​Mrs. Alker's Lesson Designs

Rationale: Students will be able to read with more fluency, more accurately, and more effortlessly, and with more expression. Being able to read more fluently makes reading more enjoyable for children. When students are able to read easier then they want to read more,with more expression,therefore making it more fun. The students will be able to do this by completing repeated readings and marking their fluency rate on a chart.

 

Materials: 1.) White board and marker

                   2.) ‘The Car Trip’ by Matt Sims

                   3.) Cover-up critters for teacher and students

                   4.) Racecar getting to the checker flags fluency chart for each student

                   5.) Timers 

 

Procedures:

 1.)“Hi everyone, Today we are going to learn how to read more fluently. Does anyone know what the word fluently means? Reading fluently  means to read without much effort and without much thought or automatically. Reading fluently also means to read faster. I am going to read this sentence and I want you to tell me if I read it fluently or not. The c-c-a..ca-t cat d-r-a…dran-k drank the m-i…mil-k milk. Was that  fluent? No it sure wasn’t. Now Let me try again and see if you can tell a difference. The cat drank the milk. How was that?  Much better! Now I am going to read with more expression.” Re-read with more expression.

 

2). Review decoding steps. “What do you do if you come across a word that you do not know? Correct!  We can use our cover-up critters! Let's use our coverup critters together, ready?.” Write the word milk on the board and practice together. “First we find the vowel in the word and in this word it is i and it makes the /i/ sound.  Then we uncover the letter m to make the /m/ sound, and then lastly uncover the letters l and k to make the /l/ and /k/ sounds. Then we blend them all together to make the word milk. Our last step in decoding is to make sure we blended the word right by going back and re-reading the sentence using cross checking  to see if the word milk makes sense. When we learn new words it can improve our fluency. Now that I know the word milk I can read it so much faster than before." Model how much faster you can read the sentence now that milk is a sight word.

 

3). Pair up students in pairs and pass out the book’ The Car Trip’. “Just like Roy and his father are racing to get to the beach to spend as much time as possible there, we are going to practice our fluency to race to the end of the book! Read along with me as I read the first four pages. I am going to read them three times to practice my fluency.” Read the first four pages three times and each time read with more fluency. “Now it’s your turn. Read the whole story one time, then re-read it and read it with more fluency and expression. Take turns with your partner reading. 

 

4). As the class is working, walk around and show withitness by making sure they are on task and working together.

 

5). After each group has completed the story twice ask some open-ended questions to assess comprehension. 1.) How does the trip the son and the dad went on similar/different than your family trips? 2). Where did they go on their trip? 3.) How did they get there?”Then have the students come up to your desk and read the story. To assess the student, use the fluency formula (words*60/time) to make sure that the students are reaching their goal of 85 words per minute and graph their progress on the Racecar chart. To keep the rest of the class on task have the students write in their journal about a trip they have taken and have them draw a picture.

 

References: 

Sims, Matt. The Car Trip. Novato, CA: High Noon, 2001. Print.  

 

Racecar fluently chart: http://www.rewardcharts4kids.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/reward-charts-racingcars.jpg

 

Michaela Daugherty, Racing to Fluency: http://mmd0021.wix.com/ctrd#%21independence-fluency-/c1xuy