What Texts Should I use?
In my diagnostic reading courses, I learned about the frustration, instructional, and independent reading levels. Each level has its purpose in the classroom. As a teacher, I need to be able to assess these levels. The frustration level needs to avoided in the classroom because no learning takes place at this point; although, there are times to stretch students near this point in order for growth to happen. The instructional level is where I teach students strategies and skills, and the independent level is the text that allows students to practice and perfect their reading skills and strategies.
The instructional level is where I focus my teaching energies to teach comprehension strategies and develop vocabulary to improve reading.
The instructional level is where I focus my teaching energies to teach comprehension strategies and develop vocabulary to improve reading.
Comprehension strategies
- Making Connections
- Questioning
- Visualizing
- Inferences
- Predicting
- Determining Importance
- Synthesizing
Vocabulary Development
The deficit of vocabulary makes the complex texts of secondary schools difficult for many adolescents. In order to increase vocabulary, I want to teach words that are relevant to the readings in class using the Frayer Model for introducing new vocabulary words. Students need at least 12 exposures to a word before they are able to internalize it and use the word confidently. Incorporating visuals and mnemonic devices help students learn the definition while examples, sentences, and scenarios using the words help students learn the shades of meaning. The following video, which was a project for ECI 546, illustrates how this vocabulary instruction was used in a middle school social studies classroom as well as a ninth grade English classroom.
I also believe that teaching students Greek and Latin roots is a learning strategy that can help overcome the vocabulary deficit. By learning about roots, students start to see the relationship between words and open the doors to many new words by finding roots in unknown words. Again, the Frayer model can be modified to help students learn these roots using flashcards as I did with eighth grade students. How I modified the Frayer model into flashcards is shown below.