…are more prepared for a changing world. They are more strategic, self-regulated, and confident. They have reading skills that will promote being a lifelong learner, capable of growing and changing as the world does.
Although my freshmen are not exactly prepared for the world yet, they are becoming better readers. The past three weeks I have introduced four strategies for monitoring their reading that they can use to self-check comprehension. They are capable of asking questions while reading, summarizing, making predictions, and clarifying. If they can’t do these things, they know to re-read or seek help elsewhere. We practiced each of the four strategies separately, then put them together yesterday in reciprocal teaching groups.
In groups of four, they tackled the short story “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty. We’ve read more difficult short stories as a class, so I chose this one because I knew it would be fairly easy to comprehend. Each group member had a role (summarizer, predictor, clarifier or questioner). They used the dialogue we had practiced, they paused while reading to do a self-check of comprehension, they asked each other for help when they needed a retell or a clarification, and they wowed me. It worked! They put everything together we had been practicing and were successful at monitoring their reading.
Assessment piece is today. They are asked to think about the monster in the story, irony and how the POV the author chose emphasizes the irony. This will be done in a QuickWrite in their journal. Second, they have two choices for a RAFT writing assignment. Either they will be a news-broadcaster reporting the story on the evening news or the sniper writing a letter to his mother informing her of what has occurred.
I’m hoping to see greater comprehension of the big idea and author’s purpose because they read slowly, carefully, and monitored their understanding together. We’ll see!
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