I was giving a reading assessment to a 3rd grade ELL student this week. He was reading a book called Hang On Baby Monkey by Donna Latham from the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System.
The book is about how baby monkeys survive and are taken care of by the whole troop they live with, not just their mother. After the student read the book and we were having our comprehension conversation, I asked the student, Why is a baby monkey’s tail is important?
The student responded with information he knew about how a monkey uses its tail. He really got “hung up” on (pun intended 🙂 ) how monkeys can use their tail to hang upside down. All which might be true information, but not in the book. This information was not related to what the writer was trying to get readers to consider and understand about baby monkeys.
This student was getting too caught up in what he knew or could make connections with. Sometimes connections or what we know or think we know can get in the way of new understandings. We have to be careful of this, especially when reading nonfiction. We have to make sure our readers notice knew information as they read, and not just dismiss it, without consideration.
I have found the coding strategy to be a very good equalizer for students who do this.
I have these students focus on information the writer shares that is new, compared to information the writers shares that the students already knew. I do not always have them do this on a paper copy of the text, we do it orally as well. When students stop and consider what information was new to them and code it with a (+) or what they already knew and code it with (*), it makes them fully consider and interpret what the writer is saying.
Do you have readers that do not want to give up on false information? This coding helps with that as well. This could be information they read and interpreted wrong, misinformation that was given to them, or information they only heard part of.
So please give the decoding strategy a try. I know I am not the only one with students like this. Let me know how it goes. What else have you tried to help this type of reader?
Troy
Reflect 