Unit 2: Lesson 3: What Do I Say?
Objectives
- Given several varied grade level learning progressions and text characteristics, participants will analyze documents to determine appropriate grade level questions and prompts for conferring.
- Participants will build and organize a "tool kit" or quick reference guide to use as a resource when conferring based on the grade level / appropriate needs of their own students.
Introduction to Lesson 3: What Do I Say?
Now that you know when you’re going to meet with students, it’s important to know what you’re going to say. For some teachers, conferring can be difficult because teachers often claim “I don’t know what to say,” or “I don’t know what skills to work on with them.”
Whether you know the book the student is reading well, or not at all, as the teacher, you’ll need to be prepared with some grade-level or reading-level questions that you can ask your students. Of course we never know what kids will say, so if conducting a research and teach compliment, you’ll need to really observe student answers and practice thinking quickly in order to provide the child with meaningful feedback or plan an effective teaching point.
To get prepared for effective conferring, you’ll start this lesson by exploring leveled text characteristics that will help you to understand exactly what skills children in your classroom should be working on. In addition, you’ll read some leveled comprehension questions from Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell that will help to shape your conferences.
Throughout this lesson, please print any of the leveled comprehension questions or text characteristics resources (appropriate for your grade level/students) that can be housed in your conferring binder. In the next lesson, I discuss essential items for your conferring binder, but these two documents, in addition to your schedule are definitely essential!
Let’s go!
Ready, Set, Learn!
First, take a moment to think about your students. Are your students primarily reading on grade level…What are those benchmark levels?
The most common grade level and book level correlation chart can be found to the right (click on it to enlarge). It was created by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell and can be seen in their book entitled “The Continuum of Literacy Learning” (2007). In addition to a lot of great resources in their book, Fountas and Pinnell also have a website (fountasandpinnell.com) filled with great information! If you feel that your students span a wide range of levels, you’ll want to be sure to really understand features and characteristics of each different level. If you’re trying to teach a reading skill that is much more complex than what can be practiced in the child’s book, you most likely won’t be so successful.
For the next few minutes, browse at the text characteristics established by Fountas and Pinnell (2007) to learn what kinds of skills your students should be able to apply in their books.
Now that you’ve looked at characteristics of text by level, you may have a better idea of what kinds of skills or teaching points would be appropriate for your students.
Then, come the questions of what do I actually SAY? What if I know nothing about their book? Relax! It’s OKAY if you’re in this boat.
For grades 2-5, it’s very likely that you won’t actually be able to glance through the whole story in the first thirty seconds of meeting with a child. Because of this, sometimes it really is impossible to know if students are giving answers that are 100% accurate. With conferring, open ended questions that lead students to more questions can give you some of the best information about a child’s reading levels, especially their abilities with inferring.
If you are hoping to check in or work on a specific skill with a child, my suggestion for you is that you have some questions that would assess this skill in mind and you may start your conference that way. To support teachers in their reading conferring, in their book “The Continuum of Literacy Learning (2007), Fountas and Pinnell suggest a list of leveled comprehension questions, which can be used during conferences for any level book.
At this time, take a few minutes to glance at the comprehension questions suggested for students in YOUR class!
Leveled Comprehension Questions
Now that you have some reference documents that can make conferring life easier, I suggest putting those documents together to form a special toolkit (or conferring binder). Please see the assignment below for advice on creating your own toolkit.
Assignment
To better prepare for future conferences, I suggest pausing to now construct a toolkit or conferring binder that can be used in your classroom on a daily basis. To view my exemplar reading conferring tool kit (or binder) first, please click the link below. Please keep in mind that my methods for note taking and scheduling may not be applicable to your classroom, but you can still observe components of my toolkit and how they support me during conferring time.
File:Slattery-Reading Conferring for the K5 Classroom- Lesson 3.pptx
When you have finished your toolkit, please continue on to Lesson 4 of the mini course!
Lesson 3 References
Chart
Fountas, I. & Pinnell, G.S. (2007). The continuum of literacy learning, grades K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Retrieved from https://www.rtsd.org/cms/lib/PA01000218/Centricity/Domain/797/Introduction%20to%20the%20Continuum%20Feb%2017%2012.pdf
Comprehension Questions
Fountas, I. & Pinnell, G.S. (2007). The continuum of literacy learning, grades K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Retrieved from https://marcy.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/fpcomprehensionquestionsteText:
Text Characteristics
Fountas, I. & Pinnell, G.S. (2007). The continuum of literacy learning, grades K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Retrieved from http://schools.cms.k12.nc.us/corneliusES/Documents/Fountas-Pinnell%20Guided%20Reading%20Text%20Level%20Descriptions.pdf
Page Links
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