Don't have time in your day to reach every student? My 10 Minute Reading Intervention resource can help you squeeze in lessons that are fast & effective!
Dyslexia reading programs, dyslexia strategies, dyslexia tips, dyslexia tutor, Orton Gillingham, Lindamood Bell, Barton, Wilson, multisensory program..
A three-step process for teaching your students how to identify, define, and apply academic vocabulary found in complex texts.
Learn six ways to help reluctant readers gain confidence and improve their reading skills in upper elementary and middle school classrooms.
If you need guidance knowing how to help struggling readers in your classroom, try these 6 tips to make your reading intervention time actually...
Strategies, interventions, and techniques that teachers and parents can use to help kids with dyslexia improve their reading skills.
I mean...why WOULDN'T you use cootie catchers in your reading block? It makes perfect sense. Ok - remember last week how I was talking about doing a little spring cleaning with some of my TpT resources? Well, I did a little spring cleaning in my file folders on my computer as well. Yikes. Now THAT'S a bit of a rabbit hole. I got in a little deeper than I wanted to, but I figured I might as well finish the job. I got rid of a lot (a LOT) of cringe worthy products that just didn't make the cut anymore, and I got some major organizing done as well. BUT - you know what I found? THIS >>> It's a reading comprehension cootie catcher that I TOTALLY forgot I made! And since it resurfaced for me - I thought I'd resurface it for you! I'm sure I made it for you guys in the first place, but I can't for the life of me find it anywhere on the blog. There's actually 3 different versions. They have different comprehension questions that can be used with any fictional book. They work great as a quick partner review game. You can download them here! Find any long-lost things in your spring cleaning, lately? Pin and Share this freebie:
Do you do all of these 6 essentials of reading intervention? Each is a must-have for effective intervention and will make it so much easier...
This post may contain affiliate links. That means that if you click the links and make a purchase I may receive compensation at no additional cost to you. I do not recommend any companies that I do not persoanlly use and love. Please read our disclaimer for more info. Teaching reading to middle school students can be difficult. There aren’t as many resources for teaching middle school reading intervention. Check out 4 Resources for Middle School Reading Intervention. It can also be difficult to find age-appropriate activities to work with students on pre-reading. K-W-L Chart This is one technique for pre-reading that does translate to older students. A K-W-L Chart is where you have the students start by listing what they know about a topic (this is the “K”). Then, you have them make a list of everything that they want to know about the topic (the “W”). And then post-reading you add the third column of everything that they learned about the topic (the “L”). With older students, I tend to also use this as a technique to help them practice with research and for the L column, they have to state evidence from the text to support it. Preview the Text If the text is non-fiction: Have the students look ahead and read any headings. Have them read any subheadings. Your students should preview any pictures in the text and read the caption with it. If the text is fiction: Have the students read the title. If there is a summary, have them read it first. Have students preview any pictures and make predictions about what the story will be about. Previewing Vocabulary This can be very important when dealing with ELL students as well as students with a reading disability. Before you begin reading the text work through the vocabulary. Discuss the different words that they are going to come into contact with that may be difficult for them. Students who are reading texts where they don’t understand the words are going to get frustrated and give up. Also if they are not understanding some of the important vocabulary words, they are not going to fully comprehend the text. Review Background If you are going to read a story with your class, take time to think about what background information they would need to comprehend the text. As teachers, we often assume students know things about the past that they may not. I was shocked this year when before a unit on the Holocaust I asked kids what they knew about it. The answer was that they knew very little, and some students knew nothing at all. So, to be careful, don’t assume your students know anything about the text. Create a lesson or a webquest where they discover the information that they will need! More Resources: Also, Check Out: Using Editing Stations in ELA Accommodations to Support Students who Struggle with Executive Functioning Get your free IEP summary page! Subscribe to get our latest content by email. Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription. There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. First Name Email Address We use this field to detect spam bots. If you fill this in, you will be marked as a spammer. Get your download! We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit
Intervention in reading can be the difference that changes a student's path. What teacher doesn’t want to be that difference? But, finding...
This resource is packed full of purposefully planned pages and outlines to keep your documentation streamlined and organized! You will find tools to help you track everything from assessment results to intervention notes to student accommodations. What's included in this resource? formative assessment results summative assessment results individual student interventions small group interventions intervention plans/calendars IEP goals and progress guided reading notes guided math notes writing conferences tutorial attendance parent communication student behavior assessment goals and scores classroom accommodations individual student accommodations student information EVERY page is offered in color AND black/white EVERY page is offered as a fully-editable PowerPoint, partially-editable PowerPoint, or PDF MOST pages have a digital equivalent page in either Google Docs or Google Sheets Is this resource editable: Yes. Every pages included in this resource is offered three ways: non-editable PDF: This option is perfect if you just want to print and go without changing anything in the document. partially editable PowerPoint: This option allows you to edit the text in the tables as well as the titles on the pages if you'd like. This option does not allow you to manipulate the table cells. fully editable PowerPoint: this options is exactly how it sounds. Every element of the document will be editable. This offers teachers are great place to start when designing a binder that truly fits their needs. Does this resource have a digital component? Yes. Most of the pages included in this resource have a Google Sheets or Google Docs equivalent. Force copy links are included. Please check out the preview before purchasing so that you have a good idea of what you're buying. If your have any questions, feel free to send me a message! Happy documenting! Looking for ways that your students can track their own data and hold themselves accountable for their progress and learning? Click here to check out my DATA TRACKER!
Learn which strategies to use with students who are engaging in escape or task avoidance behaviors in special education classes.
Take close reading to the next level in your classroom. Use the six Close Reading steps guide from Appletastic Learning for a deeper understanding of text.
It is difficult for a kid with dyslexia to stay motivated. We list 17 activities to support kids with dyslexia & help them improve skills & self-confidence.
Reading comprehension strategies for upper elementary and middle school - tips and tricks for teaching reading strategies.
Scaffold your instruction with these teaching scaffolding strategies to help bridge readiness and mastery for your elementary students!
This post will share the most frequent questions asked about the reading intervention program. Free downloads included for reading and grade level correlation.
Need to know how to help students write summaries? These lesson ideas and summarizing ideas and tips for the upper elementary classroom will help you teach summarizing and help your students write summaries as they read.
Asking questions before, during, and after reading comes very naturally to skilled readers, but for struggling readers, this skill can be just the opposite. Asking questions of varying depths is arguably the most important reading
Fluency tends to be a commonly overlooked skill, but you can change that by learning about strategies for teaching fluency with your elementary students!
hold students accountable while they independently read with these easy to implement reading tips and tricks and strategies
Reading is one thing that many students struggle with. Some students get the underlying messages right away, while others need a little extra help. By the time students reach the high school level, we hope their reading levels have improved from their elementary years. While the majority of students' understanding have improved by the time they reach high school, there are still many students who get frustrated and struggle to read. Below, I will explain and discuss five important and helpful strategies that teachers can incorporate into their lessons, in any class that they teach. 1. Inference: As we read, we can use inference to further reading comprehension. When we infer while reading, we use knowledge that we already have and combine that with evidence from the text passages to come to conclusions with what we are reading. Students can formulate a question they may come upon while reading. In order to answer that question, they need to first determine what they already know about the subject in the text and then look for evidence in the text that supports their question. This information will help to lead them to their answer. If you're in the neighborhood of trying something different, I have created these FREE Reading Strategies Bookmarks. I thought that these bookmarks would be a great addition to an existing novel study and an opportunity for students to try something new. Simply, give each student a bookmark during various sections of a novel. The bookmarks will give students an opportunity to look at specific elements in the section of the book they are reading one at a time so that students are not overwhelmed by having to examine more than one thing at a time. Students need a bookmark anyway, so this bookmark is a win-win for both students (as they will learn more reading strategies), teachers (as they can use these bookmarks over and over) and the book itself (no more corner-page creases!) 😄 Tip: Consider printing the bookmarks on cardstock paper for more durability! 2. Questioning: While students are reading their text, they can start to create questions as they go along. They need to actively question what they are reading. Questions they have may be about the text, or about what the author means by a specific sentence or paragraph. By questioning, students are now thinking about what they are actually reading and can analyze passages more deeply and thoroughly. There comes a connection between the reader and the text, which also helps to increase comprehension. Due to the fact that many of my students were struggling to come up with effective questions during their lit circle discussion, I created this Reading Response Interactive Notebook Flipbook, as a guide to help their discussions. This flipbook provides students with sentence starters, before, during and after reading questions. It's a handy tool that can be referenced over and over. 3. Summarizing: One of the more difficult types of reading strategies is summarizing, mainly because students don't know what they are supposed to do. Some students end up providing too many details, while others not enough. By doing either, they may miss the main point and end up making no sense at all. With proper and frequent practice, summarizing will help students to write down the main ideas of a longer passage, help them to focus on key points and ideas that the author wants the reader to understand, and be able to use keywords and phrases properly. 4. Main Idea: Finding the main idea of a text is sometimes difficult for students to understand. Students need to first understand the focus of the text, then they can figure out what is so important about that focus. Combining the two creates the main idea of a passage. Students can do this with any text by finding supporting evidence in the text that describes the focus. 5. Synthesizing: Synthesizing is another difficult strategy for students, so frequent practice and modeling is essential for students. Synthesizing works as a reading strategy by breaking down all of the parts of a text into pieces, such as the characters, the plot, the climax, and the setting, while discussing or thinking about how they all come together to create one whole text. As the students read the text, they will begin to think differently about the text. They will learn more information about characters that will promote them think differently. Their opinions will change, as their comprehension increases. I hope one, if not more of these strategies will work with your struggling students. These strategies require repeated practice, so if students are able to continue to use them regularly, they will have a much better understanding of them, as well as the fact that they might be encouraged to read more and challenge themselves with different books! Looking for more reading strategy ideas? Check out these ideas from the other Secondary English Coffee Shop bloggers! Getting Your Teens to Actually Read from Room 213 Editable Reading Guide for Novels from Nouvelle ELA During Reading Bookmarks from Secondary Sara
Teaching struggling readers at the high school level? Scaffold their comprehension by focusing on these four important reading strategies.
Teaching theme is not an easy task! Not only do students need to have a strong comprehension of the story's elements (like plot, setting, and characters), but they also have to be able to make inferences to find the author's message, since most themes are not overtly stated by the author. So, what are some of my favorite activities for helping kids understand theme? I'll list a number of them here. 1. Make an Anchor Chart Anchor charts are a great way to make learning visual and to have a record that kids can refer to when they need a bit of extra support. Theme may be defined in a number of ways. To me, the theme is the author's message or what he/she wants the reader to take away/learn from the story. It is a BIG idea, with a real-world or universal concern and can be applied to anyone. Besides talking about what a theme is, you'll also want to go over what it isn't. For example, some kids confuse the main idea of the story with its theme. To help students understand the difference, it's helpful to use stories that everyone in the class knows, like previous read alouds or classic stories like The Three Little Pigs. You can take each story and discuss the main idea (what the story was mostly about - specific to the story) vs. the theme (the lesson the author wants the reader to know - not specific to the story), to contrast the two ideas. The second area of confusion for some kids is that the theme is not specific to the characters in the story. In the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, for example. The theme would not be that...A little mouse named Chrysanthemum learned to accept the uniqueness of her name. The theme would be larger than the book and would be something like...It's important to accept oneself. Also, you'll want to explain to your students that often times, a book has multiple themes and there are several answers which work equally well to describe a book's theme. Since theme is very subjective, I tell students that I will accept any answer, as long as they have the text evidence to prove it. For example, in the book, Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, one might argue that the theme is about friendship, another might say family, or even courage, or kindness. Any one of these themes would be right, and counted as such, since they each fit the story and could be supported by text evidence. 2. Use Pixar Shorts to Practice Theme Besides the sheer enjoyment which comes from watching these mini-films, your students can learn a lot about reading concepts from these. They're great for ELL students or for struggling readers, and for all readers really since the text complexity piece is removed. You can find these clips on YouTube, but you'll want to make sure to preview them first, so you're more familiar with the plot and are able to focus on theme questions. Here are some of my favorite Pixar Shorts for teaching theme: Piper Partly Cloudy Lava Boundin' 3. Use Mentor Texts Mentor texts are one of my go-to teaching tools as picture books are able to portray examples of just about any reading concept you need to teach. One thing I like to do when using mentor texts for theme, is to vary the types of questions I ask. Rather than always saying What is the theme?, I might ask... What is the deeper meaning of this story? After reading this book, what do you think matters to this author? Which idea from the story do you think might stay with you? What did the author want people to learn from this story?... Once kids answer, you might say, Ah...so that's the theme! Some of my current mentor text favorites for theme include the following: Ish by Peter H. Reynolds I Wish I Were a Butterfly by James Howe Journey by Aaron Becker (a wordless book) Beautiful Oops by Barry Saltzberg The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal Pete and Pickles by Berkeley Breathed If you're looking for more titles, I have a FREE Mentor Text List for Literature which includes a page on theme which you can download from my TpT store. 4. Use Posters with Themes to Chart Book Themes I like to choose 8 - 10 common themes and place posters of them in the classroom. These are included in my Theme unit but you could easily make them yourself if you'd like. After we finish a class novel, a read aloud, or a mentor text as part of a mini-lesson, I like to have the kids discuss the theme of the book. Once we decide on the theme, I place a miniaturized copy of the book's cover (about 3 x 3 inches or so) under the correct theme poster. You can also make the posters more interactive by allowing kids to write titles of books they have recently read on sticky notes, under the posters as well. 5. Use Songs to Practice Finding the Theme I love to add music to the classroom whenever possible. Not only does it add instant motivation for some kids, but it is also just good for them in so many ways. There are lots of songs you can use to teach theme, from current pop songs to oldies, rap songs, and country songs. While all of these work well, I especially enjoy using Disney songs. Disney songs are easily recognized for some kids, have catchy, fun tunes, and have lyrics that need no censoring (yay!). You can easily find the lyrics online to project on a smartboard or document projector, and the song clips may be found on YouTube, Here are some of my favorite Disney songs which work well for theme: Hakuna Matata from Lion King Just Keep Swimming from Finding Dory Reflection from Mulan Let it Go from Frozen Something There from Beauty and the Beast A Whole New World from Aladdin 6. Introduce Short Texts Using Task Cards Using task cards for theme gives your students a great deal of practice in a short period of time, which makes them a perfect way to begin to practice finding the theme using text. I love the fact that students can read multiple task card stories and practice finding the theme 20 - 30 times, in the time it might take to read a story and find the theme once. You can do task cards as a center activity, to play Scoot, or as a whole class scavenger hunt. One thing I like to do for the scavenger hunt is to make sure everyone has a partner and to pair stronger readers with struggling readers. 7. Add Some Writing After students have worked on theme for a week or two, I like to have students create their own short stories which show a strong theme, without directly stating it. This changes each student's role from a theme finder, to a theme creator and gives students insight into how authors create a situation that allows a theme to unfold. When I introduce this project, we refer back to the task cards we just completed, as an example of story length and rich content. In a matter of 2 - 3 paragraphs, students learn that they can include enough information to let our readers know our message. After students are finished creating these short stories, it's fun to share them in some way, to give more theme practice. Sometimes I have students meet in small groups to share out, with group members guessing the theme. Other years, I leave a stack on my desk and grab several if we have a few minutes. Either the students or I read the short story out loud, and the class discusses the theme. 8. Move to Passages, Short Stories, and Novels. Once we have scaffolded a great foundation for the understanding of theme, there comes a point where kids have to move on to text which is more challenging. I like to use page-long passages which I have created, before using short stories, and ultimately novels. If you're looking for some ready made materials to help you teach theme, here's a packet I love to use which works well for 4th and 5th Graders. Click here to read more about the Theme unit. Want some more teaching ideas and activities to teach theme? Click here to read Teaching Themes in Literature. If you like this post, make sure to share it with a teacher friend! Thanks so much for stopping by! For more ideas and strategies focused on upper elementary, be sure to sign up for The Teacher Next Door's free email newsletter! Bonus, you'll also gain access to my FREE Resource Library which contains exclusive upper elementary freebies that you won't find anywhere else! I'd love to connect with you! The Teacher Next Door's Website Pinterest Facebook Instagram TpT Store
This was taken from Dr. Averil Coxhead's work on Vocabulary at the following link: Vocabulary Tiers and Samples Common Core Vocabulary, Tier I, II and III Words COMMON CORE TIER VOCABULARY INFORMATION Common Core State Standards: Focus on Tier 2 & Tier 3 Academic Vocabulary Tier 1 Basic words that commonly appear in spoken language. Because they are heard frequently in numerous contexts and with nonverbal communication, Tier 1 words rarely require explicit instruction.Examples of Tier 1 words are clock, baby, happy and walk. Tier 2 High frequency words used by mature language users across several content areas. Because of their lack of redundancy in oral language, Tier 2 words present challenges to students who primarily meet them in print. Examples of Tier 2 words are obvious, complex, establish and verify. Tier 3 Words that are not frequently used except in specific content areas or domains. Tier 3 words are central to building knowledge and conceptual understanding within the various academic domains and should be integral to instruction of content. Medical, legal, biology and mathematics terms are all examples of these words. The following lists were created by Dr. Averil Coxhead Senior Lecturer School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington [email protected] High Mileage Word List High Mileage Word Families
Are you classroom teacher looking for engaging ways to teach your students to comprehend stories? Read this post for primary ideas on how to get children to learn to visualize and build reading comprehension.
Have students who just can't remember what they have read? I have ten reading comprehension strategies to use right away to help them out!
Wiggly students can feel distracting but do they have to be? Check out my tips and strategies for students who can't sit still!
Planning your guided literacy time is bout to get so much easier. I get asked a lot about how to tie reading and writing together, while focusing on fluency, comprehension, phonics, vocabulary, writing, etc. I create this resource to get kids excited about reading and writing, and to make planning
Are Students Missing Strong Reading Foundations? Phonological, and phonemic awareness skills are the foundations for competent readers. If students are memorizing text, reading without fluency, reading words incorrectly, it might be a sign that they are missing some foundations. These missing foundations are often present in the phonological awareness continuum. Many times, our assessments target […]
Graphic organizers are timeless, versatile tools that support students in independently using reading comprehension strategies. A quality graphic organizer can be the difference between students using and understanding a comprehension strategy or not. WHY USE GRAPHIC
Do you have struggling readers you just can't reach? This mega list of reading intervention activities will help you teach all students how to read!
This research-based reading intervention program is AMAZING. Over 10,000 teachers are using The Reading Intervention Program and seeing incredible results.
Motivate students with independent reading by adding engaging reading sprints...turn the traditional reading log upside down!
Wondering how to improve reading fluency with young readers? Get eight practical tips!
Increasing reading fluency in our students is one of the main goals of any elementary school teacher. If they are not fluent readers, they are unable to gain meaning (comprehend) from what they are reading. There are a few components to being a fluent reader...
Engaging, fun ways to teach your students summarizing skills. Strengthen their reading skills and provide practice with this challenging concept.
Working with kids and young adults who are oppositional can be challenging. Being oppositional might mean refusing to do work, breaking rules, and engaging in other challenging behaviors. The truth is, many kids can be oppositional from time to time, so many of these strategies work with all learner
