Emily, I teach third grade and currently have 4 children (two of them are ELL) who are extremely fluent readers but I have been frustrated by their lack of comprehension (which has placed them below grade level) and my ability to help them to grow as readers. We have done a lot of explicit strategy work, but it has not seemed to do the trick. Recently, I have been working with them using short non-fiction text and it seems to be building their confidence. They have finally begun to take risks that they were not taking before. I give them an organizer before reading that I create to go along with the text. We also use coded post-it notes to code questions, important information (main idea), interesting facts and they also go along with the organizer. Today we read an article from National Geographic about owls. Prior to reading the article I read Gail Gibbons book on owls. Having built some prior knowledge for them they were able to make sense of the new text more readily. I also had them working in cooperative groups on adaptations and one of the students was able to connect back to a book her group was reading on migration. I am thinking that big part of the problem for my children is their need for more prior knowledge so that they feel successful when they are working with text. Going forward I need to select books very carefully, so that I am able to specifically build schema for them prior to reading. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to choose wisely when you have many groups simultaneously reading different text. I also think it is easier to do with non-fiction than fiction.
Leslie Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." ~ Dr. Seuss _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
