Reading for comprehension and building reading fluency are two major goals in most classrooms. Here are 5 quick reading tips that will help you make reading fun while working on developing reading for comprehension skills and reading fluency.
These are designed for elementary grades, but look closely and think creatively so you can apply them to your grade level.
Read in Different Voices
1. Roll and Read – This idea is super clever. Take reading and make it feel like a game by having your students read in different types of voices. Depending on how they roll the dice, that determines how they read.
Plus, if are working on choral reading or poetry, wouldn’t this be a fun way to decide as a class a way to change it up for a day? {Free download}
Read to Self Response Sheet
2. Reading Response Sheet – Take the opinion of your students and turn it into part of their literacy center time. Have them fill out a response to the book by writing about the summary, give it a rating {just like a movie critic} and share if they’d recommend it or not to a friend.
Turn it into an opinion piece every once in a while as to why they would or would not recommend it to work on bringing in some Common Core based writing skills. {Free download}
3. Reading Response With Adjectives – I think that delving deeper into what makes students like or dislike a book, the elements or characters is important.
Here is a response sheet that works on describing a favorite character using adjectives.
If you can begin to see patterns and help students see those patterns in their choices then they can better choose books that they will like based on what they like or better understand when a text is a departure from their comfort zone. {Free download}
Create Fluency Goals
4. Fluency Self Assessment Rubric – Get your students to practice being self aware of their fluency habits and working towards improvement.
Use this rubric to model a think aloud lesson by using this lesson plan idea from Caitlin.
You’ll like that students can choose a goal to focus on and feel good about having one specific thing to work towards and focus on. {Free Download}
5. Strategy Sign Up – You could quickly use the goals set using the rubric above to then create your strategy groups for guided reading. With this idea, the goals are set in a quick way that also lets students have a say in setting goals.
Dissect Story Elements
6. Story Elements – Check in on where your students are with basic comprehension by taking a look at the elements of a story.
Get immediate feedback using words, pictures or a combination of both. This can be used with any fiction book to break it down. {Free download}
Thanks to these fabulous teachers for sharing their printables and lesson plan ideas. They are creative ways to help grow our readers! Feel free to grab the “I’m a Featured Teach Junkie” blog button as your creations are definitely worth the shout out.
More Reading Tips
- 12 Easy Cause and Effect Activities and Worksheets
- Story Elements {Teaching Characters and Plot Structure}
- Teaching Common Core Non-Fiction – 3 Tips
- 11 Spring Poems for Children and Poetry Ideas
- Kindergarten Printable Props for Retelling
Leslie {aka the original Teach Junkie} loves learning new things to make teaching easier and more effective. She enjoys featuring creative classroom fun when she's not designing teacher shirts, making kindergarten lesson plans or planning her family's next trip to Disney World.