Fluency+ideas

Repeated / Shared Reading

 * Use one text for the whole week
 * Each day, time students as they read it, and record their time. As they practice, they will see themselves get faster at it.
 * Use texts at instructional level, or poetry
 * start by modeling the reading of the text with expression, pauses, phrasing, intonation first (or model the beginning of the text)
 * give corrective feedback as they read (correct errors)
 * ask a different comprehension question each day after reading: have students make connections, summarize, ask questions, make inferences (poetry lends itself to inference)
 * often spiral back to poems or books from previous weeks so they can keep those up as well
 * ways to practice repeated readings (vary these by day of the week)
 * echo read (teacher models, students echo)
 * shared reading with a partner
 * performance: students perform different parts for their peers
 * assign re-reading at home for families
 * Use more big books and predictable texts for fluency / re-reading
 * re-read and have students experiment with intonation, especially with dialogue, or stressing different words
 * How did the character say that? Angrily? Sadly? Excitedly? Try it different ways and see which one seems to fit best
 * Have students (or do as shared writing) write short scripts of small parts of a story. After reading the story, pick one small scene to turn into a "play" with dialogue. Decide what each character might say and write it out. Read the script chorally, model how different characters' voices might sound, then have students take turns acting it out, playing different parts.
 * Students might "become" a character, holding up paper plates on Popsicle sticks with eyes cut out over their faces. They can draw the characters' faces as they see them on the plates, then get interviewed about themselves. The teacher is usually the interviewer.
 * Graph how long it takes them to read: [|fluency graph.doc]

Poetry

 * rhyme and rhythm makes it fun to use for fluency
 * good for phrasing and expression practice
 * rewrite the poem as prose in a short shared writing exercise; use the prose as well as the poetry version for repeated practice

Word study ideas that comes from the texts used for repeated readings

 * make word webs for words with multiple meanings, connecting ideas that students associate with the different meanings
 * find words (especially rhyming words) in the poem that have common spelling patterns; list other words students can think of with those patterns
 * sort words from the poem and other words students come up with, by spelling patterns
 * do searches / brainstorms of words that follow certain rules that occur in the poems: soft c and hard c; -ck words; kn- words (use dictionaries to find words and list them, or have kids brainstorm them or look for them in other books)