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So.We.Don’t.Sound.Like.A.Robot.

Have you ever said this to your students?  “Boys and girls, practice reading smoothly and with expression so.you.don’t.sound.like.a.ro.bot.”  Well, I have.  Sometimes I say it all day.  If you know me even a little bit as a teacher, you know I’m BIG on fluency development.  Even though the majority of my first graders are still sounding out CVC words and beginning to stretch out CVCe words, we talk about fluency a lot! In the beginning, my biggest goal is for the kids to understand what fluency is and learn different “self-help” techniques they can use to grow in their fluency development.

Here are some of the things we’re up to this week as we work on our fluency.

Readers’ Theater: Lights, Camera, Read! We started our first Readers’ Theater on Monday on an adaptation of The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything.  The repetitive lines allow all students to be successful and they love the fun story events. We will perform this Readers’ Theater to a couple of the older classes during the week of Halloween.


 
Voracious Reading:  I emphasize the importance of reading lots and lots of books, all the time.  This week, we had another discussion of “just right” books.  We have these discussions often at the beginning or end of our mini-lessons.  It helps to have a couple of students find a “just right” book from their book bin and explain to their peers why it is a “just right” book for them.  This is our comprehension song for the week:
I did not create this song.  I wrote it on this anchor chart a few years ago after a friend 
taught it to me.  Leave a comment if you know who the author is! I love it! 🙂

Understanding Punctuation: Having discussions about punctuation in writing and reading can help your kiddos read with expression. It helps to really discuss why the author included that particular piece of punctuation in the text.  For example, “What is the character excited about?” “Why is the character excited?”  “How do the illustrations help you understand that the character is excited?” These are all questions that will really get your students thinking about the story and the emotions behind the text.

We read this very popular book, Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka

 
 
I read the book 3 times.  First, I read it without expression and I didn’t show the pictures. I asked the students to tell me what was happening in the story between the two boys.  They had no idea!  The second time, I read it with expression and showed the illustrations.  They talked in partners about the differences between my first read and my second read, and we also discussed the story.  During the third read, the students read the book aloud to me.  They had to use the punctuation marks to show expression.  This is a wonderful book that is very helpful for fluency mini-lessons! 🙂 
 Here are the fluency strategies we’ve added to our CAFE board this week:

Thanks for catching up with us on what we’re doing this week in our mini-lessons.  I feel sure that by the end of the year, we.won’t.sound.like.robots.anymore. 😉
I’ll leave you with this little picture:  
My hint:  Be sure to stop by this weekend for something you don’t want to miss…

 

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6 Comments

    1. Can't you share them as long as you don't charge for them? I know I have seen others on TPT (not as cute as yours) that are free because of the Daily 5 copyright. That is, if you would be willing to share them for free. They are great!

    2. Hi Karlyn,

      Thank you so much! You are so sweet. 🙂 It has been said that freebies are allowed but there have also been some issues recently where even freebies have been asked to be removed. That made it seem like a gray area to me, so I have made a personal choice not to share any D5 things for free even, and to just keep them for personal use in my room. I hope you understand. 🙂 Thank you again for your sweet compliments. 🙂

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