Connecting Theory & Practice Week 6

Educators at my school site have noticed a decreasing trend in reading comprehension and engagement. This is especially the case in English and Science for 6th graders. Educators have decided to implement new interventions to try to increase engagement, understanding, and comprehension within all populations of 6th graders (SPED, MLL, and General Education). Some strategies implemented were directly correlated to the strategies we are learning in class. The first strategy was previewing and predicting. The educator provided a sheet of paper for the students to preview the text they were about to engage with and read. Students were instructed to look at the title, pictures, key vocab words, headings, and sections. This gave students a glance at what they were going to read and prepare for the content. This looked very similar to figure 6.2 in the Kopp 2015 text."In addition to building background knowledge, explicit vocabulary instruction increases reading comprehension, helps students communicate more effectively, improves the range and specificity of student writing, enables students to communicate for effectively, and helps students develop a deeper understanding of concepts (Kopp, 2017)". Previewing and predicting assignments can go hand-in-hand with explicit vocabularyinstruction to provide a well-rounded reading intervention for students to make connections, activate prior knowledge, and prepare for the reading/task at hand.

Currently, students at my school site are unable to independently read the text and comprehend the materials. Along with the textbook, the students were provided a copy of the text with every 5th word blanked out. As students read the text they were expected to fill in the blanks of the second copy. This strategy is called a Cloze Read. This strategy helped students with engagement, reading comprehension, and increasing content knowledge. I thought this was so beneficial for students. They had to be actively reading the text to be successful with their assignment. I will be implementing the Cloze Reading strategy in many different classrooms and for different contexts. Regularly incorporating cloze reading into instruction is a versatile and effective strategy. It provides scaffolding for all students including SPED and MLLs. Cloze reading is a sheltered and structured approach to reading that supports language and content learning.