If you are a teacher and are not familiar with The Florida Center for Reading Research please do yourself a huge favor and go to the link now. They have amazing instructional materials for students in grades K-5. I give them full credit for the materials found in the sight words center I am about to share with you.
FCRR has basic fluency practice sheets for students with passages, but I have third grade students who still have not mastered the Dolch sight word lists. There is an activity on the FCRR website that uses common phrases instead of whole passages or individual sight words.
There are two versions of this center. For the first one, I put each phrase on a card so students could practice them like flash cards. There is a record sheet where they can keep track of how many cards they can read in 1 minute. My students use a simple turn-over timer from an old board game. For the second version, I put the phrase papers in a sheet protector along with the record sheet so students can keep track of their practice. This second version let's them practice in the familiar left to right sweep. My strategic readers enjoy this activity and are always asking to practice.
Students select a book at their reading level. My students use their Accelerated Reader reading range levels. They read while their partner times them for 1 minute.
The partner counts how many words the student reads in 1 minute (I have my students use the one minute sand timers so all they have to do is flip it over). Then partners switch places. Students write the book title and number of words read on the record sheet.
You could also have students use the DIBELS Progress Monitoring passages that they have already been tested on. Simply put a copy of the passage in a plastic sleeve and stick it on a clipboard.
