ND Curriculum Initiative

Subject & Standards

Needs Assessment/Rational

The school at which I teach received the Reading First grant last year. Because of this, we now have a reading coach employed at our school. My unit is based on the findings of some of her testing from the beginning of the school year. The tests used were DIBELS (oral word fluency/retell) and the TPRI. One area in which a group of my students scored low is comprehension, a major component of reading. Soon we will be taking part in CTB testing which will also measure student comprehension. I have seen evidence of low comprehension skills on classroom tests published by Open Court, the reading series we have adopted in our school. In order to boost these scores, I have decided to implement activities designed to improve students’ comprehension. Comprehension strategies will be taught and practiced.

Understandings & Goals

Enduring Understanding: Students will understand and be able to use a variety of comprehension strategies to help them understand what they read.
Goal(s): 1. Students will understand the importance of comprehending what they read.  2. Students will be able to implement various strategies to improve reading comprehension.

Questions Answered

Essential questions: 1. Why is it important that we understand what we read?  2. How can we better understand what we read?  3. Which comprehension strategies work best for me?  4. How can we show/demonstrate understanding.
Objectives: 1. Students will be able to define comprehension.  2. Students will be able to identify a variety of comprehension strategies.  3. Students will utilize various comprehension strategies while reading.  4. Students will demonstrate comprehension of text through projects and activities.  5.Students will be able to retell what they read.

Assessment

What quiz and test items (e.g. simple content-focused questions that require a single, best answer) will provide evidence of understanding? Multiple choice questions and fill in the blank statements will work best to show understanding in a second grade classroom.
What academic prompts (e.g. open-ended questions or problems that require students to think critically and then to prepare a response / product / performance) will provide evidence of understanding? 1. Prior to reading, students will be given focus questions to think about as they read.  2. These questions will be revisited when reading is complete.
What performance tasks and projects (e.g. complex challenges that are authentic, mirror the real world and require a performance or product) will you include that will provide evidence of student understanding? Students will create pictures using a computer to show understanding of stories they read.
What other evidence (e.g. observations, work samples, dialogues, student self-assessment) of understanding will you collect? 1. Students will create mini-videos after reading a particular story.  2. They may record a skit, a commercial for the story, a puppet show, etc.  3. Creativity is welcome in this activity! These videos will be shared with parents.  4. Students will self-assess using student created rubrics.

Instructional Strategies

Students will use inquiry-based learning when they investigate to discover the strategies they are already using for comprehension. They will record their results and share them with classmates. Project-based learning also takes place as the students demonstrate comprehension of a book/story on their videos. They will work in cooperative groups to design their own displays of comprehension. They will need to show evidence of using the comprehension strategies taught throughout the unit.