We know how important it is to teach our students to make inferences when they read. It's a tricky concept, and one that needs to be taught again and again. Students often confusing inferring with making predictions and observations, and some are just confused all together! Som
'4B' was the code our school secretary used to easily identify our class back when I taught 4th grade. 4 = 4th grade. B = Bongers. I later went on to teach Language Arts at a middle school, so this blog documents the learning we did in reading and writing each day, in addition to many posts from when I taught fourth grade. I figured keeping it all in one place was better than having two separate blogs. One more thing: please feel free to PIN anything you see!
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Reading comprehension is a very important part of the education process. We must be able to understand what we read to complete the process of communication. Help your children become great readers with fun worksheets to practice with. There are some great fun stories to choose from at early and later reading levels. Develop your […]
Let's do English ESL reading for detail (deep reading). Each chapter has between 3-5 questions. some are literal and some are interpretive and some need prior k…
Using movies, short films or animations in the classroom is extremely engaging for students. I use short films from Pixar Studios to teach a variety of skills
An anchor chart can and should be a useful teaching tool, but there are tricks to making and using it that make it so. Click through to read these tips!
In today's post, I'll share ideas for teaching inferring through a gradual release of responsibility. Make sure to read all the way through the post, because there are several different freebies you can download and use right away!
These tips and tools will show you how to teach inference and help your students find success with a difficult skill!
Reading + Writting Anchor Chart for Making Inferences for the Third Grade! 🧠✏️📚
We've started learning about the reading comprehension strategy, Inferring, this week. I L.O.V.E teaching inferring!! It's so fun to see the kids' gears turning and putting the pieces together to figure out what's really going on!
Reading comprehension strategies for upper elementary and middle students. Tips for incorporating the strategy of inferring.
An inference is an interpretation or an explanation of an observation. The observation is made using our senses. To make an inference, we connect what we observe to prior knowledge and the new...
Phonemic Awareness: -Sound isolation -Sound identity: https://youtu.be/ihF1J0c9Yf0?si=nXuRMDIlHVtUANCf -Sound blending -Sound substitution -Sound deletion: https://youtu.be/XVZbPJEhI7c?si=Q8nPD5Xdntu_nv24 -Sound segmentation (the most difficult to master)
Before Christmas we read a story called, Shark in the Park in which a little boy named Timothy Pope is looking through his telescope in the...
I was at an inservice this week on using Comprehension Toolkit in small groups. We reread chapter 1 of Strategies That Work, and I read som...
Do you have a student (or several students) who struggle with poor reading comprehension? In this post, I share the step-by-step process that I use to improve my students’ reading comprehension! I wrote this post primarily for Kindergarten through 3rd grade teachers. However, if you are a Kindergarten teacher, some of these ideas may not apply to you (although some may). At the end, I’ll address Kindergarten separately. 🙂 Photo Credit: KK Tan, Shutterstock Gather More Information First, if I notice that a student has poor reading comprehension, I try to gather a little more information. I look for answers to the following questions: Does the child have good (or better) listening comprehension? (Can the child successfully discuss and answer questions about texts read aloud to him?) Is poor decoding affecting comprehension? At what reading level does the student comprehend (if any)? Is poor fluency affecting comprehension? (Is the student reading so slowly or disfluently that it’s difficult for him to comprehend? Is the child spending so much time and effort sounding out words that he doesn’t have any brain power left to focus on meaning?) Are there specific comprehension skills (i.e., retelling, inferring, asking questions) that the child excels at or especially struggles with? Does the child tend to invent (incorrect) answers to comprehension questions, or does she simply say, “I don’t know”? As you probably already know, so many different factors can affect comprehension! In order to appropriately address the problem, I always try to pinpoint what the underlying cause is. For example, sometimes students can decode texts that are much harder than what they can comprehend. This is why, when I assess students’ reading level, I always take comprehension into account. The Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System is my favorite tool for determining students’ reading levels because it incorporates decoding, fluency, and comprehension assessment. Let’s say that a student can decode a Level L text with high accuracy. But her comprehension is poor unless she reads a level H text or below. This means that she should be reading Level H or Level I books during guided reading. A Level L text is too difficult for her to understand, even if she can decode it perfectly. Or, to give another example, you may find that a student’s fluency is holding him back from successfully comprehending a text. In this case, I would, again, move the child back to an easier reading level at which he/she can read more fluently (and give more attention to comprehension). Moving students “back” levels is not necessarily a bad thing! It just means that you are providing them with opportunities to be successful with decoding and understanding texts. This builds confidence and is necessary for them to move forward! But, of course, if none of these issues is at play, it may just be a matter of comprehension! Sometimes neither decoding nor fluency is the problem, and a student simply struggles with understanding what she is reading. If this is the case for some of your students, keep reading—I’m going to share exactly what I do to help solve this problem! Establish the Importance of Comprehension When our students come to us, we rarely know EXACTLY what they understand to be true about reading. Do they believe that it’s all about decoding the words? Did their previous teacher focus on reading speed? So when a child struggles with comprehension, I make sure that I am sending the right message: that comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading. To do this, I: Outright tell the student (repeatedly) that understanding the text is extremely important! It allows us to enjoy and learn from a text. Reading isn’t very much fun when you don’t know what the book is saying! Make sure to always address the content of the text right after we read it (rather than jumping straight to phonics or other teaching points). Use thinkalouds during individual, small group, and whole group instruction to show that I am thinking about what I’m reading, I also share how I notice and fix my own problems in comprehension. Make the Child Responsible for Checking Comprehension When I set out to improve a child’s comprehension skills, the very first thing I do is to make him responsible for checking his own comprehension. To do so, I use a simple stop-and-check strategy. Before I read a text with the student, I place sticky notes at various stopping points. I might put them at the bottom of each page, at the end of a chapter, or even after each paragraph. Then, as the child reads with me, he is responsible for stopping at each sticky note. He retells what has happened in the text (since the previous sticky note). If he can retell successfully, he continues reading. If not, he goes back and rereads. If you use this strategy, you’ll want to try to determine the largest amount of text that a child can read and still recall (this may take some trial and error). As time goes on, the amount of text that a child can read and retell should increase. Your sticky notes should grow farther apart! Although I originally provide some feedback about the child’s retellings, I eventually begin asking, “What do you think—did you understand that part? Should you go back or continue reading?” Again, I’m trying to put the responsibility on the child for monitoring his own comprehension. When I see that the student is successful with this strategy, I begin asking him to place the sticky notes himself. Next, he decides on stopping points beforehand (i.e., after every chapter) but does not place any sticky notes. Eventually, the goal is for the student to use this stop-and-check strategy independently: without my assistance, and without any sticky notes. This takes time, of course! Focus on Literal Retelling After we’ve worked on the stop-and-check strategy for a couple of days, I also begin incorporating a whole-text retell. In addition to having the student retell individual parts of the text, I also have him retell
Are you teaching reading virtually and looking for ideas and strategies? This post shares one way to structure your weekly digital reading instruction.
Use these simple tips and tricks to teach guided reading during reading centers or rotations! I will go through exactly how I teach every lesson and answer FAQ about guided reading!
Teaching reading to every beginning and struggling reader using science of reading and Orton Gillingham resources.
