Ideas from Sunday

I was lucky enough to attend a wonderful PD session today with Sunday Cummins. I plan to blog about several of the take always I got from the session over the next few weeks. This helps me process through the information and reflect on it. Hopefully someone else will get something out of it as well.

I work in a district that has supported reading instruction exceptional well. We have implemented Reading Work shop and continue to use Guided Reading as well. We use the Fountas & Pinnel Benchmark Assessment system as one way to access reading.

http://www.fountasandpinnell.com/assessment/

The session was on working with transitional readers using a lesson plan taken from Jan Richardson’s book: The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading.

Transitional Readers are students reading at levels J-P.

When conferring with students as they read during a guided reading lesson Sunday shared that she focuses first on-

1^st Monitoring/decoding

2^nd Fluency

3^rd Comprehension

If they showing competence in one area move to the next.

I think this makes sense because monitoring/decode and fluency both effect comprehension.

When moving to check comprehension when conferring we focus on using Fountas & Pinnell’s Systems of strategic actions:

http://www.fountasandpinnell.com/resourcelibrary/id/184

Checking Understanding on:

                                        1st – Thinking Within the Text

                                        2nd – Thinking Beyond the Text (inferring)

                                        3rd – Thinking About the Text (authors craft)

 

When conferring with students who are in the writing phase of the guided reading lesson focus on-

1^st– meaning 

            2^nd – syntax (language structure)

            3^rd – Spelling

I say address capitalization and punctuation if time as you see fit to meet the kids needs, but remember that when we ask students to write about what they read we are doing it as a way for them to show understanding of the text and to extend that understand at the Transitional stage.

When writing always make sure you provide students time to plan their writing with you and then orally rehearse it. Students who need guided reading are often readers who lack good language skills. 

Please contact me if you have any thoughts or questions!

Check out Sunday’s blog at: https://sundaycummins.wordpress.com/