This study guide outlines three reading methods--Readers Theatre, choral reading, and performing poetry-- that can be used to promote fluency and comprehension.
Performing Literature to Promote Fluency and Comprehension
Grades
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Supporting Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
This Strategy Guide is for developing comprehension that incorporates the gradual release of responsibility model.
Grades
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Giant Story Problems: Reading Comprehension through Math Problem-Solving
1 - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students create posters using images, text, and mathematical equations to represent a story problem.
Grades
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Guided Comprehension in Action: Teaching Summarizing With the Bio-Cube
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Recurring Lesson
Students learn the ins and outs of writing biographies by researching a contemporary or historical figure and writing a summary.
Grades
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Book Sorting: Using Observation and Comprehension to Categorize Books
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students utilize their reading and writing skills as they think critically in order to sort books in multiple ways.
Grades
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Improve Comprehension: A Word Game Using Root Words and Affixes
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students study common root words and affixes, improve their comprehension and spelling, and make a card game in which they form words with a prefix, root word, and suffix.
Grades
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Research Matters: What Kinds of Classroom Discussion Promote Reading Comprehension?
8 - 12
Professional Library
| Journal
"Research Matters" provides teachers with review and application of research that illuminates the daily concerns and activities of English language arts teachers and classrooms.
Grades
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Performing Poetry
Grades
K - 5
Strategy Guide
Performing poetry incorporates oral reading, literature, and the performing arts. This strategy can benefit content area readers, English language learners, or learners with special needs.
Grades
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A Schema-Building Study With Patricia Polacco
2 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students use the Semantic Impressions and Possible Sentences strategies to write about Patricia Polacco's books Chicken Sunday and Rechenka's Egg, complete a character study, and write using a WebQuest.
Grades
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Choral Reading
Grades
K - 5
Strategy Guide
During choral reading, students read together orally. Repeated, supported reading helps students read with greater expression and read unfamiliar words with greater ease.
Grades
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Supporting Student Comprehension in Content Area Reading
Grades
6 - 12
Strategy Guide
In this strategy guide, you'll learn a few simple, yet powerful, techniques to encourage students to use peer talk and writing to enhance their understanding of content area texts.
Grades
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The Mysteries of Memory: Memorization Techniques That Work
6 - 8
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students learn techniques that can aid in memorizing information, play online memory games, and participate in a class memory game to develop and share their own memory strategies.
Grades
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Let's Read It Again: Comprehension Strategies for English-Language Learners
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Help Spanish-speaking English-language learners unlock the mysteries of their new language by using a bilingual book to recognize unfamiliar words and construct meaning from the text.
Grades
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History Comes Alive: Developing Fluency and Comprehension Using Social Studies
2 - 5
Lesson Plan
| Unit
Let the power of imagination and inference serve as a "time machine" to bring Benjamin Franklin into the classroom! History and science come to life in a dialogue with Franklin the inventor, developed through lesson activities that incorporate research, imagination, writing, visual arts, and drama.
Grades
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Using Concept Circles to Develop Academic Vocabulary
Grades
3 - 12
Strategy Guide
In this guide, you will learn how to use the Concept Circles strategy to support vocabulary development and comprehension of complex text.
Grades
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Multiple Texts: Multiple Opportunities for Teaching and Learning
5 - 9
Professional Library
| Journal
Using texts that first meet the reading "levels" of middle school students, then offering increasingly challenging books, teachers can group students at all levels using multiple texts. Strategy logs and conferences are two of the successful tools teachers use to increase comprehension as well as critical reading skills.
Grades
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The (Un)Making of a Reader
K - 8
Professional Library
| Journal
Through looking critically at the underpinnings of "story mapping, a teacher uncovers a contradiction between the author's definition of reading as a constructive process and the reductionist nature of story mapping, which she shows inhibits students' potential to explore a diverse range of personal responses by promoting comprehension over response, uniformity over diversity, and control over freedom.
Grades
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Connection Stems
3 - 8
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
Connection Stems give students the language (and a reminder) to support their understanding by tying new learning to what they know about themselves and their world.
Grades
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K-W-L-S Chart
3 - 8
Printout
| Graphic Organizer
This printable extends the familiar K-W-L's means of organizing students' prior knowledge, formulating inquiry questions, and recording new learning by adding space for questions for further inquiry.
Grades
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Text Talk: Julius, the Baby of the World
K - 2
Lesson Plan
| Standard Lesson
Students are asked to "talk" with Kevin Henkes' Julius, the Baby of the World by using open-ended questions to help them interpret the language, plot, and characters of the story.