One Minute, Please!

Goal

Students will increase passage reading fluency and accuracy.

Materials

• Reading material at the student’s independent and instructional level
• Fluency Timer graph

Say the following:

• “I am going to set the timer for 1 minute.”
• “Start reading when I say, ‘Begin.’”
• “Read carefully and quickly until I say, ‘Stop.’”
• “At the end of 1 minute we will count the number of words you read and write it down on your fluency graph.”

Teacher Steps: Describe It

• This activity can be conducted in pairs or classwide.
• Tell the students they are going to read for speed and accuracy in a fun and different way.
• Students are given a passage at their instructional level first and partnered so that one student is the reader and one is the listener.
• The timer is set for 1 minute, and Partner One begins to read first.
• After 1 minute, the number of words read correctly is recorded on the student’s fluency graph.
• Set the timer for 1 minute. Partner Two begins to read.
• Number of words read correctly is recorded on the student’s fluency graph.

Student Steps: Do It

• Say the following:
  • “Partner up because we’re going to read for 1 minute.”
  • Give students an instructional passage with a word count at the end of each line.
  • Students are paired in advance (refer to the pairing procedure previously described in this chapter).
  • “Partner One starts reading when I give the signal to begin by saying, ‘One Minute, Please!’”
  • “At the end of 1 minute, Partner Two counts and records the number of words read correctly on Partner One’s fluency graph.”
  • “Then we will switch roles and Partner Two will read, and Partner One will count and record the number of words read correctly on Partner Two’s fluency graph.”

Variations

• This activity can be used with reading passages from a variety of subjects across the curriculum to include passages in social studies, science, language arts, and so forth.
• One Minute, Please! can also be used with the high-frequency word bank or with a high-frequency nouns word wall. (A reproducible list of high-frequency nouns is available as a download.)

Excerpted from Interventions for Reading Success, Second Edition by Diane Haager, Ph.D., Joseph A. Dimino, Ph.D., & Michelle Pearlman Windmueller, Ph.D.