Within this page,the complex processes involved in reading
comprehension are divided into three categories (much like the National
Reading Panel Report). The categories include vocabulary instruction,
text comprehension instruction, and teacher preparation and comprehension
strategies instruction. You'll also find useful websites that students
can visit to practice their use of comprehension strategies with fiction
and non-fiction texts at a variety of reading levels.
Vocabulary Instruction
- Helping
Children at Home with Vocabulary Building from the Child Development
Institute is a helpful outline of suggestions for parents as "language
models"
- Homonyms
from Alan Cooper is an entire website devoted to types of homonyms
with an ever growing list of homonyms to learn about.
- How
to Really Teach Vocabulary: The Clarifying Routine written by Edwin
Ellis and Theresa Farmer
- Ideas
for Using Vocabulary from Middlesmoor Teachers in Yorkshire, England
includes over 50 instructional strategies for teaching vocabulary sets
to students and two categories of vocabulary sets
- Strategies
for Teaching Vocabulary summarizes Dodie Ainslie's article Word
Detectives in The Reading Teacher.
- Teaching
Vocabulary is an opinion piece on using the Word of the Day strategy
- Two
Dozen Tips for Teaching Vocabulary from Joseph Pettigrew
- ProTeacher's
Index of Vocabulary Websites provides links to 15 resources, most
of which can be used by students.
- Vocabulary
Cartoons offers items to purchase as well as vocabulary lists for
students at various levels and a free chapter to use.
- Vocabulary
Acquisition Synthesis of Research was prepared by the National Center
to Improve the Tools of Educators.
- Ways
to Teach Vocabulary from the Resource Room includes multisensory
activity ideas, a word
parts exercise, and suggestions for categorizing
words.
- Word
Play by Judi Wolinsky highlights atleast 100 online resources to
learn more about words, their origins, their meanings, their spellings
and lots more.
- Writing
Den includes audio clips and great content
for enhancing comprehension at the word, sentence and paragraph level.
- Vocabulary
Learning and Speaking Activities from Angelo Jo for Forum.
- Vocabulary
Instructional Tips
- Excellent
Vocabulary Resource List from includes some websites that use literature
and others that encourage play with words and language.
- For Student Use:
Word Central
from Merrium-Webster is a fun, interactive environment for daily buzzwords,
rhyming dictionaries, and much more. Click on Educators for a nice overview.
- Focusing on Words
and Word Explorations
helps students enhance their English vocabulary skills by focusing
on the Latin and Greek elements used in English.
- Vocabulary University
provides many, many vocabulary activities that help prepare students
for standardized testing.
- The
Fix Express for Smart Surfers provides a daily thought-provoking
quotation, vocabulary word, educational trivia and a "this-day-in-history-type"
digest.
- For English Language Learners:
Text Comprehension Instruction
- 12
Tips on how to improve reading comprehension (part of Donald Martin's
booklet on How to Be A Successful Student)
- Comprehension
Instruction: What Make Sense Now, What Might Make Sense Soon, by
Michael Pressley as a summary for Reading Online.
- Reading
Comprehension: What Works, by P. David Pearson. Feb. 1994 issue
of Educational Leadership.
- Improving
the reading comprehension of high school students includes a list
of online resources compiled by Antonio D'Onofrio from New Jersey
- Effective
Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension by Nell Duke and
P. David Pearson; also Developing
Comprehension in the Primary Grades (.pdf) as presented by Duke
& Pearson to the Michigan Reading Association
- P. David Pearson's Balancing
Authenticity and Strategy Awareness in Comprehension Instruction
- Learning
to Learn Reading Comprehension Models from University of Toronto
- Teaching
Literacy in High School in New South Wales provides a glimpse into
this high school classroom and many suggestions for comprehension activities
like seven strips, timelines, vocabulary cline, etc.
- How
to Become a Better Reader is a helpful collection of advice sheets
on Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's web site aimed at
helping students who struggle with reading assignments.
- School
Home Links Reading Kit from Compact for Reading
- Varying
Reading Strategies is a simple table that highlights reading strategies
to use for different purposes
- All America Reads offers various before, during, and after-reading strategies to improve reading comprehension for students.
- The Textmapping Project is a non-profit organization serving as a resource to classroom teachers to "improve reading comprehension skills instruction." Textmapping is a graphic organizer technique that has been used to teach reading comprehension skills in mainstream, ESL, and special needs classes at all levels.
Teacher Preparation and Comprehension
Strategies Instruction
Websites for Comprehension Practice
-
Reading
A-Z special preview of 28 leveled books for guided and independent
reading for beginning readers. You can download and print all of them out.
-
Reading
Comprehension Resources for struggling readers from The Resource Room
-
Fluency Through
Fables provides six fables online six fables for students to read and
then completes some online comprehension exercises.
-
Country Reports
is an excellent and comprehensive online reference website that provides
lots of content area text organized within a database.
-
CNN NewsStories
are current news stories accompanied by a range of multimedia interactive
activities (video clip, sound clips, read text online) to build reading
comprehension skills for older students.
-
CyberSurfari:
a bi-annual free, fun and safe Internet treasure hunt with lots of prizes.
Contests begin each year in October, February and June and students can
play individually or as a team from school or home.
- Merry Bee's Subject Chart offers a section entitled "comprehension" that provides free printable worksheets and online comprehension exercises. Other literacy topics include reading strategies, phonics, grammar, and websites for teachers.
-
New York Times
Learning Network Designed for Grades 3 and up, it includes news summaries,
a daily quiz, science questions, student letters to the editor, a crossword
puzzle, ask a reporter and lesson plan archive. Articles contain links
to vocabulary and geography "knowledge tools" to build background while
reading.
-
KidReach
Online Reading Center has many types of anticipation
guides for students to refer to as they read new books.
-
KIDS:
Kids Identifying and Discovering Sites encourages students to articipate
in this ongoing, cooperative effort of classrooms in which students, under
the supervision of teachers, discover, evaluate, and review useful curricular-related
Internet resources. Students develop their research and evaluation skills
and help produce an authentic, important project for other students and
their teachers.
-
Ranger
Rick features a New This Month section with short articles about a
variety of topics concerning animals and nature.
-
Current events and news with Scholastic
NewsZone, Weekly
Reader and Time for Kids;
all wonderful reading materials for students reading in the content areas.
This page last updated on May, 2007. |
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