In shared reading using a big book, ask the children to look carefully at the cover of the book. Then ask “What can we learn or make a guess about this book, just from looking at the front cover?” Then ask the students to make their own prediction about what they think is going to happen in the book. After receiving some of the student’s predictions, begin reading the book. Further, into the book invite the students to read along too. Stopping throughout the book to ask lots of literal, inference and inferential questions to examine the children’s knowledge and comprehension. This strategy also provides support and scaffolding to other students by showing them ideas or parts of the narrative, that they might not have thought of or understood themselves.
Some examples of the questions the teacher could ask are:
Where are they going?
Who is ‘they’ in the story?
How did you know it was the people?
So what do ‘they’ want to make him do?
Stop regularly to check the student’s predictions throughout the narrative.
Literacy Strategies
It is extremely important to provide students with adequate techniques and strategies to help them problem solve during their reading development. An example of a teacher providing a student with a problem solving tool is a flash card that depicts the strategies a child can use when they come across an unknown word. On this particular card there were different animal characters that represented each technique. An example of this is 'Stretchy the Snake'. If children chose to use Stretchy the Snake they knew to stretch the letters out aloud to see if they could decipher the word they were reading. Another character was Chunky the Monkey'. Children would use Chunky the Monkey to break the word into smaller chunks and then put them together. An example of this is the word 'sickbay'. Students cover up the end of the word as they try and work out the start and vice versa. They then put the words they have worked out together to form the full word. Each child in the class has one of these flash cards in their reading box at all times. It is important for the children to have easy access to these strategies and they also encourage independant learning as they are techniques they can try on their own.
In shared reading using a big book, ask the children to look carefully at the cover of the book. Then ask “What can we learn or make a guess about this book, just from looking at the front cover?” Then ask the students to make their own prediction about what they think is going to happen in the book. After receiving some of the student’s predictions, begin reading the book. Further, into the book invite the students to read along too. Stopping throughout the book to ask lots of literal, inference and inferential questions to examine the children’s knowledge and comprehension. This strategy also provides support and scaffolding to other students by showing them ideas or parts of the narrative, that they might not have thought of or understood themselves.
Some examples of the questions the teacher could ask are:
Where are they going?
Who is ‘they’ in the story?
How did you know it was the people?
So what do ‘they’ want to make him do?
Stop regularly to check the student’s predictions throughout the narrative.
Literacy Strategies
It is extremely important to provide students with adequate techniques and strategies to help them problem solve during their reading development. An example of a teacher providing a student with a problem solving tool is a flash card that depicts the strategies a child can use when they come across an unknown word. On this particular card there were different animal characters that represented each technique. An example of this is 'Stretchy the Snake'. If children chose to use Stretchy the Snake they knew to stretch the letters out aloud to see if they could decipher the word they were reading. Another character was Chunky the Monkey'. Children would use Chunky the Monkey to break the word into smaller chunks and then put them together. An example of this is the word 'sickbay'. Students cover up the end of the word as they try and work out the start and vice versa. They then put the words they have worked out together to form the full word. Each child in the class has one of these flash cards in their reading box at all times. It is important for the children to have easy access to these strategies and they also encourage independant learning as they are techniques they can try on their own.