CHAPTER 5

During Chapter 5 the two sisters present a series of examples of conferencing sessions they have performed with children who are all working on a range of strategies.

The first goal they introduce is Comprehension with the strategy of ‘check for understanding’. They conference with students who are both beginning readers and advanced readers. Sevila is a beginning reader who knows her letters and sounds and can decode words easily, however struggles with understanding.  To help Sevila with this strategy Gail demonstrates how she can stop and think about what she has just read. After reading about 5 pages Gail stops and retells what she has read.  Gail mentions to Sevila that once she can retell the story she can move on. If she cannot retell the story she needs to reread that part. The secret is to think about the story, as we read not just read the words.

Inna, is an advanced reader who is working on the strategy ‘check for understanding’ too. Because she is an advanced reader Gail choose some picture books that would support her vocabulary and story line. These were the kinds of texts she needed, with more support for understanding the text and vocabulary in it. Gail used the same approach to model the strategy for Inna as she did with Sevila. She asked Inna to stop at the end of each page to see of she could retell what had happened. She told Inna to ask herself ‘who and what’. Who did we just read about and what were they doing? She mentioned that they would meet with Inna daily to move her forward into more sophisticated strategies to improve her meaning.

The next goal the sisters looked at was Accuracy with the strategy of ‘flip the sound’.  Again they met with an advances reader and a beginning reader. Jaeger was a begging reader who knew all the letter sounds in isolation. When he made an error reading or something didn’t make sense he new to go back and reread, however he could not correct himself.  He was reading the word stop as stope. To help him with this mistake Gail taught him how to flip the sound.  I really liked this strategy as this is a common mistake kids make in Kindergarten and this is a great way to help correct themselves. Gail gave him some sticky pages to put in his book every time he used the strategy to help reinforce this.

The flip the sound strategy was also used to help the advanced reader with the same problem. When teaching this strategy, whether it is for a beginning reader or an advanced reader, we follow the same sequence.

·      Model with the word the child has read within his or her text.

·      Continue modelling a few times from the child’s text.

·      Have the child practice flip the sound a few times

·      Give the students the task of practicing the strategy during Read to Self and record the words they practiced.

·      Set another appointment to review the strategy.

The next strategy Gail introduced was Cross Checking.  When using this strategy with a beginning reader, Gail encouraged the student to look at the pictures in the book for a clue. Look at the picture and look at the first letter of the word, does it make sense? I have found myself using this strategy a lot in Kindergarten

For an advanced reader the strategy changes, as they tend to read books with out pictures. Students still cross check but they are looking for understanding as well. Students need to re read the sentence and cross check which word in the sentence doesn’t make sense and why. When student reread the text Gail encouraged him to read each work slowly and cross-check it by asking himself ‘Does the word I am reading match to letters on the page, does it sound right, and does it make sense? Sound familiar J

The third goal was Fluency focusing on rereading the text.  During this meeting Gail meets with a students who was taking along time to read. This was from years of reading texts that were too hard for her. To improve her reading Gail asks her to read some books that are a little easier for her. Reading these books over and over again will help her read it fluently and with expression. I love how this example is exactly what we are doing with our Home Reading system and encouraging kinds to improve their fluency.

The last goal was Expand Vocabulary using the strategy of ‘tuning into interesting words’. Ikman could read anything but struggled with comprehension because he didn’t know what the words he was reading meant. Gail encourages Ikman to write down any words he doesn’t know into his personal word collector and during Read to Self Ikman can write down words he doesn’t know onto post-it notes in his story. Gail makes a note to meet with him to show him how to find the meaning of the words the next day. Gail also talks about Table-Talk books. I thought this was a great idea. Students can take their table-Talk book home and share the new words they have learnt with their family.

I found this chapter really interesting as it gave me an idea on how to ‘meet’ with the students. I haven’t introduced meetings with my class yet as a lot of them are reading under level 10 and we are just getting into picking our own activities during daily 5. However, I have found myself modelling some of the strategies during Listening to Reading when I read to the kids. 

What strategy did you introduce first?

How often are you conferencing with students?

What's the best time to begin this? Should it be dependent on a reading level?

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Kristen