GF Lesson Design

Lesson Design for Growing Independence and Fluency

Rationale: Skilled reading, which is the ability to automatically recognize sight words, requires fluency. The purpose of this lesson is to teach students how to successfully, and at a fast pace, read passages for understanding. This lesson will approach teaching fluency with practicing reading, decoding, cross checking, rereading, and finally fast reading. The students will be able to read with expression and without decoding. The students will read repeatedly both individually and with a partner.

Materials: 1 stopwatch/student pair, class set of The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat, pencils, whiteboard + marker, 1 fluency graph/student, 1 partner reading progress checklist/student, 1 comprehension sheet/student

Procedures:

Introduction- “Fluent reading is our friend! Today, we are going to work on becoming fluent and fast. It is important that we still read the words correctly, even when we are trying to read at a fast pace. When we can read words automatically, we can understand the actual story easier. Today, we will do repeated readings to try and get faster each time we read the text. Then we will read with expression to keep the story interesting! All of this is going to help grow our sight word vocabulary – words that we read automatically. We decode words, crosscheck them with the sentence to see if they make sense, mental mark them to keep them in our memory, and then reread the words to make sure we learn them. As our sight word vocabulary grows, we become fluent! We can read more stories and understand them better.”
“First, we decode the words. Does anyone remember how to decode a word by using a cover up?” *allow for answers* “That’s right – we look at one part at a time and then blend it all together.” *write lunch on the board; demonstrate while uncovering one phoneme at a time* “/l//u/ ‘hey! like the cave man said – uhhhh’ /n//ch/. Llluuunnchh. Lunch! This word is lunch. Today at lunch, I will eat a sandwich!”
“What if we come across a word that does not make sense even when we use our cover up critters to decode it?” *allow for answers* “We crosscheck! We use other parts of the sentence that we do know to help us figure out the word we don’t know. Look at the sentence I have on the board.” *write ‘He was born on an island far away.’ (first sentence in our story) on the board* “He was born on an… /i//z//l//a//n//d/ far away..? Is that word izzland? That isn’t a word! An izzland far away..? Oh! That word is island! The s is silent! Now, I’m going to reread this sentence.” *read with expression* “Didn’t that sound like an expert fluent reader? We decoded and crosschecked the unfamiliar word. Then we read it to understand it. When we read a sentence over and over, the words become automatic for us to recognize. This puts them in our sight word vocabulary, and we become skilled readers! Remember, each time you read, you will get better and better.”
“Now, we are going to practice reading fluently with a book about a very special friendship. There is far away island where imaginary friends are created. When a child dreams up their imaginary friend and makes a special name for them, the creature is called to meet their real human friend! There is one lonely creature that waits and waits but still has not been dreamed of… He gets too lonely and decides to travel to the real world to find his companion. He gets to a busy city where people are doing fancy things and wearing fancy business clothes. It is nothing like he has ever experienced before. Do you think he will ever find a friend? Do you think he will make it in the real world? You get to read this story with your partner to find out what adventure is in store for the imaginary creature!”
“It is time to read with your partner!” *pass out books, stopwatches, partner reading progress checklists, fluency graphs, and cover-up critters* “You will take turns reading with your partner. You will each read it three times, alternating back and forth. Your partner will time you with the stopwatch while you read, and record your time on the checklist. Remember to use your cover-up critters and decode first if you don’t know the word, and crosscheck by finishing the sentence to make sure it makes sense. You will get faster each time you read, and you will gain a better understanding of the story! Your partner will keep up with how smooth and fast your reading, and how your expression while reading is. You will discuss the book with your partner, but you will only make positive comments. I don’t want any of you to hurt each other’s feelings. Then, you will work individually to answer questions on your comprehension sheet.”
“I will collect your Partner Reading Progress Checklist and see how fast and fluent you read! Then I will talk to each of you about your progress and track where you are on your fluency graph of Beekle and Alice from our story! You will read a few pages of to me and we will make sure you are becoming the most fluent you can be!” *use formula (words X 60 / seconds) and checklist to calculate where each student is on the graph*

References:

Instructional Book - Santat, Dan. The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend. Little, Brown and Company: Carson, NY, 2014.

Templates - Felkins, Haley. “Jump into Reading!”. https://haleyfelk1.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/growing-independence-and-fluency-1

Tedder, Morgan. “Score Big with Fluency”. http://morgan12bhs.wixsite.com/misstedder/growing-independence-and-fluency

I. Comprehension questions:

Beekle went to the ______ to meet Alice.
1. Grocery store
2. Playground
3. Street
When Beekle and Alice finally meet, they both felt ____.
1. Shy
2. Excited
3. Mad
When Beekle first got to the city, he saw people eating _____.
1. Pizza
2. Cake
3. Noodles
Beekle and Alice warmed up and went on many adventures.
1. True
2. False
Beekle felt lonely at the end of the story.
1. True
2. False

II. Partner Reading Progress Checklist:

Title of Book: ________________________________________

Total # of words in book: ______

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? ______

III. Graph of reading fluency:

Help Beekle reach his new friend Alice!

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Making Friends with Fluency

Molly Cranston

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