Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, University of Texas at Austin
Lesson 3 - Consonant Digraphs
Words such as witch, whack, and wish often cause beginning readers to struggle. The third installments in the Word Recognition and Fluency series of 17, covers consonant digraphs. Activities guide learners through the identification and...
Learning for Justice
Mary McLeod Bethune
Young historians conduct a close reading of the text of an interview with Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of former slaves who taught herself to read, grew up to establish schools for other Black women, and went on to become an advisor...
University of Pennsylvania
Decoding Propaganda: J’Accuse…! vs. J’Accuse…!
Reading snail mail is a great way to go back into history and to understand others' points of view. The resource, the second in a five-part unit, covers the Dreyfus Affair. Scholars, working in two different groups, read one letter and...
Curated OER
On your mark, get set, GO!!!!!
Students experience the strategies of decoding words and crosschecking to master reading more fluently. They read, crosscheck and decode the books, "Lee and the Team," from Phonics Readers and "Ready to Race," by Shealy Melton.
Curated OER
You can call me.........Speedy Gonzalez!
Students practice their decoding skills to increase reading fluency. They use timed reading to observe the rate at which they read. They work in small groups to read a book in a time situation.
Curated OER
Ready...Set...Let's Read!!
Students observe and demonstrate various reading decoding strategies to improve their reading fluency. In pairs, they take turns reading sentences outloud to each other, with the goal of reading them more quickly each time. Students...
Curated OER
Context Clues
Students develop vocabulary using pre -reading strategies. In this language arts lesson, students discuss the intended message from observing a picture. Additionally, students explore guessing the covered word within a text.
Curated OER
Ready, Set, Read Again!
Student increase their reading fluency through the use of various strategies. After reviewing chunking and decoding, students complete an initial read of a novel text. Working with the instructor, they complete a read of their passage to...
Curated OER
The Big Green Monster
Students practice rereading selected passages to improve their reading fluency. Working in pairs, students read and reread decodable, leveled passages. They complete center activities in groups of four in order to aid in decoding and...
Curated OER
Faster, Faster!
Students practice reading faster, smoother and more expressively by exercising the strategy of reading and rereading text to become more familiar with word recognition. They participate in reading a page or two of "Pen Pals" to...
Curated OER
Roll the Dice
Learners practice recognizing and blending letters together to create new and unique words in the process of decoding text. They play a game where they roll dice to help blend a variety of words together and create new ones to analyze...
Curated OER
Vowel Sounds
This plan aims to increase the reading proficiency of your fourth grade class. While no materials are provided, a list of activities to practice are included. Various activities include creating songs for short vowel sounds, using cue...
Curated OER
Kites are Slow, Reading is Fast
Speed read with your third, fourth, and fifth graders. Learners pair up and work together to improve their oral fluency. Use the technique of covering up unknown words to isolate the vowel and decode the word. There's a sheet included to...
Curated OER
The Little Children That Can: Growing Independence and Fluency
Get ready to boost fluency in the classroom with this lesson geared toward elementary readers. Listening to the first half of The Little Engine That Could, learners focus on how voice changes create expression. They then read the rest...
Curated OER
Scatter Brain
Examine a coordinated geometry grid to decode the hidden message. Pupils write a coded message to their parents using letter coordinates from the grid.
Curated OER
Icky Insect Is In Icky Sticky Ink
Practice the strategy of letter-sound correspondence when identifying the short vowel /i/ sound in written and spoken words. The teacher recites the tongue twister "Icky insect is in icky sticky ink," while listeners repeat. Letter boxes...
Curated OER
Slim Pig
Beginning readers study the short /i/ sound. First they determine how the mouth moves when they say the target words in a tongue twister. They complete letterbox activities by making words with the short /i/ before reading What Is It and...
Curated OER
"Flying to Fluency"
Students become fluent readers by decoding words and practicing mastery of phoneme correspondences. They also practice repeated readings of texts along with timed readings of the book, "Pat's Jam." Each student interacts with a bulletin...
Curated OER
Reading Like an Expert!
Students identify and interpret that they should read as if someone is explaining it to them like a conversation. Then they reread the text given until they are no longer decoding and it sounds like they are just talking. Students also...
TV411
Understanding Hard Words
Two strategies for decoding unfamiliar words are featured on a worksheet that illustrates how to use the parts of words (prefix, root, and suffix) and context to determine meaning. Examples are included as is a guided practice exercise.
Curated OER
Vocabulary Dictionary Drill
Investigate vocabulary terms related to communities. First your class generates a list of vocabulary terms related to the study of communities. Working in small groups, they compete in a dictionary drill to discover the meaning of the...
Curated OER
A Speeding Rocket, a Shooting Star... It's a Racing Reader!
Prepare a gameboard and die-cut race cars to play a fun fluency game. Also create several flash cards to review the long /i/ sound. Then, model reading smoothly and with expression, emphasizing the importance of re-reading texts to...
Curated OER
Poetry As Oral Performance
Reciting poetry is a great way to build oral language skills and build classroom community. Pupils look at the text elements of poetry and choose a poem to read aloud. They focus on rhythm, fluency, and expression. This is a great way to...
Curated OER
Go, Speed Reader! Go!
Students practice the strategy of decoding words to advance from beginning readers to independent readers. They read and reread the book, "Sam the Garbage Hound," by Charnan Simon. Fluency checklists are kept for each child and are...