Fluency Strategies for Fifth Grade
1. Telling Jokes:
Description: These are great for struggling readers because jokes are short and they can practice before they read them to peers.
Purpose: Telling jokes helps students develop correct prosody so listeners can get the punch line. Prosody includes; the ability to emphasize appropriate words, the ability to use appropriate intonation, the ability to use punctuation appropriately, the ability to interpret characters' emotions, and the ability to pause at phrase boundaries.
Directions: In order to tell a joke effectively readers need to have good delivery so those listening get the humor. Readers of jokes must adhere to punctuation, intonation, and phrasing. As a teacher you should have a collection of joke books within your classroom, and help students with intonation, punctuation, pause, and interpretation and then allows your students to read the jokes to friends in small groups.
Some joke books with appropriate humor for students are included below.
Description: These are great for struggling readers because jokes are short and they can practice before they read them to peers.
Purpose: Telling jokes helps students develop correct prosody so listeners can get the punch line. Prosody includes; the ability to emphasize appropriate words, the ability to use appropriate intonation, the ability to use punctuation appropriately, the ability to interpret characters' emotions, and the ability to pause at phrase boundaries.
Directions: In order to tell a joke effectively readers need to have good delivery so those listening get the humor. Readers of jokes must adhere to punctuation, intonation, and phrasing. As a teacher you should have a collection of joke books within your classroom, and help students with intonation, punctuation, pause, and interpretation and then allows your students to read the jokes to friends in small groups.
Some joke books with appropriate humor for students are included below.
2. Repeated Readings:
Description: Repeated readings increase students' fluency.
Purpose: In order for repeated readings to be effective, they need to have a clear purpose, to increase rate, to increase accuracy, to improve phrasing, or to improve comprehension.
*Directions: Select a favorite story of one of your students that has previously been read before. Re-read the story aloud with your students and create a discussion based upon the story. During the reading of the story, you can ask your students questions about the characters' motives and how the setting affects the action in the story. A repeated reading allow students to focus less on decoding words and more on comprehending the story and allows the readers to make inferences about the characters within the story.
*Repeated readings can be performed with an individual reader or with a small group of readers. Readers theater and choral reading also provide purposeful repeated readings and are effective for any grade.