Running Record & Lesson Plan

You can view my running record here.

Bracha is a 7-year-old with great reading skills. She whizzes through a level M passage, from the reading A-Z collection, and scores amazingly well. When she comes across difficult words, she slows down and sounds them out carefully . She has a great grasp of phonetics and impressed me with her fluency rate. Nevertheless, when I ask her questions she seems confused and has a hard time comprehending the text. I notice that she struggles with recalling details and retelling the events in a correct sequence. If a child is an avid reader yet fails to comprehend what the passage is all about, not much is being accomplished. Therefore, my aim is to build her comprehension skills. I will work on the Common Core Standard RL.2.1; ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.

First, I will explain to Bracha that sounding out words correctly is just one aspect of a good reader and discuss the importance of comprehending what we read. I will let her know that today we will focus on improving her comprehension skills.

I will begin with allowing Bracha to pick her favorite book (to pique her interest) and we will read the book together. Although she has read the book numerous times, it is a great way to reinforce her memory skills and reading comprehension. Once we are done reading the book we will play a fun activity together.

Spinner activity:

 I will take a spinner that is divided into four sections. One section is labeled, “Who?”, another, “What?”, another, “When?”, and the last one, “Where?”. She will spin the spinner and depending where the arrow lands, I will ask her questions accordingly.  For example:

Who are the characters in the story?

Where did the story take place?

What happened in the story?
Once I am certain she has a basic understanding of the details of the book and is ready to move on, I will present her with a book to read aloud to me. This time I will select a book that is unfamiliar to her.

She will read the title aloud. In order to activate her background knowledge to the content of the text, we will discuss what she already knows about this topic. I will encourage her to make some predictions on what she thinks will happen in the story.

Then, we will take a picture walk to preview the illustrations, so she familiarizes herself with the book, while we discuss probable events that the pictures seem to be telling.

 Story ball:

For this activity we will go outdoors. I will give Bracha a beach ball and marker, so she can write each of the following questions on a different section of the ball: “Where?” “Who?” “Beginning?” “Middle?” “End?” and “Favorite part?”.  I will toss the ball to her, after catching it she will have to answer the question written on the strip which her right hand falls on. She will have to recall facts such as, “Where did the story take place?” “Who were the main characters?” “What happened in the beginning, middle, and end?”  “What was her favorite part?”

I will offer her clues if she has a hard time recalling an event. Once she gets better at it we will toss the ball quicker making it more active and fun!

Story necklace:

To ensure Bracha can retell the story in the correct sequence, I will give her 3 colored index cards, titled First, Next and Lsat.

As she retells the story, she will write down what happened first on the card that says first and then write what happened next on the card titled next. On card number 3 she’ll have to write what happened last.

We will discuss it to see if she wrote over the story in the correct order. Then we will string the cards on a colorful yarn to create an adorable necklace she can proudly wear!