Sorry that I am late with this post! My Mom came out for a visit (I haven’t seen her since the summer) and I chose to visit rather than write a post!

Here are some of the Strategies for Comprehension that I found to fit into my teaching (although I hav enot used them yet, I think that they will be good ones :))

Strategy 20- Read It: This strategy looks interesting. I like how they added the page with the visuals for the main vocabulary words. I noticed that the text is simpler and does not contain all of the vocabulary words. A student could then highlight the phrase that best describes the vocabulary word using different colours for each word.

Strategy 21- Sequence It: I have never used sequencing for numeracy (not in this way anyways!) This is such an interesting concept to me. You could also have visuals to support the story and have a child sequence the parts of the story. This could have varying difficulties- someone might sequence 3 events (beginning, middle, end) while abother student sequences more in depth and has 5 or 6 events to sequence.

Strategy 22- Make It: I love this strategy and am using it with one student that I have been working with. She is learning about different topics of interest (tigers, robots, octopuses) and has created a diorama of the tiger, a recycled model of a robot and is now sewing an octopus stuffie. On top of this, she has been researching the topics using Google Read and Write and has created short “essays” with her new knowledge. So much fun!

Strategy 26-Cloze It: This strategy is great for sight words, vocabulary and even recalling texts. You can vary the difficulty of this activity as well by adding a word bank or a first letter to aid the students in finding the correct answers. It can also be made a bit more difficult by removing the word bank and having them pick out key details from the text. The hard part with this, is that some kids will be excellent at finding the necessary information and just filling in the blanks but not actually reading the text, so ensuring that thetext is read first might help solve that problem.

Strategy 29- Note It: I like how this strategy helps to synthesize the information about a topic into small, manageable chunks. Students could work with a partner to determine some of the key ideas about the topic. Some of the ideas could be highlighted within the text for the student to search out and record. They may even draw some of the key ideas about the topic, if that is more suitable to their needs. This could also be done using a speech to text software, such as Google Read and Write.

Strategy 30- Report It: The graphic organizer for this strategy would help students organize a story, or could be modified to allow them to do research on a specific topic. It is not too overwhelming, only requiring small amounts of information at a time. For those students who are able, it could then be turned further into a written essay-type piece, or handed in as is for those students where essay writing is not an option.

How would you use these strategies? Which ones are your favourite? Any further suggestions on how to make them better/modify them for your own use?

Until next week, when we look at the Strategies for Analysis!