Fluency Mini-lesson Danielle Dolecki

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March 17 2017; 11:25-11:45 (continued into March 21 ) st

Mrs. Lams 5th Grade Class, Plains Elementary

Small group (5 students)

Goal: Work with lower level students on faster reading

Materials:
Mad lib papers
Stop watches
Pencils

Procedure:
5 min Directions
Today, we are going to work on faster reading by playing a game
called Mad Libs. Has anyone played this before? ask student to
explain game to other students
Mad Libs is a game where you will first be given a list of parts of
speech. What are nouns? (examples) What are verbs? (examples)
What are adjectives? (examples)
You get to pick any words you want that fit that category. Next, I will
give you the paragraph and you will fill in the words in the blanks.
When you are done, you will read your paragraph to a partner. I will
give you each a timer and you will record each other to see how fast
you can read the paragraph. Make sure you write down your time
after you are done reading!
Lastly, after each partner has read his or her paragraph once, you
will try to beat your time!
2 min I will pass out sheets with categories and blanks. Students will fill
out the sheet.
I will answer any questions.
2 min I will pass out the Mad Lib sheet with the paragraph. Students will
fill in the first word in the blank with a 1, the second word in the
blank with a 2, etc.
30 sec. I will have students find partners (student sitting next to him/her).
There will be one set of partners and one group of 3.
5 min Students will read their paragraphs to each other. The student
listening will time the student reading. After the student is done
reading, he or she will write down his or her time for round 1. This
will repeat for the other student.
5 min Students will read their paragraphs to each other again. The
students will write their times for round 2.
1 min Closure
 What did you think of this activity?
Did you get quicker on the second time?
What do you think would happen if you read it a third time?
 I used the Mad Libs fluency activity with a small group in my fifth grade

practicum class. I chose this activity because I really enjoyed doing this activity in our

READ class and thought my students would enjoy the humorous aspect. My CT

recommended I work with the lowest level readers on this topic because they could use

the most help with fluency. There were so many Mad Libs to choose from and I

decided on the Solar System topic because I thought both boys and girls would be

interested in the topic and it was somewhat related to science. She approved this option

for the lesson and thought the paragraph was at an appropriate level for these students.

Students really enjoyed the activity. We ended up having to do the activity over

two days because students struggled way, way more than I was expecting with nouns,

verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. We reviewed in the beginning of the lesson what each

part of speech was; however, I had to explain each several more times during the

activity and give students several examples to choose from. Choosing the words for

their paragraphs took the entire 20 minutes the first day. On the second day, we finished

the reading and timing part of the activity. I ended up filling in their paragraphs to save

time and only had the students read and time themselves. The students really enjoyed

getting to use the stopwatches and were very competitive over getting the best times.

The students also didnt seem to find the activity as funny as I was expecting them to.

Only one student stumbled while reading because he was laughing and I was expecting

that to be a more common problem.

While the students were reading, I noticed that the students were fairly fast

readers on the words that they were familiar with. Almost all the students struggled with
eventually and subside. I think that overall this was an appropriate text for the

students because each only made about one to two errors. All of the students improved

their time on their second read. The fastest time was 46 seconds and the slowest was

1:21 on the second read. The students wanted to read a third time to see if they could

further beat their time.

If I were to do this mini-lesson again, I would want to pre-assess students

knowledge of parts of speech before beginning. I would have prepared more of a review

and provided a sheet with more examples of each for students to reference if I knew

that this would have been such a large gap in understanding. Overall, they were very

engaged and I think this was a beneficial and fun way to practice fluency.

In my future classroom, I will need students running records assessment data to

know where students are with their reading accuracy and speed. I would select

passages that are easier for each group of students in allow students to be able to

practice with rate and expression and not struggle with individual words. I would

practice fluency in the same homogenous groups that the students are in for guided

reading instruction. For whole class activities, I would assign parts of passages based

on levels. Ideally, I would love to spend about 20% of my language arts block on

fluency. There are so many fun, engaging, and entertaining ways to practice fluency and

I want to integrate as many strategies as possible. First, modeling fluency is imperative

so students know what fluent reading sounds like and what they are working towards. I

love the idea of visiting readers, storylineonline.net, and read alouds. I also want to be

sure to include time for SSR or Drop Everything and Read everyday after lunch so

students are having time to relax and read something that interests them. I also want to
use this as a time to model my own love of reading. Next, I love the idea of

incorporating a little bit of acting through readers theater and poems and books with

dialogue to practice expression. Especially with readers theater, I would make the

activity a week long so students would have plenty of practice and then perform at the

end of the week. To practice speed, I want to use mad libs and tongue twisters. We.

Lastly, I love the idea of giving students accountability for their own fluency progress by

having students assess their own reading through recording and evaluating. I am so

excited to start incorporating effective and engaging fluency instruction in my future

classroom.