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In this series about developing micro-comprehension I have discussed how students need a good vocabulary in order to create accurate mental models of the stories they read or hear. We also know that those mental models are affected by the way the brain fills-in missing information, called gap-filling inference. Next up is sentence structure processing.
Read MoreIn this series about developing micro-comprehension I have discussed how students need a good vocabulary in order to create accurate mental models of the stories they read or hear. We also know that those mental models are affected by the way the brain fills-in missing information, called gap-filling inference. Next up is sentence structure processing.
Read MoreWould you agree that teaching spelling should be an all-day/every-day job?! We all know that opportunities to teach quick spelling lessons arise frequently throughout the day. But, all too often, we miss these teachable moments!
Research on spelling shows that for decades, the common approach to teach spelling centered on rote memorization with a heavy emphasis on visual learning. But, the research shows that spelling can be improved by
Read MoreToday, I’ve decided to write to you, the adult reader, about a topic that most of us take for granted: Reading. I’ve chosen this topic because improving reading skills is not just a concern for students only! We all need to practice. The truth is that your reading ability may be more important to you after you have completed your formal education.
Here’s the thing. Reading isn’t just for pleasure. In fact, reading all kinds of written material and processing the information quickly is part of our daily lives at work, at home, and everywhere in between. The scary part is that you don’t always have much time, yet it’s important to interpret many of these written messages with accuracy. So, what can you do about it? I’d like to give you just a couple of tips. First, you can start by
Read MoreLast time, I showed you how to help students own the alphabet as more than just the ABCs. Each symbol or letter is a picture of sound. Our job is to teach kids how to attach the sound or sounds that each symbol represents.
We’ll start at the very beginning with the letter A a . As you can see, I printed both the capitalized version and the lower case versions. I do that because children need to see and use both forms. I start with A a, not because it is the first letter of our alphabet, but because it represents the first three vowel sounds I teach. I repeat…it has THREE sounds that should be taught right out of the starting gate: a, a, a. Click the play button below to hear the correct
Read MoreLately, I have been pondering my linguistic journey. Over the years, it has been a journey of self-discovery. A journey that led me to use a fascinating method to teach systematic phonics and phonemic awareness.
If you could have visited my first and second grade combined classroom about 20 years ago, you would have noticed that I displayed traditional alphabet cards above my chalkboard. I didn’t really use it as a reference tool. It was more of a standard classroom decoration than a tool for learning. That is, until I gained some knowledge about teaching letters NOT as letters of the alphabet, but as pictures of sound. I didn’t realize the power the alphabet has when it is considered as a code made of symbols that allows learners to attach sounds to them.
The fact remains, we have an alphabetic language. In other words, letters provide us a way to encode sounds of speech into symbols…the letters of the alphabet. But for years, that information was lost on many a teacher. When I realized how the code system works, it rocked my linguistic world!
Read MoreIn this series of blogs about micro-comprehension, I have presented strategies that boost micro-comprehension: vocabulary words, gap-filling inference, sentence structure processing, figurative language processing, and applying text structure.
When you teach students how to slow down their own thinking— to become aware of what they are thinking about while reading, you are teaching them
Read MoreAs I continue my series about micro-comprehension, text structure processing is next in line. Earlier, I wrote about sentence structure processing. The process of analyzing sentence structure and text structure shares similarities. However, analyzing at the sentence level gives a close-up picture of the meaning of the sentence; whereas, analyzing text structure provides the bigger picture of an entire essay or any longer piece of writing.
Many fluent readers seem to automatically process text structure, but it is probably subconscious. Take a look at this shortlist of text structures students encounter:
Read MoreReading fluency, comprehension, prosody (the highs and lows of the voice to convey emotion), —these facets of reading sound like a bunch of educational mumbo-jumbo, but they matter! As I continue to poke around in figurative language processing, these components have to be mentioned because many readers need us to teach these skills directly, at least until they get the idea. Sounds like a lot to manage? Not really—not if you root these skills in an activity that rightly brings each area to the forefront in a kid’s thinking.
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As part of my series-within-a-series for figurative language processing, writer’s workshop might seem like a surprising topic to bring up in a discussion about reading comprehension. But, it’s not. I have worked with many students through the years, many who struggled with reading comprehension. They struggled for various reasons, but I discovered that even the poorest readers could read their own writing.
So, writer’s workshop proved to be a very important step when helping struggling readers to find not only their writing voice, but also their reading voice. When you couple that with showing the students how to nuance their writing by using figurative language, they can then connect that understanding to both reading and writing.
Ben Franklin’s old truism about teaching goes: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” It’s as true today as it was when he first said it. That’s why writer’s workshop is an ideal event where students gain real experience with figurative language.
I set up writer’s workshops just like I set up literature groups. Every other day, students will either engage in a literature group or in a writer’s workshop. During the writer’s workshop, a lesson about alliteration, for example, might have spring boarded from the previous day’s literature group discussion about a tongue twister, like Peter Piper. After having immense fun reading Peter Piper and having discussed alliteration, the topic for the next writer’s workshop is born!
Each writer is asked to create their own tongue twister, which will highlight alliteration as the “skill” to sharpen up. At the next writer’s workshop, students will be encouraged to read their tongue twisters aloud or in pairs. This is just a simple example to demonstrate how simply figurative language can be taught in a hands-on way, using writing as the vehicle.
You might want to try using writer’s workshop to encourage your kids’ figurative language processing skills. Below is a list of types of figurative language that you can explore:
alliteration
onomatopoeia
rhymes
similes
metaphors
personification
If you do an internet search for children’s books and youth’s novels that serve as excellent mentor texts for each of these kinds of figurative language, you will be amazed at the multiple opportunities you can offer your students to dabble with figurative language and truly comprehend it.
(This post is part of a series on Micro-Comprehension. To start at the beginning, click here. To view the next post in this series, click here.)
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