Martin Luther King

I am so thankful that Dr. King lived.

I can love and marry anyone I want to, without thinking about race.

I am paid equally.

I can sit at the table of brotherhood with anyone.

  I deeply appreciate the sacrifice he and his family made for us. 

He is one of my heroes.

It’s always nice to see the art that the REAL kids make.

They did a great job. 

I am ready for them to read all about MLK for next week’s fluency.

Here is our “Hero Wall” and Timeline.

I keep their fluency graphs up from last month, so the kids can

compare their growth month to month. 

Pages slide into sheet protectors from the right.

I took the real graphs out to protect privacy…

This graphing and comparing gets my kids motivated,

but not to beat each other, rather to outdo themselves. 

First graders don’t believe that they can do anything hard.

They just don’t.

They have not had the life experiences that teach

them that practice makes perfect….

or nearly perfect…

I give them that experience through fluency practice.

  We talk about the power of rereading.

I use this silly “heart/ brain” picture to illustrate

how each time we read the

same passage, our brain understands more information, and

we can read more words per minute.

This is because we are  becoming more comfortable

with the fluency passage.

Thus, our hearts and brains fill up each time we read.

I see the kids drawing their own hearts on the back of their fluency

passages and after each reread they darken in the heart to

represent more knowledge going in their brain/hearts. {sweet}

My students have decided it takes 4-6 reads to become an expert

and fill up your heart/ brain with info.

Sounds like a good number to me.

We read each passage about 3x daily for an entire week.

1. alone

2. together

3. with our 3rd grade buddy

Every day we do this, so actually, it adds up to at least 15 rereads.

That’s why I write social studies and science fluency.

They might as well learn something meaningful !

I love fluency.

 

They love fluency.

The fluency is ChAllEnGiNg, but they attack it like beasts!

My kids are HuNgRy to reread, and they become

very engaged in any reading lesson when I tell them,

“This strategy will help your fluency….”

Love, LOVE, LoVe, engagement during strategy lessons.

Speaking of love. I am in love with our timeline of the heroes we will

be covering for the next 13 weeks of fluency.

So cute ! ! ! My students are pouring over any biography book they

can find, now that I put the timeline up.

One of my boisterous boys screamed (like a little girl)

“She has Lincoln books!”

They have been discussing that Washington is not wearing a hat.

One of my sweetie boys said, “It’s because we are inside

 and we don’t wear hats inside.” {cute}

I did not have the heart to point out that Lincoln is wearing a hat.

So is Johnny Appleseed…

Well, kind of…

Maybe a pot does not count as a hat????

I am so proud of my two most recent fluency units.

Mammals of the Woods and American Heroes

I believe that these have made my students

become better readers since my Guided Reading time has been

stretched sooooo thin by 10 kids joining my class.

Thank you, Jose Lacayo for PuShInG me toward doing

fluency practice and drills 3 years ago

and for bringing your students to my room

every.single.day

for 5 minutes!

That is 25 minutes of 1 on 1 reading time a week for each child!

If I did that with each child... let me get a calculator....

30 kids....5 min per kid.... 5 times a week.........

It is 750 minutes of 1 on 1 reading a week.

It’s just a thought…

I’m not the BoSs of ApPleSaUcE…

Do what you want with your own class…

But….

If you have not considered doing daily fluency buddies, 

then you might want to.

It has been amazing for my students.

ReAliTy ChECk !

By the way 4 of my kids are NOWHERE near reading these passages
,

so they read the HM Phonics readers and their sight word lists 

as fluency practice.

There will always be 3-5 kids in AnY ClaSsRoOm who can’t do what all

the other kids are doing….

fact of life…

What's your ace in the hole to help your students

 become better readers???

To read about this unit in action in second grade please visit Amy's blog

{here}

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