Showera's List: CAFE - Comprehension Videos

As students become more sophisticated readers, Cause and Effect can be a strategy to assist with comprehension. Students are expected to have command over this strategy on many of our state assessments.
In this video, Gail uses a simple text with Brayden in order to model Cause and Effect. He adds his own thinking and goes deeper with the meaning. As the conference closes, Gail anchors the strategy to comprehension, and shares that we utilize this strategy to deepen our understanding of what we are reading.
She leaves Brayden with an assignment; to look for examples of Cause and Effect in his own reading and contemplate how it helps with his understanding.
This is a goal for each of our students, to be able to transfer their learning from one context or reading to another.

How do we help students understand and utilize the strategy of Determining Importance? Christie tells her students the secret...we have to know why authors write.

After turning and talking, Christie's students share out a couple of the authors purposes they discussed. Christie then nudges them to give examples of books and titles that validate their thinking.

Our state learning standards require proof of student mastery. Christie weaves the grade level expectations into each of her lessons throughout the year, which is evident in this lesson when she requires them to substantiate their thinking and learning.

In this video Janet models three strategies in combination. Author's Purpose and Text Features help deepen comprehension, and Paying Close Attention to Pictures helps expand vocabulary. The story she has selected supports the strategy instruction beautifully. Watch how she introduces these three strategies, involves the students in the learning, and then wraps up the lesson for the children by identifying the strategies and their use.

Our school is upgrading to SMART boards and projection devices. Imagine this lesson with the book projected so everyone can see all the text features? We are excited for the many ways technology supports instruction and learning.

One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of being a teacher is not just imparting knowledge, but creating thinkers. That's why we so appreciate being in a classroom where teachers like Carrie are doing just that, moving students past surface level responses to deeper thinking.

Carrie's higher readers are quick to identify if the authors purpose is to persuade, entertain, inform, or explain…however, they aren't really able to go further. She is looking for a way to move them to deeper thinking and an ability to articulate and record what they discover about the message an author has for them.

Pam meets with Nicole to discuss her progress with summary writing. They have met many times before and are very comfortable with each other and the safe, supportive nature of a conference.

Nicole is focusing on important details to help her write effective summaries. She is able to determine importance when reading non-fiction, but is less successful with fiction. Through Pam's gentle probing, supportive statements and definition of summary, Nicole leaves with the adequate tools to practice using this strategy independently. Notice Pam gives her an audience and accountabliity to complete this learning by letting her know she will read it when her reading response journal is turned in.

Ever wonder what a short, focused, jam packed conference looks like? Watch and listen below!

Summarizing is an important comprehension strategy. Not only does it help us remember what we read, but it helps us communicate with others regarding our reading. The students in this fourth grade class have been immersed in the strategy of Summarizing Text. They are proficient at finding the main events of their narrative text and are ready to be introduced to how we might use the same strategy with non-fiction text. Christie has them turn and talk, thinking about how what they know might be applied to a Time for Kids article. Let's listen in.

Thinking about the students in your class, have you encountered those who are able to decode beautifully but are so concerned about reading the words right and reading quickly that they neglect to stop and think about the text? Meet Haylee, a first grader who does just that. After conferring with Haylee, we found that she actually had very good comprehension, but often missed engaging with the text and comprehending it. We decided that teaching her to ask question about what she was reading was a good next step to support her comprehension.

Listen in as Joan uses the gradual release of responsibility with Haylee, modeling the strategy, working together and then having her practice on her own before sending her on her way to practice independently. Notice that Joan shares with Haylee what she is writing on her conferring sheet and then sets an appointment on the calendar for the two days later to meet back with her to check progress with the skill.

We are always amazed when we model and teach strategies to kids and one of our students remarks, "I didn't know you were supposed to do that!"

Because we are proficient readers, backing up to reread when we don't know a word on the first try is such a natural response that we use it without even thinking about it. However, our most struggling readers often don't have this strategy in their reading repertoire. By modeling the Back up and Reread strategy, pointing out exactly what goes on inside the head of a proficient reader, we begin to take the mystery out of what to do when they come to a word they don't know, and equip them to do it on their own.

Gail models the simple but powerful Back Up and Reread strategy with a group of young learners.

In this video, Christie introduces one of her fourth grade students to the strategy of Back Up and Reread. This multipurpose strategy supports accuracy, fluency and comprehension. Christie's student is a master at decoding words, so her fluency scores are always high. When she has an occasion to figure out an unknown word, she is typically successful. However, failure to go back and reread the sentence once the new word is deciphered interferes with her comprehension.

Listen in as Christie models the strategy of Back up and Reread, articulating exactly what she is doing. This short, specific, focused instruction provides just the scaffold needed for success. Christie also provides sticky notes, which will help track thinking and progress so it will be easy to share when they meet again the next day.

Back up and Reread is a tremendous strategy to facilitate comprehension when meaning has broken down. The trick is to monitor one's own understanding in order to stop in a timely manner, then go back and repair the breakdown by reading the text again. These two girls will be working with the strategy to help them with their comprehension goal.

Using a picture book, Christie models her thinking aloud after every two-page spread, quickly answering the "who" and "what" before moving on. Because she is monitoring her own reading so closely, she is quickly aware of confusion when it arises. She shows the girls how she goes back, and sometimes back a bit more, rereading and rethinking until her understanding gets back on track.

This video shows the second half of a small group lesson on Check for Understanding in Carrie's room.

The first video in this series showed how simple it is to model the strategy using a shared text. Joan shared the 'secret' to making this strategy work: you must stop reading periodically, checking to make sure you understand what was just read before moving ahead. The first video clip in this series also showed a small group of students at various reading levels, working together because of their common need for this comprehension strategy.

In this second part of the series, we get a chance to see a beginning reader with poor comprehension as she begins to utilize this strategy. She normally reads an entire book without being able to recall any important details. Joan shows her how to back all the way up and read shorter sections of the book -- stopping more frequently to check for understanding. This is key to starting her on a journey to attending to and comprehending what she reads.

The initial secret to the strategy is 'stop and then check for understanding.' If you have students who struggle to remember what they just read when they stop, you may want to scaffold the secret a little more, prompting children to say the "who" and the "what" of what they just read. These two simple nudges can make the difference between the silent, blank stare of a student struggling with Comprehension and a student who can begin to work their way to remembering what was just read.

We use this video in many of our CAFE Workshops. It has become a foundational piece for showing the structure of our small group work as we teach the first comprehension strategy on the CAFE menu, Check for Understanding.

Small-group instruction can be a powerful way to maximize our time in the classroom teaching children. When we first began our journey of teaching small groups, we put children together by levels and they read from multiple copies of the same text. It wasn't the most efficient way of operating because even though they were at the same reading level, their needs were very different. Some read smoothly, but didn't understand. Others understood beautifully, but read below fluency targets and without expression. We had simply taken the whole-group problem of different children with different needs and made it a small-group problem. Having children in a small group based on need rather than level remedied this issue completely.

In this video, Joan and Carrie are working together with a small group where the reading levels range from early first grade to late second grade. Each student has Comprehension as a goal and needs to learn the strategy of Check for Understanding and the strategy's secret to success. After Joan models the strategy, children practice with different books

It is a real trick for children to understand they need to stop and 'fix it up' when comprehension breaks down. Often children don't realize the need for stopping because they aren't really thinking about the story.

This video clip gives strategies that support children as they grapple with learning to monitor their own comprehension. Joan models the important process for Jada, a fourth grader. She makes her thinking audible and brings Jada into the practice with her, before sending her off to practice on her own.

One way to reflect on our practice and fine tune it is through the conversations with other teachers. In this video, Heather has Gail listen in and offer feedback on her one-on-one conference with Grace.

Gail's feedback is specific to the structure of the conference and what is being taught. She also discusses when to move a student onto another strategy.

It is our goal to provide meaningful conferences which are specifically tailored to our students and their development. We endeavor to take advantage of teachable moments, purposefully nudging our children into their next steps somewhat effortlessly. The "light bulb" moments we witness over and over when our teaching is focused and specific are exciting, rewarding and a powerful reminder of why we became teachers in the first place.

We have found conversations with other teachers to be a powerful tool for reflecting on and fine-tuning our conferring practices. Colleagues and literacy coaches you trust are invaluable sources of professional development and support.

Prior to listening to this conference, you may want to print the "How to Confer" Download that is linked below and watch the conference with that structure in mind.

Whenever we read to children, we treat the opportunity as if time with a book is a great gift. The pleasure we derive from books begins to trickle out and infect even the most reluctant readers. This is a constant, no matter what skill or strategy we have decided to focus on. In this lesson, Joan not only draws her students in with her authentic love of the book While We Were Out, but introduces the strategy of inferring as well. Students take words and pictures of a story and mix it together with their schema (or background knowledge) to gain deeper comprehension that goes beyond the text.

Gail is working with a small group of sixth graders in this first of a two-part series. After a brief check to see if each student has a good fit book, Gail launches into a lesson on things they might need to take into consideration when faced with True/False questions. True/False questions carry their own special comprehension challenges. In addition to drawing conclusions from given text, students are often required to rely on background knowledge and inference to answer correctly.

In this second of a two part series, Gail wraps up the the lesson by reviewing and giving an assignment that will help the students develop the skills necessary to successfully tackle True/False questions.

While working with the comprehension strategy of Predict and Confirm, Gail weaves in the processing strategy of Turn and Talk. Engaging all students in a whole group lesson can be difficult. At times it feels like the teacher is holding the conversation and learning with the one student who raises their hand the fastest and is called on most often.

Turn and talk, moves students from being passive receivers of information to active constructors of meaning. Gail involves them in thinking about reading rather than just "doing" reading or listening to reading. This process encourages students to actively think about what they have learned and leads them to be more deeply engaged in making sense from print, or in the case of this story, pictures.

Watch the engagement and excitement increase as the story progresses.

Let's step into Trish Prentice's room for a moment and eavesdrop as she introduces How Rocket Learned to Readto her students. In less than two minutes, her boys and girls connect with the story, ask questions, make predictions, identify it as fiction, and are eager to read. We had to remind ourselves that all this great evidence of learning was taking place in a kindergarten classroom!

Proficient readers are able to recall a story's sequence through retelling. After Gail demonstrates her thinking throughout the reading of The Zoo by Suzy Lee, she models a retell to show her understanding of the story.