An Easy Fluency Fix

Hello to everyone!  It's Andrea from Reading Toward the Stars with an idea for helping with fluency in your classroom.

I have been working with my third graders to help them read with fluency.  They love to ramble through words or read soooo s-l-o-w-l-y that anyone that would fall asleep.  Each week we work on a new passage and different strategy to help with their fluency.  Several weeks ago, we worked on using punctuation to help build our fluency.

After reading the passage several times, we talked about how to read it, so it would be understood more clearly.  I read it with NO punctuation, and they laughed at me.  I made lots of mistakes and sounded awful.  I then read it as it was supposed to be read, and they "got it".

We talked about the punctuation in the passage, and they highlighted all of the punctuation.  Then when they read it, they read it with better fluency, pausing as needed to make it sound right.

Using punctuation is an important factor in fluency.  Students need it to help with prosody and inflection.  It helps to make sense of what they are reading and leads to better comprehension.

What are some ways you help your students attend to punctuation when reading?