Growing Independence and Fluency Design

Flying for Fluency

Rationale: The goal of this lesson is to get students to read more fluently so that they spend more time on comprehension and less time of decoding. Reading fluency is defined as the ability to read accurately, smoothly, and with expression. This lesson will teach students what fluency is through modeling and practice. Students will be asked to repeatedly read something so that they can grasp the concept of what happens when they can read without trouble. They will gain independence in reading with their use of strategies like cover up critters and crosschecking.

Materials: A stopwatch for each pair of students, cover up critters, pencils (one for each student), sample sentence for the teacher to model, whiteboard, expo marker, airplane fluency chart, teacher fluency checklist, reading progress fluency checklist (one for each student), and class set of The Little Airplane

Procedures:

Say: “Today, we are going to be working on something called fluency. Fluent readers read quickly, accurately, and automatically. It is also important to be a fluent reader because then you are able to focus on what is going on in the text of the story instead of trying to figure out how to read and decode words the words within the text.”
Say: “Now let’s look at the word that I have written on the board. We are going to use our cover up critter to help us when we get stuck on a long or hard word.” *Write a decodable word on the board* “I will now show you how to use the cover up critter to help me decode the word.” Cover all of the word except for the s. “F says /f/.” Uncover the l. “L says /l/.” “So we have /f/ and /l/. That says /fl/.” Uncover the igh. “Igh says /I/. So now we have /fligh/.” Uncover the rest of the word. “The last part is T says /t/. So let’s put everything together, ffllliiighhtt, that’s right! We just sounded out the word flight! It is important when we decode that we think about the sounds that the letters are making to see if that actually is a real word.
Say: “Now I am going to write a sentence on the board and read it. I want you to tell me if I read the sentence fluently or at a beginner reading level.” “Cade loves to play with planes.” Ccc/aa/dd/ee, Cade, llll/o/vv/e/s, loves, to, ppp/llll/aaa/y, play, with, p/lll/aaa/nnn/ss, um I mean planes. I will now reread the sentence so that I become more familiar with the words and what they mean. I can do this to check that the words make sense. I knew that plans did not sound right in the sentence. I remembered that a_e says /A/, and then I corrected it to planes. Cade loves to play with planes. After rereading, I read the sentence much smoother and understood it much better. This means that I crosschecked. Crosschecking is what a fluent reader does when they cannot figure out how to sound out a word. They use context clues to help them figure out the word. Crosschecking is a very important strategy to learn and do when you are becoming a fluent reader. If crosschecking doesn’t work, we can also use the cover-up strategy. If you get stuck on a word, your critter can help you figure out the word. For example, if I didn't know the word pot, I could use the critter and sound out p-o-t.” (Demonstrate example)
Say: “In order to practice your fluency more you are going to read the book The Little Airplane. Pilot Small is getting his plane reading for a flight. Flying gives him a new perspective on his view of the Earth. What do you think he will see below when he is in the sky? Read the story to find out! Read the story by yourself one time and then you will read it aloud in pairs.
Say: *Pair the students together* “Each pair will get a copy of the book The Little Airplane, a stopwatch, a pencil, and a fluency checklist. Each partner will be asked to read the same section from the story 3 times. The students will choose who is going to go read first and time first. The first time reading, the reader will read while the other person listens. Then the first reader will read again and the other person will be the timer for times 2 and 3. The timer student will record how long it takes for the reader to read the story. Each student should listen to the reader and make a mark on your fluency checklist when they make a mistake (saying a wrong word, not knowing a word at all, or skipping the word). Do they sound smoother and follow punctuation rules? Do they get more accurate? Can they read with more expression? Once the first reader is done the partners will switch positions and the other partner will read while the other times. Does everyone know what to do? Okay, begin!” *The teacher will walk around and observe* *Take up fluency checklists when they are done with the activity*
Say: “Now we will calculate our words per minute. *Tell them the number of words in the book* Take the number of words that you had a mistake with and subtract it from the words in the book. Do this for both the second and third time. This lets us see how you are each progressing with your reading fluency. We can also see which reading was the smoothest and fastest for each of you based on these numbers!”
Say: “To make sure that everyone has comprehended what they have read I will call each one of you up to my desk individually to ask you to read the section one more time and ask you questions about what you have read.” *Time the amount of time it takes to read the section* *Use this information to calculate the words per minute* *To do this, multiply the number of words read by 60 seconds. Then, divide this number by the number of seconds it took to read the section. Record their words per minute number on the fluency checklist and chart. The student will be able to move the plane further up the page on the chart like it is taking off. They can move it forward each time they progress with their words per minute. The goal is for the plane to be able to “fly” or for the children to be completely fluent on their own*