Teaching Fluency
The first week of school was a haze. Our first week was a
half week (Wednesday-Friday) and there really wasn’t time to accomplish
anything academic; which I was totally fine with. Fast forward to week 2,
reading block. In my reading block I teach an ELA mini-lesson each day. My team
this year decided to start off the year by teaching a week of fluency. It’s
fairly simple for the kids, nothing heavy, and was a great ease into our
reading block and what the procedures would be like for the kiddos. I thought
our week of fluency went great and it’s completely adaptable for any grade. I
would
teach/review fluency in every grade 1st-6th! It’s a
great reminder for all students what a good, fluent reader consists of.
I used
the acronym E.A.R.S. to teach fluency and broke it up by taking one letter each
day of the week. Monday I briefly taught the acronym and what fluency was and
why it’s important then Tuesday-Friday I taught each skill more in depth! I
hope you can adapt this and use it for yourself!
So first off, EARS stands for Expression, Accuracy, Rate,
Smoothness!
Monday: I started with a youtube video from storyline
online. We watched Betty White read this adorable picture picture book and I
had the students jot down a few things that Betty did (yes, we’re on a first
name basis) that made the story interesting to listen to. Afterward I
explained that she is a fluent reader. To be a fluent reader you have to use
your EARS! Then I pulled out these cute posters that a teacher from my team made.
We read each one together and emphasized over and over that fluent readers use
their EARS! We had a lot of fun memorizing what each letter stood for. I yelled
out E and the kids would yell back EXPRESSION!
Tuesday: Today we practiced accuracy (I like saving
expression for last.) To do this I set up 8 picture books around the room. The
kids each partnered up with an inside partner siting on one side of the book
and an outside partner sitting on the other side. Each time they heard my
little bell they would take turns reading a page of the book while their
partner checked for accuracy. I chose to use picture books because I wanted an
easy text. I’ve noticed that most kids miss easy, filler words like: the, a,
at, in, is or mix those type of words up. Their partners job was tap their
finger against the page if their partner skipped or missed a word and the
partner would correct. They would read back and forth until they heard the
bell. After the bell the inside partner would rotate to the left and start again
with their new partner. The outside partner would stay wherever they were at in
the book and not start back at the beginning. I had the inside partners move 4
times to the right and then the outside partners move 4 times to the left. They
LOVED this simple activity. Even upper elementary kids like picture books!
Here are some of the books I used for this activity. Skippyjon Jones was a little too difficult, but the Fly Guy books were perfect for this activity!
Wednesday: Today we practiced rate! I just went to this website and pasted in a reading passage. Then we “zapped it” to various reading
speeds. As a class we talked about what it sounded like too slow, too fast, and
then practiced multiple times with a just right 4th grade rate. I
also practiced with them at the rate they should be at by the end of the year. For
fun we sped it up to 250 wpm and we tried to keep up. It was chaotic but a fun
ending to our activity.
Thursday: Today we discussed smoothness. This was the day I had the hardest time with. Smoothness proved to be difficult to
practice. To teach it, we discussed smooth reading vs. robotic choppy reading
and of course practiced our robot voices. I read a few pages of a book to them
and pointed out that each “phrase” or each time I took a breath was because the
book gave me a clue: punctuation. I had the kids read outloud with a person and
practice saying a phrase in 1 breath and not stopping or pausing until the book
gave them their “clue.”
Friday: EXPRESSION! We had so much fun with this day. I
showed the kids this clip (start at :23) to show what AMAZING Expression sounds like. Then I
pulled out the picture book Seriously,
Snow White is So Annoying. I made
copies of every couple pages every 2 students a few pages to work on together.
They would need to look for punctuation and think really hard about how the
author would want that page to sound. After giving them about 8 minutes to
rehearse with their partner, the groups came up 1 at a time in order of thes
tory and “presented” their pages. We had such a ball listening to all the good
expression for the most part. Afterward we talked about who we liked listening
to and why. I did have to clarify for them the difference between expression
vs. accents and weird voices.
I plan to reference EARS all throughout the year during our
reading block and especially during my reading groups! I hope you can find
something here to help in your own fluency week! Thanks for stopping by!
