Supporting Striving Readers

1. Supporting Striving Readers Fall 2012 Robin Valente

2. Who are striving readers? • Elementary aged students that are two or more grades below grade level in reading • Example: a 5th grade student reading at a 3rd grade level

3. Assessment/Intervention

4. Assessment • QRI: Word Lists • Administering a leveled word list assessment “provides a quick estimate of the students word-identification ability” • Focus on accuracy of identification and atomicity of response while administering the test. • Use the word list as a diagnostic to determine the level reading passage to begin with. Caldwell and Leslie, 2011

5. Assessment • QRI: Reading Passages • Purposes: • Determine student’s independent, instructional, and frustration levels • Assess student’s ability to read various types of text • Assess student’s ability to comprehend in different modes Caldwell and Leslie, 2011

6. Assessment • QRI:Analysis • Miscues • Automaticity • Retelling/ Comprehension questions • Strategic Reading Caldwell and Leslie, 2011

7. Intervention • Instruction that is specifically designed based on the findings of an informal reading inventory or some other method of assessing reading proficiency. Caldwell and Leslie, 2011

8. Intervention • Components of Successful Intervention • Emphasize reading and writing meaning • Teach students strategies that good readers and writers use • Find text that students CAN read successfully • Provide consistent lesson structure • Provide time for word study • Focus on fluency development • Keep small group sizes Caldwell and Leslie, 2011

9. Student Strategies and Teacher Techniques for Comprehension Comprehension should be monitored numerous times throughout the reading process. Explicit instruction should be given… • Before reading • During reading • After reading (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007)

10. Before Reading Teacher Preview: Selecting a text • What do I want my students to learn from the text? • What type of text is it? • Narrative, Informational, Persuasive, Technical • What are the features of that text type? • What are the challenging words/concepts in the text other than content vocabulary terms?

11. Before Reading Anticipation Guides: are a list of statements that relate to a particular text that helps the students know what to look for as they read. Purpose • Build prior knowledge • Establish a purpose for reading • Introduce key terms/ideas

12. Before Reading Anticipation Guides Steps • Select a text (or texts). • Identify major ideas or concepts. • Create true or false statements that reflect the concepts that will be covered in the reading. • Read through the statements with your students, having them select true or false.

13. Sample Anticipation Guide

14. Sample Anticipation Guide Passage Tropical rainforests are among the most mysterious of all geographical biomes in the world. A biome is an area with very distinctive plants and animals that have adapted to life in that particular environment. Rainforests have covered large portions of the Earth for millions of years, and can have trees that are 1,000 years-old or more. They are called rainforests because they are among the wettest areas on Earth, receiving anywhere from 80 to 100 inches of rain a year. In most rainforests, the temperature ranges from 70 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit all year long, and the air is almost always humid. • (Adapted from superteacherworksheets.com)

15. During Reading Think-Aloud: is a detailed process of making our thinkingpublic by showing students how we constructmeaning. Purpose • Students learn to monitor their thinking as they read. • Students slow the reading process down. • Students assess their own comprehension and reread as necessary. (Davey, 1983)

16. During Reading • Think-Aloud Steps • Read through a text with your students and verbalize all the comprehension skills that come naturally to you as you read (predicting, questioning, summarizing, making connections). • Students listen/follow along as you read the text aloud. • Pause at predetermined places and ask for volunteers to share their thoughts.

17. After Reading Tea Party: allows students to determine meaning of a text. Purpose • Repeat exposure to key concepts. • Summarization of text without student anxiety. • Teacher assessment of comprehension.

18. After Reading Tea Party Steps • Write down statements directly from text onto index cards, repeating them at least twice (you want multiple cards of same statements). • Students each get a card and walk around reading as many of their classmate’s cards as they can. • Students group to discuss the information they’ve read, and, as a group, write a statement about what they think the main idea of the text is. • Discuss each group’s main idea statement as a class.

19. Reading Comprehension In order to comprehend a text, students must… • Make personal connections with the text. • Understand text structure. • Understand the purpose of reading. • Understand the meaning of vocabulary used. (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007)