Building phonemic awareness at the outset is the key to reading fluently at later stages in any reading development program. In reference to the debate on avoiding students from sounding out the word, I am of the opinion that this holds good for students past the emergent stages of reading. During the first year, a Kindergartner is learning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and decoding and blending is an effective prelude to reading of the CVC words that build for later fluency. Once the student has passed the emergent stage, other strategies other than sounding out the letters may be employed.

One resource that I found particularly useful  to build reading fluency for my Kindergartners was the ‘Fluency Readers’ featuring 144 CVC words.

These Readers double up as accordion-style foldables for interactive notebooks or a collated collection of reading fans. Just attach a brad to the individual strips and fan out as words are read.

The reading strips are folded on the center horizontal lines accordion style. That way, it is not too overwhelming as the child reads one word at a time as the accordion is unfolded.

For use in interactive notebooks, the second strip (marked 2) for each set is glued to the notebook, then the first strip (name on cover) is glued to the second strip, only at the top tab. The strip may still be folded accordion-style to be read.

If using as fans, all the strips are collated and attached at the top with a brad. The strips should be able to move around loosely.  A blackline version may be sent home with students to practice reading.

As the child reads, the read strip can also be easily moved to the opposite direction so the fan is not cumbersome for little fingers to handle.

My kids simply love reading from these Reading Fluency strips. Needless to say they are all pretty good at reading those clever CVC words!

You can also find these Reading Fluency Strips by clicking on the image link.

Until next time…