Ms. Cieslak's Reading Lesson Designs
Growing Fluency Design: Making Muffins with Fluency
Morganne Cieslak
Rationale: This lesson aims to help students develop fluency in longer, more developed texts. Fluent reading is reading in which words are recognized automatically. With automatic word recognition, reading becomes faster, smoother, and more expressive. Readers will to be able to read and reread decodable words in text. Fluency depends on getting many more words into sight vocabulary. When children are decoding words and self-correcting in context, they are adding sight vocabulary. In this lesson students will practice their fluency and gain experience through repeated and timed reading practice with partners. At the end of the lesson, the teacher will gauge each students’ reading fluency by calculating WPM in a repeated reading practice.
Materials: Stopwatches, copies of the partner reading checklist, copies of the reading comprehension worksheet, cover-up critters for each student, pencils, class set of If You Give a Moose a Muffin, fluency charts for each student (teacher’s record only)
Procedures:
1. Say: “Today we are going to work on our fluency in reading! This means that you are going to become professionals at reading words quickly and correctly. We are able to make these sight words by sounding them out and blending, finishing the sentence to crosscheck, and rereading the sentence to remember the word. Even good readers need to practice making their reading smooth and expressive. We will practice this today by reading the same book more than once with a partner. When you reread the same story, your reading gets easier because you learn the words so well they jump out at you. Then you will be able to understand more of the story. If you read the story aloud to others, you will sound like a professional storyteller which makes it easier for your listener to understand. This is called repeated reading! Ready to give it a try? Let’s begin!”
2. The teacher will model how to crosscheck and decode by using an example sentence written on the board. Say: “Let’s take a look at this sentence on the board.” (motion to the sentence written on the white board: I had a tough time keeping the moose away from the muffins. ) “I am going to try reading it aloud to you. ‘I had a ttt—OO—ug—hhuhh …time keeping the s-n-ee-ak-y moose from those muffins.’ Hmm, I had a feeling I would make some mistakes since that was the first time I read it. Let me try reading it again with some help from my cover-up critter. ‘I had a ttt—ou—huh time keeping the sn-eak-y moose from those muffins.’ Oh that tricky word must be tough like something was hard to do. Okay now that I know the words in the sentence I can reread it faster. ‘I had a tough time keeping the sneaky moose from the muffins.’ I am going to try again to make it sound a little smoother and more expressive: ‘I had a tough time keeping the sneaky moose from those muffins.’ That time, the words flowed smoothly and it was a lot more fun to read.”
3. Say: “Practice makes perfect! All good readers get better with practice. When I first read the sentence on the board it was difficult because I had never read it before, and didn’t immediately recognize some of the words. The second time I read the sentence, it was getting easier because I knew the words since I had just read them and understood what they meant in the sentence. By the third time I read the sentence, I was able to say it smoothly and add expression! I became fluent in reading by rereading the sentence until I understood it. We get more fluent because we remember the words that slowed us down, just like the word tough slowed my reading down. Once I finished the sentence and reread it, I was able to figure it out. That is how you will become fluent readers, too!”
4. Say: “To practice reading fluently, we are going to read the book ‘If You Give a Moose a Muffin’. This book is about a very big and hungry moose. He stumbles upon your house and you give him one of your mother’s homemade muffins. Of course, he wants some jam to go with it. What else could he possibly want? Do you think he will eat all of your food? Let’s read to see what other mischievous things this moose gets into!”
5. Children will be given a copy of the book, their own cover-up critters, peer fluency checklists, reading comprehension worksheets, and a stopwatch. Say: “Now we are going to practice reading fluently by working with a partner. Each of you will take turns reading the story. You will each read the story three times total. Remember to crosscheck by finishing the sentence, even if you come across a word you don’t know. Go back and reread the sentence and use your cover-up critters to help you figure out the words that slowed you down. While you’re reading for the first round, your partner will time you using a stopwatch. They will record the time on a piece of paper. Your partner will listen closely the second and third time to see if you are reading smoother, faster, with more expression, and/or remembering more words. They will mark this feedback on the peer fluency checklist. When discussing with your partner, be sure all feedback is positive: we are all friends and like telling our friends good things about them. After you both finish reading and filling out the peer fluency chart, talk about the book with your partner. After you have finished, work independently at your desk to complete the reading comprehension worksheet and then turn it in to me.”
6. Teacher collects peer fluency sheets after repeated readings are complete; assess each student’s fluency by using the following formula: words x 60 / seconds. After using the formula to assess each student’s fluency, call each student up individually to read a few pages from the book while the class is working on the reading comprehension worksheet. The teacher will take note of words per minute and graph their improvement on individual fluency charts (horse racing and passing flagged benchmarks to get to the finish line = goal of 85 WPM).
References: Brown, Sherell. Flying into Fluency. https://sites.google.com/view/readingwithmsbrown/growing-independence-fluency
Query, Sarah. Marching for Fluency. https://sarahquery.wixsite.com/lessondesign/growing-independence-and-fluency
Instructional Book: Numeroff, Laura. If You Give a Moose a Muffin. Harper Collins, 1991. 32 pages.
Assessment Worksheet questions:
1. What reminded the moose that he wanted to be a ghost for Halloween?
A. candy
B. the sheet
C. the muffins
D. the paint
2. What kind of jam did the moose like with his muffins?
A. strawberry
B. blueberry
C. blackberry
D. raspberry
3. What did the moose make out of the socks?
A. mittens
B. slippers
C. sock puppets
D. paint brushes
4. What did the moose ask for when he opened the door?
A. jam
B. a sheet
C. a sweater
D. more muffins
5. What did the moose and the boy paint in the house?
A. the walls
B. the furniture
C. self portraits
D. scenery
