What is a Science of Reading - Language Comprehension Unit?

Poetry Close Reading

Poetry as a Close Read When I was a student, poetry was the literacy genre that I hated the most. Why? Most of the poetry used was dry, confusing, or too hard. I don´t really remember being taught how to read it or what the elements of poetry were for. But now, poetry has become more enjoyable for kids. The topics are rich, sometimes funny, and also thought-provoking. At my school, poetry is a favorite unit. We look forward to it and read it every month. Structures of poetry We spend time learning about the s tructures of poetry such as rhythm, rhymes, alliterations, and stanzas. This is part of our first read. This helps us to practice fluency and prosody as we read. Some ways to practice are choral reading, partner reads, and independent reads. imagery: Next, we analyze the meaning of the poems. I usually start by discussing the imagery in the poem. This happens in your 2nd and 3rd reads. What words evoke your senses? Sig...

A New Way of thinking about comprehension

How many times have we, teachers, worried about testing to determine whether our students understand a comprehension skill or strategy? In LETRS, Moats and Tolman talk about the many hidden mental activities that happen in comprehension. In other words, comprehension is more of a process than a product. Well, that makes sense. So what are those processes of comprehension ? Monitoring comprehension - my favorite strategy for this is STP (Stop, Think, Paraphrase) Reading with appropriate pace - pacing actually correlates to understanding text Making inferences as you read - what are the characters thinking or feeling? Making a mental model to organize thinking and understanding Making connections in the text with views and background knowledge How can we support those processes of comprehension? Reading multiple texts around one topic helps to build background knowledge. In another blog I will talk moe about this critical com...

Isolated Skills or Multiple Skills?

We are coming off about ten years of teaching skills in isolation. At the time, it seemed like a sound idea. Struggling with the main idea? Spend more time on the main idea. We spent a lot of time focused on three-week units around one skill. But what teachers noticed was, it didn't work! They still didn't get the main idea!!! Fast forward to 2019 and the Science of Reading movement....the first book I read that changed my thinking was Natalie Wexler's the Knowledge Gap. I will spend another blog post synthesizing takeaways from this later. In all honesty, this book made sense to me. Why weren't the kids getting these skills in isolation? We had taught many, many lessons on them! Wexler says it's not because of the skill, it has more to do with the information in the text they are reading. If you have no background knowledge, then you can't decipher the meaning of the text. Students need to...

The OTHER end of the Reading Rope - science of reading

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