Building Fluency with Fall Fluency Activities

Fall is only a few days away and there are so many wonderful books about fall to help students build fluency. Themes are great for students who need more practice learning the target vocabulary and become more automatic with their new words. Fluency is one of the 5 Big Ideas in Reading. Fluency is necessary for students to comprehend what they are reading. Students need to read in order to become fluent but we know that struggling readers spend less time reading. They not only struggle with fluency but also with comprehension. Themes also give students students more opportunities to learn the targeted vocabulary with a variety of activities and multiple exposures.

For the beginning readers, fluency begins with a single word. There are several activities to help students learn the fall target vocabulary that you see in the sample from my new Fall Fluency Unit below. For ESL students and struggling readers there are those cards with pictures and also without. There are 2 fluency activities called Fast Match and Point and Say that students play with a partner.

Students also need to learn phrases and then sentences. Look at the example of the sentence below. Students not only learn the fall vocabulary words: wheelbarrow and leaves, but sight words: the, is, in, of and phrases: in front of the, full of.  When students struggle to read and labor over each word they struggle with comprehension. The phrase: in front of, should be read together without pausing to indicate where the dog is.

Here are some of the Phrase Activities, Sentence Activities, and Assessment from my Fall Fluency Unit. There are also Build a Sentence Fluency Cards included.

Students who are fluent, read with expression. They understand what is happening by the way they read. I love using poetry to teach fluency and using expression.  Here is a poem from my new Fall Literacy Activities Packet : Students can add the actions of picking the apples, putting them in a basket, washing and slicing them, and then eating them.

Poems are short and help reluctant readers participate when doing echo reading, choral, and whole class readings. The more they read it, the more fluent they become. It also build confidence. Besides reading passages at both the 1st and 2nd Grade levels,  I've also included 2 Readers Theater Partner Scripts like the one below.

There are also 3 differentiated leveled Reading Assessments. This packet is great for ESL students, Special Ed teachers, and RTI besides regular classroom teachers. If you would like to check out all the activities and materials in this packet please click on the image below and to read the description and download the Preview file. The Preview file includes sample pages of many of the activities and materials in this packet.

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Building Fluency: Tips, Strategies, Activities, and Freebies

Fluency is one of the important big ideas of reading. What research tells us is that students can become fluent by:

• Explicit instruction, guidance, and feedback
• Practicing reading with appropriate texts

The best way to build fluency is through Repeated Readings. Here is a great video of 1 Repeated Reading Method I have seen used. I used a different one where after the 1st reading I have my students go back and practice reading it a few times before timing them again. Students love graphing their progress! 

You can download a Research Report on Fluency by clicking HERE. For many beginning and struggling students fluency begins with words,  phrases, and sentences before they are ready to read texts.

Paired Unison Reading is another strategy where teachers or other adult readers can practice reading in unison with the struggling reader until the struggling reader feels ready to read alone. If the struggling reader makes an error the teacher or adult reader corrects the word, then practices that sentence in unison with the struggling reader and then the struggling reader continues alone. Research by Topping and Whitley (1987, 1990) found that this method of paired reading can significantly improve reading fluency.

Parents can be very instrumental in helping students build fluency. At home parents can read a poem or passage to their child followed by reading in unison and then having the child read the poem or passage to the parent.

Choral reading is another great strategy for building fluency. It engages 100% of your students with lots of reading opportunity. It is highly recommended as part of your fluency building instruction.

Another great strategy I have used a lot with my ESL and Struggling Readers is Echo reading. This is a strategy where the teacher reads a sentence or paragraph and the student listens and follows. After the teacher stops, the student echos back the same sentence or paragraph following with their finger to make sure they haven't memorized what you have read.

I have created a new "Back to School" Fluency Activities Packet  that helps students build fluency with words, phrases, sentences, texts, poems, and readers theater all related to the theme of "Back to School." Using themes to build fluency gives students more time to see, say, read, and write the targeted vocabulary which not only helps build fluency but makes them feel more successful. You can use all of the strategies above with the texts, poems, and readers theater in this packet.

The Word Fluency Activities include Picture/Word Cards, Word Cards for Fluency Match Games, "Point and Say" Fluency Activities, a fun Card Game "Roll the Die and Read the Word" Game and Word Reading Assessments.

There are several activities at the Phrase and Sentence level of fluency and assessments as you can see below.

Finally there are Sentence Building Fluency Cards, Reading Texts that are differentiated at the 1st and 2nd grade reading levels, Poems, and a Readers Theater script as well as Reading Texts for Assessment with Student Progress Reading Charts.

You can download the Preview file to see sample pages of all the materials and activities in this packet.

I have put together a free "Back to School" Fluency Activities Packet which includes Fluency Building Cards and a Readers Theater Script that are all new and would be a great addition to the complete packet above.

You can download this free Back to School Fluency Packet by clicking on the image below.

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Building Fluency: Tips and Activities for Beginning Readers

When I first started Elementary ESL students it was before State Benchmark Testing and Annual Yearly Progress. I spent most of my time with the most limited English students on speaking. When AYP came along and high stakes testing, the emphasis turned to all of the language skills of speaking, reading, writing, and listening. At that time I was more concerned with teaching vocabulary and building background for my students until I became part of our school leadership team. I had some wonderful opportunities to go to some outstanding conferences around the country with top reading experts. I realized how important fluency was to reading comprehension, especially when I did Dibels testing every week with my 2nd and 3rd grade learning center students who were reading below grade level.

Fluency is one of the 5 skills necessary to achieve reading proficiency. For students to comprehend what they read they need to become fluent. They need to:

• recognize words automatically
• group words into meaningful phrases
• apply rapid phonic,morphemic, and contextual analyses to identify unknown words

The only way that students become fluent readers is to read. Over the past 20 years research has identified repeated reading as the key strategy for improving students' fluency skills.  Since accuracy and automaticity are a fundamental principals of fluency, teachers who work with beginning readers need to spend a significant amount of time on basic word recognition and word analysis skills. To be effective, teachers need to provide daily opportunities for students to learn to read words accurately.

We all have made sight word cards for our students to practice but I'd like to share a few new pair activities you may want to try with your students in addition to what you already do. Here are a few that I found on the Florida Center for Reading Research website. These are all timed activity to help students increase their speed. Although they are timed activities, they would be great activities without timing to give students more opportunities to learn sight words, vocabulary words, or word families. These would also be great for RTI for struggling readers.

The first one is called Fast Match

To play Fast Match you will need 2 sets of the same words for each pair of students, a timer, pencil, and Time Recording Sheet.

• Each student places their ten words face up in rows like the picture above. 
• Start the timer. (you may want to practice this a few times without the timer.)
• Student 1 looks at the cards and says a word, eg. "water" and student 2 quickly finds the matching word in his row.
• If a match is made, student 1 picks up both cards, reads them, and places them in a stack.
• If a match is not made, student 1 reads another word.
• Reverse the roles, and continue playing until all the cards are matched.
• Stop the timer and record the time.
• Repeat the activity attempting to increase the speed.

The next activity is called I Point, You Say. You will need 1 set of word cards and 1 copy of the word list, laminated, pencil, and Time Record Sheet. 

Word Cards

List of Words

• Place high frequency word cards face up in rows on a flat surface.
• Place the list of words and time in the center.
• Provide each student with a Time Recording Sheet.
• Working in pairs, student 1 picks up the list of words and student 2 sits in front of the word cards.
• Student 1 starts the time and reads the first word from the list of words.
• Student 2 looks quickly for the word card and points to it.
• If the student is correct, student 2 reads the next word on the list.
• If incorrect, student 1 provides assistance.
• Continue until all the words are read and identified. 
• Student 1 stops the timer and student 2 records his time on his sheet.
• Reverse roles and attempt to increase speed and accuracy.

Here is a sample of the Time Record.

The last activity I want to share with you is called Fast Words:

To play Fast Words you will 2 copies of the word list and laminate, a timer, Vis a Vis Markers, Time Sheets, and Timed Reading Progress Charts for each student.

• Place 2 copies of the target word practice sheets, Vis a Vis markers, and timer in the center.
• Before timing, students practice reading the words to each other.
• Student 1 sets the timer for 1 minute and tells student 2 to begin.
• Student 2 reads all the words across the page while Student 2 follows with his Vis a Vis pen marking any words that are read incorrectly.
• If all the words on the sheet are read Student 2 goes back to the top of the page and continues reading.
• When the timer goes off, Student 1 circle the last word read and counts the # of words read correctly.
• Student 2 records the number on his Time Sheet.
• Reverse the roles and repeat the activity to increase speed and accuracy.
• After both students have recorded their # of words correct per minute they will fill in their Timed Reading Progress Chart.

For those of you that use the Fry word lists, I have put together a free packet of all these activities and the 1st 50 Fry word cards, word list cards time sheets, and timed reading progress chart. Just click on the image below to download your free packet.

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