Drop the popsicle sticks! Mobile Ed has new reading strategies to get your students to participate in class while strengthening their reading fluency and comprehension. Fluent reading is critical to academic success and is foundational for education. But teaching reading can be challenging as many of our students tend to learn differently, have different reading levels, hold different interests, and need individual attention.

You may put a little extra emphasis on reading activities this month in your classroom as National Reading Month has come around. To celebrate, we have a few reading strategies that help students engage with texts in refreshing ways for many grade levels.

• Choral Reading: In a choral read, students and teachers read simultaneously. Reading aloud in unison removes the anxiety of reading alone while offering support to students who need extra help with word recognition, pronunciation, and prosody. As students gain fluency and learn new words together, they will have new confidence in themselves and feel more equipped to read new texts.

• Rereading: Rereading is the most straightforward strategy to help students go beyond reading the words on a page and comprehend new material. A 2000 study by the National Reading Panel found that rereading out loud had a “positive impact on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension.” Have students read the exact text several times over the week. You might have students read the passage out loud and then have students read it independently. You may also consider rereading the same text in multiple modalities: audio, film, online, etc. Reading a text multiple times (alone and together) improves students’ fluency and comprehension of the material and builds a strong vocabulary. 

• Reading Buddies: Assigning reading buddies from different grades or different reading levels (or the same level) helps students learn vocabulary and speech patterns from one another while reducing the stress of reading a text in front of several peers. Each student can observe how the other student pronounces words, paces themselves, and changes their tone. Consider having students answer questions about the reading together so they can search the text together and brainstorm new conclusions. 

• Think-Aloud: A Think-Aloud requires a teacher to verbally annotate a text out loud by stopping and sharing their thoughts, questions, and ideas with students as they read the text. This gives students of all ages an appropriate example of how they should be processing information while reading. This strategy improves students’ critical thinking and comprehension by slowing the reading process and teaching them how to engage with their text more deeply. They will recognize what information is essential in a text and what is not while also picking up on vocabulary, pacing, and intonation as you read aloud. 

• Ear-Reading: Ear reading combines reading normally with listening to the text simultaneously. Ear reading models intonation, sentence structure, reading rate, and rhythm for students learning to read or struggling to learn at an appropriate level. This strategy is well-known to be helpful for many students who have dyslexia. Students become more fluent, have an expanded vocabulary, and are more motivated to read. 

• Retelling: After a read-aloud of independent reading, have students explain the text in their own words. This could be done by sharing with a partner, writing down a summary, or drawing a picture. Retelling provides students with practice noticing essential elements of texts and retaining that information while also thinking deeply about the information just read. Repetition strengthens connections in the brain, making the material more memorable and reinforcing their comprehension skills. 

• Graphic Organizing: For this popular strategy, we use maps and charts to help students comprehend the text plots, themes, and vocabulary words. Using visuals breaks down complex thinking processes so students can grasp a complete concept and can teach students many different skills. Make your graphic organizers or find several free graphics. Though this strategy is used to enhance the reading ability and comprehension, other academic subjects can use this strategy to help students process information. Some examples of graphic organizers include Venn diagrams, idea webs, T-charts, sequence charts, and making associative drawings.

Young Author’s Day is an assembly program designed by the Mobile Ed team to provide an engaging and educational way for students to learn about storytelling. Our team tours the country bringing this program to students and teachers who need an interactive way to learn about story elements. After an exciting assembly about story structure and self-expression, students are challenged to create their own stories and use what they’ve learned. At the end of the program, we select student stories to be performed in front of everyone, and students get to laugh and cheer for their peers as they find a new passion for stories. 

To learn more about our Language Arts programs, visit our webpage.