Meeting Three

In my third meeting with my struggling reader I focused the instruction around questioning skills you can use to help retell a story/text. This particular student struggles to retell text she has read recently. I started the lesson by asking the reader why is it important to use questioning while reading text. The students’ response was that she didn’t know. Together we discussed that sufficient readers use questioning to help them comprehend the text. The student and I also talked about how questioning can be used as a tool to help a reader retell a story.

I began my lesson by providing my student with some questions she should keep in mind while reading. I told her these are questions she can think about when she is trying to retell a passage or text she has read.  The questions were…

·         How does the story begin?

·         Where does the story occur?

·         Who are the main characters? Which was most important?

·         What is one important problem in the story?

·         What important things are happening in the story?

·         What’s the order of events?

·         How is the problem solved? How does the story end?

Together we discussed how these questions can help a reader retell a passage they have read. I provided the student with a print out that contained the questions above so she could use it as a resource until she became familiar and comfortable with them.   I then introduced The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. While reading the texted I implemented the questions we previously discussed through guided practice and think alouds. I then released the student to take over the questioning and think alouds, while the text was being read we would also stop and talk about the content. When we finished the book I used a Fiction Retelling Scoring Form to check my readers’ comprehension of the book. Before having her retell the story I reminded her to keep in mind the questions we discussed earlier. The reader scored a seventeen out of twenty-one on the scoring form. This puts her under the skilled level. I found this interesting because it is usually like pulling teeth to get her to retell a text or passage. I believe by providing the student with information, guided examples, and the right tools the student was able to successfully retell The Curious Garden.