RESPONSIVE READING

- Ideas and Strategies

“When students read for pleasure, when they get ‘hooked on books’, they acquire, involuntarily and without conscious effort, nearly all of the ‘language skills’ many people are concerned about. ”

-Stephen Krashen (2004: 149)

Who is actually reading

Shyam pays close attention to the text so that he can pronounce every word correctly.

Reema reads a text with expression.

Anita reads as quickly as possible.

Types of reluctant readers

The Dormant Reader:

‘ I am too busy right now’

The Uncommitted Reader:

‘ I might be a reader, someday’

The Unmotivated Reader:

‘ I am never going to like it’

- G Kylene Beers, 1996

Reading Effect

At Home

Whole School

Inside the classroom

Child’s Interest to

read

Reading cycle

Word

Sentence

Paragraph

Story

Phonic and

Phonemic Awareness

COMPREHENSION

FLUENCY (SPEED TO READ)

SUMMARIZE

ANALYSE

ORGANIZE

INSIDE THE CLASSROOM

- Reading and Fluency Strategies

Pre-school strategies

• Write a message everyday for the children before they come in.

• Aim is to teach them that print always has a message.

Morning Message

Pre-school strategies

• Create a guest-register kind of book. Have them sign it everyday against their names.

• Aim is to teach them the sense of belonging.

• This also serves as an assessment tool.

Sign-in Book

Pre-school strategies

• Use BIG BOOKS for interest generation.• Pre-read: prediction with props or

sentences.• While read: a lot of rhymes where children

can participate, pause and predict.• Post-read: recall and relating questions, art.

Storytelling

Comprehension Strategies

• Give first and last line of the story to your students.

• Ask them what could have happened in the middle.

• Tell them to look at the pictures to take clues

First and Last Line The Umbrella Man- Roald Dahl

“ I am going to tell you about a funny thing that happened to me and my mother yesterday evening”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------??

“ ‘You see how clever he is!’ my mother said. ‘He never goes to the same pub

twice’ ”

Comprehension Strategies

• Give few key words from the story to each group.

• Give the words in form of word cards.

• Ask the students what prediction could they draw from the word clues.

Word Clues Terrific hurry Sweet and polite

Funny thing Well dressed

Dentist Walked fast

Café Pub

Taxi Coat rack

Me and mother Silk umbrella

Treble Whisky Game

Help Suspicious

A pound Old man

Umbrellas hanging Rainy days

Comprehension Strategies

• Try to extract pictures of major scenes of the story.

• Give each set of pictures to groups/pairs.

• Ask them to guess from the title and sequence the pictures.

Story Sequencing

The Umbrella

Man

Comprehension Strategies

• If the story has a particular theme, then develop similar scenarios based on the theme.

• Give each theme to each group.• Have students react on the scenarios

as if it has happened in their community.

• Be innovative with the style of writing- notice, letter to the society board, etc.

Thematic Scenarios

A man has come into the society who have been

asking for money because of his daughter’s illness. He has been seen in the local gambling club. How

would you warn the people in the society or your

neighbourhood.

Comprehension Strategies

• Read the story before hand. Write-out the important dialogues of the character- each quotation in a card.

• Distribute each set of cards to pairs.• Ask them to guess the kind of

character they can conclude from the dialogues.

• From the dialogues, have your students guess the events in the story.

Character Quotations

The truth of the matter is, I’ve got myself into a bit of a scrape. I need some help. Not much I

assure you. It’s almost nothing, in fact, I do need it. You see madam, old people like me often

become terribly forgetful

‘My wallet’ he said. ‘I must have left it in my other jacket. Isn’t that the silliest thing to do?’

Comprehension Strategies

• Write down each line of the story in a piece of paper and distribute each sentence to each student.

• If the story is too small then do the activity group wise or distribute one line per pair.

• Have each of your students read each sentence aloud and put the pieces together. Students can stand in a line as per the sequence.

• This can be followed by silent reading.

Mingling Party I am going to tell you about a funny thing that

happened to me and my mother yesterday evening.

‘Why don’t we go back to the café and wait for the rain to stop?

Line 5

Line 9

Line 2

Line 7

Comprehension Strategies

Anticipation Guide

EVENTS OF THE STORY DID IT HAPPEN? WAS I RIGHT?

The umbrella man wanted to sell his own umbrella to two friends

YES, I THINK YES

The umbrella man went to the pub with the money and bought whisky

NO, I DON’T THINK YES

The umbrella man was old and feeble and walked slowly down the

street to the umbrella shop

YES, I THINK NO

Comprehension Strategies

• Give a quarter of a chart paper to a pair of students.

• As each part of the story is being read, stop and ask each pair to draw a scene on what has happened till now.

• Note: please tell the students not to decorate it. it should be a 2 minutes task where students just do a rough sketch.

• Objective is to gauge that the student has comprehended well.

Story Sequencing

Comprehension Strategies

• The class needs to be in small groups for this strategy.

• After each event is read in the class, ask each group to take turns, come up and create a story moment like a picture as to what happened till now.

• All the groups should get chance to do so.

Story Moment

Comprehension Strategies

• Comprehension is processing information for a certain purpose- concept maps lend itself very well.

• Have a concept map based on the skill of the story- character analysis, DRAWING CONCLUSIONS, MAIN IDEA, ETC.

• HAVE THE STUDENTS FILL IT UP AT LOGICAL POINTS OF THE TEXT. THIS ALSO ACTS AS A FORMATIVE.

Concept Maps

SAMPLES OF CONCEPT MAP

SAMPLES OF CONCEPT MAP

Comprehension Strategies

• After reading, students can act as different characters- by moving like them, by talking like them using their dialogues or by acting out the characteristics.

• Other students will have to guess the character and the situation.

Who Am I?

Fluency Strategies

• Choose a paragraph which is at the most familiar level with the students of your class.

• Have groups of five read it together with right pauses and tone.

• Objective is to get the hesitant student speak.

Choral Reading

Fluency Strategies

• Divide the parts of the story into paragraph cards.

• Model the reading and have students read it aloud after you as a preparation. Make actions while you read.

• Distribute paragraph cards to each student of the group.

• Ask each group to come and read their paragraph in sequence and with actions.

Reader’s Theatre

Fluency Strategies

• Have students paired up in a way that a developing reader and a fluent reader is in a pair.

• Make the developing reader the ‘coach’ and the fluent reader the ‘player’.

• while the fluent reader/player reads a paragraph, the coach summarizes the paragraph into who/what/where/why.

Player and Coach Reading

Fluency Strategies

• This is a fluency test that the students can have among themselves as a healthy game with no competition.

• Give 1 minute to each child and ask the child to read with expressions at a considerable speed.

• Monitor how many words could the child read with proper intonation and expression.

Timed Reading

IN THE SCHOOL - Reading Environment Enhancement Strategies

Generating interest for all readers

• Adopt a holistic and standardised language learning programme.

• Level students with their vocabulary or language competency.

• Prescribe according to the difficulty level of the book.

• Tag books in classroom libraries/ school library with the diagnostic level of each student.

Generating interest for all readers

• Start reading.

• Share your reading experiences

• Organize read-a-thon

Generating interest- for reluctant readers

• Take a library trip

• Listen to audio books

• 20 minutes of independent reading-

everyday

• Author and illustrator research

• Reading mileage

50 Page Club

100 Page Club

200 Page Club

Generating interest- for reluctant readers

• Do book reviews and publish

on school wall or Facebook

• Give format for book chat and

book review

Title of the Book:

Author:

Characters:

Problem/s:

Solution/s:

Was the flow logical:

Recommendation:

Will I suggest this book to anyone:

Reason for suggesting/not suggesting

this book:

No. of stars I give to this book:

Text selection strategy

• Open the book to the middle.• Open up your right or left hand.• Read a page of the book to yourself.• Beginning with your little finger, put one finger down every time you

come to a word you don’t know.• If you finish the page and your thumb is still up, then you probably

have a text right for you.

Thumb Rule

Reading at home

• Ask the parent to turn off the sound of the television with the captions turned on.

• The child watches and reads a television show.

Closed Caption Television

Scholastic would be pleased to support your schools further

and set literary goals and initiatives to achieve them.

Thank you!