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Teaching Reading Comprehension

19/9/2015

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As I've moved from P1 to P3 this year, I've been aware that I need to think more about how I adapt and stretch the ways I teach reading comprehension.

As a P1 teacher, while reading comprehension is always important, you spend much of your time, at least initially, focusing on the phonics side of things. Children need to be able to decode before they can read for understanding! But when your class of P3 children arrive one morning in August for the first time, they come equipped with a basic to good (depending on the child) understanding of letters and many phonemes. While the phonics work will obviously be on-going, the children are reading more widely, and they are beginning to read for information.

I feel like P3 is a transition year in many ways - their last year in infants, before transferring to the middle stages. Because I've been steeped in the P1, heavy on phonics mind set for the past few years, I decided to sign up for a twilight course this past week, looking at teaching reading comprehension in the middle and upper stages. While not all of my class will be ready for some of the ideas and suggestions, I do have a group that could easily be pushed on.

The course was very practical, and the course leaders were both knowledgeable and helpful. They introduced us to the website The Learning Zoo, which is worth a look, I think. Here is a link to a free 'Teachers' Checklist' from the site, which helpfully breaks down all of the literacy Es and Os for each level - I'm planning to print it out to add to my planning folder. I think it will make creating learning intentions and success criteria quite straightforward, but it's also helpful as a checklist for ensuring that I'm covering a broad range of learning intentions under the umbrella of each Literacy E and O.

At the training, the facilitators also talked about using 'Task Maps' with different reading groups. A task map looks like this:

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In the middle square, you have the name of the text the children are reading. In the surrounding squares, you put in a variety of tasks for the children to complete. What I really like about this, is that as you are filling in the different tasks, you can make sure you are including tasks that allow the children to practice the different reading comprehension strategies you are teaching during whole class and small group reading sessions.

I think this will be helpful with one of my guided reading groups in particular. Once they have been trained in how to use their Task Maps, this should free me up to spend a bit more time with my groups who need a little bit more support.

The Learning Zoo has a section with some Task Maps for different books already uploaded and ready to use. But even if the tasks maps there won't work for your class, they give you a good idea of the different types of tasks you can include if you want to create and share your own maps for different books available in your own school. Other teachers at the twilight said that once they got into the swing of creating their own tasks maps, they were not as time consuming to make as they might look at first...here's hoping I find that to be true! 
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Reading Comprehension Strategies

25/8/2015

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I really like North Lanarkshire's Active Literacy programme for getting kids sounding out and decoding words. After my last couple of years, though, I felt like I needed to be more structured with how I taught Reading Comprehension strategies - and I wanted a 'hook' into them, that kids would remember easily. So I had a look on Teachers Pay Teachers (I'm sorry this isn't a freebie!) and came up with this pack from A Teachable Teacher.

In the pack, she gives each strategy an animal. You can see 'Retelling Rhino' above, and there are 6 more (Picturing Peacock - visualisation, Wondering Walrus - questioning, etc). The pack includes posters for each strategy, smaller versions of the posters (so you can put them on scrapbooking rings, to keep in your reading area, or for each child to have their own) and various structured worksheets that the children can use to help them get started using the different strategies.

In my class, we started with re-telling (so it is up on our wall), and I linked it last week to our writing, as the children retold their favourite day during the summer holidays. This week, I've followed up by having each reading group re-tell their own reading story as our 2nd day 'comprehension' task (I used my Story Maps - click if you need some for your own class).

In the past, my teaching of Reading Comprehension strategies hasn't been as structured as I would like. I really like this little pack, and the kids already remember 'Retelling Rhino' without any problem at all!

As we add more strategies, more posters will go up on the wall. I'm also planning to order scrapbooking rings, so every child can have their own set of Reading Comprehension strategy reminders.

Our Primary 2 (1st grade) teacher and I are both using the same pack. Hopefully, this continuity will boost reading comprehension in subsequent years as well. I love the way the animals are associated with each strategy - such a great way to help little ones remember them!

How do you teach reading comprehension strategies in your class? Are there any specific resources that you use? I'd love to hear new ideas, if you'd like to share!
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Another Day at School...Getting Closer!

7/7/2015

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OK - so this is what the classroom looked like when we arrived this morning (as I said yesterday - it always gets worse before it gets better!). You don't quite realise how much stuff you have until you are in the process of moving rooms and reorganising it all.
My son joined me and the three girls today. Here, three of the kids are starting to help sort out all of my number cards. I have many sets of cards (some are 0-10, others are 0-30, 0-50 and a few sets are 0-120). These can be used in lots of different ways - but it helps when all of the numbers are there! Unfortunately,
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this proved to be the least popular job on offer, and all three kids moved on to other things. I have a feeling I'm going to need to bring the remaining sets home myself and sort through them while watching something on TV. I briefly considered bringing them home tonight, but couldn't quite work up the necessary enthusiasm!
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While the other 3 kids flitted between sorting number sets and various other odd jobs, my oldest patiently worked her way through a TON of cutting out. Here she is, cutting out 'Reading Comprehension Strategy' cards - I now have enough to make reminder sets for every child in my class next year. While she was doing this, a couple of my other kids photocopied and cut out our spelling word homework lists for next year - so all of these pre-prepared literacy resources are sitting in the top of my literacy cupboard, ready to go come August (see the picture to the right). What a great feeling (thanks, kids!).

For anyone who is interested in the reading strategies resource my daughter prepared for me, I am using Reading Comprehension Strategies by A Teachable Teacher. She has turned each strategy into a cute animal (for example, we have 'Picturing Peacock', who reminds us that when we visualise our story, that helps us to remember it). The resource I bought also includes classroom sized posters, graphic organisers for each of the strategies, and photocopiables to use in an interactive literacy notebook. I'm looking forward to trying this out next year with my class - I'll let you know how I get on!

We were in school from just before 10 to a bit after 4, with a break for lunch at Subway/Ashvale in Portlethen. Cupboards and resources are much more organised, and the classroom is looking a bit better. Still more to do (and we haven't even started on the library), but I think I'll give the kids a day off tomorrow. We're planning to watch Jurassic Park tonight in preparation for going to see Jurassic World tomorrow afternoon. Here is a picture of the classroom as we left it this afternoon:
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    About Me

    I have taught from P1-P5 (K-4th grade). You'll find a variety of resources and ideas appropriate for these year groups as you explore this blog. I'm glad you are here and I hope you find activities, ideas or resources that are useful in your own class. 

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