Reading Lessons by Ruth Lee

Rationale: This lesson teaches children about reading fluency. In order to be able to read fluently, children must recognize a lot of sight words effortlessly and involuntarily. Rereading a familiar story with efficient decoding strategies including the process of decoding, crosschecking and mental marking will not only help students to store as many sight words as possible while reading but also to greatly increase reading fluency. A guidance from an expert (scaffolding) while reading will help facilitate the process of becoming an independent fluent reader. The aim of teachers is that in the end students themselves will be able to use those strategies when reading independently. The goal of this lesson is to improve student’s fluency through repeated readings and timed reading.

 

 

Materials:

1. The Deep Sea by Matt Sims (class set)

2. List of the vowel correspondences: a_e,ai = /A/; ee,ea = /E/; o_e = /O/; oa = /O/

3. Cover-up critter (decorated Popsicle stick with googley eyes on the end for each student)

4. Reading progress charts (for each student; Appendix A)

5. Fluency Checklist (for each student; Appendix B)

6. Dry-Erase Board/Marker 

7. Stopwatches (class set, one per pair)

8. Pencils 

 

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Procedures:

​1.     Introduce the lesson by explaining what it means to be a fluent reader. 

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        Say: Has anyone here played any musical instruments? What about those recitals that you got to

        have a lot of fun with when you practiced the same piece over and over again for numberless

        times that you even gave up checking after so many practices? Well, I hope you had an amazing

        performance at the recital and the reason you could that was practice! Just like it, when we read

        familiar stories over and over again, we get easy with them. And guess what? We will be an

        expert in reading! Once the reading gets easier for you after reading it two or more times, you

        then can read with more speed and even with more expression. As reading becomes easier, you’ll

        get what I meant by the sweetness of reading. 

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2.     Do a short review on your students’ frequently missing correspondences or those with generally

        low frequency of appearance in children’s literature. 

 

        Say: Before we start really digging on reading stories, I would like to review what we have learned             so far. I have the list of the vowel correspondences, meaning the pairs, for you to look at first.

        And then I’m going to go over the sound of each one of them with you. As I go through the list,    

        check if what you’ve thought matches with what I say. [Go through the list. Pick the vowel

        correspondences that are in the book you’ll reread: a_e,ai = /A/; ee,ea = /E/; o_e = /O/; oa = /O/]

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3.     Have students take out their cover-up critters. Review how to use the critters when coming

        across an unfamiliar word during reading. 

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        Say: Today we are going to review the cover up critter strategy. Okay, what do we do when we

        come to a word that we cannot read? We use our cover-up critter! For example, if I saw this word             (write peak on the board) when I was reading and did not know it, I would cover-up all the       

        letters but the vowels (p and k) because I know that ea= /E/. Now look at the letter before the

        vowel. /p/. Blend these phonemes with the vowel /E/. This sounds like /pE/. Then blend the

        letters at the end of the word, the k, with the rest of the letters to make /pEk/. Oh, the peak. Like

        the peak of the mountain. 

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        When you see a word that you don't know how to read, use the cover-up method to help you

        decode the word. Breaking it down into little pieces is a lot less intimidating and makes it less      

        frustrating when you come across a word you do not know. And don’t forget to reread the        

        sentence one more time after you’ve decoded an unfamiliar word when reading the real stories. 

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4.     Review/model crosschecking.

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        Say: To understand what we have read, we cannot just focus on reading fast. We can crosscheck

        what we read to make sure our sentence makes sense. For example, if I read this sentence (Write

        on the board: "I see a blue whale over the peak of the waves.") as "I see a blue whale over the peck

        of the waves." then I could use my crosschecking ability to decide that “peck” doesn't have        

        anything to do with the waves in the sea. I would then reread my sentence correctly as “I see a

        blue whale over the peak of the waves" realizing that I misread the word.

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5.     Model reading fluency. Writing ‘Dave has a boat that has a big sail’ on the whiteboard. 

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        Say: Beginning reader sounds like this when reading the sentence on the board: ‘Dave has a

        b...bhhooot that has a big sail?’ A boot? Hmm… Then, they might say ‘Dave has a boot that has a               big sail’ still struggling with the unfamiliar word and repeating the word they do not recognize. A

        beginning reader who has practiced rereading and can now read the word correctly and say

        ‘Dave has a boat that has a big sail. Oh, the boat!” But, they might sound like a robot or read

        without expression, yet a fluent reader who recognizes all words automatically and reads with

        expression sounds like this: ‘Dave has a boat that has a bi~g sail!'  Fluent readers sound like this

        because they are able to read the words effortlessly and automatically. The more practice that

        you have with a book, the faster you are able to read it. Reading a book that you have already

        read before helps you become more natural with books even that you have never seen

        before. Let's start practicing so that we can become fluent readers!       

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6.     Practice and expand the lesson on whole book reading. 

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        Start with an interesting book talk about The Deep Sea but be careful not to give away the ending

        so that the students are eager to continue reading. Say: Bill and Dave are going on a sail. They

        love to sail on the boat they owned. Does anyone own a boat at home? What are some things

        other then enjoying the beach you can do with ocean? [after listening to two to three student’s

        response, quickly gather the attention by saying the following.] Bill and Dave got out to the sea

        and guess what? Something happened and their boat got cracked! We will have to keep reading

        to see what will happen to the sweet friends. 

 

        Then, break the class up into pairs and give selected book, The Deep Sea to each child; hand out

        a (1) Reading Progress Chart and (2) Fluency Checklist to each student. Tell them to take

        turns reading parts of the story to their partners. Tell them they get to play each of the two roles:

        the recorder and the reader. The person who is not reading, “the recorder”, will be responsible of

        writing down how long it takes for the partner to read designated pages (p.3-4) from the book on

        the (1) Reading Progress Chart. The “recorder” will record using a stopwatch. 

 

        They will then switch turns (the "reader" becoming the "recorder" and vice versa) and do the

        process again so that each student reads. After both children have finished reading, have them

        practice by doing a repeated reading of the same text (x2).  This time remind each "recorder" to

        fill out the (2) Fluency Checklist after the "reader" has read the book second time, as well as

        the (1)Reading Progress Chart at the end of the 2nd reading to measure the time it took. This

        will give them a chance to focus on expression and smoothness not just speed. This will also

        show me how well they read the text not just if they could read it quickly.  

 

        Allow the students to do one more rereading of the book for a total of three readings of the

        book. Let the students discuss how they got better within their readings and re-readings of the

        book with their partner.

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7.     Observe the reading partners as they read the text. Walk around the room and answer questions

        that the students may have. Be sure that they are filling out the Reading Progress Chart and

        Fluency Checklist.

 

8.     Lastly collect the students' completed Fluency Checklist and Reading Progress Charts. Compare

        the students' first, second, and last readings to check for development in fluency. 

 

        **Teachers may use the given formula to calculate fluency in WPM (words per minute) for the

        purpose of individual repeated reading with the teacher taking miscue notes: