When unfamiliar vocabulary gets in the way of word solving – Tip #2
Posted on October 8, 2018Share This Content
* required field
Some our of kindergarten students read above grade level. How do we keep them challenged? A colleague of mine, Lisa, engaged a small group in close reading of an informational text about energy with great success. Here are some photos and tips she shared with me. Just some background. These nine students were reading at …Read more
Emergent and early reader texts are frequently about animals and include action words like swim, hop, and jump. The trade books we choose to read aloud to students can serve to build, reinforce, and expand this type of vocabulary. For example, in Nic Bishop’s Frogs (2008), frogs wriggle, grip, burrow, climb, catch, swallow, blink and …Read more
A few weeks ago, I had the honor of reading aloud Nic Bishop’s Frogs to kindergarten students on the south side of Chicago. When I visited the school initially, I engaged in an informal reading conversation with three of the students, reading aloud sections of a book about penguins to them and assessing what they …Read more
Caution: If you are using the Common Core “stretch band” Lexile levels to determine what 2nd & 3rd graders should be reading, there is no empirical evidence to support these levels for these grades. Read Upping the Ante of Text Complexity in the Common Core Standards: Examining Its Potential Impact on Young Readers (Hiebert & …Read more
Last year I had the honor of working with two kindergarten teachers who immersed their students in nonfiction author studies. Late in the spring they led a two week author study – week one on Steve Jenkins’ books and week two on Nic Bishop’s books. Monday-Wednesday or Thursday, they read aloud a book and …Read more
So I had a great time teaching a lesson on making text-dependent with a class of second grade students a few weeks ago. In my last blog entry, I wrote about teaching objectives that surfaced during reading conferences with three of these students. The students revealed to me they were not previewing nonfiction texts strategically …Read more
Recently I met a frustrated kinder teacher who told me her students are being asked to count paragraphs and identify key words and phrases. Seriously? She said that all she hears about is close reading, close reading, close reading. My response – no way…not for kindergartners. Yes, close reading is an anchor standard in the …Read more
What do you do when emergent-early stage readers can’t decode a word because it’s not in their vocabulary? In a previous entry, I wrote about holding emergent and early stage readers accountable for word-solving (as much as possible) before offering support including telling providing an unfamiliar vocabulary word. For example, one student figured out “off” …Read more