Melanie Kisling

Fluency Mini Lesson

Materials (pictured)

Planning process

 For this mini lesson I used Zoo’s Who’s by Daniel Florian. I chose this book because in class you
showed us a similar poem book by him that seemed to fit nicely with fourth and fifth graders.
This book had about 20 different animals that had a unique poem to go along with it that was
only 5-10 lines that would be easy enough for the kids to read themselves but also some of the
poems had some “tongue twisters” that would be good to challenge their reading skills but at an
appropriate level.
 First I started out reading the whole book to each of the kids as a read aloud to exemplify my
tone of voice for each of the animals to let the kids see how they can read in any tone to make it
seem more interesting to listen to.
 After I did the read aloud I laid out papers on the table of each one of the pages that I copied so
that the kids could pick which animal they wanted to be.
 I gave them each 5 minutes to read over their poems to make sure they knew the words first of
and secondly to be able to practice their reading.
 Once the 5 minutes where over, we all got into a big circle, I started, then we went around to
each kid and they read their poem that they picked out.

Response

 The kids absolutely loved this activity, they asked each day after that if they could pick a
different animal to be so that they could read it in a tone that they had been thinking about.
 My CT also expressed how their fluency in small group seemed to even be more heightened
than usual and that they were more into the stories that others were reading about because of
the tone of voice that they were using.
 Going back to the reading in the circle, I noticed that all of the students were really trying their
best and had really thought about what they were going to sound like before they read. They all
read really well and had a good “reader’s voice” so that we could all hear.
 Melanie Kisling

 I was super proud of the way they presented their animals and the way the more shy students
stepped up to the plate, not fussing, and read with integrity.

Differences next time

 Honestly I am really happy with how this worked out and how well the students did with this
activity, even getting my CT praising of how well she liked it and how she would use this method
too, was rewarding to hear.
 The only thing that I would possibly change is to have enough time to have the kids pick more
than one animal to be able to read about to see how they did with the second one.
o I feel like with a second animal they would have more confidence and would read it
even better than the first time, especially for the introverts to really hear and see what
is going on.

Future classroom

 For my future classroom I would love to use this. I even feel like this could work with the
younger grades, just with a reading that works for their level of reading and understanding.
 For this mini lesson there was no particular grouping, but you could also do this in smaller
groups to be able to really hone in and focus on the ones that need more fluency work.
I also would use this to incorporate technology by letting them use EPIC and pick a book or a
short reading that they enjoy to have a story circle to be able to read to the class to see how
they can engage their classmates.