Reading Strategies and Activities for Under-Resourced Students

Objective 1: Phonemic Awareness

- Phonemic Segmentation

* Rubber Band Stretch:

Teacher models with a large rubber band how to stretch out a word as the word is said.

Example: /bbbb-/ooo-/yyyy/

Teacher models with stretched out rubber band how to bring rubber band back to its original length and says the word fast: /boy/

Students pretend to stretch the rubber bands as they say the sounds in different words.

* Stretchy Names

Students and teacher clap and say a verse for each child in class: ADAM,ADAM. how do you do? Who's that friend right next to you?

Students and teacher say the next  student's name very slowly, stretching palms far apart as the word is stretched: /RRRR-/oooo-/bbbb/.

Clap once quickly and say the name fast: /Rob/.

- Rhyming Words

* Silly Rhymes Big Book

Use the rhymes and rhyme charts around the classroom to create silly poems with the class.

Write the one-liner rhyme with the whole class in big letters on large chart paper.

Read aloud several times.

Use different voices. Have students sound and clap words.

Have a student or student illustrate the rhyme.

Repeat each week for another set of rhymes.

* Snap and Clap Rhymes

Begin with a simple clap and snap rhythm.

Get more complex as students move along in rhyming.

Clap Clap     Snap fall     Clap Clap     Snap ball

Clap Clap     Snap hall     Clap Clap     Snap small

Variation is the "I Say, You Say" game:

I say cat. You say _____. I say bed. You say ____.

Objective 2: Phonics

- Blending at the Beginning: This activity allows the teacher and students to use music to practice phonics skills. This activity should be sung to the tune of Three Blind Mice.

"A" says /a/

"A" says /a/

The letter "a" says /a/

A says /a/

/a/ as in hat

/e/ as in Ed          E says /e/

/i/ as in it             I says /i/

/o/ as in top         O says /o/

/u/ as in up          U says /u/

* Concentration: This activity allows students to turn cards over to make matches with cards that have the same words on it. The teacher makes pairs of words with the cards. For example:

                      red                                           red

* Tic-Tac-Toe: Put words on the square. The player must say the word before earning the square.

* Swapping: On the board, write a sample word that begins with a consonant. Direct the students to sound, blend, and identify the word. Sawp the initial consonant with another consonant and ask the students to say the new word. The teacher should demonstrate the sounding and blending of the letters fo the students. Repeat this exercise often. After students have mastered swapping the intial consonant, try to replace the final consonants. Focus on one letter position at a time.

Objective 3: Fluency

* Modeling Fluent Reading: This requires an experienced reader reading a passage out loud. This allows students to hear appropriate phrasing and intonation while reading words automatically. You can expand this strategy by inviting guests into your classroom to read to your students.

* Choral Reading: All students read in unison with the teacher. Passages should not be too long and should be at the independent reading level of most students.

* Echo Reading: Select a grade level passage that is on the instructional level. The teacher will read a sentence, paragraph, or page aloud and then the students will chorally read the same piece.

* Whisper Reading: The student will quietly read a text aloud to themselves. Students can also use "whisper phones" if available.

* Reader's Theater: Students rehearse an perform a pay for peers or others. Scripts are read by the students and derived from the books that are rich in dialogue. Students act our the parts of their characters by reading lines or by acting as the narrator. In this activity, reader's are exposed to the material several times which allows them to practice fluency.

Objective 4: Vocabulary

* Semantic Mapping: This activity is a visual organizational technique that displays ideas according to the way they relate to one another categorically. In this activity, the teacher introduces a key word and asks students to write that word in middle of their map. Students then predict what they think the word means and write their ideas on their map. After finishing the reading the text, the students will decide what information is correct and incorrect on their map. After students have corrected their maps, students will begin to group ideas into subcategories.

* Thinking Tree: This activity shows the relationships among vocabulary terms. After the teacher has shared a piece of literature with students by either having them read independently or as a group, the teacher provides students with a list of terms from the text. Students are then asked to arrange the terms heirarchically into a thinking tree. Students list the terms by showing supercordinate, subordinate, or coordinate relationships.

Objective 5: Comprehension

* Prediction Walk: Students are allowed to "take a walk" through a book. Students look at pictures and then predict what they think the book is going to be about. The teacher asks students questions about their predictions and allows the students to give feedback on their thoughts. The students will then read the story and decide if their predictions were correct.

*KWL Strategy: Students will reflect and brainstorm what they Know, Wish to discover, and Learned for an expository text.

*Visualizing the Text Through Drawing: As a teacher reads a text, the students are asked to close their eyes and develop a mental picture of what is being read. After the teacher finishes reading the story, students are allowed to draw a pictureof what they saw and write about how their drawing relates to the text.

These strategies have been adopted from Chapter 1 of All Children Can Read: Effectively Educating the Under-Resourced Child by Thea Williams-Black.