Instructional Coach Weekly Update
Week of Feb, 15-19
Strategy Spotlight
Last week I wrote about repeated readings, which hopefully is going well for everyone.
This week I am writing about "the purpose for reading" that you set for your students beforehand. Every time students are reading they should be reading with a purpose and that purpose should be presented and explained to them before they start the reading for the day. The purpose for reading will probably change each day with each repeated reading of the story and may involve independent, partner, small group or whole class work.
Here are some things you can pair with reading/repeated readings as your "Purpose for Reading":
- Free Response
- Annotate Text
- Highlighting
- Jot Dots/Summarizing
- Red, Yellow, Green Questions
- RACE Response Strategy for answering comprehension questions
- Think, Pair, Share Strategy for discussing comprehension questions
- Identifying Text Features
- Graphic Organizers
- Reflection Journal
These are just some ideas that can be paired with your daily Whole Group Reading lesson. The majority of these strategies will require students to comprehend what they read. If repeated readings can help improve students' fluency, reading with a purpose can improve students' ability to comprehend the text they are reading at a higher level. If you would like more detailed information or explanation on any of these strategies just let me know - I have handouts on all of them!
Remember, anytime a student does work they need to receive feedback on it for it to be meaningful - next week I will discuss teacher feedback in more detail.
Hopefully we can continue to increase the rigor in our daily lessons to improve our students ability to be fluent readers that can also comprehend what they read.
Last Week
- Modeled lessons for teachers
- Team planning meetings
- Math data team half day training
- Writing a couple of different novel units
- Drop in observations
- Made more standards books for teachers
- GWAEA LCI Training on writing Common Formative Assessments
The Week Ahead
- Drop in lessons
- Unit writing
- Working closely with my "Case Study" teacher
- Working on prioritizing math standards with math data team leaders
- Meeting with Barbara Leete to continue our work on the Reading Strategies website