Building Student Fluency

During my years as a first grade teacher, I always struggled with finding ways to help my students read more fluently. I worked very hard with them in small groups, teaching phonics and phonemic awareness, and encouraged reading at home. However, there were still those students who weren't improving. They were struggling with reading fluency and comprehension simply because they did not have adequate word decoding skills. When reading a passage, they spent all of their time and attention on sounding out the words and none on what the passage was actually about. Then I stumbled upon an activity that, when used on a daily basis, began to reach even those students who were struggling so hard. My co-teacher and I put together what we call Phonics Practice PowerPoints. These PowerPoints show the students how words are broken apart (and sometimes chunked) to decode the word then we put the parts back together to read the (whole) word. Of course we already teach our students this skill. What makes these PowerPoints different is that they are visual and verbal. As the parts come onto the screen, the students say the sounds and then say the whole word as it comes onto the screen. You can watch my video to see what this actually looks like. The movement of the words (and parts of the word) appeal to kinesthetic learners. I sometimes have my students clap or stomp as the different parts of the words come onto the screen. The students love them because they are fun and engaging. Sometimes I made a game out of it to encourage friendly competition. After practicing the slides, I chose students to come up and read the words at the end while being timed for one minute with a timer. The student that read the most words with no mistakes was the winner and would receive a prize. Of course, I made

sure every student got a turn and that the same person was not the winner every day. It's amazing what kids will do for a piece of candy! This activity can be used whole class, in small groups, or at a workstation. Click the button below to download your FREE COPY of our short A PowerPoint Phonics activity. We hope your students like it as much as ours do!