A few more points to reflect on from Sunday Cummins. My thought are in italics.
- Keep your hand out of the book, make the student do the work!
This is very simple, but sometimes very hard to do. You have to hold yourself back at times when you want to jump in. I think it would be Ok to pull out a white board and try using an analogy to help students solve a word after they have tried their own suggestions. For example, if a student was stuck on the word bound, write the word out on a white board and ask them what the word is, and what is saying the “ou” sound and apply it to the word bound. I would probably follow up with an analogy chart using ow and ou very soon!
- When a child looks up at you, or asks is that right after reading a word, don’t answer yes or no. Respond with “What do you think?”
If you respond, yes or no, then you are doing the part of the monitoring for the student. Students have to monitor and cross-check independently as readers. Remember this was with a group of transitional readers, levels J- around P. The support you give should be helpful but not take monitoring and cross-checking out of their hands. You should not be doing the thinking of reading for them when they are reading.
- Sunday says the support you give should have generative value and cause a ripple effect.
Students should be able to transfer the strategy across texts and writing.
Reflect 