How to Help Students with Reading Comprehension but do it the Conferring All Star Teacher™ Way.
Hey, amazing literacy teacher! How’s your reading time going this school year? I bet you have some students who are close to their reading goals and some who are nowhere near it. There's probably a mix of different reading levels going on in your classroom. Am I right?
Small group instruction for reading is one of the quickest ways to help students with reading comprehension. I encourage you to spend the majority of your conferring time in a small group lesson with those students who need extra support in reading comprehension. This will give your students a chance to participate in guided practice while you offer teacher feedback prompts.
Conferring All-Star Teachers™ have many different types of small group structures in their back pocket. They choose how much support they give their students. They don’t start off with the highest level of support and then lessen that support over time. I know it’s very tempting to do that. In my first year of using reading workshop and conferring methods, I made this mistake a lot. Watch this video to learn about one of the mistakes I made when I started conferring with students.
One of the most beautiful things about small group instruction is that you come alongside each student to guide them individually.
In my small group lessons, I modeled how to do the strategy every single time. Although, there will be times that you need to demonstrate how to do it. Sometimes it’s not necessary at all. Just remember that one of the beautiful things about small group instruction is that you come alongside each student to guide them. Think of modeling and demonstration as the type of heavy support you can give students. Inside our Conferring All-Star Teacher™ program, I show educators how to invite students to do the work and give only as much support as each student needs.
Let’s say you want to help students overcome reading comprehension difficulties. You start a small group lesson focused on “backing up ideas about characters with evidence from the text”. After you start teaching, you notice students would benefit from extra support, up front. You know, before they practice the strategy. If you notice this, go ahead and insert another quick burst of teaching. Then continue on with the small group lesson. Here are three different methods you can use.
A Quick Demonstration Can Help Students Overcome Reading Comprehension Difficulties
The first way to help students who struggle with reading comprehension is with a quick demonstration.
With this method of teaching, you show and tell. It's important to think aloud during each step rather than do the whole thing and point out at the end how it happened.
This step-by-step demonstration helps readers to see how you were able to create the model you did. Not just the end result or a great example. Sometimes you might want to mess up on purpose to show how to fix it in the moment.
Shared Practice Can Help Students Who Struggle with Reading.
The second way to help students improve poor reading comprehension is by offering a Shared Practice.
Guided reading, shared reading, and interactive read aloud are great times of the day for students to engage in shared practice with you. But did you know that you can bring that shared practice into your conferences and small groups?
You can work together to read and practice the strategy you'll want students to use in their independent reading time.
The Example & Explanation Method Can Help Students Improve Poor Reading Comprehension
The third way to help students struggling with reading comprehension is to offer heavier support. But only if your reader needs it. You can do this with the Example and Explanation method. One thing that Conferring All-Star Teachers™ have is a conferring toolkit. Do you have one? Take a pic and shoot me a DM on Instagram. Or hop into our Literacy Teacher Greatness Facebook Community to let us know what’s inside your conferring toolkit.
If not you don’t have a conferring toolkit, I highly encourage you to have a collection of texts and other resources with you as you meet with readers individually and in small groups. When you have a good example of a text to share with readers, it's important to point out what you want the students to notice and name the strategy clearly.
Need more mentor texts for your conferences and small group instruction?
The Reading Comprehension Mentor Text Strategies for reading levels A-W, I've done all the work for you. Can you imagine having a mentor text at each text band level already marked up with example strategies you can teach in your conferences and small groups?
Well…here they are. You can bundle several grade levels together or just grab one single grade level of mentor text strategies.
Inside this resource is:
- One BLANK sticky note template for you to print your own strategy sticky notes.
- Strategies sticky notes with a modeling example already typed for you that match the strategies you would most likely teach to your students who are reading at the A-W level.
- Each strategy box includes a page number that corresponds to the page in each book; so you know exactly where to put the sticky note and where to stop and model the strategy.
- Please NOTE: The children's book is NOT included.
Invite Students to Do the Work: Give Only as Much Support as Each Student Needs.
All three of these methods (Demonstration, Shared Practice, Example & Explanation) will help increase your support before they practice the strategy on their own. But only choose ONE of these options, otherwise, your lesson will go way too long. And you won’t be able to meet with other students. I encourage you to pick the one method of teaching you feel will benefit the students in the group. This will set them up to be more successful.
The most important takeaway is to be mindful of the amount of support you offer students and help them be as independent as possible. Choosing to demonstrate, giving an example, or doing a shared practice — these are all important decisions Conferring All-Star Teachers™ need to make. Try to keep your talking to a minimum, so your students have as much time as possible to practice the strategy. But always remember there are times when you need to give extra support in your prompts. Or you can offer a quick example for students who don’t seem able yet to practice the reading comprehension strategy. This is not necessarily a bad thing, teacher friend. It’s really important that you are aware of how much support you are offering. Have plans to lessen the support over time to encourage more independence.
Are you ready to help every student with reading comprehension and do it the Conferring All-Star Teacher™ way?
Then go ahead and get started, teacher friend.
DM on Instagram or hop on into the Literacy Teacher Greatness Facebook Community to let me know how your readers are doing this school year.
Looking for even more FREE training, strategies, and resources on conferring with students? Come on over to my Facebook page and grab my Conferring With Readers & Writers Like a Pro Guide. This guide will give you the 8 steps to reach ALL your students through 1-on-1 conferences and small groups every single week.
Have an awesome year, teacher friend!!!
Remember this is the year to grow into your literacy teacher greatness!
