For students who struggle with fluency, I usually implement a bit of theater. Around 2nd to 4th graders, readers go through a difficult period for reading. Between these years they go from reading middle grade, or lower, books to chapter books in the fourth grade. What is expected of students in terms of this period of reading is also significant. By fourth grade should be able to exhibit short comprehensive paragraphs and begin to formulate inferences based on their reading.
To state a completely unscientific observation: I have experienced most struggles and pushback to reading around this age. It’s a difficult period that must be approached with discipline, understanding, and care. Nurturing that initial love for reading is key here, even If love is not always the right word to describe student’s relationship to text.
According to the Iowa Reading Research Center, and organizations beyond count, a fluency exercise that helps students begin to connect sentences, and generally promotes overall comprehension of their text, is beginning to read with “feeling”. Meaning they practice reading like their talking. Early readers are placing words together in their head like little puzzles. To read with feeling helps the reader begin to connect sentences and bring substance to the words they’re reading. They are weaving the words into the world.
Screenplay lesson plan:
Introduce students to the idea of reading with feeling. Practice reading sentences with inflections, see how it changes the meaning. In acting this is called “reads”.
Discuss what “dialogue” is. Find it in a variety of texts and start reading it.
Reader’s Theater is also a really fun activity for kids
You can use this outline to formulate a script. I like using pip cards to decide the characters and location(s) of the script
Fill out the script. You can use the template below as inspiration, but you know your students. Do what works for them. Make a movie, make a play! Get creative!
Bending Tree Education 