Monday, January 20, 2014

Comprehension Strategies with MLK

Happy MLK Day my friends! I hope you are enjoying your day off. I will be spending my day 100% WORK FREE and enjoying my family. Hubby and I are planning to take Jackson to the park to let him play on the big kid playground. Since I'm 7 months pregnant, Hubby will be the one chasing him around...I'm totally fine with that! 

Wednesday I'll be back working with my 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. I wanted to share some of the plans I have for my second graders. Part of our tutoring sessions focus on comprehension. I know that all students can benefit from comprehension strategies (particularly with expository text), especially struggling students. In order to get some comprehension practice and keep things relevant for the kids, I created a MLK expository passage with a matching comprehension check. Here's how I plan to use the passage...

The focus of our mini lesson will be on asking questions. Before we read, I'm going to have the kids practice using these thinking stems to ask questions. I'll have the stems cut out and bound together before hand since it is a tutoring session, but if you use these whole group the kids can make them.



I gave each student in my group a reader's notebook to track our work. THEY LOVE THEM!! I used interactive math and science notebooks when I taught kinder and second, I regret not using them in reading! But oh well...live and learn! Ok...back to the lesson. To make a pocket, the kids put some glue dots in between the lines, flip it over and press on the edges. If your kids haven't done this before, stress the importance of "A little bit of glue sticks a lot!" Have kids label the pocket and stick the stems inside.



I've also created BDA flap books for kids to record their questions. These are easy to make. The kids cut around the entire flap book and cut the two flaps. They put glue on the back and stick in their notebooks. Before they begin reading, have them use the stems to think of questions they have about the passage or the topic. Students record under the "before reading" flap. Teach them how to do this during and after. I've modeled this for them, so it should be pretty easy for them to do independently.



I created the MLK passage and comprehension check to fit into the notebooks as well. This was my first go round at writing passages, I think it turned out ok but let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement! It was a little harder than I thought. 

My husband read the passage and the questions. He said that question 3 was kind of hard because there are two choices that could both be right. I told him well, yes...but the kids need to refer back to the text to see which answer fits BEST. I explained to him how our state reading assessment can be very tricky like that and the kids need to know how to choose the BEST answer based on text evidence. It's funny when you share stuff like this with non-teachers because the second grade they remember is NOTHING like the 2nd grade now. The kids are learning and doing so much more, it's unreal!



Ok so there you have it my friends! If you want to use anything I posted, you can pick it up here. Let me know what you think and if you can use it! Now it's off to enjoy the day!

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