I just accepted a job as a 5th grade reading tutor. It'll be 3 days a week for 2 hours. I'll get the students that are just on the cusp of passing the TAKS (50s/60s). These students are excelling in some objectives, but there's one or two objectives they are continuing to fail at. I'll have a resource book to get plans from, but will probably be coming back here to ask for ways to supplement those resources. TIA
Ask away... By coincidence, this week I am starting an after-school tutoring program for some of our grade 6 students. I'll be working with 10-12 students who are struggling somewhat and the goal will be to increase Reading Comprehension as well as their enjoyment of reading and their confidence as readers. I am going "back to the basics" and focusing on comprehension strategies and word attack skills. I'm still working on pulling things together, but I'm more than willing to help if I can.
Thanks! This is an age group that I really wanted to work with as I would love to teach 5th grade! Once I get the resource book and know what objectives the kids need work on, I'll be on here with lots of questions. I appreciate the help!
So Wednesday will be my first day with the students. I"ll have them Mon, Wed, Thur from 930-1100. The students will have a TAKS Reading Coach workbook. I've used this series for second grade. I met with one of the teachers today and she said it would mainly be going through reading strategies. So what are some reading strategies that you use for your 5th graders? In second grade we had them 1) circle the title, 2) Read through the passage twice, 3) Read through each question, 4) Eliminate answers that cannot be right, 5)Find the answer in the passage and underline.
Those are a lot of the general strategies we use as well... don't forget to make them pay attention to text features, my kids always skip over those. More than likely, you'll be focusing on certain skills such as summarizing, main idea, compare/contrast, making conclusions and drawing inferences. Each of those has more specific strategies (and graphic organizers) attached to them. You'll also want to focus on the vocabulary that is underlined in the passages... I like making my kids write clue words or their own definition on the side while they read so the mult. choice answers don't confuse them later. Some TAKS-specific books that I like are Step Up to the TAKS (nice short passages), TAKS Master and TAKS Coach. The hardest part of the 5th grade test is the paired readings, traditionally that's where kids do the worst, along with inferences & generalizations. Hope that helps!
I don't know anything about the test you are preparing your students for, but in my tutoring group, we are focussing on before, during and after reading strategies--the ones that noreenk mentioned as well as visualization, questioning, and making connections.
TAKS Coach is the book that we're using. I thought about doing some vocabulary work with them, but wasn't for sure how. Thank you for the suggestion of having them write their own definition. I'll be using that one! Keep those ideas coming!
an absolutely AWESOME resource that my coworkers discovered this year is www.fcrr.org. if you go to the following link and scroll down to Book One and Book Two, they have excellent games and graphic organizers for skill-building and centers. hope this helps! http://www.fcrr.org/Curriculum/studentCenterActivities45.htm
What a great resource, noreenk--thanks for sharing! I'll be printing off the Comprehension modules at school today.
Here are some of the strategies I use: Word Webs: Used for vocabulary questions. Students make a web with the underlined word in the middle. Then they write words that came around the underlined word in the passage on the web. The students use the words on their web to help them figure out the word. I also tell the students to go back and put the answer choice they picked into the sentence. Does that word make sense in the sentence? Get The Gist: This is used for questions about main idea. In 10 words or less, students write a GTG for the passage. We work on this a lot when we do our daily read alouds of picture books. I've also used it when reading a chapter book. We write the GTG of each chapter. BME: This is used for summary. After students read the passage they need to write a BME-BI for the story (Beginning, Middle, End, Big Idea-theme). This is another thing we work on with read alouds. We write a summary for the book and then break the summary into the BME. The students do this immediately after reading the passage (before they even see the summary question.) When students get to the summary question, they review their BME and then search for the best answer choice. Students look for the answer that has a BME in that order. If it is missing a part, in the wrong order, or has false information that choice gets eliminated. I also have the students write the theme of the passage because these questions often appear in the test. Again, we do this with read-alouds! Cover the Answers: This is working VERY WELL for me! I have the students cover the answer choices and write down their thinking and what they think the correct answer is before they look at the answer choices. In my tutoring groups I have even blocked out the answer choices on their answer sheets before I copy them, so that it forces the students to come up with their own answers, then after we write our answers, we look at the answer choices and find the correct choice. The students have learned that almost all the time they have the correct answer before they even look at the answer choices. I like doing this strategy because a lot of the time, students let the answer choices confuse them! This proves to the students that they do know the answers! Hope this is helpful!!!
Yes, THANK YOU TXTCHR!! The students are using TAKS Coach. Do you think these strategies will work for those passages?
