I read it, but I don’t know what I just read. Has this ever happened to you? Has it happened to your child? It has happened to all of us, at one time or another. Remember when the tax directions came in booklets, and you had to wade through that nonsense to do your taxes? I would read a small paragraph and have no idea what I just read. As a proficient reader, I realized that I didn’t understand, and I went back to reread it. I would break it down into smaller chunks until I was able to understand the directions.
This happens to readers all the time, but the struggling ones are the ones who don’t realize they don’t understand what they just read. Their reading sounds great out loud, and when you ask them what they just read, they can only recall the last few sentences. That’s because they aren’t doing the hard work of visualizing when they are reading. In Jennifer Saravallo’s, The Reading Strategies Book (2015) she gives a great tip for students who read words but don’t remember what they have read. It’s called Read, Cover, Remember, Retell. I recently taught this to my fourth graders with great success. They were reading nonfiction books, but could only talk about the final sentences on the page. I modeled the strategy, by covering part of a page with my hand. I only read aloud the part that my hand covered (about a paragraph). I then closed my eyes and said aloud what I was picturing when I was thinking about the part I just read. Then I wrote it down on a sticky note so I could remember the main idea of the page. I had to model and model and model it for my struggling readers, but they have it now! It is their go-to strategy for all of their reading because it makes them slow down and really think about the story in small chunks. The next time your child reads a page or a chapter and she cannot remember what happened, show her this strategy. It will help her monitor her reading and remember what the story or section is about. It is a way to slow down her reading so she can make meaning of the story. Hopefully it will help your child to remember what she read.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMy name is Laura Coffin, and I am the reading specialist at Lake Placid Elementary School. I have a BA from William Smith College and a M.Ed. in Reading from Lesley University. I also hold a Wilson Language Level I certification. I teach reading, writing and spelling strategies to help all students! Follow me on twitter @lgaetacoffin Archives
December 2017
Categories |