As a beginning educator, I did a ton of planning for my reading instruction. While teaching kindergarten, we had to create all of the instruction from scratch. We had no series, and really no guidance other than we knew we were going to teach a “letter a week”. We bought little leveled readers and phonetic readers, gathered trade books, found read alouds, and copied take home books. We had many important components of a good reading program. We were somewhat successful; all of our students knew their 26 letters and sounds and could sound out some words, knew rhyming, and enjoyed reading. My true growth came, however, when we transitioned to a reading series that brought an equal focus to phonics and comprehension.
Intentional Instruction relies on the premise that each of the five critical components of reading are purposefully and strategically taught. Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension are all vital to reading success. Here is how I used each text type to support Intentional Instruction in each realm.
Differentiated Text and Decodable Readers- These were purposefully used to instruct in Phonics and target specific skills students needed. Text were short and matched to the lagging skill. This is where new skills were introduced. This was instructional text.
Decodable Readers and Leveled Text- These were purposefully put out for student to read after the specific skills were taught. They were designed to be short enough that once a student decoded the text, they could be read through a few times to build fluency. This was practice text for fluency and decoding.
Basal Reader or Common Text (articles, etc.)- This was used to introduce or revisit the comprehension strategy. It needs to be an on-level or slightly above grade level text. All students use the common text. It needs to be short enough that it can be completed in 1-2 sittings. It is read aloud to students as they follow along. My primary purpose is not decoding or fluency with this text, so the first time through is teacher read. Subsequent reads can be independent or read aloud depending on student skill set. We never round robin read, as we are modeling fluency and focused on comprehension. This is also a text that we can work on vocabulary without losing the flow of the story. I considered this Teaching Text.
Interactive Read Aloud- This is a longer text where we model and demonstrate the seven comprehension strategies. We reinforce strategies without teaching new ones. We discuss vocabulary and rich text, but do not use the read aloud to introduce new vocabulary strategies so that the focus is on the text. The text should be above student level, this is where scaffolding and modelling takes place. This was Modelling Text.
Independent Student Text- This is the teacher guided/student selected text at student appropriate level where student independently practice the “whole package”. This is when teacher conferences revolve around deeper thinking and text engagement. This is not SSR or DEAR. Teacher/peer interaction is critical to independent text.
I did all of these in my classroom, but under the umbrella of teaching reading. When I became more targeted with what I was doing with each text, I became much more effective in my instruction.
Dodging the Pendulum 