What have you learned about your buddy’s needs, abilities and interests?
N.R. is a 4th grader who enjoys reading action stories, and has a particular interest in science. When given carte blanche to select a topic of interest to read and learn more about he chose to conduct an internet search for articles about water’s surface tension and proceeded to read and discuss the topic. He displays a genuine interest to learn more about the world around him via science.
His reading comprehension is high as demonstrated by his ability to accurately answer literal and inferential questions after reading short texts. He has successfully done this with fictional text, science based text and textbook style historical account. When reading aloud he has good intonation, proper pronunciation and good tone of voice. In the case of stories, he also uses inflections to enhance the story. He reads in short, complete sentences, and only occasionally in single words. This appeared to occur only when the word was not previously known to him. In these instances he made use of repetition, context cues, and phonemic knowledge to pronounce the words. His overall reading fluency was good.
His reading rate is somewhat low for his grade level, averaging in the low to mid 90’s words per minute on standard grade level text, which places him below the 50th percentile for his grade level based on the Hasbrouck & Tindal Oral Reading Fluency Scale. At the same time, he would likely score high if using the NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Scale, as this one is multidimensional and takes into consideration not only rate but also accuracy (he had 98% accuracy) and expression. His silent reading speed appears to be higher, averaging 110 to 115 words per minute. Because his reading comprehension has been consistently high regardless of whether instructed to read aloud or independently (silently), it is possible that he slows down when reading aloud in order to concentrate on all the aspects he incorporates into it. This is an area for further observation.
As a result of this knowledge, what learning objectives and materials are you considering using for your lesson?
The lesson will start with a grade level short texts for N.R. to read silently. N.R. will then be asked to give a summary of the text and proceed to answer literal and inferential questions. If the reading rate is low, the lesson will focus on strategies to help N.R. improve his reading fluency rate. If the rate discrepancy persists and his comprehension remains high, the lesson will move on to reading and working with a science based text of interest to N.R. As part of the exercise N.R. will identify the author’s main ideas and purpose of the text. N.R. will then formulate two literal questions and 2 inferential questions. By doing this exercise N.R. will be going beyond generating answers as he has to be able to take the information and re-formulate it as questions. Then we will examine the questions. In doing so N.R. will be practicing his critical thinking skills and employing multiple comprehension strategies.
The materials for this lesson include two 4th grade level texts, access to scientific texts (National Geographic articles), pencil and paper.
This looks great!
ReplyDeleteWould you be able to clarify what you meant by “he reads in short, complete sentences, and only occasionally in single words”? Could you give an example of this because I am not quite sure I know what you mean? In comparing my experiences with yours, it is interesting that your buddies reading comprehension is high yet his reading fluency is below grade level. What I have observed with my buddy is that she is low in both areas so I figured there might be a correlation between the two. I thought maybe because she reads a little slower than average for grade level than it might make it difficult for her to comprehend the text. I like that you had the opportunity to observe your buddy silent read. I am curious as to what I would see if I watched my buddy silent read. I know I read faster when I get to read silently versus out loud. I wonder if there is some type of silent reading fluency scale. I suppose it would be hard to measure but if you asked question for comprehension at the end then maybe it would like you know if reading silently and quicker actually was beneficial.
Your lesson plan for N.R. sounds great. I like that you are thinking about it going in two different directions depending upon how the lesson starts. The plan to have N.R. make questions instead of just answer literal and inferential questions is a good idea. Have you done this or have you seen it done before? Would there be a certain thinking level question you would want him to form? Or would something like “what was the color of the boat” be acceptable?
It sounds like your buddy is a pretty good reader with good comprehension. Reading the first parts of your narrative, I started to wonder if you should bump him up to fifth grade texts, but then I saw your comments about his fluency.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it sounds as though his only difficulties with fluency are with his rate. It might be worthwhile to talk with him about what's slowing him down. I wonder if sounding out words that he ends up knowing/understanding once he's decoded them could be contributing to his slow rate.
I agree with your plan to work on fluency, but I wonder a bit why you've selected a silent reading to start with. With a silent reading, your buddy could skim and skip words -- producing a higher rate -- while still exhibiting good comprehension. That said, if you proceed and find his rate to be low, which fluency (as opposed to comprehension) strategies do you think you'll focus on? Will you have him read the text aloud after the silent reading to try and determine what's slowing him down?
It sounds like you have a good grasp of your buddy's strengths and needs and have a good plan for a lesson.
Lots of ideas here: Summarize, identify main idea, fluency (rate), formulating explicit and implicit questions. Which one of these skills might be a useful focus for a lesson with your buddy? Also, if he reads silently, how will you determine his reading rate?
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