Information text and fluency ideas


Of the five components of reading, I think fluency is the one that is neglected the most.  It is easy to find lessons for the others, but most activities for fluency are teacher directed.  With all of the expectations put on teachers today, we are trying to  utilize every minute that we have with our students.  In a perfect world, we would send home readers with our students and parents would listen to their children read.  This doesn't always happen, so what is a teacher to do?  The answer is a child directed fluency activity.  It took me years before I worked out all the bugs of my Sentence Shuffle lessons.  The benefits to this type of activity are:

  • It can be set up as a folder game.  This is great if you are wall-to-wall students this year and don't have space to set up centers.  Students can easily do this at their desk or table.  
  • You can set it up as a center.  The directions for the center are included so student won't interrupt your small group lesson if they didn't pay attention the first time.  All of these lessons (levels: K-5) have the same format so once you teach your students the format, you can switch the topic of the sentence shuffles and not have to give directions again.  Save your valuable for time for something else! 
  • There are lesson for reading levels K-5 and I am adding more every day.  This works great for differentiation.  
  • You can use this with your small groups, too.  Students read real and nonsense sentence.  It is a great way to check for comprehension.
  • Speech pathologists and special education teachers have also left feedback that they love them, too!

Use different colored folders for the different reading levels.  Your students will love it when they graduate to a new color!


Inside the folder is a report card size envelope to hold the cards.  On the right is the shuffle sheet where students stack the cards.


On the back of the envelopes is a brown envelope to store the writing assignments.  On the envelope is a recording sheet.  When students complete the folder, they write their name beside their number.  I do not include the recording sheet in the packets because I want to give you an editable version so you can type your students' names on it.  Click HERE to find a PDF and editable version.


I just added a new packet today about Bees which is perfect for this time of year.  It is on the 2nd grade reading level and is aligned with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade Common Core Standards.


Click HERE to visit my TPT store.


Click HERE to find more Sentence Shuffle centers organized by reading levels.










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