Recovering and Rereading with Arthur

Rationale: Beginning readers work hard to learn vowel spellings in order to build sight words, but often they get bogged down in slow decoding. To automatize reading, they need to build reading fluency, recognizing words instantly and accurately. When they come to unfamiliar irregular words, they naturally slow down to decode and rely on context to pronounce strange spellings accurately. This lesson will demonstrate how decoding, crosschecking, mentally marking irregular spellings, and rereading will help build sight words to make reading smoother and less laborious. The method of repeated readings is a well-researched method for automatizing reading skills. In this lesson students will read and reread a second-grade level text to a mastery level of fluency. They will answer questions to demonstrate understanding of the text, and they will help reading buddy partners improve their reading fluency.

Materials:

Timers for each pair of students Copy of Arthur’s Chicken Pox for each pair

Partner checklists & pencils List of comprehension questions

Introduction: When we read a new book, we often come across words we’ve never seen before. Sometimes they have strange spellings and it’s hard to figure out what the words are. In this lesson you’ll learn some tips to get those new words. You’ll become a smoother reader, and recognize the words instantly after you reread sections and time yourselves to see how you’re improving and getting more words right the second and third time you read. When you read words automatically without having to figure them out you are a fluent reader.

Review & model a strategy: When you come to a word that you don’t automatically recognize there are a few things you can do. First, see if there are chunks you recognize, like ing, ed, or tion at the end as in action. If you can’t get the word, try finishing the sentence to see what might make sense. For example, listen to me work on a big word in this sentence: When no one was looking, DW held the ther-mo-met-er … I’m not sure what that is but I’ll finish the sentence and go back to that word …under hot water. Let me try that again. When no one was looking, DW held the ther mom e ter, thermometer under hot water. Yes, a thermometer is what takes your temperature. When no one was looking, DW held the thermometer under hot water. That third time I sounded pretty smooth and I knew the word. This makes me think DW is trying to fake being sick. What do you think!

Procedures

1) Maybe you can tell already that Arthur’s Chicken Pox is story about Arthur going home from school one day because he is feeling very sick. That line about DW tells me that his sister may be jealous and want to stay home just like Arthur. I’m curious to find out what’s going to happen with DW.

2) [Have children pair up with partners. Pass out books and checklists to partners] Before we start reading, we are going to practice getting through some tough words first. Let’s look at the first page. I can see already that there are some words ending in ing, ed, er, and several with two or more syllables. They shouldn’t be too hard if we start out by working our way through the words, use the whole sentence if we get stuck, and then reread to keep up with the story.

3) Read this page through the first time to yourself, silently. [wait about 1 minute.] Now that you have had a chance to read all of the words, we’ll try reading it together chorally. It was Monday morning, but Arthur’s family was thinking about Saturday’s trip to the kircus. What is a kircus? Let’s try the other pronunciation of c /s/ircus. We know what that is and they must be pretty excited. [Children may also stumble on knife and favorite.]

4) Show checklist on smartboard or large poster paper. I’m going to mark a little check for missing these words: circus, knife, trapeze, and favorite on the first time reading aloud. I didn’t time us but that is what you will do with your partner. What words did we slow down on? Thinking, throwing, artists.

5) Now you can take turns reading and keeping track of words your partner misses and words that slow your partner down. First read silently to yourself, then aloud with your partner twice. Your partner will time you and keep track of missed words and slowdowns on the two rounds.

Each section has ten pages but not all of them are very long, so it will go much faster than you think. When you’re both done, raise your hands to get your list of questions to answer about the story.

Comprehension questions

Directions: Write a complete sentence or two to answer each of the following questions.

When DW came home from school and saw Arthur, why do you think she said “I think you’re faking.”
What do you think Grandma thought when DW’s chicken pox came off in the bathtub?
How do you feel about DW missing the circus in the end because she really did get chicken pox?

Additional extension activity

Children can draw a timeline of some of the highlights of the story in comic strip style. For example – Arthur going to the nurse at school, Arthur on the couch at home, DW returning from playgroup and beginning to taunt her sick brother.

Teacher fluency check:

While some are working on comprehension questions or drawing a timeline of story events teacher should do an individual fluency check including wpm and accuracy rate on a section of the text. Follow up with one comprehension question: What did you think of the way DW treated Arthur while he was sick? Did it look like Arthur was really having a great time while he was sick? How would you want to be treated if you were as sick as Arthur was?

References:

Brown, M. (1996) Arthur’s Chicken Pox. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Caitlin Collins, Junie B Jones Fluency Party

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