Partner Plays & Hands on Fluency with Jan Brett

Jan Brett recently visited my local bookstore. I was fortunate to be one of her fans that attended her visit. She taught an art lesson while she spoke to us. I found some of her drawing lessons online. These would be perfect for inside recess or a lesson extension to one of her stories. You can find the 2 drawing lessons along with read alouds for the following stories with my new FREE Q.R. code Listening Center:

• The Mitten
• The Hat
• 3 Snow Bears
• Annie & the Wild Animals 

Fluency is one of those skills that requires practice, practice, and more practice.  Students need more practice than what they get during small group lessons.  Some students are fortunate to have involved parents who help them at home.  How do you help students who don't have this support?

Set up a Readers Theater play with stick puppets and your fluency is now hands on.  

You can make a stick puppet stage with a graphic like the one in the picture, a file folder, and some binder clips. To make this:

• I glued the stage graphic on the front cover of a file folder.
• Laminate the file folder with stage graphic.
• Fold the back flap of the file folder like a fan (1 inch strips).
• Hold the fan with large binder clips on each end.
• Use an X-acto knife to cut a slit in the front for the stick puppets to slide through on the stage.

This is the view from the back of the puppet stage.  Students can also hold their puppets next to the edge of a table or desk if you don't want to make a stage.

You can find ways for students to practice their reading skills independently at school.  Partner plays are an easy to manage fluency activity.  You can divide the speaking parts into however many students are in your small group.  This group has two students so I used 2 different colors to highlight students' parts.  

The example of the stick puppets and readers theater scripts is from Jan Brett Readers Theater and more.  

Sources to make my blog post graphics can be found HERE.
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