I admit it: I love phonics instruction. Maybe it's just part of my K-2 heart, but I love watching readers grow as a result of explicit, skill-based phonics instruction. Fluency-building is just one aspect of reading development, of course, but I believe it should go hand-in-hand with phonics instruction.
I believe children should receive practice with reading passages that reflect phonics instruction.
Several years ago, I noticed that some of my students who really needed to build fluency were bored and entirely uninterested with the decodable passages we used for practice. The passages were appropriate texts for meeting their needs, BUT... they weren't effective because the readers were not at all invested in reading them. Student interest matters for effective instruction!
I decided to break one passage down into sentences and create pyramid reading cards using those sentences. Each child got a card to read, and we rotated throughout our reading exercise. I was surprised by how much they LOVED this!
The repetitive reading was so helpful in building their confidence. The longer the sentence, the "bigger" the pyramid, and they thought that was quite a challenge! When we finished all the sentences, we read the normal passage, and I could see the immediate impact of the pyramid reading on their fluency with that particular passage.
This is how it works:
Over the years, I have continued to build upon this concept. These pyramid reading cards are just one of the great resources available in my fluency-building products, which can be accessed individually by skill, or as a bundle!
This GROWING bundle will continue to expand to include a variety of skill-based fluency activities that target specific syllable types and/or spelling patterns. The materials are based on the Orton-Gillingham approach for reading instruction and are designed to provide tactile experiences with phonics skills.
Currently, the bundle includes eight of my 5-Star rated products that focus on the following phonics skills:
* Consonant Digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh, ph, -ck)
* Words that end with -tch and -dge
* R-Controlled Syllable patterns (ar, er, ir, or, ur)
* Closed Syllables
* Open Syllables
* The Suffix -tion
* Magic E Syllables
* Vowel Teams
Fellow teachers have been so generous in sharing their feedback about these materials!
You can access this bundle, as well as links to the individual skill-based products within the bundle here. Also, click through the slideshow below to learn more about all the materials included!
Now, here's the freebie you definitely need to snag... Help your students visualize their fluency growth using these free student fluency graphs! I love, love, love to see my student grow. More than that, I love for THEM to see their growth. Graphs like this are ideal in helping students really see how far they have come in their reading progress. These are also fantastic pieces of evidence to share with parents during your parent-teacher conferences! You can grab your own copy here: FREEBIE Student Fluency Graphs
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