Reading to learn!
Rationale: When reading fluency has been achieved, a reader can
focus more effort on understanding or comprehending what they read.
This way they can learn what they are reading!
There are several strategies to be learned that can improve comprehension.
The goal of this
lesson is to improve comprehension by teaching students to use the
Story Grammar strategy.
With this strategy students make a map or outline of the main elements
of the story, which will help them with free recall and cued recall.
Materials: The book Stop Drop and Roll by Margery
Cuyler, a list of questions written on the board, 2 sheets of lined notebook
paper and a pencil for each student.
Questions:
1. Who is/are the main character(s) in the story?
2. Where and when did the story take pace?
3. What did the main character do?
4. How did the story end?
5. How did the main character feel?
Procedures:
1. Introduce the lesson by telling the children that they have been
doing a really good job so far and now that they know how to read we are
going to focus on learning what we read about. We are going to learn how
to do this by making a kind of map about the story that we read. In order
to make this map, we will have to answer the questions who, what, when,
where, and how about the story. Making a map or outline of this story
makes it a lot easier to remember and learn what we read.
2.First, we will practice with a story that everybody knows. Do you
remember the story of the Three Little Pigs? Good! I will show you
how to make a map about the story by answering these questions (Teacher
answers the first few questions about the story of the Three Little Pigs,
reasoning out loud for students to follow.) Now lets work together to answer
the rest of the questions (Teacher asks the remaining questions and the
students help her answer them.) Leave the answers and questions on the
hoard to be an example for the following exercise.
3.(Teacher has the students read the story Stop Drop and Roll. Next,
she has the students take out a clean sheet of paper. ) I want you to copy
down the five questions that I wrote on the board, leave 2 or 4 blank spaces
between the questions. After you have finished reading the story silently,
write the answers to the questions about what you read. When you finish,
lay you paper and the story sheets on my desk quietly so that you will
not disturb the rest of the class while they finish working. Then you may
read your library books silently.
4.When all students have completed the assignment, allow them to read
their library books
for a few more minutes. Then have them to get out another sheet of
paper and ask them to write down anything and everything that they can
remember, in story form, of Stop Drop and Roll.
Tell them to include the information they had used to answer the questions
but they must also include at least 2 other events from the story and at
least one detail about each main character.
5.Assess the student's work by comparing this assignment to the previous
assignment. Check to see if they included the additional information
you requested.
This should be repeated with other stories to stress the importance of this strategy and to encourage the students to do this independently.
References: Pressley, Michael, et al. "Strategies that Improve Children’s Memory and Comprehension of Text." The Elementary School Journal 90 (1989) : 13