How NOT to Read Fluently

Today, my students spent some of our reading time practicing fluency.  Especially at this time of year, I go out of my way to make it fun.  (Brain research shows us that "fun" is a big motivator, but I think teachers knew that before the research was done!)

Click image to download freebie.

There are 4 important parts to fluency:

1. automaticity in word recognition 
2. accurate word recognition
3. rate (speed) of reading
4. prosody, or expression

I thought this activity would be perfect to put into my emergency sub plans.  It's got limited materials and is a skill that needs to be practiced frequently.  I've typed up the directions for you to download and put into your own emergency plans.  Come on over to Elementary Matters to learn more!

Enjoy!

Getting the Most out of Poetry

Come on over to see what I have my kids do with poetry throughout the week!

This can EASILY be adapted to be a center during the week.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Syllables... and Then Some

Teaching about syllables is important to help readers become fluent readers.  Being a fluent reader is important in comprehension.  Did you know there are 6 different kinds of syllables? Come on over to Elementary Matters and find how to teach students about syllables.  There are a couple of great links and a freebie for you!Sally

A Few Thoughts About Fluency and a Freebie

There are many studies on fluency these days.  One of my favorite is that fluency is directly related to comprehension.

Here's a freebie to help kiddos become fluent with short and long a sounds.  They can use these pages as word sorts, or just practice reading each row to practice short and long vowel words.

There's a page of nonsense words and a page of real words.  The nonsense words are great for those readers who depend so much on their visual memory that they really haven't developed fluency on the skill of "sounding out".

I'm sure we all have a few of those!  (You can spot these kids by their spelling... if they spell birthday brithday or girl is gril.  They remember what the word looks like, but they don't listen to the sounds of the word in order!)  Enjoy your freebie!



Sally

LETRS Training - The First Seven Points

I just finished up my second of 3 weeks of training for the LETRS program.  Hop on over to Elementary Matters to find out what LETRS is all about!
Sally

Building Fluency With Poetry

Hey gang! I wanted to share a wonderful resource that I found that has several free poetry lessons to teach fluency with, as well as a book you can order that has a poem for each week and activities to go along with them. If you are interested in learning more head on over to my blog and see how I used this resource in my guided reading groups.

Reading Fluency

Come over to Keeping Up With Class 
For a final chance to enter my giveaway,
A freebie from Walgreen's,

And to see how I use this little giraffe to chart my students fluency.