Saint David’s approach includes the teaching of speech sounds and distinct decoding and encoding skills to increase reading
fluency and spelling skill.
increases his reading ability in striving for automatic fluency
with these most frequently used words. When coupled
with their increasing awareness of the alphabetic principle
and phonics skills, they are then even more likely to have
successful encounters with books at their instructional level.
In reading groups or individually, by matching students
with “just right books,” teachers are able to shape instruction
so that the books the boys read feel accessible to each student
and yet stretch them in ways that help each boy learn to read
better. That is the delicate balance we strive for in our reading
groups at Saint David’s. So what does that actually look like
on a day-to-day basis?
Picture a First Grade classroom with a small group of
students seated on the carpet, enjoying a new book together
in an activity called guided reading. There are open-ended
prompts on the board like, “If you put yourself in ____’s
shoes…” and the boys are reading aloud in succession,
practicing their oral fluency, which allows the teacher to
monitor each individual student while everyone else follows
along in his own copy of the same book. Periodically, the
teacher pauses the group reading process to prompt the
students with comprehension questions that allow each
student to show his understanding of what’s just been read.
This day, they are describing the sequence of main events, so
students are asked to use their fingers to retell across their
hand, using the order: “first, next, then, and finally….” What’s
so phenomenal to observe is the level of excitement in the
boys as they figure out the nuances of the story, whether it’s
on the page they just read or something they remember from
the back cover. When the lightbulb clicks on for a student,
his hand often shoots up and he’s able to share what he just
realized, using the sentence starter, “I say this because in the
book….” That moment of reading comprehension is what we
are explicitly teaching in lessons like these, so that, as C. R.
Adler puts it, “students become purposeful, active readers
who are in control of their own reading comprehension.” 5
This idea of direct instruction in reading comprehension is not
limited to emerging or early readers, as a Third Grade reading
class that same day includes similar lessons, scaffolded up in
difficulty to match the growth demonstrated in those readers.
In that classroom, there are colorful book bins filling the
back bookshelf that categorize independent reading choices
based on genre or author or series. Using a brief reading
selection as a warm-up, there is teacher directed practice
that asks students to retell, but this time students must use
specific details from the text that get at the overall main idea
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