Growing Independence and Literacy Design

Growing Independence and Fluency Design: The Oddest Things of Reading

Rationale: The objective of this lesson is to help readers with growing independence develop better fluency in longer and more advanced texts, whether this be books, poems, or stories. Fluency is the ability to recognize sight words automatically while also reading, understanding, and expression. This should be effortless in reading and automatic. The way a reader can achieve fluency is from reading and rereading (or Repeated Reading). In Repeated readings, the student will decode words and be able to recognize words automatically. With this lesson, fluency, decoding, cross checking, re-reading and comprehension will be taught.

Materials:

Stopwatch for each pair of students
Sentence on board (hidden until we begin): "We can play baseball outside.” and "I like to catch green frogs."
Class set of And That Was the Oddest of Things by Daniel Errico (1 per student)
Cover-up Critter for each student
Class set of Pencils
Repeated Reading Checklist (1 for each student)
Reading Chart (One per student)
Teacher Fluency Checklist
Fluency Graph
Comprehension Exit Quiz with Questions

Partner Reading Checklist

Total # of Words in Chapter: __________

Reader: ___________________________

Checker: __________________________

1: ___ words in ___ seconds

2: ___ words in ___ seconds

3: ___ words in ___ seconds

Which turn sounded the smoothest? _____

Which turn had the least number of errors? ____

Teacher Fluency Checklist (1 per student)

Name of Reader: _________________________

Date: ___________________________________

Time: ___________

Words x 60 / time in seconds: ____________ WPM

Fluency Graph:

Comprehension Questions:

1.What did the penguin eat?

2. What were the lemurs throwing?

3. What did the boy see in the sky?

Procedures: Introduction: 1. Say: “Today we are going to take one step closer in becoming better readers and we are going to learn what it means to be a fluent reader. Does anyone know what being a fluent reader means?” Call on student who has hand raised and listen to the response. Allow a few more students to add onto the definition. “A fluent reader is able to read quickly and easily while being able to recognize all words and understand what they are reading. When we read fluently, we are able to understand the meaning of what we are reading much better. Reading is lots of fun when we can understand!”

Activities: 2. Say: “We will now practice reading a sentence together, let’s look at the board.” Display board depicting the sentence “We can play baseball outside.” Say: "I will show you how I read this sentence. 'Wwweeeee ccccaaannnn pppppllllaaaayyyy bbbaaa…bbbaaalll oouuutttssiiddeee'. When I get stuck on the third word, I finished reading the rest of the sentence. I still cannot figure out what the word is so I will now use my cover-up critter. First, I uncover the first letter in the word, this tells us to say /b/. I will continue to move to each letter in the word: /b/ /A/ /s/ /e/ /b/ /a/ /l/ /l/. I need to remember that the a_e says /A/, so this word is pronounced b-A-s-e-b-a-l-l. Let me read the sentence again, "Wwweeee ccaann ppllaayyy bbbAAAsseebbballl oouuttssiiddee: Oh, it's baseball! It is the game we can play with bats on a field. I continued to reread the sentence and used crosschecking until I understood what the sentence was saying!” (Model saying, "Wwweee ccaaann pplllaayy bbaasseebbaaall oouuttssiiddee "We can play baseball outside".) Say: "The more practice I have reading and rereading a sentence, the better I get at reading it and the more I understand what I read. Now, I can mentally mark the spellings so when I see them again, I will remember how to say each word.

3. Say: "Now, we will see the difference between a fluent reader and a non-fluent reader. I am going to read this new sentence on the board". (Display sentence on the board that says, "I like to catch green frogs"). Say: "This is how I may read the sentence the first time I see it: 'I llliiikkkeee tttooo ccaattcchh gggrreeeenn ffrrooggss'. "When I read it as slow and as stretched out as I just did, it is difficult for me to understand what I just read. If I read it again, I can try to read it faster and smoother, which will help me understand it better. (Model saying it again faster and smoother). Say: "I l-i-k-e t-o c-a-t-c-h g-r-e-e-n f-r-o-g-s.' See! That was much better! Let me try reading it again and see if I can read it with more expression. (Read faster and with more expression) 'I like to catch green frogs!' Say: "That time I read this sentence, it was much easier to understand what I said, and you could even see how I felt because of how I read the sentence! This is how a fluent reader should read a sentence. Now, you try reading the same sentence on the board! (Have students read the sentence and practice using expression while saying the sentence).

4. Say: "It is going to take some practice for you to become fluent readers! For example, in the sentence we just read, 'I like to catch green frogs', I did not get it right the first time. It was more difficult because I had never seen it before. However, the second time I read it, the easier it was because I had already decoded the words in the sentence. By the time I read it the third time, I was able to read it faster and with more expression because I had read the sentence before. I became fluent in reading this sentence by reading the sentence multiple times until I understood what it was saying! Now, you can practice becoming fluent readers!".

5. Say: "Now, we are going to practice our reading fluency by reading the book, And That Was The Oddest of Things. One night, a little boy heard loud chewing sounds coming from his kitchen. When he went to see what it was, he saw a tiny blue penguin eating his food! He heard more noises and found a giraffe watching television. He then heard splashing and rushed into the bathroom. There, he saw a octopus taking a bath! His house was a huge mess! Why are these animals here? Where did they come from? Will his house be cleaned? Let’s read to find out!

6. Say: "We are now going to practice our reading by reading silently to ourselves at our desks until our timer goes off. See if you can read to the very end. If you make it all the way to the end in the time we have, reread the story until the timer goes off. I will set the timer for 10 minutes. (Set timer depending on my student's abilities).

7. Say: "Now, work with your partner right next to you. We will each be reading the book to our partner. Each pair of you will get a timer/stopwatch to time each other while reading. While one of you reads to the end, the other one of you will time the reader using the stopwatch. Read the story 3 times to your partner; you can switch back and forth. Make sure to write down your partners score after each time they read on their reading chart! You should also use the reading checklist to see how your partner is doing while they read to you and seeing if they get better! I am hoping you are improving each and every time! Continue to practice so that you are reading smoother. faster, and with more expression!

8. Assessment. Say: "During your reading with your partner, I will bring each of you up to my desk one at a time. Here, you will read half of the story to me. Make sure you put on your thinking cap and try your hardest while reading to me! I am going to time you while you read to see how fast you are reading! (This is when I will use the fluency formula). After you have read to me, I will give you a comprehension exit quiz to take with 3 questions on it. Here is the exit quiz:

1.What did the penguin eat?

2. What were the lemurs throwing?

3. What did the boy see in the sky?

Reference:

Taylor Hoff’s GF Design https://taylordhoff.wixsite.com/lesson-designs/growing-independence-and-fluency-gf

Mackenzie McCollum's GF Design https://kenziemac22.wixsite.com/my-site-2/gf-design

And That Was the Oddest of Things by Daniel Errico https://www.freechildrenstories.com/and-that-was-the-oddest-of-things

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