Fluency Lessons

Kim Gilbert offers her fluency lessons that were used in the video-taped sessions from the March 6 Focus Group, entitled “Helping Struggling Readers.” Kim teaches a first grade class at Harris Elementary School in Springfield, MA.

Before teaching these fluency lessons, Amanda Rinaldi (the classroom teacher) and I taught several lessons on inferring a character’s feelings. We taught our students to do this in two ways. The first was by making connections to the characters and our own experiences (when something like that happened to me I felt ________, so I think this character feels _________, too). The second way was by thinking about things the character said or did. Below are some books that we found helpful in crafting these strategies.

1. Ira Sleeps Over, Bernard Waber
2. Amazing Grace, Mary Hoffman
3. Oliver Button is a Sissy, Tomie dePaola
4. The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, Judith Viorst
5. My Great Aunt Arizona, Gloria Houston

Graphic Organizers - graphic organizers the children used to record their thinking while reading

Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4