Image credit: Yan Krukau via Pexels
By The Educator Collaborative Associate Member Sophie Teitelbaum
When I first started teaching high school English, I struggled with teaching reading comprehension. My training was in teaching English to secondary students, but it did not include information about the science(s) of reading or how to teach foundational literacy practices for those students who need it.
What I wish I had known then was the power of oral reading fluency (ORF) assessments, something typically used in early elementary grades as a diagnostic and progress monitoring tool.
ORF assessments have forever changed my teaching and are now something I administer every year in the first two weeks of school in order to gather valuable reading data to support my high school students and tailor my teaching to their needs.
(I should note here that I believe in general we over-test our students–but hear me out on the value of this assessment!)
ORF assessments helped me see how breaks in fluency were impacting comprehension. One of the things I discovered was that as they read, my high school students were ignoring commas in subordinate clauses, introductory phrases, and appositives, which led to confusion around a sentence’s main point. When this happened consistently across a text, students struggled to understand what they had read.
After I administer the ORF assessment to all my students**, I analyze the data for overall trends as well as trends across individual classes. From that analysis, I determine what types of clauses and phrases most students are struggling with, which may differ from class to class. Then I look through the texts I’m teaching over the next few weeks and identify what types of clauses and phrases show up a lot in those texts and create a calendar for when I’m teaching which types of clauses and phrases.
I intentionally integrate teaching specific clauses and phrases into my lessons, one at a time, usually spending one week on each type of clause or phrase.
My process:
- While projecting on a board, I explicitly teach the clause/phrase embedded within the text we are reading. I identify the clause/phrase for students in the text, name the type of clause/phrase, and explain how that clause/phrase is used (and the impact it has on the sentence’s meaning).
- I invite students to orally share sentences that include this type of clause/phrase.
- I ask students to write and share their own sentences using this type of clause/phrase.
- I then have students return to the text we are reading and find other instances where this type of clause/phrase shows up. Then they practice reading these types of sentences with the appropriate emphasis so that its cadence becomes more familiar to them.
- Throughout the year, I spiral in the types of clauses/phrases students have already learned by:
- Having students revise a written response by adding in a specific type of clause/phrase.
- Having students respond to text-related questions using specific types of clauses/phrases.
- Pointing out specific sentences in texts we are reading and having students name the type of clause as well as explain in context how this specific clause impacts the sentence’s meaning.
NOTE: I complete steps one and two on the first day I introduce the type of clause/phrase. Only once most students are successful with step two do I introduce step three, and this is often not until the second or third day. Step four can spiral throughout the week I teach the clause/phrase and is also something I use to spiral in the future to ensure that students really internalize it and as sentences increase in complexity.
This shift in my pedagogy and practice has improved my students’ reading comprehension. At the same time, it has also equipped my students with the skills to express their complex, deep thoughts in writing, since written language often uses different (and way more complex) sentence structures than what is reflected in our oral language.
** You may be wondering how I administer ORF assessments to 150 students in the first two weeks of school! Each student needs about 3 minutes with me. One minute to connect with them and frame the ORF assessment; one minute to read; and one minute to discuss strengths and what we’re going to work on together.
