check Sheet:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• 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 listed]

 

Reading Comprehension Questions

1. Who was Amelia Bedelia on vacation with?

2. Who did Amelia Bedelia go sailing with?

3. What happened after Amelia Bedelia ran into the pirates?

 

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:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

 

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

 

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

 

Parish, Herman, (2015). Amelia Bedelia Sets Sail. Greenwillow Books.

 

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

 

 

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