Goal: Comprehension/Strategy: Check for Understanding (Beginning Reader)
- This brought back memories of listening to my ELL kids read. I liked the visual of sticky notes to keep her accountable and to reference in the next conference. I sometimes worry about focusing on fluency or WPM as it can give a false sense of reading success.
- We don't have many ELL students at all, but I have to say that this coaching session was pretty abstract and highly verbal which are big red flags. I would love to see "Who and What" in some visual way that would keep her accountable and focused. Do you worry about checking for understanding during your whole class read aloud?
- I love this! I have heard other tricks like "when two vowels go walking, the first does the talking", but I have never heard of this one which is VISUAL. Have any of you incorporated this?
- So, this makes me wonder how you can do these conferences whereever the students are sitting? At times you need a whiteboard, markers, or sticky notes. I am not sure about this part.
- In my experience, many students struggle with leaving out all of those details and just narrowing the focus to the main events. I like the idea of breaking up the task by chapter and then editing them into a summary. This seems like a big 2nd or 3rd grade skill. Do those teachers have any tricks to share?
- I love that included a kindergarten example here! I think most of our primary teachers instinctively use beginning sounds and pictures in books to build up confidence about reading. Giving it a fancy name like "Cross Checking" is a great way to build PK-5 language across the building.
- I like to see the carryover with this skill in the upper grades. As the vocabulary in their books gets harder, it is important for them to realize that they still need to fall back on previously practiced skills.
- I like the idea of this because I do believe we have some students who do not hear fluent reading/are read to at home. I also think we have cut back at school on how much we read aloud to students. I am still, though, not sure about modeling non-fluent reading for students. That might take me some time to buy into!
- This part reminded me of how our non-proficient readers in many cases have limited vocabulary and limited experiences outside of school to develop it. We still must move forward and there is no fast or easy way to cram vocabulary in a meaningful way with children. I wonder how she gets from the "I don't know what silo means" to knowing it. Dictionary? The mini-notebooks to carry back and forth to the home are a cute way to keep communication open and add vocabulary practice, too.
I really like the idea of individual reading conferences with students. I especially like the idea of teaching individual strategies based on what individual kids need. Chapter 5 did a good job of laying out the conference procedures as well as providing tools to use (strategy ideas/forms). I feel like I am using the Cross Checking strategy quite a bit. I use not only words, but also visual cues to prompt students (Reading Recovery really supports this) to look for Meaning, Structure, and Visual sources of information. I do this by asking
ReplyDelete"Does it Make Sense?" (Meaning)
"Does it sound right?" (Structure)
"Does it look right?" (visual)
I have picture cards that I use as well. I have heard several student use the terminology on their own which makes me smile :)
I occasionally model the "fluency/strategy: reread text" during our read aloud part of the day. I tend to read and then say, "I think I should back up and reread that" and then ask if it was easier to understand the second time.
ReplyDeleteWe talk about reading with expression and work on putting this into play when we "read to someone", but I think it's good for students to know that adults also read to fast sometimes. I hope it helps them see the value in reading at the right pace, not too fast, but not too slow. This can be hard for students to grasp as they may equate successful reading with reading fast, which often results in poor comprehension.
I really liked the strategy called "flip the sound" and I am anxious to try it with my students. Even struggling readers in 4th and 5th grade have difficulty with vowel sounds and could benefit from this strategy.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lisa Webb, when working with beginning readers we use the "cross checking" strategy quite often with visual or picture cues. I now have a name for this strategy that crosses K-5.
ReplyDeleteLooking ahead...
ReplyDeleteChapter 6 is about "whole class instruction". The text decribes whole-class instruction as brief and far more frequent. It involves teaching a select few strategies from the CAFE menu. My teaching is in small group or individual form. However, I thought this was an interesting chapter to read. The authors write that whole-class CAFE lessons are driven by assessment, one-on-one conferring, and small group observations. I made an immediate "text to self" connection between this as the work that the district is doing on Data Teams. It is so important that we not only collect data and observations...but also use that information to really form and guide our teaching.
This chapter makes a whole lot more sense to me. We actually need to teach these reading strategies directly for kids to understand them. We are such a small school and if we all had the same "language" when we thought reading this would be so helpful to students. Example: "flip the sound" I think it would be a great idea to come up with terms/vocabulary that is common so everyone can be teaching the same vocab. to students year after year. The same was true for the fluency. (slow like a turtle, "fluent" like a walking, fast like a jet.)
ReplyDeleteChapter 6 Comment: This chapter gives good examples of various whole-class lessons. The pages in the index are very helpful. I teach many of these strategies, but probably not as systematic as I should. Again, I think it would be great if everyone taught these strategies and we were all using the same vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteI don't teach a lot in whole groups because it is hard for all of the students to pay attention at once. Teaching new things in small groups help my students learn the new skill better than large group. I would like to start teaching and talking about retelling in large group. If I model what a retell looks like then my students might do better when they are assessed for data teams.
ReplyDeleteChapter 7 blog- I can't figure out where else to put this blog. It makes sense to group students also by strategy (at some point in the day.) I think the authors do a great job explaining how this might work, but until I "see" it firsthand it is hard for me to visualize how this would work. I would like to see the management side of this.
ReplyDeleteI like the structure of the reading conference. I do conferencing with students but not as structured. I do try and teach individual, small group and whloe group strategies. At times, I feel like I have too much going on to be effective. I find that my lower readers take the strategies and practice them the most compared to the other students. I found the section about summarizing interesting. The district really pushes that strategey in 3,4, and 5. After reading that section I am thinking about students who are not good at retelling and Check for Understanding, so I now I am realizing that they are not ready for summarizing and we are pushing some students too early. I liked Renee's idea that we need to use the same language when teaching these strategies. I teach these strategies, but don't use the same wording in the CAFE book.
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