Feeling Fancy with Fancy Nancy’s Fluency

Growing Independence & Fluency

Rationale: To comprehend reading, students need to be a fluent reader. Being a fluent reader means that students can read automatically and effortlessly, while also being able to remember the message that is being expressed in the text. Fluency makes reading a story more enjoyable for the student because they can more smoothly read the text and more effortlessly use expression while reading. In order to have fluency, it requires us to learn new words as sight words. Through reading, decoding, crosschecking, mental marking, and rereading, students can grow into more fluent readers. In this lesson, students will gain fluency and independence in reading by crosschecking after reading our text and repeated readings.

Materials:

- class set of Fancy Nancy by Jane O’Connor

- pencils

- stopwatch for each set of students

- coverup critter for each student

- student & teacher checklists

- white board with dry erase markers

Procedures:

1. Say: “Today, we are going to work on improving our fluency while reading. Can anybody tell me what fluency means? [Listen to responses from students.] A fluent reader can read steadily and with little to no effort while also comprehending what they are reading. Reading gets so much easier when we can fluently read books or texts! We are going to go over some strategies that will help us to add more sight words to our vocabularies.”

2. Say: “Now, we are going to look at some new words. [Write “fancy” on the board.] I am going to use my coverup critter to help us work together to figure out what this word is. I am going to use our cover up critter (aka our creepy crawly) to figure out this word! [Take our creepy crawly and use it to unveil the letters as we go.] Fff – aaa – nnn – ccc – yyy. /f/ /a/ /n/ /c/ /y/. This doesn’t make any sense! Hmm, let’s use our blending skills to blend this: ffaannccyy. Oh, it’s fancy! For this word, our a is making the short a sound. Our creepy crawly is helpful when working with words we have never seen before!”

3. Say: “For our next example, we are going to work on our knowledge of crosschecking. Who can tell me what crosschecking is again? [Listen to responses from students.] That’s right! Crosschecking is when we use the rest of the sentence to help us understand and identify a harder word. We are going to use a sentence from our book. This sentence is now written on the board: “That’s a fancy way of saying purple.” We are going to pretend we ae reading this in our book now. I want you to identify if I sound like a fluent reader or not after I read this sentence, okay? Here we go! “That’s a fancy way of [pause] sss-aaa-yyy-iii-nnn-ggg” Wait, what? That doesn’t make any sense. Let’s keep reading and see if we can figure it out. “purple”. OH, saying as in talking about something! So, our full sentence would be, “That’s a fancy way of saying purple.” That makes more sense already! So, by using the rest of the sentence, I was able to figure out what the word was and what it meant. Did I sound fluent when I was reading? [Listen to responses from students.] No, I didn’t sound fluent because I had to slow down my reading to help me know the word I was missing. Alright, someone now needs to read the sentence again and since we mental marked it, we can now know what the hard word was.”

4. Say: “Now, we are going to read our book for the day: Fancy Nancy by Jane O’Connor. This story is about Nancy who is a super fancy little girl. She wants to take her boring. Normal family and turn them into a fancy family. Do you think she will be able to do it? Is something going to go wrong with it? I guess we just must keep reading! Now, I want you to silently read the book to yourself, and we are going to find out what happens with Nancy’s family! If you get stuck and need some help, what should we use? [Listen to responses from students.] That’s right, our creepy crawly! [Give out class set of books] [Give students time to read through the book individually and write down answers to our comprehension questions afterwards.]”

5. After walking around and making sure each student is completely done with the first reading of the book, teachers we will instruct students to pair up with a partner. Say: “With your partner, you are going to read the book two more times per each person. The first time, you will not correct or help your friends in any way. Just listen to each other read to each other.”

6. [Teacher must pass out their recording sheets and their stopwatches.] Say: “Now, we are going to play our fluency game of the day. Our reader is going to read the book while our listener times them with the timer I just gave you. Once they have finished reading, the listener will record the time on the sheet that was just passed out to you. Then, our listener will become the reader and our reader will become the listener. This basically means that they will switch jobs. As you are the listener, you should be aware of if the reading is matching all the things on our checklist like reading more words, faster, steadier/smoother, and the expression they use. We will repeat this process three times to help fill all the spots on your sheet I just gave you.”

7. [Teacher calls up each student up individually and bring their fluency checklist and their book they chose.] Say: “Alright, it is now your turn to read to me! Let’s dive in!” [Record their time of reading with you as well as others.] [After each student is done, teachers should have each student answer the four overarching comprehension questions and take them up as an assessment of what they learned.]

Fluency Checklist for Each Student:

Title of the Book:

Reader’s Name:

Partner’s Name:

Date:

Make a Checkmark if the Following Things Improve After 2nd and 3rd Tries:

Remembered More Words Fluently __ __

Read Faster __ __

Read Steadier __ __

Read With More Expression __ __

Reading Tracker:

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