Fluency Idea

This week in Room 19 we began a new take-home activity, "The Great Poetry Race", to improve our reading fluency. The kiddos love it. This is not my original idea, but rather an idea that was in the April 2009 issue of Reading Teacher. I found out about it from a post on "The Second Grade Teacher's Club" and adapted the materials to meet my needs. Thank you Jennifer L. and everyone else who posted about this great activity!

So here's how it works: I began by reading a fun poem to my class at the beginning of the week and explaining the concept. I read them some of the parent letter too - my class loves knowing what parent letters say before their parents do! The goal is for students to read the poem to as many adults as possible throughout the week.

At the end of the week, the student with the most signatures is the winner of the race. Every student with 20 or more signatures is a "top finisher" and recieves a sticker for their sticker chart. When the chart is full they will get a small prize (I ordered matchbox cars, racing sillybandz, and racing pencils from Oriental Trading), but my favorite prize is a coupon to read their weekly poem to me, the secretary, or the principal for a signature. The first place finisher each week will get a prize right away as well as a chance to read the poem for the class and record it for a listening center.

My class is EATING THIS UP!  I had many read the poem to 20 adults this week and my top finisher had 25 signatures! That is with a snow day on Monday, so they didn't get started until Tuesday night. Any improvement in their fluency is a bonus at this point, because they are truly enjoying reading and sharing their poem with anyone who will listen. It's wonderful!

Check out the link below to download the materials I adapted and created to get started (parent letter, recording sheet, sticker chart, coupon, and leaderboard). Just a couple of hints: I plan on laminating the leaderboard and using a Vis-a-Vis marker to change out the names each week. Also, it works great to print the recording sheet back-to-back with the weekly poem.

The Great Poetry Race Packet

Let me know if you try "The Great Poetry Race" in your classroom. I want to know if you have any ideas to make it even better! Just google if you want to find out more or are looking for poems to use - there is a wealth of information about this idea on the internet. : )