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Shared You can do any of the comprehension
lessons in a shared reading format. Shared reading is the most appropriate
format when young children are just learning to track print and other
print conventions. It is also the most efficient format for teaching any
new strategy. 1. Be on the lookout for and select big
books which help you teach the
comprehension strategies you need to work on. 2. Decide how many days you will spend
with the book and what you will
do with children before and after reading. 3. Plan some rereadings of the book to
help children develop fluency. |
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Choral and Echo Choral and echo
reading are most appropriate for plays, predictable text, text with
refrains, and texts with lots of dialogue.
Children enjoy reading this way, and it helps build the confidence of
struggling readers. 1. Choose poems,
plays, songs, predictable books, and other text you children will enjoy. 2. Choreograph the
reading in some simple way so that children are reading different parts. 3. Reread the
selection several times, letting different groups read different parts. 4. If possible,
provide copies for children to take home or to store in their personal reading binder. |
Everyone Read To Everyone Read To 1. Choose text
for which you think children need page-by-page guidance. 2. Plan a
before/after reading activity which will develop comprehension strategies. 3. Lead the
children through the text a page or two at a time. Have students read to
find out important events or information. 4. Include
questions to which the answers are not literally stated, but which can be
inferred. For example, you may say,
“Read to find out how Charlie is
feeling.” The text may say it has been
a bad day, and Charlie is stomping down
the street. The children have to infer
his feeling and explain how they
knew. 5. Have children
raise their hands when they read the part that helps them to figure
out the answer and continue reading.
Warn them when you are asking a “2
hander”. 6. When most
hands are up, ask a volunteer to give you the answer. Ask someone else to
read the parts aloud that helped them figure out the answer. 7. When the
answers are not literally stated, ask children to explain how they figured it
out. You might say, “Yes, he is
feeling bad and unhappy. It didn’t say that in the text but you
figured it out. What did it say that
let you figure it out?” |
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Pantomiming 1. Choose
stories with lots of characters and lots of dialogue. 2. Read the
story and decide who the characters are and what they are saying and doing. 3. Make
character cards, and let children choose the character they want to be. 4. Have the
readers chorally read the story while the actors “pantomime” and ad-lib a few
lines. 5. Do the book
again so that all the children get to be characters. |
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Partner Reading 1. Arrange the
partnerships carefully. 2. Think about
how often to change partners. 3. Decide where
the partners will read. 4. Decide how
you will handle absent partners. 5. Always make
sure partners know how they will read the selection. 6. Always have
partners read for a purpose. 7. Set a time
limit for reading. 8. Make sure
students have something to do if they finish before time is up. 9. Before
beginning partner reading model and role-play the behaviors you want. 10. Circulate
and coach the children as they read. |
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Plays 1. Choose
stories in which there is a lot of dialogue. 2. Work together
as a class to turn the first part or chapter into a script. 3. Have the
children work in groups to write some of the script. Give the children in the groups specific
roles, and determine how many children should work together according to the
parts needed. If necessary, work with
one of the groups to help them succeed. |
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Story Maps 1. Decide on a
story map skeleton that will work best for you children. 2. Talk about
the slots on the map, and make sure the students understand their purpose for
reading. 3. Have students
read (or read to them) the first part or chapter. 4. Have students
complete the story map together or in small groups. |
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KWL 1. Before
beginning the chart, lead a general discussion about the childrens'
experience with the topic. By letting
a student tell about how her aunt was
in a tornado, or how another student saw a bat at the zoo before
beginning the chart, you avoid having the students want these “experiences”
put in the Know column. 2. After the
general discussion, ask students what they know about the topic. List the facts. (if a student tells you
again that her aunt was in a tornado,
accept that but don’t write it because it is not a fact about
tornadoes!) 3. If children
disagree, turn the fact into a question, and pout it in the Want
column. (“bats eat fruit, no, they
don’t!” is recorded as “what do bats eat?” 4. When you have
recorded all the facts that the children know about the topic in the
“Know” column, show the students what they will read, and ask them to come
up with questions they think that text will answer. If their questions
are too specific, help the students make their questions broader. 5. After
reading, begin with the questions first, and add answers to the Learned
column. Then, add other important
facts. 6, If students
are going to continue reading about the topic for another day, ask them if
what they have read so far has helped them think of any other questions
that might be answered in the remaining part of the text. Add these questions to the Want Column. |
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Reader's Theater 1. Choose
stories in which there is a lot of dialogue. 2. Work together
as a class to turn the first part or chapter into a script. 3. Have the
children work in groups to write some of the script. Give the children in the groups specific
roles, and determine how many children should work together according to the
parts needed. If necessary, work with
one of the groups to help them succeed. |
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Graphic Organizers 1. Look at the
text and decide how the information can best be organized. If the text structure is
topic/subtopic/details, you will probably want a
web or data chart. If the text
compares two or more things, a data
chart or Venn Diagram works well. Time
lines help children focus
on sequence. Causal chains focus
students on causal relationships. 2. Let the
children see you construct the graphic organizer skeleton. Use this time to
discuss the words you are putting in the organizer, since these are
apt to be key vocabulary from
the selection. 3. Have students
read to find information to add to the organizer. 4. Complete the
organizer together. 5. You may want
to do a focused writing lesson in which you which children use the
information for the organizer to write summaries or reports. 6. When children
understand and can complete the various organizers, have them preview the
text and decide what kind of graphic organizer would work best. Then, let them help you construct the
organizer’s skeleton. |
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What's for 1. Give students
one minute to preview the text and decide what kink of text it is and what it
is all about. 2. Have students
explain what kink of text it is, what it is all about, and how they know. 3. If the text
is story or informational, have students try to decide which it is and
justify their answers. Explain that
sometime times this decision is easy, but other times you can’t tell until
you have read some of the text. 4. If the text
is informational, have students identify any special features, such as
bold-faces text, etc., and tell how these features can help them when they
are reading. |
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Me Purpose Conversations 1. Model for the
class how to lead and participate in a good small group discussion of a
book, a chapter in a book or an article or story they have read
previously for another purpose. 2. Group your
students into mixed groups (4-5) students you feel work well together. 3. Read the
book, chapter, article, or story you want you children to read or reread,
and about which you want them to have a Me Purpose conversation. 4. Construct a
Me Purpose for the selection that either asks the children to evaluate
(story) or to apply (informational text).
Be sure there’s no “right”answer to
the Me Purpose question you construct. 5. Adjust the
groups for absentees so every group has four to five children in it.
Appoint a group leader to keep each group on-task. Set the timer for 8
minutes. Walk around, observing what
you need to do to help the
students learn to improve their Me Purpose conversations. |
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Who Took our Caps 1. Select the
first six or fewer sentences from a book, book chapter, story, or
article. 2. Print or
write this selection on a transparency with no beginning-sentence
capitalization, ending-sentence punctuation, or extra spaces between
sentences. 3. Work to
achieve consensus among the students as to where the first sentence ends
and the second one begins. Add
capitalization and punctuation to
mark where the majority want the change of sentence to be. 4. Continue
sentence-by-sentence until consensus is achieved as to where all the
sentences begin and end. |
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Talking Why and How 1.Introduce
Talking Why and How by leading the class through a book, a chapter in a
novel, or a story they have read previously for another purpose. Show the students places where they
naturally use their minds and imaginations
to fill in some of the “why” and “how” questions the author has left
open. 2. Model for the
class how to lead and participate in a good small-group discussion of a
book, a chapter in a novel, or a story they have read previously for
another purpose. 3. Group your
students into mixed groups (4-5) students that you feel will work well
together. 4. Read the
book, chapter in a novel. or story you want your children to read or reread,
and then do Talking Why and How.
Decide if the selection has some “openness”
in it so the children are free to infer and image how things happen,
why things happen, how characters fee, and why characters do what they do. 5.If the
selection does have some ”openness,” construct a maximum of 6 interesting
“why” and “how” questions that your children would have to image or infer
to answer. In your mind, a question
may have a probable answer, but make
sure it doesn’t have a single “right” answer with which no good reader
would argue. 6. Adjust the
groups for absentees so every group has 4-5 children. Appoint a group
leader to keep each group on-task. Set
the time for 10 min. Walk around, observing what you need to do
to help the students improve their
discussions next time. |
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Souvenirs A souvenir is a
reminder of a pleasant experience.
Children like to collect things, and if you provide souvenirs
regularly, they will begin to wonder as they are reading “What will she give
us to remember this?” Those are the kink of pleasant and anticipatory
associations we want to build for reading.
Souvenirs are “little things” which mean a lot to children. They are
only to prompt the retelling. |
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Picture Walk 1. Walk students
through the text, looking at some or all of the visuals. 2. Ask questions
about the visuals, and let the children explain what they can learn
from these to the other children. 3.Use the
visuals to introduce key vocabulary.
Ask questions that might elicit the word,
and if students don’t come up with the word, say something like,
“We call this a …” 4. Have students
say the key vocabulary word, and stretch it out to decide what
letters they would expect to find in that word. Have students locate
and point to that word in the text. |
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Prove It! 1. Ask students
to make predictions based on the title, book cover, and table of
contents(if there is on). Number their
predictions. 2. Decide which
section of the book will be read first, then have students make
predictions for that section based on the pictures-including
any labels, captions, charts, maps and other visuals. Limit the time students can look at the
chosen section to about 2 min., and have them close their books while making
predictions. 3. Have students
read the text in whatever format you choose. 4. After
reading, have children tell which predictions are true or not, and have them
read parts of the text aloud that “prove it”. 5. Put a check
next to any predictions that are true, and cross out or modify any
untrue predictions. 6. Ask children
what other important things they found out that couldn’t be predicted
based on the visuals. discuss this
info and refer students back to the text
to clarify words or meanings as necessary. 7. If you are
reading a longer piece, continue steps 2-6 for each section. |
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Anticipation Guides 1. Write some
statements concerning the main topic about which students will be
reading. Include some statements that
are common misconceptions that many
children will think are true, and some statements that are so silly and
ridiculous that students will know they are not true. “Stack the deck” so that there are many
more correct statements than incorrect ones. 2. Read each
statement with students and talk about what it means. Emphasize names
and key vocabulary. 3. Have students
write “yes” or ”no” for each statement.
Encourage risk-taking and
guessing by saying something like, “You have a 50-50 chance. Take a guess!” 4. After
students read the selection, go through each statement and have students
indicate whether or not it is true.
When there is a disagreement, refer students back to the text and let
them explain their reasoning. 5. If possible,
have students help you reword false statements to make them true. |
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Rivet 1. Choose six to
eight important words, including important names and words likely to
be difficult for you students to decode. 2. Draw lines on
the board to indicate the number of letters in each word. 3. Write the
letters in each word, one at a time, pausing for a second after you write
each letter and encouraging students to guess the word. When a student
guesses the word, finish writing it. (unlike hangman, students are not
guessing letters. Their eyes are
riveted to the board as you write the
letters, and they are trying to guess the word based on the letters you
have written and the number of remaining blanks.) 4. When all the
words are written, have the students use as many of the words as
possible to make predictions about what is going to happen in the story. Record these predictions. 5. Have students
read the selection, and determine which of their predictions
actually happened. |
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Think Alouds 1. Choose a selection that truly causes you to
think. 2. Decide how
much of that selection you will read aloud. 3. Look at the
pictures and read the selection before you do the Think-Aloud.
Look for places where you actually use the thinking strategies-connect,
predict/anticipate, summarize/conclude, question/monitor, image/infer, and
evaluate/apply. Think about how you
will explain your thinking to your children. Mark these places with sticky
notes and cryptic comments if this will help you remember. 4. Do the
Think-Aloud as the “invisible” children watch and listen. Comment on all
pictures first, and then read the text.
Stop at appropriate places in the text and comment. 5. Don’t try to
“force” all the thinking processes into any one selection, but do try to
include all six of them across your lessons. 6. Provide a
structure for your children to “get in tune with,” and have students share
their thinking as they read the selection. |
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Beach Ball 1. Decide on the
questions and write them with permanent marker on a beach ball. 2. Talk about
the questions on the stripes, and make sure students understand their
purpose for reading. 3. Have the
children read in whatever format you choose. 4. Toss the
beach ball to a student to begin the activity, then let students
continue tossing the ball to one another and answering the questions. |
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Who Did What? 1. Select the
first few sentences, or at most the 1st paragraph, from a book, book
chapter, story, or article. Make sure
there are several pronouns with
different referents in these sentences. 2. Print or
write this selection on a transparency with up to the first 10 pronouns
bordered or circled. 3. Work to
achieve consensus among the students as to whom or what the first
bordered/circled pronoun refers. Write
the referent on which the majority agree
above that first pronoun. 4. Continue
pronoun-by-pronoun until consensus is achieved as to whom or what each
bordered/circled pronoun refers. |
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What's the Missing Word? 1. Select the
first paragraph or two from a book, book chapter, story, or article. 2. Print or
write this selection on a transparency with every fifth word deleted and
replaced by a blank of standard length, up to a maximum of 20 blanks. 3. Work to
achieve consensus among the students as to what word was probably deleted
and replaced by the first blank. Write
the word the majority want in
the first blank. 4. Continue
blank-by-blank until consensus is achieved as to what words to in all the
blanks. |
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Who Mixed Up Our Sentences? 1. Select the
first six or fewer sentences from a book, book chapter, story, or
article. 2. Print or
write those sentences on a transparency in random order in a numbered list. 3. Work to
achieve consensus among the students as to what sentence should be
first. Number the sentence with a “1”
that the majority of students say is
first. 4. Continue
sentence-by-sentence until consensus is achieved as to the correct order of
all the sentences. |
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Writing and Drawing 1. Have children
do their writing and drawing on a sticky note, bookmark, index card, or
in their reading response log. Make
sure they know it is their ideas you
want them to record-you are not expecting a finished writing piece or
a work of art. 2. Give a
limited amount of time for the drawing or writing. Some teachers call
this activity a “quick write” or “quick draw”. 3. When
feasible, let students choose if they want to draw or write, or both. 4. Use writing
and drawing to provide another purpose for rereading and as follow-ups to
predicting activities, KWL’s, graphic organizers, story maps, Beach
Ball, and small group discussions. 5. As you
introduce each new writing/drawing activity, model how the students might
do it. On different days, include
drawing, writing, and a combination of
both so that children see that you value all three. |