Miriam
Lescaille
Module
3- Supporting Emergent Readers
Blog
3
Case
Study: Orlando’s Case Study
Student:
Orlando
Age:
7yrs.
Grade:
1st
Focus:
Comprehension
Possible
Strategies: Graphic Organizers; Repeated Reading; Comprehension Strategies
Orlando
is a 7 years old boy in 1st grade. Orlando is having difficulty recalling and remembering
simple facts from stories as well as answering questions pertaining to the
characters, setting, main idea, sequencing, and predicting, etc. Despite his
over all eagerness and happy disposition he is struggling when it comes to
comprehension especially when he reads independently.
The Following 3 Strategies Should Aid
Orlando and Help Him Achieve Better Comprehension:
1.
Comprehension Strategies:
Comprehension is the understanding of
what has been read. Comprehension
strategies are the techniques a proficient reader uses to gain meaning from a
text (The IRIS Center- Orlando Case Study). Some of the best Comprehension Strategies
include: Predicting, Summarizing, Retelling, Rereading, and Questioning.
- Predicting: refers to guesses a student makes even before they start to read the story such as looking at the pictures on the cover, title, or just an educated guess. This strategy will support Orlando by allowing him to get an idea of what the story is about by just looking at the pictures on the cover or making a guess about what he thinks the story is about and then see if his guess or predictions were correct. We search for and use the visual information that represents the language of the text, for children that means following and understanding the story and also getting information from pictures (Pinnell & Fountas).
- Summarizing: helps the student identify the main idea of a story. This strategy will support Orlando by helping him to read small sections at a time from the story or one paragraph at a time and come up with the main idea of what he has just read in one sentence. Students are asked to name the “who” or “what” of the story, decide what the most important thing is about the “who” or the “what,” and finally, say it in one sentence (The IRIS Center- Orlando Case Study).
- Retelling: allows the student to retell the story right after he has heard it or read it. This strategy of “Retelling” will support Orlando by helping him for example with the main idea, characters, main events, and setting which are some of the skills that he is struggling with according to his teacher.
- Rereading: this helps the student to go back and reread a part of the story in order to look for the answer or clarify something they are not sure of. This strategy will support Orlando because he would be able to go back into the story what is called a “look back” to allow him to get more clarity or find the answer. Rereading and revisiting texts is very beneficial it expands vocabulary, helps them understand sentence structure, and it increases their background knowledge (Pinnell & Fountas).
- Questioning: This strategy allows the student to answer the following questions from the reading: who, what, when, when, where, and how. This strategy will benefit Orlando because by him being able to answer the questions of who, what when, where, and how from the story he will acquire more understanding and comprehension of the text he has just read and be able to answer simple comprehension questions.
The
above Comprehension Strategies and their components take time for the students
to begin to use on their own or with the help of the teacher, however over a
period of time they will benefit the student with the over all comprehension.
2. Graphic Organizers:
Graphic Organizers are simple diagrams
used to assist students at any grade level in organizing and recalling elements
from stories they have listened to or read (The IRIS Center- Orlando Case
Study).
Some examples of Graphic Organizers are:
Story Mapping, Literary Webs, and Venn Diagrams. Using the strategy of Graphic Organizers can help Orlando
with his comprehension skills. The
purpose of teaching students to use graphic organizers is to provide students
with metacognitive tools that they can (eventually) use on their own (Swanson
& De La Paz, 1998).
·
Story Mapping: This Graphic Organizing skill can be
used for example, to help Orlando remember parts of the story like “who, what
and where” as well as having a visual representation.
·
Venn Diagram: This Graphic Organizing skill helps
students see what stories have in common, how they are alike and what they
share, as well as what they are different in. This type of Graphic Organizer skill would help Orlando by
helping him compare and contrast some of the things the stories read have in
common as well as what they differ in and this will help him in his
comprehension and comparison between stories.
·
Story Mapping: Sequencing: This Graphic Organizing skill
helps students to organize a story in order of events. They can draw pictures to represent the
order things happened in the story.
This type of Graphic Organizer skill would help Orlando by having either
a visual representation or writing words to help him with his comprehension and
recall of the story and the order/sequencing in which the events of the story
took place.
·
Literary Webs:
This Graphic Organizing skill helps students to dissect the story and
take it apart and go from the whole to smaller parts in order to get a better
understanding of the story.
Literary webs help students understand a story in terms of both the
whole and its parts (The IRIS Center- Orlando Case Study). This type of Graphic
Organizing skill would help Orlando by being able to start with the entire
story and then braking it up into smaller parts to improve his comprehension
and understanding of all the components of the story.
Orlando would benefit from all the
different types of Graphic Organizers because they will help him enhance his
comprehension and retelling and recalling of the stories read independently or
as a group for him to be able to remember the characters, setting, sequencing,
common threads within stories, as well as remembering details and creating a
visual and mental representation.
Orlando would also benefit from the teacher modeling how to complete
each Graphic Organizer or Story Map over a period of time and then eventually
having him work on it independently or in small groups. In conclusion, overall research and the
readings I have done demonstrate that Graphic Organizers help and improve
students’ reading comprehension.
3. Repeated Reading:
Repeated Reading refers to reading a
familiar book or story over several times. Repeated reading has been shown to assist students reading
below grade level to make gains in fluency and reading comprehension skills
(Bos & Vaughn, 1998). This
strategy will help Orlando by giving him more of an opportunity to understand
and recall more of the details and have better reading comprehension. Moreover, children who had repeated
exposure to a story elaborated on and engaged in more interpretations of text
than children who did not (Doyle & Bramwell p.555). Repeated
Reading can be used with “Partner Reading” or in a “Group Repeated Reading set
up.
- Partner Reading: refers to when you pair two students and the student that is the more skilled reader reads first to the student that has less reading skills to help model for the student that needs the extra help. Morrow and Smith (1990) found that children read to in small groups demonstrated better story comprehension than children read to in whole-class settings. Orlando would benefit from partner reading because he would have more of an opportunity to ask questions for better comprehension, and feel more comfortable, and achieve better understanding and comprehension of what is being heard.
- Group Repeated Reading: refers to when the teacher first reads a line from a book first to show her students and then her students follow along in their book, then the students repeat what the teacher has read, and finally the students and the teacher repeat the line from the book together. Orlando would benefit from repeated reading because he would become more comfortable with the material, gain more comprehension, and build vocabulary.
With the above Repeated Reading
Strategies one can also use “word walls, flashcards, and Reader’s Theater”. I feel that Orlando would benefit the most
from Reader’s Theater that consists of acting out the story, sequencing the
story and remembering the important characters. This would enable Orlando to have a better understanding and
internalize what he has read and in turn have better comprehension of the
characters, main idea, setting, and order of how things happened in the story
visually and mentally. Children will be eager to look at and perhaps retell or “reenact”
books that you have read or reread to them. This highly beneficial activity helps them internalize the
structure of stories, notice features of informational books, and practice the
language of books (Pinnell & Fountas).
“Literacy
ought to be one of the most joyful undertakings ever in a young child’s life.”
By Don Holdaway
Work
Cited
References
Doyle, B.
G., & Bramwell, W. (2006). Promoting Emergent Literacy and Social-Emotional
Learning Through Dialogic Reading. The Reading Teacher, 59(6),
554-564.
Pinnell,
G. S., & Fountas, I. C. (2011). Literacy beginnings: A prekindergarten
handbook. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Welcome
to the IRIS Center. (n.d.). Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/
Children’s
Story- “The Little Red Hen”
The
children’s story that I selected to develop a Graphic Organizer to be used with
the story to help Orlando identify the story’s main components is the story “The
Little Red Hen.”
The
Graphic Organizer that I want to create for Orlando for the story “The Little
Red Hen” will help Orlando answer the questions about setting (where),
characters (who), events (beginning, middle, end)/sequence of events (first,
next, last) and lesson learned. As well as use pictures/images/catchy phrases
that relate to the story, “The Little Red Hen” as part of my Graphic Organizer.
Very nice blog Miriam. I really enjoyed viewing all the pictures you have applied. I really liked the technique used in the video. I would not have thought of a song to help Orlando recall parts of a story. Music is very catchy and easy to remember, so I really like this technique in where he will be able to sing the song and relate back to the story when figuring out who the character is and what the setting means. This will be very beneficial if he becomes confused.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your great comments.
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DeleteGreat blog Miriam! "The Little Red Hen" is one of my favorite children's books. I like that you included pictures in your story map I think that was a great idea.
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ReplyDeleteGreat Blog... It was visually appealing! You did a very nice job identifying and explaining each strategy and how Orlando benefits from the tools. I loved the music video "Parts of a Story." Music is an excellent way to get children to learn and to be more focused and engaged. Also, the Reading Comprehension video was interesting and informative. Little Red Hen one of my old time favorites. Good job with the Graphic organizers...easy to understand!
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job, I really enjoyed your blog you went into details in every topic. I like your poster of what a good reader is that is something that a teacher who teaches second grade and up can post in their classroom. I also like your readers theater and that you showed a picture of one to give teachers an idea of how they can create one in their classroom. Your blog was great!
ReplyDeleteThank you everyone for your comments and great feedbacks. We all did an excellent job!
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