Uru Mānuka Teacher Only Day: Reading with Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey (www.theliteracyplace.com)
Reading Strategies:
These are the strategies that are the most beneficial and have been researched.
These are the three Sheena and Louise identify as the biggest game changers.
-self monitoring
- the ability to be able to infer
- summarising
Reading strategies support readers comprehension at all levels. Comprehension processes depend on what you read and your purpose for reading. There are levels of comprehension literal, inferential (Author and Me) and evaluative. Children need time to talk no matter what the level. Discussion prompts.
Our brains are not cognitiely wired to read. So they have to connect the language part of the brain with the visual part of the brain so it does take time. Therefore comprehension is easier once they are not having to chunk to decode words. This is their model for teaching the reading process:
Activating prior knowledge supports comprehension. Given what the text is decide on the best strategy that will get them into the text.
Explicitly pre teaching words.
The dot to dot activity supports this and can be used in a variety of different ways. Either single connections, multiple connections or connections over time (throughout the reading).
Another way is:
Self Monitoring: Everybody gets stuck when they read sometimes. Everyone uses different strategies to support their comprehension, including adults. It's ok to check ourselves. Some children tend to skip over the words if they are unfamiliar or reading it but moving on without questioning what it means. This is important to tackle.
Understanding Words when self monitoring
Word Hippo is a child friendly programme for finding synonyms, antonyms, definitions, understanding and pronunciation.
Predicting:
Predicting is about engagement so unless everyone makes a prediction then what is the point. Smart Guess is a better word, followed up by why do you think that, what are your clues? Let's not predict just about what the story will be. A further example of this would be predicting what job would be good for this character and justifying why. Predicting, like all other strategies, needs explicit modelling too.
Follow up to strategy teaching:
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Summarizing and Retelling:
This includes note taking too. Both need to be taught explicitly as a strategy. This is a great idea for summarizing a paragraph.
Note taking Exercise - Jan 1992, 3 containers washed off ship in storm 1 c = 29000 plastic bath toys yellow ducks, blue turtles, green frogs now all over worlds oceans. Some found 15 yrs later.
Inferring:
Using real estate ads. Why have they used these words, images, what are they trying to say.
What's in the handbag activity. A range of objects in a bag and the children infer who owns the bag. These two activities help with the beginning of inferring. Creative activities encourage children to create a relationship with a book.
Synthesizing:
A level 4 activity. It's about understanding then solving the unknowns and making those connections before digging deeper. A couple of good activities for this is designing a board game or diorama or designing business cards for character.
Book Clubs/Literacy Circles:
Great for extended conversations. Book clubs can be done virtually to using google meet. A great way to connect our learners.
Final thoughts:
- classroom culture encourages comprehension and time needs to be given over to this.
- talk is the key to developing those deeper level skills.
- children need to be clear about the strategies they are learning and how it will help them.
- strategies need to be explicitly taught and modelled by the teachers. A couple of activities may show short term success but not give long term benefits across genres.
Reading Strategy checkups are great for identifying next steps and understanding.
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