Growing Independence and Fluency | literacylessonplans

Growing Independence and Fluency: Hi! Fly Guy

Rationale: This lesson will help students develop better crosschecking and decoding skills as they read a fun and entertaining story about a boy and his pet fly. The students will improve their accuracy, rate, expression, and use appropriate punctuation when reading. The teacher will review how fluency is important when reading and what happens if readers are not fluent. This lesson has an easy text that students can decode and the teacher models what fluent and non-fluent reading looks like to help students understand the importance of fluency. We can use the fluency formula after the reading to measure how fluent the students are and if they are struggling to decode. Using the formula (words read correctly x 60) divided by (number of seconds to read the passage) will tell you how fluent the reader is.

Materials:

6 copies of Hi! Fly Guy by Tedd Arnold

Paper and Pencil to record student’s progress

Review Questions to check for comprehension

Procedures:

To begin the teacher should share some information about the text and start with a book talk. “This story is about a special fly who becomes a very helpful friend to a young boy who wants to find a pet for the Amazing Pet Show. Let’s see what happens to the fly and the boy”. Next model for students what a not so fluent reader sounds like and what a fluent reader sounds like. “Fluent readers should sound as if they are telling a story not as if they are reading a word and pausing before reading the next.” “Non-fluent readers sound very rough and hard to understand as they read like every word sounds choppy. They sound like this: “The fl-e-e, fly w-as mad. He wahnt-ed, wanted to be free. He stamp-ed, stomped his foot and said ---- B-U-S, BUZZ!” “Did that sound very easy to understand? If readers are more fluent then they are easier to understand and you get the message from the text.”
Teacher will model how to solve problems in reading by crosschecking and decoding. “So I know there is a really tough word to read here in the story which is (show the word “Amazing”) and I have trouble reading that. Some ways I remember I can help myself is to break it up into word chunks that I can understand better. Another way I can help myself is by looking at that word and reading it “A-maz-ing” so I know part of that but it sounds like “Amazing”. Does that make sense in the text “The Amazing Pet Show?” Yes it does so I can continue reading.
After modeling a rough, choppy reading of a text the teacher now models a smoother faster reading of the same text and asks the students, “Was that a better reading? Did it make more sense? Did it sound better?” Share with students the key points on fluent and non-fluent reading: non-fluent is fast, choppy, words are mispronounced, and you ignore punctuation while fluent reading the words flow smoothly together and punctuation is not ignored.
Next students will read Hi! Fly Guy aloud to a partner and the teacher will record how long it takes a student to read the text and any miscues the student makes. Each student will take turns reading the text to each other or the teacher and discussing the story.
Students will review the story after reading with the teacher and answer some questions to share their thoughts on the text and what happened.
1. Review Questions:
  1. Who were the main characters?
  2. What was Buzz’s problem?
  3. How did Fly Guy help him?
  4. Do you think this could actually happen in real life?
Assessment: Lastly the teacher will mark for students comprehension of the text and its message as well as calculate the students fluency using the formula formula (words read correctly x 60) divided by (number of seconds to read the passage)

References:

Book ideas from: http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/milestones-expectations/2nd-grade-reading-stumble

Text: Hi! Fly Guy by Tedd Arnold

Alex Lesson Plans: http://alex.state.al.us/lesson_view.php?id=32583

Modeling and teaching ideas from: http://www.startwithabook.org/fluent-kids and http://www.readingrockets.org/helping/target/phonics