Does your student struggle through a book one word at a time?‍

Even if your student can’t do the reading yet, you can let them do the thinking. 

If you are teaching a kid to ride a bike, your end goal is for them to ride by themselves. During the learning process, you may have to help them balance but they need to pedal. The same is true of reading. The end goal is to read a book on their own but as they are learning, you may have to read to them or ask questions but they have to do some thinking.

Here are two ways to read to a student, and have them do the thinking. 

• Have them retell familiar stories  - After you read the book to them, have them retell the story. You can focus on the order of events, how a character changes, or just a summary of the story. 
• Cloze Read  (fill in the blank) - Read the majority of a sentence, but stop when you get to a predictable word. “Five little monkeys jumped on the ____” “One fell off and bumped his ____”. You get the picture.

Here’s what not to do:

• Don’t point to every word on a page and ask a student to sound each one out, if they are not ready. At this point it's much more important to focus on the big picture.

So remember, even if your student can’t do the reading yet, you can let them do the thinking.

Why? This allows them to begin building the comprehension skills that they need and it gives them access to any book that sparks their curiosity.

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