Flying to Fluency

Growing Independency and Fluency
Jeanine Grimes




Rationale: Fluency is a distinguishing trait of a skillful reader. The goal of this lesson is to develop the reading fluency of the students by rereading decodable words in connected text. Through repeated readings students become more familiar with words thereby increasing their sight vocabulary. Having a large sight vocabulary helps readers to read more accurately and automatically. It also enables them to focus more on comprehension. “Poetry is an excellent way to develop fluency because it has a natural rhythm and children enjoy hearing the same poems repeatedly.”


Materials: Dry erase or chalk board for whole class to see, Dry erase markers or chalk, Eraser, Stopwatches one per pair, Blank sheets of paper for comprehension assessment

One poem for each student ( Things You Don’t Need to Know by Kenn Nesbit, How Not to Play with Your Food by Kenn Nesbit, and My Special Diet by Kenn Nesbit.), Timed reading sheets for each student to record their reading times(shown below)

Name of Reader:________             Date:________

Title of Poem Read:_____________

1st timed reading:______

2nd timed reading:______

3rd timed reading:______

          Name of Stopwatch Holder:__________


Procedures:1. Begin by explaining why it is important to be fluent when reading. “I am so proud of all of you for the improvements I have seen in your reading. All of you are excellent at sounding out words. Now it is important to read more fluently. This means to read smoothly and more quickly. I will show you what I mean. (Write sentence on the board- My grandma always bakes giant cookies on Saturdays.) I am going to read this sentence twice you tell me which reading sounds more fluent.” Read sentence first time-MMMy grand-grand-grandma alllllways (pause) bakes giaaaannnntttttt cookies on SSSatur(pause) days. “Now I am going to reread the sentence” Read sentence fluently. Which reading was more fluent? You are right the second one. Who can tell me some reasons why the second time is better?” Allow students to answer.

2. “Good the first reading was not wrong but it slow and confusing. Sometimes when we read something for the first time we have to read it more slowly because we may see some unfamiliar words. This is fine but a good way to get used to those unfamiliar words is to reread. Let’s look at this sentence. (Write The elephant sketched beautiful artwork, but the lion painted silly portraits.) I am going to read it. Use cover up method when reading. The ell-e-p-hant, elephant ssskk-sketched beautifullllll art-work, but the lion ppp-ain, painted sssssilll-y por-port- traits. “Who remembers what we call it when I use my fingers to help me to read parts of a word? Right! Cover-ups. Cover- ups are important when sounding out words. So let’s see if I read better the second time. (Read sentence more accurately but slowly) That was pretty good. I bet I can do even better the third time. (Read sentence fluently). So we see that sometimes to become more fluent readers we just need to use what we already know to sound out words and a little practice.

3. We are going to improve our fluency by rereading some silly poems. Partner up with the person sitting next to you at your table. (Pass out Kenn Nesbit poems) Partners have different poems. Tell students to practice by reading the first line of their poem to their partner. Then ask them to reread it. “Now ask your partner if you read better the first time or the second time.” Then allow other partner to do this.

4. Pass out timed reading sheets and stopwatches, one per pair of students. As students spread around the room, tell them that each partner is going to time the other person as they read their poem. The first person getting timed will read three times and the partner will record it on the timed reading sheet, then switch and let the partner read and the first person who read will now time the next three readings done by the partner who timed first.

5. As students finish the bring sheets to teacher. Teacher uses this as assessment of fluency. Students are given paper to write a sentence and draw a picture about the poem that they read to their partner. This is an assessment of the students’ comprehension of the poem as he or she read.



Michigan Literacy Progress Profile, Sight Words, Decodable Words,


Nesbit, Kenn, Newest Poems,


Watts, Emily, Faster, Faster, Red Riding Hood,

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