Growing Indepence and Fluency

If You Give a Moose Fluency

Advancements Index: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/advancements/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Rationale: For reading to be meaningful to students they must be about to read fluently. To read fluently means to be able to read words swiftly and effortlessly while also comprehending the words. This lesson is designed to help students work on fluency by having them read as many words correctly as they can in a set amount of time. Students will be working on decoding and crosscheck during this lesson as well.

Materials:

White boards
Dry erase markers
“If You Give a Moose a Muffin” book by Laura Numeroff
Pencils
Paper
Timesheets
Stopwatches
Cover-up critters
Fluency checklist
Sentence Example

Procedures:

“Today we are going to start our journey to becoming fluent readers. Can anyone tell me what fluency means? *wait for response* A fluent reader can read quickly and smoothly because they recognize the words on the page automatically. When we read fluently we can understand a story easily because we know what the words are.”
“Let’s practice reading fluency using this sentence (The moose ate a muffin). Listen to me read this sentence and think about if I am reading fluently or not. The m-m-o-o-o-o-s-s-e-e ate a m-m-u-u-u-f-f-i-i-n-n. I’m going to read that again because I am not sure what that second word is. The m-m-o-o-o-o-s-s-e-e ate a –m-m-u-u-f-f-i-i-n-n. Oh! The moose ate a muffin. Did you guys see how I had to reread the sentence to understand what it said? When we reread a sentence to figure out a word that is called crosschecking. The last time I read the sentence I sounded like a fluent reader.”
Get everyone to pull out their cover-up critters. “This is a cover-up critter. It helps us read hard words. Let me show you how to use the cover-up critter to figure out this word. *write ‘hop’ on the white board* Watch and listen. h-h-h-o-o-o-p-p-p. *uncover letters as I read* Now I’ll put it all together to say ‘hop’.”
*Get out “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” and give a book talk. “We are going to read about a very hungry moose. The moose is given a muffin! He starts to think of things that would go well with his muffin. Then he starts thinking of things that go well with those things. Let’s keep reading to see what all the moose things of and see if anyone gives him those things!”
“I want everyone to pick a partner to read with today. *wait for students to partner up* I am going to read the first few pages fluently. You all follow along and listen to how smoothly I read.” *read first few pages*
“Now you and your partner are going to take turns reading to work on reading fluency. One person is going to read while the other person follows along checking the words and using a stopwatch to time the reader. When the time is up, stop the reader and fill out the fluency checklist. Once you have read three times you and your partner will swap jobs.” *pass out pencils, fluency charts, and stopwatches*
Assessment. Collect materials. “Great job reading you guys! Now I want you all to answer a few questions on a sheet of paper to see what we remember about the story we just read. While you guys are writing I am going to call you to my desk one by one so that I can hear you read fluently too.” *ask students comprehension questions when they read one on one*