This is a multifaceted assignment, read through the entire assignment before beginning.

Plan and Implement

After completing the assigned readings from Strategies That Work (Chapters 6 – 12) and Chapters 8 & 9 from Strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction, you will (1) explain in a journal entry how effective comprehension practices rely on

• • well-developed language (although this is not addressed in-depth in the text, it is addressed in a broad sense on pages 81 & 171-172);
  • strong inference making (refer to pages 112, 142, 153 & 163 – 178);
  • background knowledge (refer to pates 212 & 106 -114);
  • comprehension monitoring (refer to pages 87 – 100);
  • and self-correcting (this is not addressed in depth in the text, but is referenced in terms of larger concepts on pages 92 & 178).
• Then, select and implement two to three instructional practices for scaffolding development of higher-order thinking and comprehension. (Refer to pages 74-82 of the text. (This is very targeted; I do not mean to suggest this is the only section where you can retrieve this information, but it certainly is the most direct. 🙂
• In addition, select a minimum of three strategies to foster comprehension monitoring and self-correcting. Model and practice these strategies with your students. (Figure 8.4 on page 248 of Reutzel and Cooter may be helpful with this.

Reflect

You will reflect upon the strategies that you chose for this assignment and the impact they had on your students’ comprehension.

Assignment Notes

Thoughts on well-developed language: Teachers generally understand the impact vocabulary knowledge has on the comprehension of a text but did you know that if students do not know 90 – 95% of the vocabulary in a text, they will experience difficulty comprehending it and reading it fluently (Conderman, Hedin, & Bresnahan, 2013)?

Thoughts on self-correcting: In the smaller context, self-correcting involves the students stopping reading and recognizing that the words that they read do not look right, or sound right, or make sense in the text. The students then reread and correct the error. If students do not correct the error, what I generally do is reread the sentence aloud to the students, where the error occurred, as the students follow along, and I ask the key questions – does that look right? does that sound right? does that make sense?

Marie Clay, the author of Becoming Literate, suggests that the teacher waits until the end of the sentence or the section of the passage to point out the error.