Ms. Madison's Classroom

Rationale: The purpose of this lesson is for students to develop fluency while reading which is important for gaining more comprehension. A fluent reader reads with ease and expression. In this lesson readers will grow to be fluent readers by repeated reading.

Materials: Copies of the book Clifford the Big Red Dog (one for each student), paired reading check-sheets, Cover Up Critter, strip of paper with sentence “The puppy rushed to the bone” for students to understand fluent reading. 

Procedure: 

• Tell the students “Today are lesson is on working to become more fluent readers! When we are fluent readers, we can read words quickly without having to stop as often. Also this will help us better understand what we are reading” 

• “When we are reading it is important not to skip any words when we’re reading. All the words in the story are important and if we skip one we might not understand what is happen later on in the story. If we don't know a word we will us our Cover-up Critters to uncover the letters one by one to understand the word. You can use the Cover-up Critters whenever you need help to understand a word.”

• “I am going to read the sentence “The puppy rushed to the bone”, tell me which way you think is the way a fluent reader would read.” First I will read the sentence like a student would decode. “Thhheee pppp-uuhhh-pppp-eee rrrr-uhhh-sh-ddd total theeeee b-uh-ooo-nnn” Next I will read the sentence a little more quickly and finally correctly and fluently. Then I will ask the students to raise their hand on which one they thought was sounded right. 

• Now that I have modeled for them we will work on reading fluently together. Everyone has a copy of Clifford the Big Red Dog so we will practice reading it together to become better readers. I will give a book talk about the puppy growing and growing and ask the students “What do you think will happen to the puppy”

• I will let the students quietly read to themselves for a little practice. “Now that we have had practice we are going to pair up with our partners and practice reading outlaid to each other. Each of y'all will keep up with the checklist that I am going to pass out and read each of y’all are going to read the book three times through. 

• I will walk through the classroom as students are reading and help if they ask. When everyone is done. I will call one student up at a time to get them to read the book one more time to me. While they are at my desk I will see how many words per minute they can attain. I  will set goals with each student to help them reach their fluency goal. 

• I will have a worksheet that has Clifford on it and a bone and one students reach their fluency goal, they will move the bone closer to Clifford. The bone is a cut out the have colored before and it has velcro so they can move it easily. 

Assessment: Oral reading with the teacher is an assessment that allow them to move on their graphs. 

References: 

• Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell

• Hungry for Reading by Joanna Holcomb 

Timing Worksheet: