Quick Tips from the Experts to Help Your Kids with Reading Comprehension Free Activities Included

hello parents and educators as you homeschool more through this covin 19 crisis are you finding that your students are having more difficulties with reading comprehension or understanding what they're reading hi I'm Laurie Ausmus and I'm literacy consultant and an author of eight books on teaching reading and writing spend lot of time in schools with students even good readers who struggle with reading comprehension so want to share with you this wonderful technique that has four steps predicted clarified question and summarized we call it the Fab Four that you can use just for with any text that your students are reading just for few minutes day and what you'll see is big difference in their reading comprehension especially if you do it consistently between now and the end of the school year would like to also mention that the lessons I'm going to share are come out of book called close reading with paired text that wrote with professor named dr. Tim sinski it can be used at home or at school to help students with this method but again you can use it with anything that you already have that your school has provided you with I'd like to talk about some of the problems that students encounter with reading comprehension sometimes they read really quickly but they don't remember what they read or they can't answer comprehension questions or they really don't know how to figure out tricky words or they read so slowly they forget everything that they've read so let's get started with Fab Four and I'll show you how it works we're basically going to be reading an article together and you can print it from your packet that the teachers given you or something online you could even use page out of textbook if you wanted and you're going to need couple of pencils or crayons different colors so that the student can underline and Mark as you're reading also want to mention that you're going to be taking turns that you take turn in the child takes turn that is why it is called originally the Fab Four is called reciprocal teaching because it's turn taking with the student and the teacher so let's get started the first step is to predict what the article or the story is going to be about and in this case it's called life in the desert so want to have the student look at the title and also look at the picture and also glance at the words and like to use my finger like this and say just glance around and kind of look around you know it's what you do when you're standing in line waiting to buy toilet paper and you're scrolling through your phone you're kind of glancing at articles you're glancing to get clues so let's glance you might see the word plants see the word animals am see ten inches so think I'm going to learn here's the language that is off the bookmark that we're going to be using and that we provided you with that goes with this lesson think we will learn about plants and animals in the desert and how they survive because saw those clues then you say to the child what do you think you're going to learn and they say well think I'm gonna learn about the cactus because see picture of the cactus so we make our predictions and that is our first glance at the text the second time is not glance it's an actual read and we're going to clarify words as we read tricky words that we think are difficult and so when we read know you're wondering well how am going to read with my child my child this might be too hard for them to read or they're reluctant to read or they're still you know struggling with reading so let the child choose these are some of the choices we have we can take turns read paragraph you read paragraph can read the whole thing and you can follow along the first time you can read it silently yourself or we can read in unison where we read together exactly at the same time kind of like chant which is very good for fluency by the way so let the child choose they'll be less reluctant to do it if they choose how it's going to be read and how you're going to read it together our purpose for reading this time since we've already predicted is to clarify and look for tricky words that would be difficult that are kind of tricky and difficult to figure out so begin reading the first paragraph one of the most interesting biomes in the world is the desert already tricky word so I'm going to search it's called biomes and I'm going to use this language off the bookmark tricky where it is biomes we can figure it out by what are some ways to figure it out the first way is not to avoid it but to look through it and look and sound it out by the word bio is like biology right know that word something about life and then I'm gonna read on and reread the sentence and see how it goes one of the most interesting biomes in the world is the desert think it means environment then the trial takes the pen and when they read their paragraph they're going the next paragraph they're gonna circle word maybe they're gonna pick the word protection and talk about there's the word protect in it and shun and then reread that plant some plants such as cactuses have spines useful for protection and talk about what they think it means if the child is reluctant to circle word and they say know all the words got it say well pick the longest word pick the trickiest word that would be tricky for younger child they buy into that all the time so we have predicted we have clarified and now we're going to read this again and this time our purpose is to ask questions and we're gonna kind of quiz each other to see if we're paying attention and we might ask question each person gets to choose what question they want to ask about what part so I'm gonna ask the question about this paragraph and might say hmmm how are the spines useful for protection with plants and the child has to reread the paragraph and put quote put question mark next to it and underline the sentence that I'm asking the question about and they have to reread it and figure it out then it's the child's turn and they're going to put question mark and ask question about the next paragraph so when we're done we've taken turns asking each other questions and we've also might ask discussion question like wonder wonder what it would be like being in the desert you know and being you know overnight in the desert and what would we like so we can ask all kinds of questions good readers this when they read it's important for students to ask questions last but not least the fourth time that we've read this is going to be summary and the student can talk about what they learned but they need to skim it and read it again we both do and then perhaps we're gonna use some of these starters here's what learned my favorite part was or we might even hold up our hands and say what are five facts we learned about this text can only remember two things better reread it okay so at the end of the lesson you've covered all four strategies that good readers use the Fab Four and you've taken turns it's an excellent lesson for improving reading comprehension thank you very much I'm Laurie Ausmus hope you'll watch the next video where explain how to use the same method with poem thank you