Reading Conferences and Reading Comprehension Strategies

1. Reading Conferences and Reading Comprehension Strategies

2. What is a reading conference?

3. A Reading Conference Is: • When a teacher reads one to one with a student • The teacher and student work together to improve the students reading • Brief conversation – the teacher roves during Independent Reading Time • More in depth conferences can take 10 – 12 minutes Why conference? • To gather in-depth information about students reading • To work to improve areas of weakness in reading • To build on students strength as readers

4. Lesson / Mini-Lesson (perhaps only a few minutes) Teacher models a reading strategy Independent Reading Time Students read quietly Reading Conferences The teacher conferences with one student while the class is engaged in independent reading Sharing Students reflect briefly, knowledge is reinforced

5. Reading Conferences • Focus on what students are doing as readers • Provide students with feedback • Are documented (this can be very simple) • Focus on one goal at a time • Students should be active participants • They talk about what they have been practising • Respond to the text they have been reading • Articulate the process and strategies they have been using • State a new goal and describe how they will achieve the goal • Conclude with an outcome and set a goal for student to work on before the next conference

6. Regular Quiet Reading Time - Makes conferencing possible

7. Independent Reading Time • A time each day when all students are reading. • Calms and settles students • Allows conferencing to happen as the class is occupied reading • First we need to build the ability of students to sit and read. In Secondary Education there are a lot of activities around reading but perhaps not enough time spent reading? (One library period a week?)

8. Fifteen minutes a day of independent, recreational reading significantly increases students' reading abilities. Average and below-average readers experience the greatest gains . (Collins, 1980; Smith & Joyner, 1990; Taylor, Frye, & Maruyama, 1990; Wiesendanger & Bader, 1989).

9. Independent reading isn't just about letting students read silently for a given amount of time. It's about providing students with the necessary tools to becoming independent and life-long readers. -Mandy Yates Reading conferences are about providing students with the tools.

10. “Just Right Books” • 0-1 fingers – Too Easy • 2-3 fingers – Just Right • 4-5 fingers – Too Hard Prep, 1, 2 1 finger– too easy 2 fingers - just right 3 fingers- too hard

11. Encourage students to use the Five Finger Rule x x x If there are two or three words on one page that you don’t know – that book is just right.

12. Some common problems our students have when reading • Reading too fast • Not reading for meaning • Not using pictures to help understanding • Choosing books that are too hard. • Not using punctuation cues

13. Gradual Release of Responsibility Model

14. Gradual Release of Responsibility Model of Teaching and Learning 1. Demonstration 1. I do, you watch. 2. I do, you help. 2. Guided Practise 3. Independent practice 3. You do, I help. 4. Application 4. You do, I watch.

15. Round Robin Reading - Teachers call on individual students to read a part of the text The current thinking is, ‘It does more harm than good’ • In ‘life’ people don’t read unseen text aloud • Faulty reading habits can develop as students are not reading at their natural rate • Students become inattentive and lose the meaning • Causes anxiety (hard on struggling readers and counterproductive) • Assesses more than teaches There are more effective ways to teach comprehension It is more useful to teach a bank of reading strategies

16. The 6 Reading Comprehension Strategies: • Predicting / Using prior knowledge • Thinking – aloud • Using text structure and features • Envisaging / Creating visual representations • Summarising • Questioning