Ok Friends,  it is time for a super GIVEAWAY! I have been asked time and time again about a resource I use to teach fluency.  I know that many of you are familiar with a post I wrote a while back about how I use Shannon Dipple's (of Primary Education Oasis) Teaching Poetry for Fluency and Comprehension.


I have received so much feedback about this product that Shannon and I have decided to give away one copy. This giveaway includes not just one book, but actually three and they are huge! It is a great resource and comes with all the poems, activities and skill sheets you will need to teach either a small fluency group or even use whole group.  Click here to see a free sample of the book.

Friends my students are begging me to go to their fluency groups! Why? My school has several flip cameras that teachers can check out so I have checked out three for my fluency groups. Everyday for 20 minutes my fluency kiddos take a flip camera, a bean bag and their fluency book into the hallway to begin their groups. Of course I have modeled, model and modeled what good reading sounds like. We have had multiple mini- lessons on speed, intonation and accuracy so they know how to set goals for themselves.

Once each pair is ready they open one of my fluency books and used the flip camera to record their cold read. Students listen to their cold read and then make a goal for themselves for the day. For example, one student wrote "I need to work on not adding extra words". I gave her a cute finger pointer (see below) and set her on their way.  I always find using fun finger pointers encourage tracking and students love them! I have claws for the boys and wands for the girls.

My fluency books are You Read to Me, I'll Read to You. My students BEG to read these books. These books are written with fluency readings in mind. Each book contains many short familiar stories written in prose format. The poems have two different colors so students know which color they read It is a lot like readers theater scripts. Click below to see an example of how it is set up.

This week I have had so much fun teaching my guided reading groups. Several of my guided reading groups are reading chapter books and one of them is working mainly on fluency. Typically, I struggle to manage having three different chapter books going at one time. My biggest issue was I felt like students were forgetting what they had read by the time I was able to meet with their group again. One of my teamies on second grade suggested I have each group read a two chapters a week for homework and together we will read two chapters in our guided reading groups. This has finally worked out and I am feeling good about it.

My fluency group is working on using poetry to build fluency. At the beginning of the year I had students doing the Great Poetry Race but I wanted to integrate this more with the skills I was teaching. After searching the internet for a resource I came across Primary Education Oasis who has a downloadable book with a poem for each week of the year. Each poem comes with activities to do with it. I was so excited about this book that I revamped my whole group. This week I made each of my students a poetry notebook. Now when we meet they bring their notebook to the group. I meet with my fluency group each day. On Monday, I read the poem to them and have them create a mental image. Then we choral read, whisper read and clap to the beat of the poem. After we meet students glue their poem in their book and illustrate a picture to go with it. This week I gave them a quick lesson on what these pictures should look like. Together we made a rubric anchor chart. Then I took a picture of the chart and glued it in their book so they could always look at it when they were illustrating.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I use the activities from the poetry lesson I bought. The thing I love about these lessons is that students use the poem to work on story elements, grammar, phonics and much more. On Friday students present their poem to the class in our Poetry Cafe.





To bring in the home element students take home their poetry book each night and read it to their families. Every person they read it to signs their name on the next page. I ask students to read it to at least 10 people. The student with the most signatures wins a lunch date with a friend.

I also leave the poem in our fluency center. During Daily Five students record themselves reading the poem on a tape and then listen to it. My kids love hearing themselves on tape!

Click here to download a free sample of this lesson book.