So you completed Fluency Boot Camp… Now what?
Fluency is a reading skill that requires maintenance and practice, especially for students who struggle with fluency. After explicitly modeling and teaching the components of oral reading fluency, you should make it a priority to schedule time for practice and reinforcement throughout the school year.
Fluency Reinforcement Activities
It is important for students to practice their fluency skills on a regular basis! Reinforce the components of fluency through weekly/monthly activities.
Some activities I recommend are:
- Weekly Poetry (model/echo/choral read)
- Readers Theater
- Fluency Passages (charting wpm progress each week)
- Fluency Speed Drills (using lists of words, phrases, or sentences)
- Phrase-Cued Passages (or passages where students mark their OWN phrases using scoop lines or phrase marks)
NOTE: Resources for all these activities can be found on my Fluency Boot Camp blog post. Even though I use the activities during the 1-Week Boot Camp, many of the activities can be modified, repeated, and revisited throughout the year.
Fluency Resource Roundup
Dolch Word Sentences
I love these printable Dolch Sight Word Sentences by School Sparks. Each week I introduce a new sentence list (levels go from Pre-Primer to 3rd Grade) and I have my students draw in the scoop lines. They then read them each day, following the scoops with their fingers, to build up their automatic phrasing and reading rate. These are also great for developing automaticity with sight words! (If you like those, you’ll also like the Noun sentences that are available for printing if you scroll toward the bottom.)
Introducing Daily Fluency
Perhaps you want to do more than integrate poetry or readers theater into your ELA block once a month, or perhaps you’re looking for a daily practice for some of your students beyond sporadic speed drills?
This past month, I started something new with my students called “Daily Fluency.” This is a follow-up to my Fluency Boot Camp, and every day the students complete a Daily Fluency Activity sheet that incorporates reading pace, phrasing, expression, attention punctuation, and a “Fast Finisher” extra! These activities take about 5 minutes total to complete and act as great warm-ups for getting my group started. At the beginning of each month, I model (or re-model) each task, including the “Fast Finisher” extras. We usually complete one sheet together, especially in the first few months! The students have a menu in their folders as a reminder of the activity expectations:
Students complete these activities using whisper phones or with partners. The goal is for them to be able to complete them independently, but the first few days I’m always around to offer coaching or support. The students pick up on the tasks quickly and soon you’ll hear them practicing fluency on their own!
I try to incorporate comprehensive Daily Fluency activities consistently with my fluency groups every day, but sometimes I’ll supplement with other warm-up activities before we get started with our planned RtI interventions. I use a lot of poetry, speed drills, and readers theater, so sometimes I’ll let them practice those as a warm-up. On those days though, I’ll send the Daily Fluency sheet home with the students in their fluency take-home bags.
As far as resource management goes, my RtI students who do Daily Fluency each have their own Daily Fluency Folders to collect all their daily activity pages, goal sheets, reflections, and rubrics. They have a separate folder for fluency passages and other Fluency Boot Camp activities we revisit throughout the year.
OPTION: To save paper, you can laminate pages to use in a literacy center or place the pages in sheet protectors so students can reuse them. You can even upload the PDF pages to your iPad (using an app like Notability) for students to annotate and mark-up digitally!
Remember, you should only use these resources AFTER your students are 100% familiar with the four major components of fluency… after modeling each explicitly AND practicing them together in depth.
Download a Sample
If you’re interested in incorporating Daily Fluency into your classroom, a sample is FREE for my email subscribers. If you’d like to download this poem, click here to subscribe (you will get the password via email). You will also receive exclusive access to my entire growing collection of free literacy resources! (If you’re already a subscriber, you may download the resource HERE.)
An activity menu is included, as well as a printable folder label and two activity pages (one from each month).
NOTE: This sample is appropriate for students in grades 1 and 2, though I use it with my struggling 3rd graders as well. (Depending on your student population, you could use it for your high-flyer Kindergarteners, too!)
(Download your FREE 4 page sample by subscribing here! Click the image below if you are an email subscriber.)
Check out all the Daily Fluency Activity Packets available in my TpT store. There are beginner-level packets and upper-level packets. The packets are sold in individual packets (each containing 2 months of activity pages) or in 6-month and 12-month bundles. Daily Fluency is available for beginner readers, as well as upper-level readers. You can even purchase both and differentiate within your classroom.
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Happy Teaching!
