Teaching Fluency with E.A.R.S

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 1^st-6^th! 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 4^th 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!