The What and How

Who needs this type of instruction?

Children who are at benchmark on fluency measures.

What materials are needed for this instruction?

• Highly engaging texts at the top end of the grade level band.
• A knowledge of comprehension strategies.
  1. visualize events
  2. arrive at logical inferences
  3. make reasonable predictions
  4. retell important events in a narrative
  5. identify main ideas
  6. summarize content
  7. synthesize across texts
• Tier 2 (fiction) or 3 (non-fiction) vocabulary words
• Graphic Organizers for students to use to help comprehend texts

How does this instruction look?

Since the primary focus of this instruction is to grow students as comprehenders and to build their world and vocabulary knowledge, teacher talk is dedicated to enhancing these areas.

Upon conclusion of the text teachers can administer an assessment to see if students can independently comprehend grade level text (Walpole, McKenna, and Philippakos, 2011).

*For more detailed and indepth information regarding small group instruction for K-5 readers visit the open education resource created by Dr. Sharon Walpole and Dr. Michael McKenna, Comprehensive Reading Solutions.