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Research - Red
Structuring Lessons - Blue
Choosing Words - Green
Activity Ideas - Yellow
Apps & Websites - Purple

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Scholarly Articles - red
Classroom Resources - yellow
Games for Students - green
Websites - purple
Other - blue

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Articles- red

Articles/ Books Containing Classroom Resources- blue

Mentor Texts- green

Websites- purple

Videos- yellow

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This section is color coded with articles being blue, blogs are yellow and textbooks are green.

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Articles and studies- red
Classroom Resources- green
Websites- purple
Books- blue
Other- orange

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Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Scaffolded reading instruction of content-area texts. The Reading Teacher, 67(5), 347–351. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1234 

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Scaffolded Reading Instruction of Content-Area Text 

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Scaffolded Reading Instruction of Content-Area Text 

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This is a great resource on how to scaffold non-fiction text in the classroom for all students. This article discusses using close reading and other strategies during small and whole group instruction.

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This article talks about the importance that background knowledge has on comprehension and understanding vocabulary within a text. It also explains ways to build background knowledge with a few different tips.

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To comprehend a story or text, young readers need a threshold of knowledge about the topic, and tougher state standards place increasing demands on children’s prior knowledge. This article offers practical classroom strategies to build background knowledge such as using contrasts and comparisons and encouraging topic-focused wide reading.

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Cartwright, K. B. (2006). Fostering flexibility and comprehension in elementary students. The Reading Teacher, 59(7), 628-634. doi:10.1598/rt.59.7.2

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Fostering Flexibility and Comprehension in Elementary Students 

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Fostering Flexibility and Comprehension in Elementary Students 

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Reading Comprehension What Every Teacher Needs to Know by Maureen McLaughlin

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Reading Comprehension What Every Teacher Needs to Know by Maureen McLaughlin

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References

McLaughlin, M. (2012). Reading Comprehension: What Every Teacher Needs to Know. Reading Teacher, 65(7), 432–440. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1002/TRTR.01064

In this article McLaughlin lays out the 10 principles she believes teachers should think about when teaching reading comprehension. These include understanding their role and the role of the student, background knowledge and teaching a variety of comprehension strategies.

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In this article, the author proposes ten principles through which she examines the essentials of teaching reading comprehension. Topics explored include the nature of reading comprehension and the ro...

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Close Reading In Elementary Schools by Douglas Fisher  and Nancy Frey

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Close Reading In Elementary Schools by Douglas Fisher  and Nancy Frey

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This article explains how to teach close reading in the elementary classroom, including the primary grades. This article includes ideas starting in K and working up to 6th on ways to incorporate in in the classroom.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2012). Close Reading In Elementary Schools. Reading Teacher, 66(3), 179–188. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1002/TRTR.01117

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This blog has great post about reading. This particular post explains what strategies should be taught before inferring is taught.

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I am reaching out to see if you can clarify for me and possibly point me in the direction of a resource(s) where I can read more about the differences between predicting, inferring, and drawing conclusions. Our curriculum was developed in house and is very skill/strategy based.
In Virginia, our state tests operationalize reading in the following way:

predicting is making an informed guess about what happens next using text evidence and schema

inferring is reading "between the lines" to a given point in text using text and schema to understand what is happening in the text

drawing conclusions is projecting forward using text and schema

Shanahan response:
I'm happy to distinguish these three concepts, but it won't help.

It won't help you teach better.

It won't help your students read better.

You are interests in making sure you are appropriately teaching these reading skills so that your students will comprehend well. But the problem is teaching those skills aren't likely to do that.

Only one of these has a clear research record (inferencing) and that operationalization is gobbledygook.

Written messages - texts - are not so complete or explicit to allow readers to make full sense of them without filling some gaps or making some connections. Authors don't tell everything. They imply an awful lot. Inferences are used to make sense of those implications.

But inferences are complicated.

There are lots of ways to characterize inferences... as demonstrated by the late Tom Trabasso.

There are, for instance, forward and backward inferences. Predictions and drawing conclusions are usually examples of forward inferencing. Readers draw a forward inference based on the textual information provided up to that point in the text. Backward inferences require that the gap be filled by information an author hasn't yet revealed. Forward inferencing requires that you remember enough information the author provided so that when something is lacking you can fill the gap. You can't possibly know where the author is going to leave gaps, so the more coherent and complete your memory is the smoother things are going to go. Backward inferencing is more complicated because you must spot the gap and realize that you don't know how to fill it; then you must be vigilant for the needed info when it arises.

Another way to think about inferences has to do with the source of the information needed for filling the gap or making the connection. The critical information may have been provided by the author earlier in the text or it may come from readers' own prior knowledge. Frequently, the information may come from both (and perhaps it will be necessary to coordinate information from more than one bit of the text).

Here's a fairly simple example:

Mary and John went to the movies.
He asked her if she wanted popcorn.
Figuring out who asked who seems rather straightforward, but how do you go about it? You must first recognize that it isn't entirely clear who was doing the talking, and then you must draw on your knowledge of the world. In our culture, people named John are usually boys so John must have asked Mary about the popcorn. This required information from working memory (sentence 1) and the reader's world knowledge.

A third way to think about inferences is the functions that they fill. The John and Mary sentence would be an example of inferences used for text connection or slot filling. This is how we make cohesive links; these inferences fill a linguistic function, connecting chains of synonyms that operate across a text.

But inferences play other functions, too.

Look at this example:
He plunked down $10.00 at the window. She tried to give him $5.00 but he refused to take it. So, when they got inside, she bought him a large bag of popcorn.
To grasp this requires an inference that they must be at the movies. Making that inference transforms this into a scene that most of us could visualize.

This kind of inference allows the reader to create a model of what is going on. Other inferences have other purposes (e.g., explanatory, predictive, associative).

What's my point?

Only to show the difficulties and complications inherent in the inferencing process during reading.

Given the different ways inferences work - requiring recognition of different kinds of omissions or implications, depending on information drawn from different sources (e.g., working memory, background knowledge), accomplishing different interpretive goals, and operating in different ways - what are the chances that you could teach students to infer effectively?

One wonders whether there is any sense to distinguishing inferences, predictions, and conclusion drawing. Do these odd distinctions (without psychological reality) help or hinder kids? My bet is that they learn to ignore such nonsensical teaching.

Nevertheless, many experts claim that asking students inferential questions improves their reading comprehension. Research hasn't been especially supportive of those claims, however. Although we can ask questions that require inferences, that doesn't mean answering them would have any discernible impact on future inferencing. Inferences are too complex and multi-faceted and texts too diverse to allow such teaching to help.

It's not that questions cannot or do not shape readers' attention during reading. Just that inferences by the descriptions provided couldn't possibly do this.

An example from the research is a study done by Reynolds and Anderson. They found that if they asked questions about the quantities expressed in a text, readers started paying more attention to the quantitative info during future readings.

That makes sense.

I remember blowing a midterm in a history class. I hadn't recognized that the prof wanted the dates of the events we'd studied. My attention shifted to the dates after that, and my final exam went much better. Questions tip kids off as to what information is important and studies show that such guidance is effective because it gets the readers to spend more time on certain information.

That can only work in those cases in which the information is recognizable. As a reader, I had no trouble recognizing the historical dates, so devoting more attention to them was a breeze. Telling kids to pay attention to inferences, to practice answering drawing conclusion questions, or making predictions during reading aren't likely to provide much of a learning payoff since this guidance fails to direct students to specific workable actions that they can take during reading.

It is possible to improve reading comprehension through some kinds of inference training, but not the general kind emphasized in state standards.

For instance, when reading fiction, it is important to consider the characters' motivations. What do they want? What are their goals? Why are they taking those actions?

Students can be taught about motivation and the importance of this can be stressed instructionally. Students can learn to ask themselves why characters do what they do and to pay attention to how they know that. If the author tells such information explicitly, they should pay particular attention to that. If the author doesn't reveal what is driving a character's action then an inference is needed.

Likewise, students can be taught to do something similar with causation when reading science. In this case, there are even signal words that can tip a reader off to causes and effects (e.g., because, so, consequently, therefore, thus, since) and distinguishing words that refer to other kinds of relationships (e.g., correlated, similar to, associated). Again, the reader needs to learn that such text demands special attention to cause and effect, whether the author states it explicitly or depends upon the reader to recognize that relationship.

Those earlier-mentioned lexical or cohesive inferences (e.g., repetitions, synonyms, pronouns) can be taught, too. Teaching students to track a character or idea across a text to support comprehension is doable and it is successful at improving students' ability to comprehend. Learning to connect pronouns, even in the earliest grades, can have real payoffs.

Essentially, I'm suggesting treating inferencing not as a skill but as a strategy for intentionally making sense of text. Students who take specific steps to consciously identify motivations, causes, and linguistic connections are likely to comprehend better. Those taught to "infer" by the definition you provided would not.

Reading comprehension instruction should focus on guiding students to think actively about the ideas in text. Previewing predicting, self-questioning, visualizing, rereading, identifying text structure have all been found to be beneficial because they prescribe actions that encourage students to spend more time thinking about the ideas in texts. Teaching students to identify certain kinds of information when they read - information that is actually identifiable in lots of texts - can help as well (that's where inference training succeeds).

(Prediction is an odd duck. I would recommend it as a strategy for motivating oneself through a text, but not one that I would want to question students on to evaluate their prediction ability. I can't think of many texts in which predictions are truly important to gaining meaning. And, with regard to drawing conclusions, no studies of inferencing or comprehension have pursued that colloquial terminology).
References
Baumann, J. F. (1986). Teaching third-grade students to comprehend anaphoric relationships: The application of a direct instruction model. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(1), 70-90.

Cain, K., Oakhill, J., & Lemmon, K. (2004). Individual differences in the inference of word meanings from contexts: The influence of reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, and memory capacity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 671-681.

Elleman, A.M. (2017). Examining the impact of inference instruction on the literal and inferential comprehension of skilled and less skilled readers: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(6), 761-781.

García?Madruga, J. A., Elosúa, M. R., Gil, L., Gómez?Veiga, I., Vila, J. Ó., Orjales, I., . . . Duque, G. (2013). Reading comprehension and working memory's executive processes: An intervention study in primary school students. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(2), 155-174.

Hamada, A. (2015). Effects of forward and backward elaboration on lexical inferences: Evidence from a semantic relatedness judgement task. Reading in a Foreign Language, 27(1), 1-21.

Magliano, J.P., Trabasso, T., & Graesser, A.C. (1999). Strategic processing during comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(4), 615-629.

Reutzel, D.R., & Hollingsworth, P.M. (1991). Reading comprehension skills: Testing the distinctiveness hypothesis. Reading Research & Instruction, 30(2), 32-46.

Reynolds, R.E., & Anderson, R.C. (1982). Influence of questions on the allocation of attention during reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74(5), 623-632.

Trabasso, T., & Magliano, J.P. (1996). Conscious understanding during comprehension. Discourse Processes, 21, 255-287.
Thanks to William Conrad for his gracious assistance in identifying photographs with young African American readers. His assistance is greatly appreciated.

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What Does It Take To Teach Inferencing? | Shanahan on Literacy

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This blog entry distinguishes skills that are included in many state standards including inferencing, predicting, and drawing conclusions. It explains why, of these, only inferencing really matters, and explains and provides evidence for the key to teaching inferences effectively.

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This post explains why reading comprehension strategies need to be taught and that students also need to be motivated to understand what they are reading.

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"My district is trying to shift literacy instruction to be in line with the science of reading. We are wondering where comprehension strategies fit into Scarborough's Reading Rope? Inferences and making connections are part of Verbal Reasoning, but what about other skills my students still need to be taught, like understanding and using text structure, summarizing, visualizing, questioning? There is much research to support explicit instruction in comprehension strategies, so where do they fit? Also, even when our teachers do a good job of scaffolding students' comprehension of complex text, our at-risk students struggle to independently process texts on tests and with grade-level classroom assignments. What else should we be doing?
Shanahan responds:

Any model is a simplification and what gets emphasized may shift over time. Hollis Scarborough's rope (2001) is no exception.

You're correct that the rope does not include a strand for comprehension strategies though it does indicate that reading comprehension becomes increasingly strategic with development (just as word recognition becomes increasingly automatic).

However, don't despair.

In her later writings, Scarborough (e.g., Cutting & Scarborough, 2012) explains that reading comprehension includes "executive functioning," which would be an important strand in that reading rope. Executive function - according to Scarborough, and many other scientists- encompasses working memory, planning, organization, self-monitoring, and similar abilities. She explicitly says that executive functioning involves the ability to use those comprehension strategies studied by the National Reading Panel.

In other words, your school is using an outdated or incomplete version of Scarborough's model; one that omits a strand that Scarborough - and the science of reading - have found to be fundamental and essential to proficient reading.

Unfortunately, that omission is consistent with the zeitgeist of our time. Many folks, these days, want to relegate comprehension strategies to the ash heap of history. An out-of-date or incomplete model that leaves them out may be reassuring to them.

What do I make of Executive Functioning?

Well, first it requires intentionality... it's the part of our mind (not brain) that takes agency, that tries to accomplish things, that aims at goals. Too often we treat reading comprehension as if it operated mainly through automaticity - arising spontaneously from reading the words.

But to comprehend we must focus on the ideas. Research reveals that adults often "read" text without attention to meaning. Haven't you ever found yourself on page 24, not knowing how you got there? This happens with young kids, too, who may get absorbed in reading a text fluently rather than trying to gain information. Reading with the aim of understanding the text is under the control of that little guy in your head wearing the EF (executive functioning) sweatshirt.

Of course, if a text is relatively easy and you're not too distracted, Mr./Ms. EF doesn't have much to do. Other times, EF has to get off his/her duff and expend more effort.

That's where reading comprehension strategies are supposed to come in. Strategies are actions we take to try to solve a problem. Several strategies have been found to improve reading comprehension. For example, summarizing has been lauded in many studies. Students who stop occasionally to sum up what the text has said so far tend to end up with higher comprehension. That makes sense. Anyone who is summarizing along the way is going to spend more time thinking about the ideas in the text than those who just read it; and that repeated rehearsal of ideas can help move them into long term memory.

That's how strategies work. They guide the reader to pay attention or to manage memory in ways that increase learning.

That some strategies -- summarization, self-questioning, visualization, using text structure, and so on - have been researched can foster the mistaken impression that strategies are a rather static set of steps that automatically enhances reading comprehension.

That's unfortunate because strategy use needs to be flexible, suitable to a reader's goals, the demands of a specific text, and the actual problems being confronted.

Right now, I'm reading what for me is a particularly hard book, Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson. In each chapter, Empson provides a complex and subtle claim about a type of ambiguity he believes is evident in literature. He then provides quotations from poems that supposedly illustrate this form of ambiguity and takes the reader through a mind-numbingly intensive exploration of the vocabulary and syntax of the poem to reveal the role ambiguity plays in literary interpretation.

By the time I've read 2-3 pages, my head is spinning. Each part of his argument is so demanding that I lose sight of any connections among them. The four possible meanings of a word may be compelling but by the time I've come to terms with them, I've totally lost sense Empson's overall argument. I find myself saying, "I understand that example, but what in the heck is this an example of?"

Picture walks, predictions, visualization and the like would be of no help - and I suspect that's often how kids feel about their strategy lessons. The comprehension problems I face with this particular text are individual and specific, requiring individual and specific responses. A major barrier in this case is the need to connect ideas that are not obviously connected. This requires a series of strategic steps - rereading, ignoring, moving information into parallel, and so on. You can say that's a "drawing connections" strategy, but it is certainly not generic.

Students should be taught reading strategies as part of their reading comprehension instruction. But those strategies need to be more purposeful and dynamic than is often envisaged. We need to promote a desire to understand.

The fundamental basis of successful strategy use needs to be an acceptance of the premise that we are trying to know the information in the texts that we read, and that such understanding will not always come easily. When that is the case, we need to make an effort to accomplish it.

With some texts, reading and thinking about the information may be all that is needed. In other cases, we have to try to solve the problems. Those problems may be linguistic (e.g., breaking down a sentence, looking up a definition), organizational (e.g., trying to use the author's plan to connect ideas appropriate), or conceptual (e.g., connecting the ideas with prior knowledge)so we need to be flexible and responsive.

I said executive functioning is intentional. It is also self-conscious. Good readers are self-aware. They monitor their own understanding. That's what allows them to make choices to solve the problems.

Too often we have kids practice reading comprehension with relatively easy texts. We guide them through the mindless application of some pre-packaged strategies (mindless in that the students aren't making choices or responding to the actual demands of the text but are just doing an activity that the teacher is orchestrating).

Those guided reading lessons may appear to be beneficial, since even the low readers appear to understand the texts by the end of the lesson. That supposed success may be more the result of the teacher or other students exposing or revealing information from the text that the low readers weren't gaining on their own. (That may be why the low readers do fine in your reading group, but not so much in more independent reading situations).

Of course, the texts that we use for such guided reading lessons have usually been selected with the idea of minimizing comprehension problems, rather than trying to expose students to them. To my way of thinking, it's better to more planfully confront students with potential barriers so they can learn to surmount them.

If you think about it, much of what we do to teach comprehension appears more aimed at developing automaticity than making one's executive function more flexible and strategic. Keeping difficulty levels low, doing lots of repetitive practice, minimizing conscious decisions, ignoring reflection, and so on can have value in teaching word recognition skills.

Those lesson features are the opposite of what is needed for teaching students how to gain meaning from complex text. Comprehension instruction needs to nurture (1) an intense desire to know, (2) an ability to flexibly take intentional actions towards that goal, and (3) a self-awareness of one's degree of success in accomplishing it.

That means placing a heavy emphasis on the learning and use of ideas in text even during the reading comprehension lessons. That means creating situations that could lead to failed efforts to comprehend (through the texts and tasks we assign). If the reading is kept relatively easy, then there is neither any reason to develop a strategic repertoire, nor any purpose for reflection or rereading to evaluate the effectiveness of one's choices or the nature of the difficulties that the text posed.
References
Cutting, L.E., & Scarborough, H.S. (2012). Multiple bases for comprehension difficulties: The potential of cognition and neurobiological profiling for validation of subtypes and development of assessments. In J.P. Sabatini, T. O'Reilly, & E.R. Albro (Eds.), Reaching an understanding: Innovations in how we view reading assessment. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Education.

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Why Your Students May Not Be Comprehending | Shanahan on Literacy

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This blog entry describes the role of reading comprehension strategies in Scarborough’s reading rope and explains why reading comprehension instruction often fails to promote independent reading success.

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This podcast focuses heavily on phonics, but discusses engaging ways to tie word study into all levels of schooling. Phonics instruction and fluency should not stop in 2nd grade, but be strategically tied into classroom activities. This podcast also has many more episodes that are quick and easy listens to reinvigorate your passions for education (features some of our professors from USF, as well!)

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Dr. Timothy Rasinksi talks to us about teaching reading fluency, having fun with words, and the art and science of teaching. Tim is known for his work in reading fluency and word study, reading in the elementary and middle grades, and supporting readers who struggle. Dr. Rasinski is a professor of literacy education at Kent State University and the director of its award winning reading clinic.

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Listen to this episode from Classroom Caffeine on Spotify. Dr. Timothy Rasinksi talks to us about teaching reading fluency, having fun with words, and the art and science of teaching. Tim is known for his work in reading fluency and word study, reading in the elementary and middle grades, and supporting readers who struggle.

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This article gives a definition of the term phonemic awareness, as well as provides several instructional recommendations on supporting students in their phonemic awareness development.

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This is a short blog post explaining the difference between comprehension skills and strategies.

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What's the difference between comprehension skills and comprehension strategies? Are they synonyms or do we teach different things when we are teaching them?
Shanahan response:

I'm glad you asked.

Comprehension skills and comprehension strategies are very different things.

They are often confused; the terms are often used interchangeably by those who don't understand or appreciate the distinctions they carry.

And, most importantly, these concepts energize different kinds of teaching.

The older of the two terms is "reading comprehension skills." It was used occasionally throughout the Twentieth Century, but really took off in a big way in the 1950s. Professional development texts and basal readers were replete with the term and its use burgeoned for about 30 years before slackening a bit.

"Comprehension strategies" were rarely heard of until the 1970s. The term had wide use throughout the 1980s, both because of the extensive strategy research and because those promoting comprehension skills appropriated the newer, trendier label-old wine in new bottles. (Some of this due to honest ignorance and some to the frequent but idiotic claim of educators that any new practice is "what we were already doing.")

Use of the term strategies finally overtook skills in 2000, but not necessarily because the practices of teachers actually had changed.

Basically, the term comprehension skills tend to refer to the abilities required to answer particular kinds of comprehension questions. Skills would include things like identifying the main idea, recognizing supporting details, drawing conclusions, inferencing, comparing and contrasting, evaluating critically, knowing vocabulary meaning, and sequencing events.

The old basal readers would make sure kids got plenty of practice with particular comprehension skills by making sure they practiced answering particular kinds of questions.

These days, the core reading programs do pretty much the same thing with the educational standards, with each standard being translated into a question type in lessons and assessments.

For most of these skills, there are no studies showing that they can be taught in a way that leads to higher comprehension, and even in those few instances where there is such evidence, the effects are quite small (and probably due to greater attention to reading the text than to practicing the so-called "skills.")

In fact, there have been a number of studies and logical analyses showing that these skills lack any kind of psychological reality... they are indistinguishable from one another in test performance, though that hasn't stopped instructional designers from trying to come up with programs that would teach these skills in a way that would benefit achievement (e.g., Wisconsin Design).

There has been a lot of research into question types over the past 50-60 years. Despite the claims, this body of research is a morass. There are so many variables that may be affecting any of these results, that it would be impossible to know what it all means.

Here are just a few of the variables found to affect how readers answer questions: poor/good readers; low/high knowledge readers; story/information text; the centrality of the information queried; verbatim vs. paraphrase; open-ended versus close-ended questions; reading or re-reading; text available or unavailable during answering; amount of text; factual vs. inferential; immediate recall vs. delay; and so on. (Of course, it is this complexity that undermines any possibility that one can teach question answering as a skill).

Reading has much more to do with being able to read particular kinds of texts and to deal with particular kinds of text features than to answer particular kinds of questions. The ACT (2006) concluded, for example, that if texts were easy, students could answer any kinds of question about them, while with sufficiently complex texts, they couldn't answer any question types, no matter how simple.

An odd kind of skill the performance of which is totally dependent on the contexts in which it is used. Each text presents information in its own way, and reading comprehension is heavily bound up in the readers' knowledge of the topic covered by the text. As such reading comprehension (different than decoding) is not a skilled activity, per se.

If comprehension is not a skill, then why has that been such a popular way to teach it? Initially, the concept fit the times. In the late 1950s when it "broke out," B.F. Skinner's version of behavioral psychology (e.g., stimulus-response, programmed learning) was in vogue. The idea that learning would result if we could simply induce particular responses to questions and then reward kids for their answers-rinse and repeat-seemed very convincing.

It has been harder to eradicate than a fungus, I assume, because it appears to map onto educational standards and the high-stakes tests. Principals and teachers assume it makes sense to practice the "comprehension skills" that tripped the kids up on the tests. So, they "use their data": combing through test results to identify the kinds of questions that students failed on and then practicing those supposed skills over and over in the hopes the kids will be enabled to answer such questions on the next test. That it hasn't actually worked doesn't seem to dissuade them at all.

The idea of comprehension strategies is more recent, and it has a substantial body of research behind it. If the notion of comprehension skills emerged from behaviorism, then comprehension strategies is the child of cognitive psychology. Instead of repetition and automaticity as the watchwords to learning, intention and decision-making and thinking move to the forefront with strategies.

The basic premise of strategies is that readers need to actively think about the ideas in text if they are going to understand. And, since determining how to think about a text involves choices, strategies are tied up in meta-cognition (that is, thinking about thinking).

Comprehension strategies are not about coming up with answers to particular kinds of questions, but they describe actions that may help a reader to figure out and remember the information from a text.

For example, the idea of the summarization strategy is that readers should stop occasionally during reading to sum up what an author has said up to that point. Doing that throughout a reading and at the end has been found to increase recall... recall in general, not of any particular type of information.

Another frequently studied comprehension strategy is questioning. Students read, stopping throughout to quiz themselves on what the text says (and going back and rereading if one's questions can't be answered). The point isn't to ask particular kinds of questions, so much as to think about the content more thoroughly, more actively than one would do if they just read from the first word to the last.

The same can be said about monitoring, visualizing, thinking about the way the text is structured or organized, rereading, and connecting the content with one's prior knowledge.

These kinds of actions-these strategies-are used intentionally by readers to increase the chances of understanding or remembering what one has read.

Comprehension strategies need to be practiced too; however, they aren't learned by repetition and reinforcement, but by gradual release of responsibility (including modeling, explanation, guided practice).

If you are serious about raising reading achievement, there is no point to teaching most comprehension skills. (Note: vocabulary is often listed as a comprehension skill and there are benefits to teaching that.).

On the other hand, there are very good reasons for teaching comprehension strategies, but there are at least three big problems with that kind of teaching.

First, studies of comprehension strategies have tended to be brief, usually about 6 weeks in duration (there are exceptions). Somehow that has been translated into substantial amounts of strategy teaching across students' school lives. To be perfectly honest, no one, including me, knows how much strategy instruction is needed. But there is certainly no evidence that there are benefits to be derived from 8 to 10 years of 30-35 weeks of strategy teaching.

Second, the only point to using strategies is to make sense of texts that couldn't be grasped without that effort. Many texts are easy enough that a reader would not need to expend that amount of energy in comprehending. Unfortunately, most strategy instruction that I have seen takes place in texts that frankly are relatively easy for the kids to read. That means they have to pretend to apply those strategies in situations that wouldn't benefit from such effort. If kids ever do apply these strategies to complex text, they are usually on their own. Most skip the effort since what such teaching conveys is that you don't need strategies.

Finally, even major proponents of explicit comprehension strategy instruction (like the late Michael Pressley, for instance) argued that as important as it was to teach strategies, teachers needed-even when teaching them-to make sure the kids were actually learning the text content and not just the strategies they were using to think about that content. That principle largely has been ignored by teachers and publishers.

More on the teaching of comprehension skills and strategies next week; should we guide students' reading?

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Comprehension Skills or Strategies | Shanahan on Literacy

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These days, the core reading programs do pretty much the same thing with the educational standards, with each standard being translated into a question type in lessons and assessments. However, such comprehension skills are not psychologically real nor are they particularly amenable to teaching. Foc…

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Building Comprehension in Every Classroom 

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Building Comprehension in Every Classroom 

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This is a great book on how to teach reading comprehension no matter what the required or allowed text is in the classroom. Lots of examples for all grade levels.

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This book has lots of real life examples to see how it was taught and then the reason behind the teaching is also explained. Easy ideas that can be implemented any time of the year.

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Chapter 3 has great examples of teaching ELL students in the ELA classroom. Section 4 also gives some great examples of ideas on teaching ELL students of all ability types.

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The Plainer Truths of Teaching, Learning and Literacy 

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The Plainer Truths of Teaching, Learning and Literacy 

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Chapter 2 gives another way to evaluate how you teach ensure students use the 4 lens of learning. The four lens of learning are the human lens, social lens, meaning centered and language based. Chapter 5 gives create examples and theory about how students can interact with text.

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Chapters 7,8, and 9 are a wonderful resource for learning how students start to learn how to read and then how reading comprehension is developed. This gives some ideas on where there may be gaps if students are not comprehending.

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Reading Development for Students with Intellectual Disabilities 

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Reading Development for Students with Intellectual Disabilities 

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This article goes in detail on how to monitor progress of students with intellectual disabilities and phonemic awareness using assessments like DIBLES, The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, and Test of Word Reading Efficiency.

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This website has 100's of research based center activities. You can scroll down to the phonics section, but also peruse the other center activities focused on phonological awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

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Kindergarten and First Grade | Florida Center for Reading Research

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Kindergarten and First Grade Student Center Activities Phonological Awareness | Phonics | Fluency | Vocabulary | Comprehension

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This is a great short video which uses the acronym PICK to determine if the book is at the right reading level for the student. The teacher motivates the students by allowing a choice from 10 books after she has inventoried the class for reading interests. This is a great way to get started with older students.
https://www.edutopia.org/video/motivating-students-book-choice

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Letting students choose books to read helps them develop a sense of autonomy and ownership over their learning.

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Motivate Students With Success at Correct Reading Level

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Motivate Students With Success at Correct Reading Level

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This blog gives teachers a quick guide to leveled reading websites on same topic/content. Many of us have used Newsela, Readworks or Commonlit to name a few. Fiction as well as non-fiction selections are featured.

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By Jessica Sanders

Leveled reading websites allow students to read the same text, regardless of their level of comprehension.

As such, it's an important way to facilitate class-wide assignments without boring higher-level students or leaving strugglers behind.

Many of these sites also make reading more engaging, provide you with lesson tips and supplemental materials that can be printed or viewed online.

Add some of these to the bookmarks tab on your classroom computer for easy student access.

Allow students to read current events at a level they can comprehend with Newsela. Students can read at five different levels, starting with 600L and ending at "Max." They can also answer questions that you create without leaving the article and even take a quiz. Both of the latter features require students to have an account-which is free for you and them.

This site is similar to Newsela, but a little less appealing on the eye and does not offer the interactive quizzing and question features. While it seems to be created for English language learners, it does serve as a simple, leveled reading news platform for students of all abilities.

Students can browse by reading level-1, 2, or 3-and choose stories in various categories, such as news, sports, nature, and funny. At the end of each article, the "difficult words" are referenced and defined, which is great for expanding student vocabulary.

Note that this website can be accessed online or through the Android or iOS app.

This free website gives teachers access to the largest, high-quality library of non-fiction articles. As a teacher, you also get access to vocabulary lists, assessments, lesson guides and the option to download or print the text. All texts are leveled, and if you want to keep everything online, sign up for ReadWorks Digital, which allows you to create classes, assign articles, and track progress all online.

Get students hooked on the "Article-A-Day" feature to make reading a daily habit in your classroom. Each week ReadWorks provides you with a set of articles on one topic, at all reading levels. Students take just 10 to 15 minutes each day to read the articles and complete the comprehension assignments.

This is an interesting tool that students can use to get simplified versions of the text they're reading. After copy and pasting the words into the text box, Rewordify breaks it down to be more digestible. The site also highlights and defines challenging words and phrases within the text, making it easy for students to understand and learn at the same time.

You can modify settings to edit the way the reworded text is chosen and how the vocabulary words are presented-highlighted within the text, as a list, with or without definitions, etc. You can also print the vocabulary words, auto-created quizzes, word banks, cloze assessments and more.

All of this is available for free, and with an account, these settings, and the documents you create and print, are saved.

This website offers leveled reading at the core, with many valuable features for both teachers and students to access as well. Reading is broken up by grade, from 5th to 12th, and is a collection of fiction and non-fiction texts. The themes are especially interesting, ranging from America and comedy to fate and freewill and growing up.

Once students are reading a text, they can use the guided reading mode to quiz themselves along the way, increasing engagement and understanding. They can also take an assessment and add their opinion to an ongoing discussion.

Other extras include assigning specific texts, tracking progress and comprehension, translation, text highlighting, dictation and vocabulary look-up. The amazing part is that this is free for teachers and schools.

Tween Tribune was created and is maintained by the Smithsonian. It's similar to Newsela in both what it offers and how it looks. Students can browse news articles by grade (K through 12), and then choose from a variety of reading levels once their article is chosen-levels are based on Lexile.

With an account, you can assign work to students and they can take quizzes and leave comments with each article. Accounts are free for teachers and students, and give you access to a variety of resources and lesson plans based on upcoming holidays, current events and more.

Similar to Newsela and News In Levels, this site provides students with news stories that are accessible at a variety of reading levels. Levels range from 0 to 6, and the website also provides "mini-lessons" and "4,392 more lessons" all of which appear to be created by Sean Banville, an ESL teacher.

Students can also have articles dictated to them, if they're still learning how to reach. As a resource created for teachers by a teacher, it's worth checking out.

This leveled reading program provides leveled e-text for students. While it does cost educators $99/month (up to 45 student accounts), the school can also purchase for $999/year, giving them unlimited accounts, student management tools and a free trial.

The library is filled with a mix of primary documents, classic fiction, biographies, and original science and history books. Each book is accompanied by a teacher guide that provides tips to teaching the text and background for building out a lesson.

Reading levels are sorted by grade and Books That Grow levels, and are matched up with a variety of standard reading measurements including Lexile, Reading A-Z, DRA and more. Check out the leveling breakdown here.

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8 Leveled Reading Websites for the Classroom

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By Jessica Sanders Leveled reading websites allow students to read the same text, regardless of their level of comprehension. As such, it's an important way to facilitate class-wide assignments without boring higher-level students or leaving strugglers behind. Many of these sites also make reading more engaging, provide you with lesson tips and supplemental materials that can be printed or viewed online.

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Motivation to Read by Differentiating Process by using CORI Approach

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Motivation to Read by Differentiating Process by using CORI Approach

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Video and article explaining how CORI motivates struggling readers to be interested in assigned reading within curriculum. The CORI strategy engages students in harder to read domain specific informational texts. Critical for comprehension beginning at the intermediate level.

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What is CORI?

CORI stands for Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. It is designed to teach children reading comprehension through the integration of science and reading. Its primary aim is to increase the reading comprehension of students in grades 3 to 5 by increasing their reading engagement.

Why orient reading instruction around concepts?

Gaining conceptual knowledge is a main purpose for both reading and inquiry science. Reading is a set of processes that individuals apply to text for the purpose of gaining meaning, knowledge, or experience. Similarly, inquiry science is a set of processes for operating directly on the physical environment to gain understanding and knowledge of it.

The building blocks of reading (the alphabetics - phonics and phonemic awareness; the fluency and automaticity; the vocabulary; the comprehension) must be taught explicitly. A best practice is to tie explicit teaching of reading strategies to "Big Ideas."

Information books give kids knowledge, which increases their comprehension skills. Reading about the world around them fosters children's long-term development.

Students who have a commitment to understand the concepts within an instructional unit are likely to get a deeper understanding of the content.

For an overview of Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction, see Overview of CORI.

How can CORI benefit students' learning?

Research that compared CORI classrooms to traditional classrooms in the same schools found large benefits in three areas:

Reading comprehension
CORI students comprehended new books better.

Motivation
CORI students want to read. In fact, they do choose to read more books after being in CORI (for more about CORI and reading motivation, see Promoting Reasons for Reading: Teacher Practices that Impact Motivation.

Scientific knowledge
CORI students learn the concepts they study deeply, which is valuable for their general knowledge and valuable for their content learning.

What are the components of CORI that particularly benefit struggling readers?

Hands-on activities

Active learning is motivating. Concrete experiences increase text comprehension. Many kids who don't read very well don't realize that each book is really about life - maybe about their life, about someone else's life, or the world around them. So for children who might not realize that, CORI tries to help them make a connection to their experience. That link becomes very powerful for them.

Information books

CORI uses information books that are interesting and accessible.

A variety of information books

CORI teachers use trade and information books to teach. Teachers match text difficulty levels to individual instruction. Books in which the print is easy, the vocabulary is not too complex, and interesting illustrations back up the text are enjoyable to less-advanced readers. From these kinds of books they can hone reading skills while learning scientific information. In the same classroom, more complex books with advanced vocabulary, charts, and text are available for those readers who can and want to tackle them. So everyone is learning (how to summarize, for example) with a text matched to them.

All students participate with the class in concept learning

While students are using different books and researching different subtopics, all readers - regardless of reading level - are learning new information about the same concept (such as weather, woodlands, animal behavior, birds of the world).

Choice of subtopics for investigation

Choice is a key part of the student motivational scheme. Choices of subtopics and text increase students' effort, persistence, and book completion. When investigating the concept of weather, one might choose clouds, while another might choose tornadoes and yet another human influences on the weather. Kids chose a topic that essentially enables them to study and read a long time. Choice creates a commitment to the reading that fosters their learning. Teachers offer a choice in the subtopic and a choice in the text in order to keep kids motivated to read for a large amount of time.

Frequent reading

One of the best ways to become a proficient reader is by reading widely and frequently. CORI students read 30-40 books over 12 weeks in order to foster comprehension. Reading that much takes effort, persistence, and energy - therefore motivation is key in fostering comprehension development.

What are some cognitive processes for reading and science in CORI?

Observation

Students observe natural and scientific phenomena in their neighborhood (e.g., measuring and recording readings at the weather station outside school, or dissecting an owl pellet to find animal bones).

Questioning

Children asking their own questions about what's going on in their environment, and get those answers through their reading.

In-depth reading

Students delve deeply into investigating their scientific topic via books. Reading lots of books is valuable for comprehension. CORI fosters high amounts of reading in order to build comprehension.

Collaboration

Children collaborate with each other to understand what these books say.

Writing and communicating

Children work to understand the topics through their reading activities, and then they share their understanding with others in their class through writing and presentations.

To see CORI in action in a classroom, see the "Engaging Nonfiction Readers" portion of the Reading Rockets Reading for Meaning video.

What reading strategies are explicitly taught in CORI?

Several reading strategies taught explicitly - with modeling and scaffolding and practice for students - within a context of inquiry about a big idea. Strategies taught systematically in the CORI program include the strategies mentioned in the National Reading Panel report.

Using background knowledge

Using what you know to understand a new book. All children need to know how to activate background knowledge. All children can be taught to do this.

Questioning

Questions to help you learn. Questioning refers to students asking or writing self-initiated questions about the content of the text before and during reading. It's a very important strategy that can be taught.

Searching

Readers are purposeful; they have purposes, needs, and goals. They need to search through different portions of books in order to learn what they want to learn. Knowing how to search for information to fulfill your goals as a reader is important.

Summarizing

Summarizing sounds simple, but it's hard to teach third grade students, In fact, it's hard to teach to college students. But it's a fundamental strategy. CORI focuses on teaching children how to form an accurate abstract representation (summary) of the text explicitly and deliberately.

Organizing graphically

When developing an understanding of informational text, it is very helpful to draw a picture or make a concept map as you read along in a book. CORI teaches children to compose these graphic representations of information.

Structuring stories

Forming a concept how a story looks and works (setting, plot, character, motives, themes, and their relationships in literature) is key to becoming a good reader. Making a map of a story is a good way to study story structure.

The CORI program teaches these strategies one at a time at the beginning, addressing one a week. In the next portion of the program (six weeks), students combine the strategies. Teachers spend time helping students integrate the strategies.

How is the program adapted for struggling readers?

In-class, daily, small-group instruction

Focused reading instruction for smaller group of those students who are struggling with one or more reading skills.

Emphasis on oral reading fluency and expressiveness

One tool for this is readers theater - where kids learn to be expressive. It is very important for this group of students to learn these skills.

Simplified strategy instruction

If you ask a struggling third grader to summarize a page in a book without scaffolding his or her efforts, that child will be frustrated. CORI aims to build bridges from text to strategy, giving a bridge for the child between a teacher's request and the text. So, for example, CORI teachers provide a little chart to help them build a summary.

Opportunities to learn reading strategies

Text difficulty matched to reading level

Teachers match the difficulty of the book to the child's level and help guide children to them. The CORI whole class plan is adaptive to individual children and their needs by having diverse text. Key to the CORI classroom is lots of books. There can easily be multiple levels of readers within one classroom. For example, a third grade class could easily have three different levels of readers - those reading on a first or second grade level, those reading at the third grade level, and those reading at a fourth grade level. Having many books helps teachers adapt to their children's needs.

Is CORI like "whole language" instruction?

CORI is not the same as whole language instruction. It is distinguished from whole language in that it is not primarily oriented to literature. It is primarily oriented to concepts.

How long does it take to get CORI started?

There is no one pathway to implementation. But it probably takes a year of planning, training, and book buying to make CORI work.

CORI takes administrative support. Support within the school, and in the district, as well as a commitment of time and effort on the part of individuals to become knowledgeable CORI teachers. Administrative considerations include: principal endorsement; teaming to work with reading specialist to find books and with special education experts to tailor instruction, etc.; and the cost of books.

Professional development is also a consideration. Professional development of a teacher is very valuable for teaching comprehension - it is difficult or impossible to learn to teach comprehension by taking materials off a shelf and then reading a script. Teaching comprehension is a form of teacher practice, of teaching expertise, that teachers learn. Schools and states have to spend money to help teachers gain these skills.

What does CORI teacher training look like?

Training through the University of Maryland entails a 10-day workshop and full-days monthly thereafter for follow-up mentoring and problem solving. Training at other universities or places may look different. Workshops cover:

Principles of good teaching

How to select good books to match all students

How to do the strategies (e.g., many teachers haven't drawn a concept map recently, so they do it in the training. Once teachers experience the strategies, they become much better teachers of them)

Actually doing the inquiry (whether it's weather, birds, aquatic environments, animals). They do the inquiry that they'll provide to their learners so they have experienced the same kind of teaching that they're going to foster for kids.

For more information about CORI, visit www.cori.umd.edu.

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CORI stands for Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. It is designed to teach children reading comprehension through the integration of science and reading. Its primary aim is to increase the reading comprehension of students in grades 3 to 5 by increasing their reading engagement. Gaining conceptual knowledge is a main purpose for both reading and inquiry science.

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A short post about how to teach students to think about their own thinking as they read and how it can help their reading comprehension.

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A mini-lesson and anchor chart for showing early elementary students how to monitor their comprehension as they read.

©Shutterstock/Sergey Nivens

Comprehension is, of course, the whole point of reading. As proficient readers read, they make meaning, learn new information, connect with characters, and enjoy the author's craft. But as students begin to transition in their skills from cracking the sound-symbol code to becoming active meaning makers, they do not always monitor their understanding of the text as they read or notice when they make errors.

There are several categories of errors that students tend to make as they read. They may insert words where they don't belong, substitute words as they read (this tends to happen with smaller sight words-reading the as a), make phonetic errors, or omit words completely. They may also make fluency-related errors, such as not attending to punctuation, which can lead to confusion about which character is speaking, for example.

Sometimes a student's error will change the meaning of the text, and other times it won't. But it remains true that the fewer the errors, the greater the child's comprehension will be.

When students actively monitor their comprehension, they catch themselves when they make an error and apply a strategy to get their understanding back on track. Monitoring comprehension is a critical skill for both students who are still learning to decode and those who have become proficient decoders but are not yet actively making meaning while they read.

Using Metacognition to Teach Monitoring

When students use metacognition, they think about their thinking as they read. This ability to think about their thinking is critical for monitoring comprehension and fixing it when it breaks down.

When I introduce the concept of metacognition to young children, we talk about the voice in our head that talks back to us while we think and dream. We talk about how this voice also talks back to the story while we read. As we read, thoughts bubble up for us, and it's important to pay attention to these thoughts. When we're reading and understanding a story, we talk about how our minds feel good. When we don't understand a story, our minds have another feeling entirely.

Mini-Lesson on Monitoring

I teach a mini-lesson that has proved effective in helping my third-grade students understand what monitoring comprehension feels like. I use the poem "Safety Pin" by Valerie Worth, which describes this common object, without naming it, by comparing it with a fish and a shrimp-and I don't reveal the title to the students at first. (The Emily Dickinson poem "I like to see it lap the Miles" can be used with middle and high school students.)

After we read the poem, I ask, "What do you think this is about? What words in the poem make you think that? What do you picture as you read it?" The students generally say they think it's about a fish or other aquatic animal, and I try to steer them away from these ideas by pointing out other lines in the poem that contradict that image.

After gathering their ideas, I delve a little deeper in my questions, and we discuss how their minds felt when they heard the poem. Most of them say that it felt uncomfortable not to fully understand the poem. I explain to them that something similar happens when we read and make mistakes, or read something that's too difficult so that we don't fully understand: Our minds simply do not feel good.

I then reveal the poem's title and pass out some safety pins, and we reread the poem together. Many of the students find the reveal to be terribly funny. We discuss how our brains feel after learning what the subject of the poem is. I emphasize that as readers, it's important for us to pay attention to how our brains feel so that we can make sure we truly understand what we're reading.

Charting It

After this mini-lesson, I share with my students an anchor chart I made based on ideas in the book Growing Readers by Kathy Collins. It has the following questions for students to ask themselves as they read: Does it look right and sound right? Can I picture the story? Can I retell the story? Does my mind feel good?
Courtesy of Brooke MacKenzie
The bottom of the chart outlines what students can do if the answer to any of these questions is no: Slow down, re-read, sound it out, and read on.

I have students practice monitoring with their independent reading books and a pile of sticky notes. If something doesn't make sense, and they've tried re-reading, they jot a note on a sticky and later discuss what was confusing with their partners or me. I've found that through conferring with students about their independent reading, and giving them support and feedback during small group sessions, I'm able to guide them to develop their monitoring skills more fully.

Monitoring comprehension can be a complicated skill for some students-it requires a lot of practice, and teacher modeling is critical. But the effort does pay off.

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Teaching Students to Read Metacognitively

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A mini-lesson and anchor chart for showing early elementary students how to monitor their comprehension as they read. ©Shutterstock/Sergey Nivens Comprehension is, of course, the whole point of reading. As proficient readers read, they make meaning, learn new information, connect with characters, and enjoy the author's craft.

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There are 2 great chapters on Reading Comprehension. Chapter 10 is about Narrative Text and strategies to teach comprehension and chapter 11 is informative text comprehension instruction.

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This is a blog post giving 7 different reading strategies to teach reading comprehension to students. Each strategies has examples and how it helps students learn.

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Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

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Comprehension strategies are conscious plans — sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. These seven strategies have research-based evidence for…

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Motivation to Read by Learning Student Interests (Reading Inventories)

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Motivation to Read by Learning Student Interests (Reading Inventories)

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A variety of online reading inventories for different grade levels. Pictures, descriptions and links provided. Great resource.

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Student interest reading surveys are an important way to find out information about your students that you may not know yet. They can be a great tool to help you plan instruction, find motivating texts to add to your classroom library, and to reach those students that just may not seem interested. The only thing is...one size does not fit all. We all have different kids, different ages, and different needs. One inventory that I may find extremely useful, someone down the hall may not like at all! So I wanted to search for different reading inventories that are free. Hopefully, you will find one that works for you and your students.

This inventory is simple and geared towards younger students. I created it with my first graders in mind. I knew that I was going to read the questions aloud and needed simple answers.

This inventory comes from Young Teacher Love. It is geared towards upper elementary students.

This one comes from Ginger Snaps. I would say that it is for students that have read a wide range of genres and would understand the different types that she lists in the inventory.

This inventory comes from Ms. D's Literacy Lab. She recommends that it is for grades 2 and up.

Leslye Tilton created this inventory. I like the layout of it and find it to be user friendly. She suggests 1st through 6th grade for this one.

Creative Connections created an inventory for younger students that has graphics instead of written answers.

Smekens Education created these inventories. This one is for grades 3-5. When I downloaded it, I found that the layout is inviting and easy on the eyes. I liked this one a lot.

This one is for 6th-12th students.

If you have an inventory that you find helpful, please leave the link in the comments! We would love to look at it and try it out.

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A blog about all things literacy from reading specialists and coaches from all parts of the US!

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Motivate to Read by Process (Literature Circles)

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Motivate to Read by Process (Literature Circles)

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PDF copy of article summary along with a brief description of the literature circle strategy. Article discusses the success of applying the literature circle methodology to informational texts.

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Culturally Responsive Practices in Reading Programs

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Culturally Responsive Practices in Reading Programs

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This article cautions on assumptive teaching for students of linguistically and diverse cultures.

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Exercises on rhyming pictures. Modifications are available for additional scaffolding.

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Teaching Vocabulary in Storybooks: Embedding Explicit Vocabulary Instruction for Young Children 

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Teaching Vocabulary in Storybooks: Embedding Explicit Vocabulary Instruction for Young Children 

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In this article, authors Spencer, Goldstein, and Kaminski lay out the research supporting explicit vocabulary instruction through the reading of storybooks. They give practical recommendations to primary grade teachers, including how to select appropriate words, deepen understanding, and incorporate active responses. They also discuss several strategies for differentiating vocabulary instruction, such as identifying more specific or additional vocabulary targets and involving parents in the selection of words.

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Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction by The Not So Wimpy Teacher

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Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction by The Not So Wimpy Teacher

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This video begins with a general overview of this teacher's weekly vocabulary routine. Around the 9:00 minute mark, she begins discussing the specific strategies she added in for struggling students.

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Multi-sensory Vocabulary Instruction: Guidelines and Activities 

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Multi-sensory Vocabulary Instruction: Guidelines and Activities 

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This article by Susan Jones gives guidelines for preparing a class for dynamic vocabulary instruction and practice, and provides a list of several activities for vocabulary practice that would engage a variety of learners.

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Edwin Ellis and Theresa Farmer describe the situation eloquently in the introduction to their clarifying strategy to teach vocabulary. To quote:

When you think of vocabulary, there is a good chance that you think of long lists of words from social studies or science textbooks, spelling word lists, or even the humongous lists of terms to study for college entrance exams. Zillions of flash cards also may come to mind. No doubt you share the common childhood experience of having to "go look up the words in a dictionary, write the definition, and then write a sentence using the term" - but how much of that vocabulary do you remember now?

In other words, many of the traditional techniques teachers and students use to learn vocabulary does not work because most students, not just those with learning problems, rarely remember the meanings of new terms beyond the test. This raises a very disconcerting question: If students don't remember the definitions of new terms after the test, why bother requiring them to memorize those definitions in the first place since it seems to be a waste of time?

Given a list of words to learn, many students will complete the assignments given, but will not have the time to actually learn what the words mean. "Vocabulary enrichment" becomes yet another set of compartmentalized pieces of information that a student is "exposed to," tries to spit back on a test, and forgets.

Developing vocabulary as part of knowledge structure requires much more energy and focus than memorizing terms. Many students will have habits of passivity that will need to be broken. Others will be convinced that these aren't words people normally use, even if in fact they've heard them many times before - but didn't remember because there was no meaning attached to the word.

Keep in mind, also, that there is more to developing vocabulary and language comprehension than learning new words. Some other skills to consider at the single word and phrase level are:

figures of speech,

confusing words such as "indifferent,"

words with multiple meanings, and

"signal" words such as but, however, and while.

Guidelines

1. Have structure and organization behind the words you present
Rather than randomly selected words "at their grade level," present words in related groups. Examples: Present words about feelings, and make a poster with the students, with different words to describe being "afraid" or "happy." Students can discuss the degrees of emotion (is terrified more than nervous or anxious, ecstatic better than pleased), and the differences between the words (how is snicker different from guffaw, terrified different from horrified?). Another option is to study word parts: have the students learn that ject means throw, and then tackle projectile, reject, and trajectory.

An advantage to grouping words this way is that it lends itself to individualized instruction. Students can all be tackling words from the big ject list - but one student may be learning subjective and abject while another learns project and projectile. (As with any strategy that differentiates between students, you will need to deal with the "why is he doing something different" issues and determining how and how much to differentiate - but with these activities the differences between students are not as obvious.)

2. Incorporate multisensory learning from the beginning
Many students gain a lot if an illustration or demonstration is presented first. Later, when the word is used or its meaning discussed, they have an image to associate it with, and are more likely to learn from the discussion as well as from the visual presentations.

3. Model the activities first
Demonstrate these activities with vivid, familiar words first. Once you've modeled an activity with a word, do it with student input next, and finally, have the students do it on their own - perhaps in groups before working individually.

4. Most work with vocabulary should be done with the meanings available
If the activity involves expressing the ideas in a different form than the definition, then the student has to think about the meaning and interpret it. If the student doesn't use the right meaning, they're worse than wasting they're time; they're learning the wrong things. In addition, students may commit a simplified meaning to memory, but if they have a more developed definition they will be able to think about that and use it.

5. Keep an ongoing list prominently posted
If the words are visible and accessible to students, they are more likely to see them, think about them, and use them. It's up to you to remember to take the lists down when you give tests or quizzes, unless you are using word banks already. (Don't rely on a list on the board as a word bank, however; some students have significantly more trouble reading or writing from a distance than from the paper they are working on.) If you've got different students learning different words, put them all up there, but be sure each student knows which words s/he is responsible for knowing.

6. Go beyond the definitions of the words
Include the connotations of the words and the ways they are most likely to be used. Don't limit this exploration to the "discussion" of words. When students are drawing or acting out words, encourage them to incorporate the connotations or the more subtle aspects of the meanings of the words.

Activities

1. Illustrate the words
Show pictures or video clips that demonstrate the meaning of a word. Have students draw and label something illustrating the meaning of the word. This is not limited to concrete nouns - a grim expression, a contemplative person, or absurd conduct can also be drawn. The labels explain how the word and drawing fit. Drawing skills are not important; stick figures with accurate labels can succinctly express an idea as well as finely crafted caricatures. The infamous "flashcards" can be made more meaningful with illustrations, as well. Be sure, though, that the student doesn't replace an abstract idea with a concrete example of it. This can be done by showing different ways that the idea is expressed and having the students discover what makes them valid illustrations - for instance, could news be grim? How?

2. Play "Quick Draw"
This doesn't have to be competitive, but it can be. See how quickly students can convey the essence of a words meaning on the board - without words. This works especially well with words describing visual concepts, like many geography terms. Again, make sure students don't oversimplify things - if you play this game repeatedly, make sure the students are using different ways to draw the words.

3. Play "vocabulary charades"
Have students draw a word from a hat and act it out.

4. Give credit for finding the word used in the real world
Provide extra credit if a student hears or sees a vocabulary word anywhere outside of the vocabulary exercises. To get the points, the student has to write down the word, what it means, and where s/he heard it. Sometimes the students will purposely use the words so someone can say they heard it - which just means they are incorporating it into their oral vocabularies.

5. Use the words yourself
That prominently posted list can be your cue to slip words into other classwork or discussions. Students may not even need the incentive of extra credit to start listening for them.

6. Have students answer questions that use the words
For example: "What are three ways you could tell a person had just received grim news?" "What are three things an impertinent person might say?" "What are three things that would disconcert you?" Doing this while the student has the meaning available gives the opportunity to process the meaning instead of guessing at an answer.

7. Have students generate examples and non-examples for words
This can be done with visual or kinesthetic illustrations as well as verbal descriptions. Have students explain whether something is a good example of a word or not, and why they think so. For most groups, this activity should be practiced with familiar, concrete words first. It can be used to lay a solid foundation for "comparing and contrasting" and defending ideas in essays, especially if you encourage the students to use precise language and good sentences.

When you ask students to generate examples, if someone comes up with a "wrong" answer, it can be used as "a good non-example" to help clarify the meaning of a word. Remind students that learning is not about proving what you already know, but about asking questions to change what you don't know into what you do know.

8. Use "fill in the blank" exercises before you expect the students to use the words in sentences themselves
This is also a good way to test students, or to make the transition between working with the definitions available and recalling what the words mean on their own. Have a word bank with five vocabulary words and five sentences with blanks, and have the students decide which word goes in which blank. Your challenge will be constructing sentences which only match with one word, so small groups of words are better. These exercises are also opportunities for you to give a wider scope to a word, and discuss how that word fits into a sentence that the students might not have considered.

9. Compose with the words
Only after a student has heard and read a word used correctly many times should s/he be expected to compose something original with the word. This can be a fun class activity, though, once a sizable list has accumulated. Students can take turns picking words from the list to add a sentence to an ongoing story - students will get a chance to hear the words they weren't sure of used by other students, and the sentences can be revised if the words are not used correctly. Eventually, students may enjoy composing absurd tales using the words.

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Vocabulary is a weak area for many students, but much "vocabulary instruction" ends up being handwriting practice.

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21 Ideas for Teaching Vocabulary in the Classroom 

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21 Ideas for Teaching Vocabulary in the Classroom 

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Another fantastic list of out of the ordinary activities for vocabulary instruction in the classroom.

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21 Ideas for Teaching Vocabulary in the Classroom

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Looking for ideas for teaching vocabulary? Here are 21 activities for teaching vocabulary in the classroom, along with links to other sources and ideas.

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Examination of Teacher Practices on Student Motivation for Reading

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Teacher Practices for Motivation during Reading

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Teacher Practices for Motivation during Reading

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This article describes successful strategies for student motivation during reading. Using the "Salient Seven" principals within the curriculum, motivation increased for students. Gives a brief overview of successful strategies. Great for a quick reference.

https://usf-flvc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01FALSC_USF/un0hgn/cdi_proquest_journals_2531176230

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Raising Reading Volume With Teaching Strategies for Motivation

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Strategies for Motivation Through Choice, Discussion, and Book Talks

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Strategies for Motivation Through Choice, Discussion, and Book Talks

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This article discusses how easy access to books, the choice of books to read, and the emphasis on taking the time to discuss in class books read at home, might help students gain intrinsic motivation to read.

https://usf-flvc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01FALSC_USF/un0hgn/cdi_proquest_journals_2059383846

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Changes in motivation and strategies using CORI

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How to teach students commitment to instruction through project based learning. Using CORI strategies, the students become more motivated to read through collaborative and hands-on activities.

https://usf-flvc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01FALSC_USF/un0hgn/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_85333471

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Reading Motivation in the Later Elementary Years

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Reading Motivation in the Later Elementary Years

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This article is a good reference in background knowledge to help teachers understand the relationship between the intrinsic motivation of a student for knowledge and reading comprehension.

doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2006.05.004

https://usf-flvc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/openurl?institution=01FALSC_USF&rfr_id=info:sid%252Fprimo.exlibrisgroup.com-bX-Bx&rfr_id=info:sid%2Fprimo.exlibrisgroup.com-589446-Bx&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi%2Ffmt:kev:mtx:&rft.epage=313&rft.volume=32&rft_id=info:doi%2F&rft.isbn_list=&rft.jtitle=Contemporary%20Educational%20Psychology&rft.genre=article&rft.issue=3&rft.auinit1=J&rft.aulast=Guthrie&rft.auinit=J%20T&rft.date=2007-06-30&rft.eisbn_list=&rft.spage=282&rft.au=Guthrie,%20John%20T.%20T&rft.atitle=Reading%20motivation%20and%20reading%20comprehension%20growth%20in%20the%20later%20elementary%20years&rft.issn=0361-476X&rft.eissn=1090-2384&svc_dat=CTO&vid=01FALSC_USF:USF

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Reading enjoyment and successful student characteristics

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Reading Enjoyment and a Proficient Student's Characteristics

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Reading Enjoyment and a Proficient Student's Characteristics

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This article describes the relationship between specific motivational strategies in the classroom reading curriculum, reading comprehension and how these strategies relate to measurable comprehension gains in students with varied genders and backgrounds.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2019.101512

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reading enjoyment and student characteristics

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Finding the Source of Reading Difficulties

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Finding the Source of Reading Difficulties

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This article is for teachers of upper grade students who are struggling with reading. It explains at first how phonics bridges the gap between phonology and orthography and the importance of decoding to reading. Many middle school students are being left behind because their struggle is decoding, but the remediation exercises focus on graphic organizers, annotating, or test prep. The ideal solution is a structured spelling program that would be used with small groups or independently.

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I'm not blaming teachers. Educator preparation programs and certification exams for middle grades teachers generally touch only lightly on foundational literacy. This makes it difficult for teachers to isolate the cause of a struggling reader's difficulties.

There are several places where students' understanding can break down. One of the most difficult for intermediate teachers to address is decoding, or the process of recognizing what sounds are represented by the symbols on a page (that is, sounding out words).

Students who are unable to decode text need remediation in phonics. Ideally, every school would have enough literacy interventionists to meet every child's needs; realistically, however, it often falls to the classroom teacher to deliver these interventions.

The Continuum of Literacy Development

Before we can talk about remediation, we need to ensure that teachers in the middle grades understand the big picture of early literacy development. Literacy development-like all kinds of human development-follows a similar general progression for nearly all people, although no two children develop identically.

Literacy development moves along a continuum from phonology (all sound, no writing) to orthography (all writing, no sound). Phonics-a systematic mapping of sounds onto patterns of letters-is what helps us bridge the gap between the two.

Within phonics, there are many subskills that develop in a relatively predictable order. If any of the earlier skills in the continuum are missing, students will be unable to access increasingly difficult text.

Determining Where Kids Are

To meet kids' needs, we need to know where they are. Diagnostic assessments in intermediate grades often take the form of standardized test passages, with the data analyzed in terms of standards-summary, main idea, character development, and so on. For our most struggling readers, however, these data do not give us the right information. We need to know where their knowledge of phonics breaks down.

There are two assessments that can be given quickly and easily to struggling readers to find where they are in their literacy development:

The free Quick Phonics Screener can be administered orally in just a few minutes.

The Primary, Elementary, and Upper Level spelling inventories from Words Their Way can provide more information about students' abilities.

Moving Kids Forward

Once we know where kids are on the literacy continuum, the real work begins. A substantial body of research suggests that traditional methods of teaching children to read have been ineffective and leave too many children at risk for reading failure. One way to remediate for all readers-especially those who are most at risk-is with systematic spelling instruction.

Research supports the use of spelling instruction to teach children how sounds map onto patterns of letters and how these patterns are transferable to other words, rather than teaching an isolated set of words to be memorized every week and promptly forgotten after Friday's quiz.

In fact, spelling instruction supports reading development more than reading instruction supports spelling. Teacher and psychologist Louisa Moats describes the relationship between the two: "Learning to spell requires instruction and gradual integration of information about print, speech sounds, and meaning-these, in turn, support memory for whole words, which is used in both spelling and sight reading."

Words Their Way is one helpful resource for this developmental approach to spelling. Children sort words based on their sounds and then draw conclusions about spelling patterns. They are then assessed on their ability to apply these patterns to unfamiliar words, rather than ones they've memorized.

Another resource is the Florida Center for Reading Research, which publishes research-based Student Center Activities that can be used in small groups and during tutoring to reinforce crucial phonics skills.

Fitting It All In

Another difficulty intermediate-level teachers face is figuring out when to execute these small-group interventions. Teachers can pull together small groups during independent work times in class-for example, when students are working on independent reading or research, or in book clubs. This requires setting up engaging academics for the rest of the class, as well as iron-clad systems that allow teachers to focus on the small groups rather than on behavior management.

Relearning how to teach phonics-or learning how to do so for the first time-can seem like a daunting task to teachers who also need to implement best practices in secondary literacy in their classrooms. But children who are reading far below grade level need us to meet them where they are. By building our knowledge of how literacy develops, we can make sure that we can support every child.

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Finding the Source of Reading Difficulties

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I'm not blaming teachers. Educator preparation programs and certification exams for middle grades teachers generally touch only lightly on foundational literacy. This makes it difficult for teachers to isolate the cause of a struggling reader's difficulties. There are several places where students' understanding can break down.

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This website was designed for teachers of ELL's, but there is also a plethora of resources for all students. I linked the Words Their Way page of the website because it gives you a streamlined plan for starting to implement this program. There are also teacher-friendly tips on beginning to use the activities in this book.

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If you're not familiar with Words Their Way , it is a developmental spelling program which has students work with level-appropriate word sorts in order to improve their understanding of the written language. Word sorts are simply a set of words which fall into certain spelling, sound, or semantic categories.

I discovered and became interested in the Words Their Way program (WTW: my own abbreviation) near the end of the 2010 school year, at which point there was not sufficient time to begin it. So, over that summer, I did some reading and research, ultimately deciding to implement it the following September.

I will admit that learning a new system was a bit daunting at first, but two things have made the challenge easier and extremely worthwhile. First, the WTW texts are incredibly helpful and offer a great variety of materials (CD-ROM and DVD too). There is a core text for the program, pictured to the left and below, another core text for WTW with English Language Learners , an edition focused on struggling readers and a number of additional workbooks with materials for each developmental stage. Second, and perhaps most impo rtantly, after using WTW for only about 2 months, my students' motivation, interest level and ability in studying words increased noticeably.

I believe one of the keys to the WTW program is the fact that students are given the task of making sense of words on their own terms. Like scientists or detectives, they are looking for patterns in spelling and sound in order to categorize words. WTW does not teach spelling "rules" which will all know have so many exceptions in English. It instead offers opportunities for hands-on, developmentally appropriate word work which leads to a greater understanding of our spelling system.

The WTW texts offer materials that you can photocopy and an incredible number of word sort lists that you can create yourself with a simple template. Many printables are also available on the CD-Rom included with the core text.

Each of my students has the following materials for word work time:

A two-pocket folder with a center flap that has three fasteners

A journal or notebook to record their words

A size #6 manila key/coin envelope which contains their current word sort

A letter size manila envelope or a gallon size plastic bag for storing previous sorts

Instructional Sheets for 5 different types of word activities (see below)

How to Make the Sorts

Typically, my students receive about 20 words o n card stock. There are two ways to create word sorts. The first and easiest way is to use one of the workbooks (see resources books below) and simply photocopy an appropriate sort onto card stock. Each book contains many sorts for that specific stage ready for copying. The second way to create sorts for your students is a bit more time consuming but leaves you with a document for future use. Using the many sorts listed in the back of the main WTW text, I make a template in Open Office Writer, type the words into a table, then print, and photocopy them onto card stock.

Here are the resource books, from left to right, early stages to more advanced.

If you have found this page useful, please consider a simple way to help support it. By clicking these images, you will be sent to view the products at Amazon. If you buy one of the books or make other purchases, a small percent will be donated for the upkeep of this website. Thanks!

For recommendations for books which focus on vocabulary development, visit For other suggestions, see my this page.
book page.

Maintain Order In order to help keep track of hundreds of words in my room, each student colors the back of their words with a crayon. The color of the crayon is specific to that student, so for example when I find a card with green on the back, I know it is from Jomar's envelope.

It can take some time to prepare the materials, especially if you have students on many different levels. But once you have the materials created, you will have them as a resource for years to come. You can also involve your students by having them cut the words out of the card stock.

HINT: I have found that some students are incredibly efficient at cutting the words out while others need more time. Instead of using up instructional time, I suggest exploring a few options: 1) Use a timer to limit the amount of time they have to complete the job. 2) Have the students cut the sorts out during another part of the school day. or 3) just cut them out yourself using a paper guillotine

After first receiving a new set of words, my students perform a "regular sort" and then record the words in their notebook or in a word processing template on the computer. The regular sort requires the students to examine the spelling and sounds of their words and think about ways to categorize them. After every sort, I have the students explain how and why they separated/categorized their words.

On subsequent days, my students will chose other activities to continue practicing with their set of words. (See next section)

What do the students do with the words? The core text of WTW outlines a variety of activities that students can do with their words. I browsed through the options and selected a few that I thought my students would most enjoy and those that would be easiest to implement. I then put together a document that encompassed the different types of activities. This document, pictured above, allows both my students and me to keep track of their progress. This "progress chart" is kept in their word work folders. (Here is the

link for a photo of the student folder and its contents and here is a link to view the document in more detail.)

I chose six different activities. Further below you will find the files so you can download the instruction sheets for your own use.

The six types of activities listed are:

Regular Sort - This is the student's opportunity to begin exploring and categorizing the words in their sort by creating columns or groups of words. When the students receive new words, this sort is mandatory. This is also the type of sort I use when doing a mini-lesson with my students about their words.

As the week progresses, students can choose from one of the following:

Blind Sort - Here students work with a partner who has the same words. They take turns reading 10-12 words to another student who then tries to write and categorize the words.

Speed Sort - A speed sort is a favorite of my students. Using a stopwatch, students see how fast they can correctly sort their words. To add an extra dimension, I try a Speed Sort and then challenge the students to see if they can beat my time.

Word Hunt - In this sort, students select a magazine or book from the classroom library and search for words that fit into their sort. This is another popular activity.
Word Game - Here are opportunities for students play various games with their words. The WTW texts offer a number outlines for games. Also included is a variety of materials (including game boards) for easy photocopying.

Type on the Computer - I created simple 2, 3, and 4 column templates using Open Office Writer. Then I saved them onto the desktops of the computers in my classroom. After completing a regular sort students can choose to type their words into a template, print it, and staple it into their notebook.

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If you're not familiar with Words Their Way , it is a developmental spelling program which has students work with level-appropriate word sorts in order to improve their understanding of the written language. Word sorts are simply a set of words which fall into certain spelling, sound, or semantic categories.

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While this site does require students to do a little bit of navigating to find a good fitting game, it covers a lot of the major bases of phonics.

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Fishy Phonics (Phase 2) - Online Phonics Game

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A fun online game to help children increase their reading speed and fluency. Players compete against the clock to fish for pictures that match target words.

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This Scholastic page has an extensive list of teacher manuals, books for read alouds (paperback section), and phonics programs. My biggest take away was the books for children. Pairing rich literature with a key phonics skill to your phonics instruction is another best practice of phonics instruction.

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Scholastic's Teacher Store has a wealth of resources for teaching phonics and phonemic awareness, from audiotapes to chapter book series to CD-ROMs -- and, of course, professional guides full of handy reproducibles, fun activity ideas, and further information on phonics instruction. The list is organized by Professional Books for teachers, Paperback Collections for beginning readers, and Phonics Programs.
Professional Books
Teaching Tunes Audiotape & Mini-Books Set: Early Phonics (Grades PreK-1)
Phonemic Awareness Songs and Rhymes (Grades PreK-2)
Reading Success Mini-Books: Word Families by Mary Beth Spann (Grades PreK-3)
Perfect Poems for Teaching Phonics by Deborah Ellermeyer, Sandy Ford Grove, Judi Hechtman (Grades K-2)
Phonemic Awareness Activities for Early Reading Success by Wiley Blevins (Grades K-2)
Easy Phonics Lessons for the Overhead by Lisa Blau (Grades K-2)
Phonics Games Kids Can't Resist! by Michelle K. Ramsey (Grades K-2)
Phonics From A To Z by Wiley Blevins (Grades K-3)
The Super Book of Phonics Poems by Linda B. Ross (Grades K-3)
Phonics That Work! by Janiel M.Wagstaff (Grades K-3)
Teaching Phonics & Word Study in the Intermediate Grades by Wiley Blevins (Grades 3-8)

Paperback Collections

Irresistible A, B, Cs: 50 Easy, Fun, Multi-Sensory Activities to Help All Kids Explore and Learn the Alphabet by Joan Novelli (Grades PreK-K)
Alphatales (Grades PreK-1)
Word Family Tales (Grades PreK-1)
Phonemic Awareness (Grades K-1)
Reading First: Phonemic Awareness (Grades K-1)
Sound Matching Practice Kit: 12 books (Grades K-2)
Fun Activities to Build Phonemic Awareness (Grades K-2)
Grades K-2 Strategic Phonics Pack (Grades K-3)
Reading First: Phonemic Awareness (Grades 2-3)
Reading First: Phonics (Grades 2-3)
Scholastic Phonics Programs and Material by Wiley Blevins
Interactive Phonics Readers in the Teacher Store
Interactive Phonics Readers Product Information

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Great Books and Programs for Teaching Phonics | Scholastic

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Scholastic's Teacher Store has a wealth of resources for teaching phonics and phonemic awareness, from audiotapes to chapter book series to CD-ROMs -- and, of course, professional guides full of handy reproducibles, fun activity ideas, and further information on phonics instruction.

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Two students are selected from a small group: the

Sounder and the Matcher. Each student receives a

bag with items who's pairs are in the others' bag. The Sounder picks an item, without showing the Matcher. Based on the initial sound heard by the Matcher, they then take out the object they believe is paired and the students in the group confirm if the initial consonant sounds of the two items match.
(The students who play this game should have a good grasp on initial consonant sounds).

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Answers common discipline/instructional classroom management problems in a classroom. Great for first year teachers. Handles issues with a positive spin on motivational strategies for teachers to practice with students. Students focus on developing intrinsic motivation and instructional responsibility with literacy.

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This book emphasizes the relationship of trust between a teacher and student. Sulllo discusses how vital it is for teachers to truly know their students so that realistic academic expectations are paired with practical strategies to help students relate to the required curriculum.

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Motivational strategies developed with brain based research. Major inquiries on utilizing the natural learning mode of the motivated brain and applying it to definitive methodology in the classroom.

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David Cooper, David Chard, and Nancy Kiger

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David Cooper, David Chard, and Nancy Kiger

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This book is a quick resource to help periodically diagnose student literacy problems. Interventions suggested work well with assessments included in book. Material works well for primary to intermediate students.

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Another quick resource to supplement reading curriculum. Great independent practice for high level intermediate students after a literacy mini-lesson.

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Quizlet is a very commonly used site for vocabulary across grade levels, as it allows users to create digital vocabulary flashcard decks. Quizlet also has a feature called Quizlet Live that functions similarly to Kahoot for a whole group quiz that is more engaging than a traditional vocabulary quiz.

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This video shares several practical ideas for developing breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge in the K-2 classroom. Most interesting are her explanations of semantic maps and word gradients.

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How to Teach Vocabulary in Grades K-2 | Vocabulary Activities for Kids

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9 Classroom Vocabulary Games to Use with Your Students 

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9 Classroom Vocabulary Games to Use with Your Students 

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This blog post contains 9 vocabulary game ideas to engage all students in vocabulary practice. Most follow a format similar to games students may already be familiar with, like checkers, pictionary, charades, and basketball.

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9 Classroom Vocabulary Games to Use with Your Students

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Looking for some fun classroom vocabulary games to use with your students? Try these 9 quick and easy vocabulary review games.

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This is a really great guide to how to choose vocabulary words, particularly how to choose appropriate words from texts based on the three tiered system of vocabulary.

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Teaching vocabulary is complex. What words are important for a child to know and in what context? In this excerpt from Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction, the authors consider what principles might be used for selecting which words to explicitly teach.

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Selecting Vocabulary Words to Teach ELLs

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Selecting Vocabulary Words to Teach ELLs

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Another guide to choosing Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 words, specifically for teaching English Language Learners.

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This article offers guidance for selecting vocabulary words when teaching ELLs and explains the difference between Tier 1, 2, and 3 words.

A student's maximum level of reading comprehension is determined by his or her knowledge of words. This word knowledge allows students to comprehend text. As the teacher, you can explicitly teach word meanings to improve comprehension. However, to know a word means knowing it in all of the following dimensions:

The ability to define a word

The ability to recognize when to use that word

Knowledge of its multiple meanings

The ability to decode and spell that word

Therefore, it is vitally important to teach key words that children will need to comprehend texts, learn the content in those texts, and pass tests. Words are taught through direct instruction of word meanings as well as through discussions about words (including prefixes, suffixes, and roots) - all combined with a lot of reading.

For English language learners (ELLs), vocabulary development is especially critical for their ability to read and comprehend texts. The selection of vocabulary words to teach ELLs can be grouped into three tiers.

Tier 1 words

Tier 1 words are words that ELLs typically know the concept of in their primary language, but not the label in English. For example, a Tier 1 word might be butterfly. This is a word that English language learners may not know, but it can be easily taught by pointing to a picture of a butterfly during text discussion.

Another Tier 1 word might be march (move like a soldier). A word like march can be easily instructed during text discussion by marching in place. But because this word has multiple meanings, it also merits further instruction. This can be accomplished through oral language activities that follow the text discussion.

Teaching Tier 1 words

We take it for granted that native English-speakers know most Tier 1 words, but this is not the case for ELLs. Many Tier 1 words may be unknown to ELLs and key to the comprehension of a passage. Different types of Tier 1 words require different teaching strategies:

Some Tier 1 words cannot be demonstrated and do not have multiple meanings, but students will need to know them. An example of this is the word uncle. A simple explanation of the word's meaning during the story reading will suffice. Or, if the teacher and students are bilingual, a quick translation is sufficient.

Idioms and everyday expressions (like "make up your mind," "let's hit the books," and "once upon a time") are also in the Tier 1 category. Teachers will need to explain the meanings of these phrases to students.

Some Tier 1 words are simple cognates (like family/familia or preparation/preparación). The cognates in this category consist of words that are high-frequency words in Spanish and English. They may not require substantial instruction because students may know the word meanings in Spanish. The teacher can merely state the English cognate and have students provide the Spanish cognate. Or, the teacher can provide the English cognate and students can say both the English word and Spanish cognate.

It is also important to point out false cognates and give the correct translation. Examples of false cognates are: rope/ropa (clothing) and embarrassed/embarazada (pregnant). There are also some false cognates that have multiple meanings in one language, and one or some of those meanings do not coincide with the meaning of the other language.

Here is a list of helpful Spanish-English cognates.

Tier 2 words

Tier 2 words are more complex than Tier 1 words. They may also be more abstract. These include:

1. Words that are important and useful to understanding the text, such as: character, setting, plot, even numbers, and country.

2. Words that have connections to other words and concepts, such as: between, among, by, combine, and estimate.

3. Words for which students understand the general concept, but need greater precision and specificity in describing a concept or a person, such as: sets, tables (for math or science, or for a table of contents), shy, ashamed, and stubborn.

Teaching Tier 2 words

Tier 2 words appear in grade-level texts. They can be worked with in a variety of ways so that ELLs build rich representations of them and connect them to other words and concepts. Different types of Tier 2 words require different teaching strategies:

Some Tier 2 words will not require elaborate discussion, because they can be demonstrated. These include words with multiple meanings, such as trunk, which can be taught by using gestures to show that it is part of an elephant, part of a tree, part of our body, and the back of a car.

In addition, many Tier 2 words are cognates. In this tier, they are high frequency words in Spanish and low frequency words in English. This means that Spanish-speaking ELLs will have a head start with these words (such as coincidence/coincidencia, industrious/industrioso, and fortunate/afortunado) because they will know both the concept and an approximation of the label in English.

The Tier 2 words that should be targeted for pre-teaching include words that cannot be demonstrated and are not cognates.

ELLs should be expected to master Tier 2 words in order to do well on comprehension and on tests.

Tier 3 words

These are low-frequency words that are found mostly in content books in the upper grades. Examples include witticism, isotope, procrastinate, amoeba, or words that are not demonstrable or cognates. These words are rarely encountered in the early grades, but if they do appear, you can translate them or briefly explain them in either English or in the ELLs' first language.

Note: It is advisable at all grade levels to have bilingual dictionaries available in the classroom. If you do not know the translation for a vocabulary word into students' native language, it is an easy reference and clarification tool. Also, when reading texts on their own, students can look up unknown words and ensure their own comprehension.

References

Beck, I., McKeown, M. & Kucan, L (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: The Gilford Press.

Calderón, M., August, D., Durán, D., Madden, N., R. Slavin & M. Gil (2003 and in press). Spanish to English Transitional Reading: Teacher's Manual. Baltimore, MD: The Success for All Foundation.

Calderón, M. & L. Minaya-Rowe (2004). Expediting Comprehension to English Language Learners (ExC-ELL) Teachers Manual. Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education, Johns Hopkins University.

Calderón, M. & L. Minaya-Rowe (in press). Teaching Reading, Oral Language and Content to English Language Learners - How ELLs Keep Pace With Mainstream Students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Reprints

For any reprint requests, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Selecting Vocabulary Words to Teach English Language Learners

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This article offers guidance for selecting vocabulary words when teaching ELLs and explains the difference between Tier 1, 2, and 3 words. A student's maximum level of reading comprehension is determined by his or her knowledge of words. This word knowledge allows students to comprehend text.

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This paper covers many of the key reasons that students may struggle with vocabulary instruction, which allows for better insights into how to properly differentiate instructions.

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Teaching Figures of Speech Learning Strategies

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Teaching Figures of Speech Learning Strategies

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This PowerPoint condenses research and recommendations for teaching figures of speech to ELLs, which is a key part of vocabulary instruction for non-native English speakers.

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This is one example of a vocabulary choice board, which allows students to choose one activity from each row to practice their vocabulary words. Each row features a different style of activity, and choice will help engage students more effectively. This idea could be adapted based on grade level and student/teacher preferences.

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This site gives several recommendations and reviews for vocabulary apps that are appropriate for K-2 students.

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A child's vocabulary can be expanded through repeated exposure to new words and by thinking about word meanings. We've found apps that engage young children in crossword and Scrabble type games. Other apps focus on specific word meaning skills by highlighting word opposites, synonyms, and homophones. Many of the games can be played together or side-by-side. Have fun and encourage new words!

Many of the reviews we link to are from Common Sense Education, a trusted resource for learning about apps and other edtech tools.

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A child's vocabulary can be expanded through repeated exposure to new words and by thinking about word meanings. We've found apps that engage young children in crossword and Scrabble type games. Other apps focus on specific word meaning skills by highlighting word opposites, synonyms, and homophones.

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10 Mistakes to Avoid When Teaching Vocabulary 

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10 Mistakes to Avoid When Teaching Vocabulary 

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A great article on common vocabulary instruction mistakes, which could help teachers reflect on their own current vocabulary instruction and see if there are any easy corrections that could be made.

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If you have questions about teaching new vocabulary words to learners in grades K-5, you're in the right spot! This post kicks off a 9-part series with everything you need to know!
This post contains affiliate links.
Phonemic awareness. Phonics. Comprehension. Fluency.

Am I missing something? What's another key element to reading instruction?

Oh, yeah.

Vocabulary.

Isn't that how it often works? We think of vocabulary as that thing we get to - if we have time.

But we're making a mistake.

Words are the tools we use to access our background knowledge, express ideas, and learn new concepts. The words children know will determine how well they can comprehend texts, in the upper elementary grades, in middle and high school, and in college. Reading is far more than recognizing words and and remembering their meanings, but if the reader does not know the meanings of a sufficient proportion of words in the text, comprehension is impossible."

Stahl & Nagy, Teaching Word Meanings

Let's take a look at 10 mistakes to avoid when teaching vocabulary.

Mistake #1 - Choosing the wrong words

Choosing the vocabulary words that you'll teach is something of an art. It doesn't mean buying a Word of the Day book and following it without deviation. It also doesn't mean choosing a big word just because it's big and impressive.

We need to make sure we're choosing mostly Tier 2 words - words that our students will encounter and use in their reading, speaking, and writing. Not sure how to choose these words? Not to worry! I'll get into that in week 2.

Mistake # 2 - Having your students look up words and copy their dictionary definitions

This is arguably one of the worst ways to "teach" new vocabulary. All of us know how un helpful the dictionary can be when trying to grasp the meaning of a new word. We must go beyond this out-of-date teaching method.

Mistake #3 - Only having students write the word in a sentence

This is a step in the right direction, but it's just a step. And I don't know about you, but I've seen too many sentences that still didn't show that my learners understood the meaning of the sentence.

For example:

She inquired a question.

I collided my little sister.

Mistake #4 - Failing to go beyond a surface understanding

Having students copy definitions from the dictionary (please don't) and having them write the word in a sentence (a good start, but just a start) will not get our learners very far. There's so much more we can do to help them make the words their own. We need to help them write kid-friendly definitions, come up with synonyms and antonyms (or examples and nonexamples), and more.

We will go into this in depth in the posts about teaching vocabulary to primary learners and teaching vocabulary to intermediate learners.

Mistake #5 - Having a hit or miss approach

I completely and fully understand how hard it is to squeeze another thing into your day. It's only when we grasp the vital importance of vocabulary growth that we choose to make time for it.

But it must be more than hit or miss - something we do just once a week or only when we find extra time. We must make it a regular part of our days. If you're concerned about how on earth you'll fit in something else, take a good hard look at everything else. Where can you cut or substitute?

Then - design a regular routine for your vocabulary lessons to make them as efficient as possible. That brings me to mistake #6.

Mistake #6 - Neglecting to have a solid strategy for teaching new words

It's important to do some research and think through exactly how you're going to introduce and reinforce new vocabulary words. How will your learners really own those words?

Not sure where to begin? I've got a few ideas to share with you in this series.

Mistake #7 - Having a "set it and forget it" mindset

If we teach the word on Monday - a "word of the week" approach - and refer to it halfheartedly throughout the week (or, some weeks - let's be honest - not at all), we haven't accomplished much.

Our students need more than a quick introduction and an encouragement to use the word. They need active vocabulary learning. That brings us to mistake #8.

Mistake #8 - Making vocabulary instruction boring

It may be hard to imagine how learning new words could be fun - especially if you were subject to copying word definitions and writing endless sentences when you were in school (as I was). But the fact is that there are many, many ways to turn vocabulary learning into a game.

Those are coming up in the blog posts about whole class and small group vocabulary activities. Stay tuned!

Mistake #9 - Losing track of your ultimate goal

As you know, our ultimate goal is to have students do well on the vocabulary quiz at the end of the week.
No! No it isn't!
Certainly we want our students to show their understanding by performing well on our assessments, but our ultimate goal is that our students use the words in their reading and writing. This is the true test.

Mistake #10 - Forgetting to celebrate word learning

In Word Nerds, by Overturf, Montgomery, and Smith, the authors have classroom celebrations at the end of each vocabulary cycle. They combine vocabulary review with a small class party.

Even if you don't feel ready for that, keep an ear open for good vocabulary use all day long - whether that's at recess, in the lunchroom, or during a social studies lesson. Get excited about those big brain words your students are using - and praise them for it!

This post was just the beginning. Stay tuned for a variety of helpful posts. You're about to become a pro at teaching vocabulary!

Here's what's coming

© 2018, Anna G. All rights reserved.

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Mistakes to avoid when teaching vocabulary - The Measured Mom

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If you have questions about teaching new vocabulary words to learners in grades K-5, you're in the right spot! This post kicks off a 9-part series with everything you need to know! This post contains affiliate links. Phonemic awareness. Phonics. Comprehension. Fluency. Am I missing something? What's another key element to reading instruction?

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These activities are aimed a ELLs, however they would be useful for all students, especially those who are struggling with vocabulary.

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Effects of Small Group Phonics Instruction on Word Recognition

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Effects of Small Group Phonics Instruction on Word Recognition

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This article was investigating the effects of structured phonics instruction on Kindergartener's word recognition. It showed that the effects of the program on student's word recognition were immediate, but not long lasting. A week after the post test, many of the students' scores went down. However these results and retainment varied greatly among students thus calling for some sort of differentiation in your phonics program.

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This article reminds us again the importance of differentiating your instruction especially in the pre-kindergarten to 1st grade classroom when time is being given to alphabetic principle. Students will come to school with such a divide in knowledge about letters depending on the letters in their name, socio-economic status and parental involvement. Time should not be spent on letters and sounds students already know, but instead moving them across the spectrum more difficult processes with letter with multiple sounds or the relationship of letters and sounds. This can be done by assessing students and using those results to guide your groupings and instruction.

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While the goal of this page is to sell you their curriculum, it does begin with a beautiful metaphor. Giving each child a pair of shoes at the beginning of the year...that are all size 12. Obviously this "one size fits all" method would fail most of the children in the classroom. Formal and informal assessments can ensure we are not learning any students behind and are pushing forward the students who need to be challenged.

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Pretend with me for a minute. This past year, the school board in the town of We-Care decided to support the newcomers to public school in a very special way. They provided each incoming kindergartener with a new pair of well-constructed, durable sneakers. The sneakers sported a gender-neutral color of neon orange, heel-activated sparkling lights, and velcro closures. Initially, the students loved the sparkling lights, the teachers loved the velcro closures, and the parents loved the relief to their budgets. However, there was one major caveat: they only came in size 12.5.

The drawback to this constraint soon became abundantly clear. On students with a much smaller foot, the shoes were so loose they flopped around and slipped off, sometimes becoming lost. On students with a larger foot, the sneakers were so tight they were painful to wear and the students began to discard them and go sock-footed or barefoot in the classroom. Recess became a real problem. In the end, this sneaker program worked only for about a third of the students-the ones who could fit into this shoe size. What a waste. What a dilemma. What were they thinking?

This "one size fits all" story seems a bit far-fetched, right? Or is it? I would contend that in the past we took the same stance when it came to phonics instruction. I am reluctant to admit that I taught whole-class phonics instruction to my first grade students for many years. I now believe the reality of that practice parallels my sneaker story. Some of my students were struggling to form their letters and were insecure in most of their sounds, while others in my class were ready for more complex phonetic and lexical knowledge, having figured out or been taught the system of decoding English a couple of years earlier. In truth, the instruction "fit" only about a third of my students in any year. What a waste. What a dilemma. What was I thinking?

In an article called "Finding Manageable Ways to Meet Individual Needs," Scott Willis and Larry Mann speak to the practice of teaching to the whole class when student needs span a wide continuum:

"Every child is unique. Although we may rejoice in this fact, it poses a dilemma for educators. When students are diverse, teachers can either "teach to the middle" and hope for the best, or they can face the challenge of diversifying their instruction." (ASCD Curriculum Update, 2000).

In Being a Reader Small-Group Reading, we take on the challenge of differentiating phonics instruction because we know that we can do more than teach to the middle and hope for the best. When we use data to identify where students are in their developing understanding of how the language works and what students need to know to "break the code," we can provide them with the appropriate instruction. The goal of Being A Reader Small-Group Reading Sets 1-5 is to provide differentiated instruction in phonics and other foundational skills in the context of real reading. To paraphrase the Being a Reader Small-Group Teacher's Manual:
Developed for students who are just beginning to grasp letter-sound relationships and the conventions of written English, the sets follow a developmentally appropriate sequence, allowing teachers to place students at their point of need. Formal and informal assessments help teachers place students in the appropriate groups, monitor individual growth, and track emerging readers' mastery of foundational skills. The students read books that correspond to a scope and sequence of phonics and high-frequency word instruction, and which were developed by the Center for the Collaborative Classrooom with careful attention to natural-sounding language, plot, and character development, a variety of appropriate fiction and nonfiction topics, and high-quality illustrations. Lessons that accompany these books focus on phonological awareness, concepts of print, phonics/decoding, and high-frequency word recognition. By the end of Set 5, the students will have mastered single-syllable phonics, acquired many high-frequency words, and been introduced to polysyllabic decoding. They will also have had many experiences using reading strategies informally to understand text.
Providing targeted phonics instruction in a small group setting with a systematic process for monitoring learning allows us to be responsive to our students' needs. We can adjust the pace, frequency, and focus of our instruction, reteaching and reviewing when necessary. While this may be an instructional shift for many, it can be life-changing for our students, especially as they encounter the increasing demands of more complex texts in the intermediate grades.

In this springtime of planning and preparation for the next school year, I'm wondering how I might score an invitation to speak to the school board at We-Care. I would show them how Being a Reader Small-Group Reading provides a better, more personalized way to welcome their new kindergarteners than "one-size-fits-all" sneakers.

Scott Willis and Larry Mann, "Finding Manageable Ways to Meet Individual Needs," Curriculum Update, ASCD, Winter 2000. http://www.ascd.org/publications/curriculum-update/winter2000/Differentiating-Instruction.aspx

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Phonics Instruction: One Size Does Not Fit All - Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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Pretend with me for a minute. This past year, the school board in the town of We-Care decided to support the newcomers to public school in a very special way. They provided each incoming kindergartener with a new pair of well-constructed, durable sneakers. The sneakers sported a gender-neutral color of neon orange, heel-activated sparkling lights, [...]

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This website from Brown Bag Teacher (AMAZING resource for busy teachers who are searching for engaging and research based activities) gives you differentiated phonics activities to use for all your students no matter what level they are at.

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Phonics is a critical part of our primary lives. We sing phonetic songs, we chant them, we read phonetic poems, and then, we do it all again. Phonics matters. Students need to be able to differentiate between different sounds and then, apply them to their own reading. Phonics helps develop automaticity as students read these patterns, and continuous exposure allows students to make the connection to their own writing, reading, and spelling. With that said, basic sound sorts of single-syllable don't offer 'just-right' practice for all our friends. So, today I want to share about how I differentiate sound sorts for all the friends in my class.

What Does Differentiated Word Work Look Like?

Just like my reading and math center, I differentiate our sound sorts using colors - green, yellow, and blue. (Read more about my system here.) The first level of our sound sort includes mostly CVC and CVCe words, perfect for students who are approaching grade-level. The second level includes words that often include multiple phonics patterns or include blends (ex. celebrate, nudged), and for patterns that sound identical I leave blanks (i.e. power/pound would be p__wer and p__nd). The third level includes several phonics patterns, inflected endings, and higher-level sight words. On this highest set, I always include blanks where the phonics patterns belong.

I print the card sets for my students (one on green Astrobrights card stock, one on yellow Astrobrights card stock, and one on blue Astrobrights card stock) and place them in a plastic bag above the Pocket Chart using a magnet. When students choose word sort, they know to grab their 'just-right' color and get to work!

Sort Expectations

Since the sorts are a just-right challenge for my students, I do ask students to work in pairs for this choice. Our Phonics Sort Center expectations are...

1. Greet my partner.
2. Pick my just-right word color.
3. Get to work right away.
4. Pull 1 card at a time. Have both partners read the card.
5. Sort the word under the correct heading.
6. Record the word.
7. Continue until all our words have been sorted.
8. Use my words in sentences.

To ensure that partners can be successful, I include these sorts in Word Work the week after they have been taught in small-groups. This provides the perfect spiral review, and allows me to pull skills I know we need to practice in alternating week. Typically, students see 2 ish sorts a month.

If you are a tech-based classroom, these digital sorts are perfect for you. Students have the opportunity to say the word, sort it, and use it in a sentence. You can snag them here.

To store our Sound Sorts, I keep them in a 2-inch binder with each individual sort in a plastic-sleeve protector. It's simple and easy to flip through grabbing what I need.

Ultimately - phonics matters. Foundational skills instruction instruction helps ensure ALL students are able to decode and encode texts. It provides solid core instruction for all students and then, follows-up with small group and targeted instruction practice.

If you are interested in additional resources for your classroom check out:

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Differentiating Phonics Sound Sorts - The Brown Bag Teacher

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Phonics is a critical part of our primary lives. We sing phonetic songs, we chant them, we read phonetic poems, and then, we do it all again. Phonics matters. Students need to be able to differentiate between different sounds and then, apply them to their own reading.

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Who doesn't love a good Pinterest board? This board contains posts that are low-prep, more articles and blogs to peruse, and tips on the classroom management and organizational aspects of differentiating your phonics instruction.

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Again, they are trying to sell you a curriculum, but this time it is affordable and each facet of the program comes with an in-depth description of how it fits into the grand scheme of your reading instruction and how it can be differentiated for your students.

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As 2nd grade teachers we had a dream of the perfect word study program. We wanted it to incorporate words in authentic literacy experiences, hands on word building, differentiation, word sorting, games, and lessons. When we couldn’t find that perfect program, we decided to create it ourselves.

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Differentiated Word Study Made Easy

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Small Group Interventions for Beginner Readers

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Small Group Interventions for Beginner Readers

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Here is an example of a phonics choice board that you could use in your classroom now. Choice boards are a great way to give students back the authority in the learning process. This choice board has a number of research based phonics activities for students to choose from.

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Instructions - Choose three activities to complete each week.

ReadingBear.org - Choose 3 phonics

Play a game of Kaboom! Make a Reading String!
practice games to play. Take the With help from an adult, write sight With help from an adult, create cardboard
quiz and test your knowledge! words and CVC words on one side of pieces of alphabet letters. Practice putting
popsicle sticks. Write KABOOM! on together letters on a string to make words.
one of them. Taking turns with Read them for your family!
friends or family, choose a stick and
read the word. If you get the
KABOOM! stick, the round is over and
start again!

Play Sound Cups!

With help from an adult, label a plastic or Turtlediary.com - Choose from a
paper cup with the letters of the alphabet.
variety of ELA games to practice
Then, find items around your home (toys,
Kizphonics.com - Play games and skills like word building, sounding
tools, etc) and figure out the beginning
activities to enhance phonics level.
sound of each item and choose which sound
Level up all the way to get ready for
out and more!
cup the item goes in!
1st grade reading!

OzPhonics - iPad, iPhone, Google APP for

Phonics Practice. Pre-School and Kindergarten
Letter School - iPad, iPhone,
Play games and grow phonic skills on any
Google APP for phonics and writing Learning Games - iPad, iPhone, Google
Apple or Android device - free! APP for ELA and Math practice.
practice.
Play guided practice games to review Play games and activities to grow phonics,
reading and writing skills - free! reading, writing and math skills - free!

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Play a game of Kaboom! Make a Reading String!practice games to play. Take the With help from an adult, write sight With help from an adult, create cardboardquiz and test your knowledge! words and CVC words on one side of pieces of alphabet letters. Practice putting popsicle sticks. Write KABOOM!

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The title seems like enough said! A phonics blog that is managed by teachers, written by teachers, with busy teachers in mind. This blog is organized and has short blogs about a variety of topics. The comment section is frequently used by other like-minded teachers.

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Phonics Hero Blog - Practical, Helpful and By Teachers

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The Phonics Hero blog covers everything phonics: a great phonics lesson explained, how to use decodable books, how to teach vowel teams and more!

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This resource contains ideas for games to support phonemic awareness.

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This article explains the study of students increasing their fluency in singing groups compared to other groups. 51 language learners enrolled in two intensive Finnish courses participated in the study. They were singing, listening to music, and reciting lyrics of songs. Fluency increased the most in the singing groups compared to the other groups.

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Increasing Fluency Through Parental Involvement

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Increasing Fluency Through Parental Involvement

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This action research project was done to validate the importance of parent involvement and how it increases reading fluency in students with learning disabilities. The study took place over eight weeks and involved nine students with IEPs. A lot of factors played into this study such as attendance, socioeconomic status, and specific learning disability. Students took home bags of books to read with a parent for at least fifteen minutes each night. Several Family Nights were offered for parents to come with their students and participate in activities. 78% of the participants showed growth in the amount of words per minute and 7/9 students showed growth in their reading fluency scores.

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Increasing Reading Fluency Using Audiobooks

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Increasing Reading Fluency Using Audiobooks

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This case study investigates the use of listening while reading process to increase reading fluency in one English-German bilingual student. The case study supports the idea of auditory input increasing reading fluency. The students fluency increased about eight chapters into the book. She took notes and discussed difficult words with her tutor to clarify their meaning and motivate her to continue reading. Using the audiobook also increased the student's motivation to read and her speed of reading each book. After reading two books using audio, the student was able to read the third book without assistance.

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This text contains many ideas on supporting students' phonemic awareness development. Arm Blending is an activity for blending sounds that can engage the bodily-kinesthetic learners (p. 146).

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Increasing Reading Fluency of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

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Increasing Reading Fluency of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

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The purpose of this study was to determine if repeated reading or teacher modeling of a passage would have a greater impact on the reading abilities of students identified with emotional and behavioral problems. The results showed that the students who received repeated reading and teacher modeling intervention improved across all measures.

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Word Sorts for Letter-Name Alphabetic Spellers 

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This text contains multiple sound/ picture sorts supporting phonemic awareness instruction.

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How to help kids become more fluent readers

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How to help kids become more fluent readers

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This website gives great tips and activities to increase children's reading fluency.

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Quick tips to help kids read fluently

Reading fluency is the ability to read at a good pace, with accuracy, and with the right expression. Fluent readers also understand what they're reading.

Here are some ways kids can improve their fluency:

Listen to models of fluent reading, like read-alouds. Audiobooks can also be great models of reading fluency.

Practice sight words so kids can automatically recognize words.

Have kids read a short text at their reading level several times. Count how many words they read correctly in one minute. Record the results on a graph. Repeat several times. (This is called "repeated readings.") Soon they'll see that their speed and accuracy improve.

Read a sentence together. Then draw slash marks to "chunk" the text into meaningful phrases of three to five words. Kids should take a short pause at the slash marks when reading.

Dive deeper

Tell us what interests you

About the author

About the author

Ginny Osewalt is a dually certified elementary and special education teacher with more than 15 years of experience in general education, inclusion, resource room, and self-contained settings.

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How to Improve Reading Fluency in Children

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Quick tips to help kids read fluently Reading fluency is the ability to read at a good pace, with accuracy, and with the right expression. Fluent readers also understand what they're reading. Here are some ways kids can improve their fluency: Listen to models of fluent reading, like read-alouds.

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Strategies for developing reading fluency

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Strategies for developing reading fluency

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This scholastic website explains in great detail some strategies to develop reading fluency.

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7 Must-Have Resources to Improve Reading Fluency Right Now

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Help your students improve their reading fluency with sight word practice pages, phonics activities, poetry, and plays available from Scholastic.

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3-Step Strategy to Build Students' Reading Fluency

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3-Step Strategy to Build Students' Reading Fluency

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This educational foundation website gives a great 3-Step Strategy to build students' reading fluency. The 3-Step strategy includes a tracker for fluency scores, students reading passages on their level with a partner, set goals, and record their words per minute.

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Young readers learn how to self-direct when they read in pairs, read the same text repeatedly, and use fluency trackers.

Fluency is often discussed by elementary teachers simply as the rate of words read aloud per minute, although the full definition includes reading accuracy plus voice tone and inflection. It's an important measure of student reading success, and as students move through grades, poor fluency becomes increasingly serious. To raise fluency levels, students need to practice reading in short bursts of effort, and they need to practice word attack skills that are used for frustration-level text, in which more than one out of 20 words are difficult to decode.

Independent reading is one way to help students build fluency, but we all know that they're not necessarily going to focus if you simply hand them a book and tell them to read it. I've found that if I combine repeat reading, paired reading, and fluency trackers, students are more motivated to do that crucial work that builds fluency.

Building Fluency in the Classroom

In my teaching practice, I've long relied on two strategies to support my students' literacy growth: repeated reading and fluency trackers (grids on which students record their fluency scores over time). Reading a passage multiple times (repeated reading) scaffolds the student's ability both to decode and to remember familiar words and syllable patterns, building their fluency and comprehension; and fluency trackers give students agency and motivate them while giving me a quick read on their progress. When integrating repeated reading with fluency trackers, I often use a one-page passage: Students read the passage three times, graphing each attempt (first, second, and third) with a different-colored crayon.

That combination has always served me well, but once I added in a third component-paired reading-I noticed that not only did the atmosphere in the classroom get a boost, but engagement improved and students got their work done more readily. Repeated reading gives them the practice and reinforcement they need to build their literacy skills, the pairing creates a positive social element, and the fluency trackers simultaneously help them to self-direct, see their progress, and stay on track while working in pairs, when socializing is tempting.

Steps to Fluency Tracker Practice

Create a tracker folder for each student: Use a letter-size manila folder, and staple in a data tracker for fluency scores. (You can find fluency trackers in a number of places, such as these free ones, or you can create your own using graph paper.)

Locate and print out reading passages: Find passages that are somewhere between the student's instructional and frustrational reading level. Often, reading passages of this type are available in the support materials to the grade-level reading program at your school. You'll need two copies of each passage for each pair: one for the student reading and one for the listener/scorer.

Pair the students: Match students who read at about the same level. Consider sociability and distractibility as well. If one student is volatile or touchy, put them with a classmate who has a calm, steady personality.

Model paired reading and fluency tracker record keeping: To model fluency tracking, gather the class in a circle so they can watch you and a student as the two of you go through the process of doing a timed fluency reading. Set a timer and have the model student begin reading. After a minute, stop the timer, count the words, report the score to the student, and have the student record the result on the fluency tracker.

Send the students out to practice: After giving the students the names of their partners, review the behavior norms (voice level, where they are to sit, how to get help) and direct them to try using their fluency trackers themselves.

Debrief and continue to practice: Once your students have tried paired reading and fluency tracking, bring them together to answer questions and work out the kinks-for example, "Did anyone have trouble using the timers?" While they are working, walk around the class to see how the students are reading and to make sure they stay on task. Eventually, they will require minimal supervision.

Give students the opportunity to set their own goals: Make the goals specific; allow them to be personal, not public; and include a time for reaching the goal. Appropriate goals might be reaching a certain level of fluency ("I'll be able to read 60 words a minute by the first of the next month") or accuracy ("I'll read for one minute with two errors or less by winter break").

Once you've landed on a routine for fluency trackers, schedule them regularly for 10 to 15 minutes at a time.

I used this strategy with a small group of second graders this spring, and three out of four students made significant gains in speed over four months with daily practice, while half of them doubled their reading speed. A colleague used fluency trackers with fourth graders who were reading significantly below grade level; in a group with a dozen or so students, all made significant fluency gains-and they enjoyed the activity. "They love it!" she told me. "When it's time for fluency, they jump up to get their folders and get to work. It's wonderful."

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A 3-Step Strategy to Build Students' Reading Fluency

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Young readers learn how to self-direct when they read in pairs, read the same text repeatedly, and use fluency trackers.

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This classroom resource helps increase student's reading fluency by having students write in an interactive notebook and visualize what they are reading about.

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Launching Reading Strategies & Practices for 3rd - 5th grade classrooms
Reading Comprehension Strategies: Questioning, Visualizing, Fluency, & What Good Readers Do

This FREE Sampler includes:
Thick & Thin Questions Interactive Notebook Template
Visualizing Activity (can be used with any literary text)

This is a sample of the following resource: Seed Lessons for Growing Thoughtful Readers

Note: Individual lessons can be purchased as well.

Need Reading Comprehension Strategy Posters?

~ This series "Seed Lessons for Growing Thoughtful Readers" keeps growing as I fine-tune and add lessons conducive to cultivating a classroom of thoughtful readers. You already receive more than 25% off your purchase today (4 lessons), and any new lessons added is just a bonus. These lessons are comprehensive and applicable for any classroom 3rd-6th. Each lesson is designed to launch good reading practices that lay the ground work for active reading.
Here's what you get in this bundle of four lessons (currently):

What Good Readers Do
This ready-to-go lesson is designed to launch good reading practices and assist in cultivating thoughtful readers. In this lesson, students define strategies used to strengthen accuracy, fluency and comprehension, and at the same time, dispel the misconceptions they might have. This lesson also includes an interactive notebook activity and concept sort that can be done as a center activity.

This detailed lesson plan includes the following:

* I can statement (for CCRA.R.10)
* An essential question to start the lesson
* Suggested read-aloud title: Wolf! By Becky Bloom, with teaching tips
* Gradual release format: I do, we do, you do..
* Formative assessment
* Interactive notebook template for this lesson: What Good Readers Do
* Photos of examples taken during the implementation of this lesson to guide your instruction throughout: charting of student responses, revisits of the chart, and interactive notebook content
* Center activity: Accuracy, fluency, comprehension concept sort-- Students sort strategies according to which component of reading they help strengthen. (Answer key also provided)

Note: This lesson spans about 60-70 minutes, therefore may take more than one day. The interactive notebook notes can be revisited throughout the year to add new strategies/practices for each component as they are taught, as well as to help set individual reading goals.

What Fluent Readers Do
This ready-to-go lesson is designed to assist launching good reading fluency practices and cultivate thoughtful readers. In this lesson, students determine what fluent readers do or look like, and at the same time, dispel the misconceptions they might have. This lesson uses a fun poem for modeling and practicing fluency strategies, and includes materials for students to create their own fluency folder where they can keep poems and passages specifically selected throughout the year for the purpose of practicing fluency.

This detailed lesson plan includes the following:

* I can statement (for CCSS.ELA-Literacy RF.3.4, 4.4 & 5.4)
* An essential question to start the lesson
* Suggested read-aloud title: The Crocodiles Tooth, a poem by Shel Silverstein
* Gradual release format: I do, we do, you do..
* Formative assessment
* Fluency folder template & practice tips (What Fluent Readers Do), used to create students' fluency folders
* Photos of examples taken during the implementation of this lesson to guide your instruction throughout: charting of student responses, revisits of the chart, poem
highlighting, and the construction of fluency folder

Note: This lesson spans approximately 45-60 minutes, therefore may take more than one day of whole group instructional time. The fluency folders will be used throughout the year to house poems and passages students can continue to practice during fluency center. Fluency notes can be kept in this folder as well and be revisited throughout the year to help set individual reading fluency goals.

Good Readers Ask THICK Questions
This ready-to-go, extensive lesson is designed to assist launching good questioning practices and cultivate thoughtful readers. In this lesson, students determine the difference between thin and thick questions and explain the importance of deeper questioning when comprehending a text.

This detailed lesson plan includes the following:

* I can statement (for CCSS 3.1, 4.1, 5.1)
* An essential question to start the lesson
* Gradual release format: I do, we do, you do..
* Formative assessment (Post=its ready to go)
* Interactive reader's notebook template for the two types of questions
* Ready-to-print question prompts
* Thin & Thick Question Sort with answer key
* Photos of examples taken during the implementation of this lesson to guide your instruction

Good Readers Visualize
This lesson is designed to introduce visualization as a strategy good readers use. In this lesson, students use details from the text to visualize in their mind's eye the scene in the story and draw a picture based on these details.

This detailed lesson plan includes the following:

* I can statement (for CCRA.R.10)
* An essential question to start the lesson
* Suggested read-aloud title: The Salamander Room, by Anne Mazer
* Gradual release format: I do, we do, you do...
* Formative assessment
* Visualization printables: one specific to anchor activity, one to be used with any story
* Photo examples of student work

I wholeheartedly love teaching these lessons for establishing the use of good reading strategies and practices in the classroom, but if you need something more specific for common core reading standards, please click on the links below...

RL3.2, 4.2 & 5.2~ Finding the Theme & Message in Literature

RL3.6, 4.6 & 5.6~ Distinguishing Point of View & Perspective

RL2.3~ Describing Character Response to Events & Challenges

RL3.3~ Describing Character Traits, Feelings & Motives

RL4.3~ Describing Characters, Settings, & Events in Literature

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Launching Reading Strategies & Practices for 3rd - 5th grade classrooms Reading Comprehension Strategies: Questioning, Visualizing, Fluency, & What Good Readers Do This FREE Sampler includes: Thick & Thin Questions Interactive Notebook Template Visualizing Activity (can be used with an...

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This link is a teacher's pay teacher's store that provides hundreds of resources to use for fluency assessment and practice.

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Browse over 610 educational resources created by Lucky Little Learners in the official Teachers Pay Teachers store.

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These activities can be implemented in the classroom during small group time.

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Mentor Texts Supporting Phonemic Awareness

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Mentor Texts Supporting Phonemic Awareness

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Watch William Walk by Ann Jonas is an ideal book to practice language play, such as alliteration, with students learning phonemic awareness.
During the story Ten Cats Have Hats by Jean Marzollo, the teacher can invite students to make predictions of what will come next, such as "five pigs have... wigs/ twigs..."
There's a Wocket in my Pocket. Activities focused on rhymes and sound substitutions to develop phonemic awareness.

Students can participate in making up their own creatures and nonsensical words.
Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein is an engaging silly book that requires students to truly listen to hear sounds and translate what they hear.

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Implement ideas from this video in your classroom to support phonemic awareness. All words begin with the same phoneme.

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Create a New Song!: Building Phonemic Awareness through Play

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A kinesthetic take on identifying sounds in words.

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Push That Sound!: Blending Sounds into Words to Build Phonemic Awareness

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Understand the difference of phonological and phonemic awareness by exploring the Reading Rockets site.

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Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words. The levels of phonological awareness are, from simplest to most complex: syllables, onset-rime, and phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. We know that a student's skill in phonological awareness is a good predictor of later reading success or difficulty. Find out what parents and teachers can do to help children develop this critical literacy skill.

Refresh your classroom instruction! Try the Phonological and Phonemic Awareness module in our free, self-paced online course, Reading 101: A Guide to Teaching Reading and Writing.

Featured partner: National Association for the Education of Young Children

Watch a reading expert work one-on-one with K-3 students, helping them master basic reading skills.

Find out about the early building blocks of learning to read and the importance of reading aloud.

Professional Development Webcasts

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Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of words. The levels of phonological awareness are, from simplest to most complex: syllables, onset-rime, and phonemes. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.

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Phonemic Awareness and the Teaching of Reading

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Phonemic Awareness and the Teaching of Reading

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This website gives substantial information on phonemic awareness, including views of the International Reading Association.

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Leveled fluency timed readings can be found on this website to use with students. There are passages, sentences, and comprehension questions.

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Award-winning reading solution with thousands of leveled readers, lesson plans, worksheets and assessments to teach guided reading, reading proficiency and comprehension to K-5 students

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This video shows how to increase students' reading fluency in the classroom by implementing some fluency practice activities. These activities include modeling reading fluency with read aloud, using audiobooks, introducing new vocabulary, partner reading, using sentence trees, phrase reading, and giving students books on their level and that interests them.

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This blog explains how to assess and score reading fluency assessments. It explains accuracy, rate, and prosody.

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Oral reading fluency is the ability for students to read text accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with expression. The What Is Oral Reading Fluency? article outlines a framework for oral reading fluency, describes the characteristics of fluent and non-fluent readers, and provides evidence-based best practices for fluency instruction. But how does one know that fluency instruction is, in fact, helping students become better readers, and how do you use fluency measures to provide targeted instruction?

Administering Oral Reading Fluency Assessments

Assessing fluency should be embedded strategically and frequently to ensure students are receiving the instruction and practice they need. Educators can assess students' fluency by using grade-level passages that have been controlled for level of difficulty and having students read aloud a new passage for one minute.

Accuracy: Notate which words students misread, skipped, or substituted with another word. Errors do not include self-corrected words, additional words that do not appear in the passage, or mispronunciation based on regional dialects or speech impairments.

Rate: Subtract the number of words students read incorrectly from the total words they read in one minute. This yields the total words correct per minute (WCPM) score.

Prosody: Listen to the students' reading of connected text and observe whether students placed emphasis on the correct words, the tone rose and fell at appropriate points, and students paused at punctuation marks and phrase boundaries.

To determine whether students' WCPM score is on target, educators can use the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) norms chart that provides grade-level expectations throughout the year. A sample is shown below. This provides insight into whether the student is below, at, or above the 50th percentile, and therefore, reading at grade-level fluency benchmarks.

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Oral Reading Fluency Assessment: Optimizing Instruction

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Oral reading fluency is the ability for students to read text accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with expression. The What Is Oral Reading Fluency? article outlines a framework for oral reading fluency, describes the characteristics of fluent and non-fluent readers, and provides evidence-based best practices for fluency instruction.

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This video gives 5 great teaching tips on increasing students' reading fluency. She suggests giving students "easy" books, integrating poetry into reading lessons, rereading short phonics passages, modeling fluency, and using reader's theater.

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Reading Fluency Strategies for K-2 Learners | TIPS TO PROMOTE READING FLUENCY

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This book explains how to make RTI possible in the classroom. It gives strategies for collecting and assessing reading data and what to do with that information.

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Increasing Fluency with High Word Frequency Word Phrases

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Increasing Fluency with High Word Frequency Word Phrases

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This book combines two research-based approaches to teaching reading: instant words and phrasing. Together, they build and increase reading fluency. There are lessons and passages to use with students in second grade.

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Examples directly related to classroom instruction on phonemic awareness.

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These videos were funded by the State of Florida Department of Education's (FDOE) Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services (through federal assistance under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part B) in collaboration with the FDOE's Just Read, Florida! Office.

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These videos were funded by the State of Florida Department of Education's (FDOE) Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services (through federal assistance under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part B) in collaboration with the FDOE's Just Read, Florida! Office.

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Targeted skill activities for phonemic awareness.

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Kindergarten and First Grade Student Center Activities Phonological Awareness | Phonics | Fluency | Vocabulary | Comprehension