Practice Reading In Drag

Yes it is Tuesday again. My mom, Karen Montgomery is guest posting. Enjoy!

No, no, no…I am not talking about cross-dressing. I’m talking about something else, read on. A long time ago a professor taught me this strategy. It has worked incredibly well for so many children that I have taught and I wanted to share it with you. A great way to teach children to read is to model text that is above their grade level. That’s the drag. Wikipedia explains drag to a swimmer like this: “Drag suits are used for increasing the resistance against the swimmer in order to help adjust the swimmer to drag. This way, when swimmers switch back to normal practice suits they swim faster as a result of feeling less resistance.” I have proven time and time again that the same resistance works for reading comprehension and fluency. Here are the steps to take for success:

• Choose a book that is about 1 year above the actual grade level of reading. If you’re reading with a second grader, pull a third grade book.
• You will begin reading with the child in small portions. For a first grader, that might be two to three sentences and for a third grader, that might be a paragraph or two. Read with fluency and intonation (expression). Track (follow under each word with your finger) as you read it and have the child follow with their eyes. Make sure the passage is small enough for the child to see and memorize what you are saying.
• Have the child read the passage back to you. Since this is not a decoding (sound-it-out) strategy, if your child comes to a word they do not know, simply tell them the word. They too, need to track as they read.
• Do this “my turn, your turn” procedure for as long as you would normally have a practice reading session.
• To begin the next session, go back in the text a bit (a page or two) and remind them of what they read in a brief discussion. In the discussion, hit some of the key words that were in the text. Something like this…”Remember yesterday we read about a humpback whale singing a different song each season.” Have the child read the familiar text independently.
• Switch back to “my turn, your turn” when the child comes to new text. And, as the words become more and more familiar, make the “turns” larger and larger pieces of text.

Practice this strategy a few weeks and you’ll see a confident reader emerge. When your child practices above grade level (the drag), they will read “with less resistance” at their independent level. Remember, this is a site word, vocabulary building strategy. It is not a structure, decoding (phonics, spelling patterns, etc.) strategy. I’ll share some of those at a later time.

I’d love to hear how it’s going with this idea! It’s your turn, have fun!

On Your Mark, Get Set, TALK!

The following blog is written by my mom, Karen Montgomery. She will be guest posting regularly. She has a passion for education and will offer both teachers and moms lots of helpful insight on education. Enjoy!

For 10 years I worked for a large publisher. I was in classrooms all across America and I saw some pretty amazing teachers and practices. I also had a unique opportunity to study under Dr. Carolyn Brown while promoting her program, Breakthrough to Literacy. Brown's areas of specialization are Child Development, Language Acquisition, and Reading. My experiences and studies have helped me form some strong opinions about how children learn. I hope you’ll join me each Tuesday as I “guest blog” and share some of my ideas and best practices. The ideas I plan to share are things that you’ll be able to do with your very own children! The late Whitney Houston sang, “…teach them well and let them lead the way.” I say, “Let’s do it!”

Simplistically speaking, comprehension is an understanding of what we hear (spoken sentences & words, etc.) and see (written sentences & words, symbols, gestures, etc.). There are other things that build intellectual capacity like smelling and touching but, I think you get the idea without going into too much detail. Comprehension begins very soon after a child is born and believe it or not, children receive and understand information long before they can express what they know in words. Wouldn’t you agree, when you call your child’s name, they know to look right at you, smile, and respond with kicking feet? Umm, they understand.

So, the first advice from me is to build their comprehension with dialogue. Children can take in a mountain of words, but they must also practice using the words and concepts that they’re learning. This practice happens in conversation. You will help your child make sense of their world by having “talks.” Don’t just read the book, ask some questions about it. Ask your child about their day and repeat the sequence back to them. Talk about what they’re building, playing, reading, etc. I know you’re thinking by now that your child talks nonstop and talking is not an issue in your home. But, what I want you to do is a bit different from what you’re thinking. I want you to have a purposeful conversation each day. I want you to laugh, cry, explain, listen, and enjoy this exchange of dialogue. Both of you will talk and both of you will listen. There is huge research that supports this idea and I’ll leave it up to you to look it up (Hart & Risley, Meaningful Differences). Let me know your observations after a few tries.

And, until next time…on your mark, get set, TALK!