Rationale: Being a fluent reader means you can comprehend your readings. Students must practice expression, pace, and comprehension if they want to learn to read effortlessly and automatically. Effortless word recognition allows students to reflect on what they are reading. By reading, decoding, crosschecking, mental marking, and rereading, students will gain confidence in themselves and become fluent readers. The best method to improve fluency is repeated reading. This lesson will allow students to apply the above mentioned strategies, such as crosschecking, while reading and engaging with the whole text of a book.

Materials:

1. Pencils

2. Stopwatch (should have enough for each pair of students to share 1)

3. Officer Buckle and Gloria (should have enough for each pair of students to share 1)

4. Write the following sentences on the whiteboard: “Sally likes to eat cake.” and “Sally wanted to eat more cake, but her mom said no.”

5. Peer fluency sheet (1 per student)

6. Cover up critters for students (optional)

7. Timing chart with comprehension questions (1 per student)

8. A class data chart at the front of the room (empty until the end of the lesson)

Procedures:

1. Say “We are going to achieve one of our goals in becoming a fluent reader in class today. Does anyone know what a fluent reader is?” (Calls on students to answer.) Either they answer correctly or not. Then say “A fluent reader is someone who is can read quickly and smoothly because they quickly recognize the words they are reading. By recognizing the words, we can also better understand what we are reading because we instantly know each word’s meaning too. Don’t you think this will make reading more fun?”

2. Say: “Now let’s look at a sentence written on the board: Sally likes to eat cake. Everyone listen really close, because I want you to tell me if I sound like a fluent reader when I read this sentence aloud to you. Sally l-i-i-i-i-c-k-s to eat. Oh likes!! Sally likes to eat…cake!” Did you notice that I got stuck on a few words in that sentence? To figure out what the word were, I kept reading on then I reread the sentence from the beginning and tried what I thought the word eat said, e-a-t. That did not make sense, did it? To fix myself I continued ahead with reading then went back when I realized it didn’t sound righ to figure out what made sense. This helped me to figure out that licks was actually supposed to be likes. This strategy of rereading is called crosschecking, and it is super important to use when we are learning to become fluent readers! Since I figured out these hard words while reading it helped me become fluent. Here's how a fluent reader would have read that sentence: Sally likes to eat cake. I read the sentence effortlessly which meant it was much easier to understand. I want you to turn to your partner and practice reading the second sentence on the board: “Sally wanted to eat more cake, but her mom said no.” Read it aloud to one another until you read the sentence fluently.”

3. Say: “Now class let’s think back to when I read the first sentence when I got stuck on the word likes. In order to figure out what the word was, I had to reread the sentence from the beginning and tried to figure out what the word likes said; I pronounced it like the licks. The sentence was very confusing, so I finished and reread the sentence to figure out what the word should say to make the sentence sound correct. This is called crosschecking, and it is very important to use when we are learning to become fluent readers!”

4.  Say: “I am now going to split you into pairs and give each pair a copy of the book: Officer Buckle and Gloria. In this story, we will read about a police officer name Officer Buckle who loves to tell students all about safety. He gets a police dog named Gloria and everyone adores her…but then they stop listening to what Officer Buckle says and only pay attention to Gloria. Let’s read to find out what happens when everyone stop paying attention to Officer Buckle’s safety rules.

5. I will let the children choose their partners for this assignment. I will assign one student to be the reader and the other student to be the recorder to start. Each pair will have a stopwatch, a pencil, a book, and 2 timing charts/comprehension sheets. I will have each student read the first six pages once to themselves. When they have read it through once, I will explain to the students how to use these sheets and what they are looking for when the reader is reading to them. One student will read as the other student starts the timer. Upon finishing the readings and stopping the timer, they will count the words and record the words and time in the chart. This will be repeated 3 times, and then they will then swap roles.

Assessment: 

I will walk around the room to monitor the activities and answer any questions as the students are reading and recording. The students will complete their worksheets and turn them in to me. We will then work together to get class averages of words per minute with the formula (words read x 60)/total seconds it took to read the text. This will be a fun activity to show how our averages (hopefully) got better over the three readings and we put them on the class data chart. I will then call each student to my desk to read the pages to me and give any individualized help that is needed. While they are individually coming to my desk, the remaining students will be completing the comprehension questions and then completing the book at their own pace. 

Timing chart and comprehension questions:

Total # of words in reading section: ______

Reader: ___________________________

Checker: __________________________

Reading 1: ___ Words in ___ seconds

Reading 2: ___ Words in ___ seconds

Reading 3: ___ Words in ___ seconds

Which turn sounded the smoothest? _______

Which turn had the least number of errors? _____

 

Who is Gloria?_____________________________________________________________

What happened that made Officer buckle sad?_____________________________________

How was this issue resolved?__________________________________________________

What was Officer Buckle’s last safety tip?_________________________________________

 

Resources:

http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/quests/ 

https://hml0015.wixsite.com/mysite-2/growing-independence-and-fluency - Published Lesson Reference

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