If your students have been using Read Naturally since the beginning of the year, they should now have a pretty good handle on using the program. You should be able to spend your time monitoring their performance and differentiating instruction instead of reminding them what they need to be doing. In addition to checking their hot and cold timings to look at their progress (and making any necessary adjustments), you should be checking how each student is doing on the comprehension questions. Is the student getting at least 80% of the questions correct? Do you have some students who are consistently getting certain questions wrong?
Each Read Naturally story in the Sequenced and Idioms series includes common types of comprehension questions: main idea, literal, vocabulary, inferential, and short answer. It is important for students to understand the different types of questions and have strategies to answer them.
Angela Walker Foster from Anderson County Schools in Lawrenceburg, KY has a great instructional strategy for teaching the comprehension questions and has graciously shared it with us. She has developed a short lesson to teach each type of question. For each lesson you will need to provide your students with the same five Read Naturally stories. They will work through these same stories together learning how to answer each of the five questions.
View or print this PDF file to learn more about Angela’s strategy:
A Teacher’s Strategy for Teaching the Comprehension Questions
Do you have your own tips for teaching the comprehension questions or another part of the program to students? Or do you have questions about this part of the program? Please share or ask away in the comments section!
Share your student’s success story—nominate him or her for our Star of the Month award. Win a Barnes & Noble gift card for the student and a Read Naturally gift certificate for your class!
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