The Reading Teacher's Sourcebook - The Meadows Center for ...

their reading. It is helpful for an older struggling reader to take ownership of his/her needs. For example, astudent might be able to clearly state and recognize: “I read fluently but I need to work on understandingwhat I read, and there are strategies I can use to help me with this.”Now that students understand these terms, post definitions for comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and wordrecognition in your room. These are the components of reading in which your students should improve.Before beginning to teach specific strategies or skills:• Explain to students that throughout the school year, you will be teaching them several strategies inthe areas of comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, and word recognition.• Tell students that you will give them a lot of practice and provide guidance when they first learn astrategy, but as they begin to catch on, you will expect them to use these strategies independently.• Emphasize that the strategies you teach are not just for your reading class—they are for all reading.Ask students to brainstorm places and settings in which they will need to be able to read. Encouragestudents to practice using the reading strategies they learn in your class when they are:• In another class.• Working on homework.• Reading a magazine, newspaper, etc.terms to KnowComprehensionFluencyThe ability to understand what is read—the ultimate goal of readingThe ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with expressionSkill instructionStrategy instructionTeaching students to perform a specific activity. Example: teaching studentshow to summarize text.Teaching students to use a series of steps to work through solving a problemor completing a task. Example: teaching students to answer multiple-choicequestions by reading all of the answer possibilities, eliminating any obviouslyincorrect responses, and then rereading the text to verify the best answer.Think aloudVocabularyA type of modeling in which the teacher verbalizes what he or she is thinkingin order to make the thought process apparent to studentsWords a person recognizes and uses orally or in writingWord recognitionThe accurate reading of wordsBos & Vaughn, 2006; NRP, 200062The Reading Teacher’s Sourcebook