Literacy Coach's Corner
What Strategies are being taught to help your child read?
Goals, Skills and Strategies
Jennifer Serravallo is a best-selling author of several books including "The Reading Strategies Book". Teachers at VDV are utilizing this resource to pinpoint what each child needs in his or her individualized instruction. To learn more about Jennifer Serravallo, click here.
http://www.jenniferserravallo.com/bio/
It's important to differentiate between the terms goal, skill and strategy. Goals refer to what our students, your children, are working towards for several weeks as a reader. One example of a reading goal would be Supporting comprehension in Fiction: Understanding Plot and Setting.
The term skill refers to a proficiency, something a reader is able to do. Many skills can make up a goal. An example of a skill may be retelling, identifying plot and setting etc..
A strategy is a step-by-step, how-to practice to help a reader work toward a skill and/or a goal. A strategy is not a single word or phrase; rather it is a series of steps, like a recipe. Once the reader is skilled, the need to apply conscious attention to the strategy fades away. An example of a strategy for supporting comprehension in fiction: understanding Plot and Setting would be Summarizing what's most essential utilizing a flip book of the beginning, middle and end of a story.
Below you will find three strategies to implement at home that fall under the goal of Supporting Comprehension in Fiction: Understanding Plot and Setting
Strategy: Lean on the Pictures
Skills: Determining importance, retelling
Strategy: Touch the page, look at the picture, and say waht happened. Turn, look, and touch the next page, say what happened. Keep going through the entire book.
Prompts to use with your child:
- What happened first?
- Touch the page.
- Look at the picture to remind you.
- I notice you said what happened on the page in a brief way.
- Turn to say what happened next. Make sure it connects to what you just said.
- Use "next...," you can skip a page if nothing major happened.
- What's the next important thing that happened? Turn until you find that page.
Strategy: Title Power
Strategy: Read the title. Keep the title in mind as you read. Think about what events connect back to the title.
Prompts to use with your child:
- Check the title. What does the title connect to in the story?
- Think of the title, What's the problem?
- How does the character's problem connect to the title?
- Where in the book did you find the problem? Let's check to see if it matches the title
- Retell thinking about the title.
- Keep the title in mind. What's the most importance part of this chapter?
Strategy: Summarizing What's Most Essential
Strategy: When summarizing, remember to tell what's important. Tell it in the order it happened. Tell it in a way that makes sense. Try not to tell too much.
Prompts to use with your child:
- Say the beginning in a shorter way.
- Just tell me the one most important thing that happened in the beginning.
- How does that event connect to the one you just told me?
- Can you say that in a shorter way?
- You told me five things that happened in the middle. Which two or three were most important?
- Turn to the end. What's the most important thing that happened at the end?
Looking for volunteers!
Resource Used: The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo
Email: jwarner@somervilleschools.org
Location: 51 Union Avenue, Somerville, NJ, USA
Phone: 9082184105
Twitter: @VDVReading