Building Reading Fluency By Learning Decoding Skills and Sight Words (Certified Teacher and 17 years experience)

This class is the perfect way to disguise fluency and decoding practice. Students will be having so much fun reading in this class using repeated and silly expressions, that they will not realize they are building reading fluency as well.  This class is designed specifically for building reading fluency using multiple research-based strategies as well as support common misconceptions for decoding words. The decoding skills that are taught could include segmenting words by diagraphs, blends, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, and word families to name a few. 


Class Format:    (see video)
-Teacher models a select few sight words.
-Students echo these same words with silly expressions using the class spinner.
-Teacher models common phrases with these sight words.
-Students echo these same phrases with silly expressions using the class spinner.
-Teacher displays a fluency pyramid with these words and phrases.
-Students take turns reading the fluency pyramid with silly expressions using the class spinner. 
-Teacher pulls out words from the fluency pyramid that require decoding skills and teaches those decoding skills.
-Students get a copy of the fluency pyramid to practice after class.


Why this class works to build strong readers with fluency!
Seventy-five  percent of the words in most children’s literature are sight words. This is why our class focuses and reads these sight words within phrases. Knowing that sight words and phrases is only part of reading children's literature, there is intentional decoding skills taught in each class as well. 

Weekly Lessons:
Week of August 23rd---Sight words: the, we, it, was, to, that 
                                     Decoding skills: long vowels with VCe, Vowel Digraphs: ai 
Week of August 30th---Sight words:  my, this, in, the, 
                                     Decoding skills: initial and end blends, r-controlled vowel with 'er'
Week of September 6th---Sight words:  we, will, his, at, with
                                         Decoding skills: -ill,  -all,  word families, diagraph 'ck'
Week of September 13th---Sight words:  of, all, want, why, do
                                          Decoding skills: r-controlled vowel with 'ir'