Alan is interested in tetherball, soccer and ping-pong. His scientific mind embraces future potential writing topics of liquid, solid and gas, water vapor, salinity, and the life cycle of insects. He willingly embraced new reading content of electricty and magnetism while showing joyful expression and a sense of humor in his writing.
Alan is a curious, self-motivated reader and a pleasure to collaborate with. Scoring at a 65-70 percentile with his oral reading fluency, Alan is on target for where he should be during the beginning of the winter trimester. Alan performed with 97% accuracy on the fluency scale at 4th grade level for words correct per minute. Strong suits: reading motivation, fluency and decoding for meaning.
Occasionally, Alan misses critical details of the story. While Alan reads at a steady pace with efficiency and three-four word phrase groups, there is room for improvement in comprehension. Alan should continue to read 4th level material while focusing on gaining strategies for comprehension. He can benefit from reading more carefully and asking questions along the way to more fully capture details of the main idea.
As a result of this knowledge, what learning objectives and materials are you considering using for your lesson?
A reading lesson for Alan will focus on teaching a strategy for recognizing main ideas with the purpose of summarizing a challenging work of non-fiction. In addition, scoring well into a 5th grade frustration level, shows that Alan can move beyond common word use to work with new vocabulary and more challenging text. Importantly, laying the groundwork of prior knowledge within the context of interdisciplinary instruction (his intrinsic motivation is Science) can guide toward greater engagement, ownership and comprehension.
The process for this lesson includes creating an “I wonder” poem to preload for conceptual understanding of doing what good readers do — asking questions. Modeling, I will read a short passage, and think aloud as I ask predictive questions. Following this exercise, together we will read a grade level text while placing sticky notes and writing Alan’s questions in the margins. Materials: journal notebook for poem, pencil, grade level text (2 copies), question prompts on cards, sticky notes.
I really like your reading lesson idea. Let me see if I understand. You will be reading a poem or a grade level text? As you read the passage out loud to him, he will think of questions. Together you will write out the questions on sticky notes and past them near where the text relates to the question.
ReplyDeleteYou also talked about writing an “‘I wonder’ poem.” Please enlighten me on this.
Finally question based on my experience last week with my buddy, did you experience anything that blew you away or did you learn anything new?
We will be reading grade level text. I experimented this week with the lesson in a small group and incorporated a question wheel. This was successful as an engagement tool/strategy. (look for the reposted pdf).
ReplyDeleteThe "I wonder poem" was not implemented at this time. However, I think this can be another engagement piece to introduce the concept of asking questions. Four "I wonder about...x"statements are created by the students and posted publicly on a classroom wall. A title is added to the display to welcome and validate students' thinking.
Working with my buddy, I learned that his silent reading rate is higher than his oral fluency rate. I learned that his comprehension is more solid than I thought. I think he can comfortably handle 5th grade reading level. What blew me away is his command of vocabulary reaching frustration at the 8th grade level, and the literature he has experience as an accomplished independant reader (Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and Great Expectations)!
Asking questions is a great strategy, both for the teacher to model with a think-aloud and for the student to utilize when reading challenging texts. The wheels are cool, too.
ReplyDeleteHi David,
ReplyDeleteYou said that your buddy reads in the 65-70th percentile, but still has some trouble with comprehension or key details. I wonder if he slowed down his rate do you think he might have a stronger comprehension?
Your lesson plan sounds interesting. I've never heard of an "I wonder" poem or the wheel. You mentioned that you did this lesson this week in a small group, did you feel that the students really liked it and benefited from the activity?
Awesome wheel!
ReplyDeleteI like your reading lesson idea for your buddy. I also like how you are incorporating the Optimal Learning Model (Routman, 2003) into your lesson, modeling and guided practice. I think asking questions is a great strategy to improve comprehension skills. Asking explicit and implicit questions can be very beneficial. I love the idea of using sticky notes for questions. How convenient!
You mentioned that you learned his silent reading rate higher than his oral fluency rate. Do you think read alouds can help him build his fluency skill? I think reading poems or Reader’s theater can also help him build confidence in reading aloud.