When it comes to reading comprehension , it can be difficult to know if your students truly understood what they read. It can also be difficult to know if your students are reading the entire passage, or if they are going right to the questions and skimming the passage for the answers. Teaching summary sentences is an excellent way for teachers to see what their students are taking away from the different sections of the passage, which can lead you to see how well they understood the passage, from start to finish. WHAT ARE SUMMARY SENTENCES? Summary Sentences are sentences used to summarize different sections, or parts, of a passage. These sentences can be used with every text, whether it be long or short, fiction or nonfiction. The point of taking the time to write summary sentences is to help students quickly see what each section was mostly about, which will help when answering comprehension questions.  The summary sentences wi......

In upper grade classrooms, students spend a great deal of time responding to the texts they read. Over the years I have found that no matter what grade level I teach, students have a difficult time writing thorough and meaningful reading responses. At the start of every year my students need quite a bit of guidance when writing their responses. One of the best ways that I have found to teach students to write meaningful responses is by providing them with sentence frames. I like to encourage students to follow three simple steps when writing reading responses, each with sentence frames and prompts to use: Step 1: What did you read? While reading... In chapter __ of... On page __ of... During today's reading of... Step 2: What happened in the text? Tell what a character said. Tell what a character did. Tell what a character thought, felt, or learned. Describe the setting.  Describe an important event that occurred. Explain a problem that was encountered. ......

Reading strategy groups are a highly effective way of grouping your students during Guided Reading.  Instead of grouping students by ability, you are simply grouping students based on the strategy they need help with.  While this way of grouping sounds ideal, there are some problems you may run into if you've never grouped this way before.  Here are a few tips to help you along the way. Don't forget to grab the FREEBIE! Tips for Grouping Your Students Once you have worked with your students enough, you'll start to learn their strengths and weaknesses that go beyond their reading levels. It is important to recognize if a student is struggling with a particular skill, or if they are just struggling with reading the passage. Here are a few tools you may want to use to help you decide if/when a student should be placed in a strategy group. Classroom Reading Assessment - group students that miss similar problems on an assessment. Conferring Notes -......

        One strategy which all good readers have in common is the ability to use context clues effectively. When students encounter words they haven't seen before or words which they don't fully understand, context clues can help them problem-solve to determine what a word might mean in that particular context. By directly teaching your students these five main context clues, they will have some of the tools they need to greatly increase their reading comprehension.   Here's my anchor chart for Context Clues Types. I think anchor charts are great to help document learning and for kids to be able to reference concepts when needed. The five types of context clues I like to teach can be remembered  by the mnemonic  LEADS. These include Logic, Examples, Antonyms, Definition, and Synonyms. I also introduce Word Parts (base words, prefixes, and suffixes) later on in the year, after we have had plenty of practice with Latin and Greek Roots . ......

        Teachers know that having a rich vocabulary is an asset to students as readers and as writers. We know that students who are avid readers, tend to have more advanced vocabularies than those who don't and that vocabulary acquisition is a wonderful side effect of reading quality books.          One of our jobs as teachers is to not only encourage our students to love reading but to provide instruction and activities which promote vocabulary development.          Since students need repeated exposure (experts say 8 - 12 times!) for words to be able to be understood and used successfully, students need lots and lots of practice interacting with words. Variety is key, as the more fresh and the more fun we can make it, the greater the engagement.         Here are 23 vocabulary activities you can use with your students to help reinforce vocabulary. Most activities may be played as a who......

                         Finding the main idea is one of the most challenging reading strategies to teach. On the surface, it doesn't seem that hard... I mean, we're just asking students to find what the passage is mostly about.          But when faced with the task, kids not only have to comprehend the passage, but they have to figure out which information is the most important, without getting sidetracked in the details.         Main idea is one of those concepts which needs to be revisited over and over. Even though upper grade students have been introduced to the main idea, they still need so much practice, especially as the text complexity is increased.           I've found that for the main idea (as with any difficult concept really) it's always good to use a variety of tools and activities in order to reach as many kids i......