Growing Independence and Fluency

Monkeying Into Fluency!

Growing Independency and Fluency

Rationale: This lesson will help students develop fluency in more difficult and longer texts. Fluent readers can blend words correctly, read quickly, and read effortlessly. We want to motivate readers to read and reread decodable words in texts, learning to recognize them without having to decode. During this lesson, students will be practicing their fluency, reading silently, and reading with a partner. They will then read independently with you, and you will graph their progress. You will also be going over miscues in between readings. This lesson allows teachers to be able to track their students’ progress and ability to read fluently and independently.

Materials: Sample sentences on white board for modeling, stopwatch for each pair of students, pencil for each student, fluency checklist (one for each student), fluency timesheet, cover-up critter, comprehension questions for each student, chart to record words per minute while reading, and a class set of Junie B. Jones and A Little Monkey Business.

Procedure:

Say: We are going to be learning and practicing how to read fluently with expression today! Being able to read fluently means we can understand the words that we are reading and follow along with the storyline. If we become more fluent, we can comprehend texts while also reading with expression. In order to read fluently, we must practice, so that is what we are going to work on today.”
Say: Let’s review before we begin! Do you remember what we do when we get stuck on a word? We use our cover-up critters to help us sound out and blend the word. [Write sentence on the board]. I will read the sentence on the board, She /licks/ her friends. /Licks/ her friends? That doesn’t make sense. Oh it must be /likes/, the girl likes her friends. Did you notice I got stuck on the second word in the sentence? I read all the way to the end of the sentence. Then I went back and reread the sentence with the word I thought it was, /licks/. Then I went back to reread with the word that made the most sense which would be like. This strategy of rereading is called cross checking, and it is really important to use when we are learning to become fluent readers! If a fluent reader were to have read this sentence, it would have sounded like this… “She likes her friends.” The sentence was easy to understand because I did not have to stop and fix a word, I read it effortlessly. Now we are going to read the next sentence to a partner, you can see it on the board. “I like the color of your shirt.” Practice reading to each other until you can read it fluently without stopping.
Say: Now it’s your turn to practice reading fluently! We are going to read some of the book Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business silently first, then in pairs. In this book Junie B. has a misunderstanding about her new baby brother. This causes trouble in kindergarten. What do you think will happen when she tells everyone her brother is an actual monkey?!
Students will read the whole book silently to themselves. After, they will each read the whole book to their partner. They cannot help their partner read while they are listening.
Say: [After students are paired] Each partner has a copy of our Junie B. Jones book, a stopwatch, a pencil, and a fluency checklist. Each partner will read the first chapter of the story 3 times. You can choose who is going to read first and who gets to 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. Then timer student will record how long it takes for the reader to read each 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 person times. Does everyone know what to do? Okay, great, 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 three 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 how long 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 Junie B. 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 Junie B. to be able to make it down the chart, or for the children to be completely fluent on their own].

Checklist:

Did he/she read smoothly?
Did he/she show facial expression?
Did he/she have voice changes/
Does the student have an overall understanding of expression?

Fluency checklist will be filled out for each reading partner:

Title of book:
Student’s Name:
Partner’s Name:

Make a check if the following is true after the 2nd and 3rd readings:

Remembered more words:
Read faster:
Read smoother:
Read with expressions:

Reading tracker:

0 - - - - 10 - - - - 20 - - - - 30 - - - - 40 - - - - 50 - - - - 60 - - - - 70 - - - - 80 - - - - 90 - - - - 100

Correct words per minute:

After the students are done reading, collect the data for yourself to analyze and assess how your students did and who still needs to work on reading fluently. Use your observation of the class as well.

Comprehension quiz:

Why does Junie B. think her brother is an actual monkey?
Why does Junie B. get sent to the principal’s office?
Who ends up being the first person to see her baby brother?

Sources:

Zaloga, Aspen. Flying for Fluency. https://aspenzaloga.wixsite.com/education/growing-independence-and-fluency-de

Park, Barbara. Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business. https://www.amazon.com/Junie-Jones-Little-Monkey-Business/dp/0679838864

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