Improve Student Reading Fluency Even When You're Not Around
2nd Grade is what we call a “bridge year”. The kids have been working heavily on phonemic awareness and phonics all through K and 1st grade. 3rd-5th grade promises complex texts that require a well-developed vocabulary and stamina. 2nd grade is the year to bridge the kids from early literacy skills to advanced literacy skills.
That bridge? Fluency.
Fluency has really taken the spotlight in recent years. It was cited as the “forgotten element of reading instruction” for a hot minute, but we’re giving credit where credit’s due now. Fluency work matters.
If I could stand on my soapbox for y’all for just a minute: fluency is not isolated work. There is no reason to separate fluency from actual reading. Phonics instruction (at least part of it) can work this way. Phonemic awareness certainly is a different thing from reading. But drilling kids on isolated words and phrases and calling it ‘fluency practice’ is poor execution of the research. It’s not best practice. Practicing short spurts of phrases or words to work on phrasing and intonation, or maybe just sight word fluency as a separate skill from reading….YES. Definitely make those things part of your fluency instruction.
But, how do students become more fluent readers? By reading! Lots of reading modeling, exposure, practice, and immersion.
One way I like to be intentional about this, but not add a separate time to my reading block…is to create one station in my classroom that is devoted to fluency. If you do "Daily 5” (or any variation of it) the ‘read to someone’ area lends itself well to fluency work. It works even better if you have two kids of different reading abilities, so there is an opportunity for peer mentorship!
Here are some examples:
Partner Reading
Kids simply read a book together, EEKK style, and fill out a comprehension organizer at the end of it. If kids are on different levels, it gives the lower-achieving student a chance to have fluent reading modeled for them, receive support with decoding, etc. This takes some training and modeling for SURE, but it’s so worth it.
The BEST books for partner reading are the Piggie & Elephant books by Mo Willems and You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You books. You can not convince me otherwise. (affiliate links below)
Expression Exercise
Like partner reading…with a twist. Students choose expression cards and take turns reading to each other in that voice (angry, excited, sad, confused, etc.) Great for developing prosody and voice!
Poetry Performance
Put out some of your best poetry anthologies…Shel Silverstein is great for this center. The kids “perform” the poems for each other. These short, bite-sized readings are accessible for all students, and give the kids a chance to really ‘get into it’, which leads to more fluent reading!
Punctuation Police
One big part of reading fluently is noticing punctuation, and how the author intended for a story to be read! Punctuation Police is an activity that I always do whole group with my kiddos near the beginning of the year when I’m talking about fluent reading. The kids then take that same lesson and repeat it with each other with a variety of books. (The Pigeon books by Mo Willems are great for this!)
The whole group lesson looks like this:
CLICK HERE TO SEE MY POST ABOUT SENTENCE TYPES
Putting activities like this out in my room help my students to work on fluency, even when they’re not reading right in front of me. If you want the printable directions and materials for these centers, you can find them in my center pack!
