Frequently Asked Questions: About Reading!!
- Why is it important to have 90 minutes for reading daily?
- May students go to another class for intervention during the 90 minute block?
- What do you mean by flexible small group instruction?
- What is a good way to build vocabulary skills?
- What can I do to help my students read more fluently?
Why is it important to have 90 minutes for reading daily?
Implementation of a 90 minute reading block must be combined with good
teaching methods with special attention to what a student already knows,
timely and specific feedback, and the active participation of the teacher in
order to have a significant impact on achievement (Quartarola, 1984). It is
important to remember that students vary on the amount of time needed to learn
a new skill, the intensity of instruction, and amount of practice
opportunities provided within the reading block. All of these aspects of
reading instruction are important to student achievement (Gettinger, 1984,
1985, 1989). Therefore �time spent in learning is a more useful index of
learning time and a stronger predictor of achievement than simply allocated
time� (Gettinger, 1985, p. 4).
May students go to another class for intervention during the 90 minute block?
In order to implement some programs correctly, students are grouped
homogeneously and may need to move to another classroom for their core
instruction. Students with an individual educational plan (IEP) that specifies
special reading interventions may receive the most appropriate level of
instruction either in the regular classroom or by the ESE teacher in the
special education classroom.
What do you mean by flexible small group instruction?
Students are grouped according to shared instructional needs and abilities and
regrouped as their instructional needs change. Group size, allocated
instructional time, and instructional content varies among groups. Time can be
adjusted so that additional instruction is provided for struggling students.
What is a good way to build vocabulary skills?
Teachers help young students build vocabulary by choosing understandable,
interesting, and potentially useful words to discuss during or after reading
books to the children. Vocabulary knowledge will be expanded and deepened when
teachers clearly explain the meaning of unfamiliar words and provide
discussion and activities that require students to demonstrate their knowledge
of the words� meaning within multiple contexts. Teachers build vocabulary
skills for older students before, during, and after reading by choosing words
that are likely to be useful in understanding the text, exist in a variety of
texts, and appear in normal conversations of the mature language user. In
order for vocabulary learning to have an impact on reading comprehension, new
words must be learned at a level of mastery that includes the ability to
fluently access their meaning and to understand possible shades of meaning in
different contexts. So, one key to �robust� vocabulary instruction is to
engage students in activities with words that help them learn to access their
meaning in many different ways. A helpful resource for building teachers�
knowledge about vocabulary instruction is Bringing Words to Life by Beck,
McKeown, and Kucan (Beck et al., 2002).
What can I do to help my students read more fluently?
Teachers can help their students become more fluent readers by providing a
model of fluent reading and then monitoring them during repeated oral reading.
Model how to read a passage at the student�s independent level then have
him/her reread the passage at least three times to improve fluency. Of course,
this will need to be done across many different passages during the year in
order to produce a generalized effect on reading fluency, and it is important
for reading to be as accurate as possible during this type of reading
practice. Effective repeated oral reading strategies include partner reading,
choral reading, tape-assisted reading, and timed repeated readings. When the
teacher is able to provide immediate feedback during a timed repeated reading,
it may be appropriate to have the students read material at their
instructional level. As much practice as possible of this type should be
scheduled during reading instruction, particularly for students who are
struggling with reading fluency. For students who are very poor readers with
extremely limited sight vocabularies, it may also be helpful to provide
focused practice from lists of high frequency words. Apart from these focused
instructional techniques that have been shown to produce gains in reading
fluency, it is also important to create as many opportunities throughout the
day for students to read meaningful text at the appropriate level of
difficulty. A useful reference for further guidance in the area of fluency
instruction is A Focus on Fluency by Osborn, Lehr, and Hiebert
http://www.prel.org/products/re_/fluency-1.htm.