Growing Fluency

Swimming into Fluency

Growing Fluency Design

Paige DeShazo

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: Timer (for each group of students), a copy of The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister for each group to have on, peer evaluation check list, sentences wrote on the board, but kept covered until necessary: “The other fish were amazed of his beauty” and “Please give me one of your shiny scales.”

Procedures:

1. Say to the class: “Who wants to be known for being an A+ reader? Well today we are going to learn exactly how to do that! To become an A+ reader, we must first learn how to read fluently. You might ask what that means, and being a fluent reader means that you can read without hesitation or doubt in the words, and recognize them as soon as you see them with your eyes. We must have a large sight word vocabulary stored in our brains, and recognize these words automatically, without having to decode them or break them apart. To create this large sight word vocabulary and store in it our brains, we must practice reading through a process of repeated reading, where we can decode, crosscheck, mental mark, and then reread the sentence/book.”
Ask: “Do you remember what crosschecking is? (wait for a student to raise their hand and answer correctly) Exactly!! Crosschecking is going back to see if the words we read in the sentence makes sense to us. 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 sentence, “The other fish were amazed of his beauty”), I might read “the other /f/ /i/ /s/ /h/ ….. mmmmm that doesn’t sound right, let me finish reading, were amazed of his beauty.” Mmmm the other blank were amazed by his beauty. Since the story is about a fish, that must be /f/ /i/ /s/ /h/! 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.”
Say: “Now I’m going to show you the difference between a fluent, A+ reader, and a non-fluent reader. Let’s look at another 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-ppp-lll-ee-a-ss-e gg-iii-vv-e mmm-ee oo-nn-e o-f yyy-oo-uu-r s-hh-ii-nnn-yy ss-c-aa-lll-ee-s. Because I read it so slowly and stretched all of the words out, it is hard to know or remember what I read. But if I read it again, I might be able to read it a little faster and smoother this time: Pp-ll-ea-s-e gg-i-v-e mm-e one of yo-u-r shhii-nn-y sc-aa-les. That time was a little better, but it still wasn’t quite as fast and smooth as an A+ reader would be. I’m going to try to read it one more time and maybe I can get it (read it smoothly and add 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, like an A+ reader would: Please give me one of your shiny scales.
Fluent, A+ readers are not born with lots of reading talent. It takes much practice over and over again to become an A+ reader! When I read the sentence ‘Please give me on of your shiny scales,’ for the first time, it was really hard because I had never seen or read it before. Therefore, I had to spend time decoding it. When I read the sentence the second time around, I was able to read the sentence a bit smoother because I had already decoded it. Then by the third time I read the sentence, I was able to read it smoothly and I added expression to my reading. I became a fluent, A+ reader by rereading, and practicing and that’s exactly 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 unique, but beautiful fish that had scales that were much shinier than the other fish at his school. The other fish loved his scales so very much, and one of them even asked if he could have on of his scales. Rainbow fish did not like this idea at all, so he replied with a no. Since Rainbow Fish will not share, nobody wants to be friends with him. What do you think is going to happen to Rainbow Fish? Will he learn to share with his classmates? Or will he ever have friends? You and your partner will have to read the rest of the book to find out what happens!
Students will now be placed in to groups and handed a copy of the book. Say: “Now we are going to practice reading fluently through rereading, and we are going to split up into partners. I will read the first two passages of The Rainbow Fish to show you exactly what we are going to do.” Explain to the class that each time you read the passage, the more familiar and easier it will be (read the passages). “Now it’s your turn! (assign which is partner 1 and which is partner two and then hand out the timers), First, partner 1 will read aloud while partner 2 will time them. Then, you will switch and partner 2 will read while partner 1 times them. After reading aloud, talk about what you read in the story to your partner. Then we’re going to read aloud again, while our partner is looking at our checklist and seeing if w read faster, with more expression, remembering the words, and read smoother. Then, we’ll switch partners again and do the same thing. We will do this a total of three different times. Don’t forget 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:

Grisham, Carly. “Swimming To Fluency.” http://carlymgrisham.wixsite.com/mscarlyreading/blank

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

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