Fluency

Happy Wednesday! We're over the hump of the first full week back to school after holiday break.

Before break the sisters and I decided we needed to incorporate an intense fluency routine into our day. Our kids are so choppy I sometimes wonder if robots are reading! We found an awesome fluency pack on TpT made by Courtney Keimer. It includes 35 passages that will take you through the year, with reading levels appropriate to the average second grade student.

So you're probably wondering how we work it... 

First we made bar graphs to match each of the passages. We copied enough passages to take us through the end of the year. Then we copied the graph to the back of the passage.

 

Each student was given a Duotang folder to keep everything organized. Inside the folder is a page protector. Inside the page protector we keep our current passage.  The page protector is wonderful because they can write on it with dry erase markers and they wipe off clean. The old passages will be kept behind the page protector. 

The students were paired by level. We paired high readers with low readers and worked toward the middle. On Monday the students were introduced to our new fluency routine. We have the partners play 'rock, paper, scissors' to see who reads first.  We set a timer on the Smart Board for one minute. While one partner is reading the other partner is tracking the words and marking any errors. When the timer goes off the partner marks the last word read and counts the number of words that were read correctly. Then we switch roles. Once both students have their total numbers calculated they return to their desk and graph. They graph everyday to track improvement. 

I have to admit, day one took us about 40 minutes to go over all the directions and expectations and to do cold timings. Tuesday we cut it in half and it took about about 20-25 minutes. Today we were down to 15 minutes! They are getting the hang out it! We will keep you updated on how this is working and if we are seeing progress in their fluency.

We want to know... how do you get your kids to be fluent readers???   



- Sister 3 -