Orlando's Case Study

    Orlando is a seven-year-old boy in the first grade who struggles with comprehension skills when reading independently. Due to his lack of progress, his teacher has set goals for him to achieve by the end of the school year.

   The school's reading specialist has suggested to implements specific reading strategies, repeated readings, and graphic organizers.

Graphic Organizer

     In my opinion the three strategies are very useful in Orlando case. But the first one, graphic organizer is the most important, because combines visualization with the learned vocabulary to help understand Orlando easier what happened in the story further encourage him to think critically. The graphic organizers can be used to compare and contrast, analyze relationships, brainstorm, explore concepts or just take notes, help students see their reading and writing instruction in a new way. The graphic organizer is a simple diagrams used to assist students, at any grade level.       

    As early as kindergarten, students can use simple maps to identify who, what, where, when and why of a story or sequence the events of a story.

   The graphic organizer has many tips for implementation, and serves to help students to identify and respond questions about characters, settings, and events.

      There are many examples of a tips implementation that we know, some of them are·         Retell the story by using key words: first, next, and last. With this words the students learn the sequence of the story. The students learn to understand what happens first in the story and what comes after.

·            Retell the story by using story elements characters (who), setting (where), and plot (what). When the students use elements characters helps them to associate names with the story and it is much easier for them to become familiar with the new vocabulary from the story.

·         Retell the story by using story markers: beginning, middle, and end. This tips is very important because in this way the students learn about sequence and learn also in which order happened the events.

·         Use imagery to create a mental picture of the story.  Do everything you can to show in addition to (Fountas & Pinell Literacy, 2009).

      Recent research shown us: Students at-risk for reading difficulties require systematic, explicit instruction and more repetition to develop important reading skills (Babyak, Koorland, & Mathes, 2000; Foorman & Torgesen, 2001)

·         The purpose of teaching students to use graphic organizer is to provide students with meta-cognitive tools that they can (eventually) use on their own (Swanson & De la Paz, 1998).

·             The visual framework of a graphic organizer provides an organizational format for reading text that has been shown to help children with learning disabilities increase reading comprehension skills (Babyak, Koorland, & Mathes, 2000; idol, 1987).

Repeated Reading
    When we start to think how the repeated reading helped Orlando we arrived at the conclusion that with this strategy Orlando acquires more fluency in reading and creates a connection through repetition gaining in automatically word recognition skills.

      Repeated reading of a book leads to an increase in vocabulary when compared to reading a book just once and moving on to the next one. This has been proved by numerous studies. During the first reading of a book, the reader is introduced to the story. In subsequent readings, the child is able to look beyond the ‘newness’ of the story, the characters and events, to comprehend how things fit together and work. As words are repeatedly revisited, children have the opportunity to hear and practice decoding words. When words are frequently decoded, learning is consolidated.

Repeated Reading Facilitates Predictability. Being able to predict what will happen next enables children with a sense of mastery. They can recall what has happened, make sense of the events and place them in order. All of these things are necessary life skills, which children will use over and over again through the years to follow. Re-reading enables children to foster cognitive skills needed to predict what will happen next.

Comprehension Strategies

          The comprehension strategies help to him to understanding of what has been read moreover Orlando acquire a systematic approach to introducing vocabulary and background information. The young children learning the structure of different kinds of texts through comprehension strategies. When we mention meta-cognition can be defined as "thinking about thinking." Good readers use meta-cognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Before reading, they might clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text. During reading, they might monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and "fixing" any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding of what they read. With the children happens exactly the same, first the teacher before reading history provides information to create a base on which the student can connect the story they read with the knowledge they already have.

          The Question-Answer Relationship strategy (QAR) encourages students to learn how to answer questions better. Students are asked to indicate whether the information they used to answer questions about the text was textually explicit information (information that was directly stated in the text), textually implicit information (information that was implied in the text), or information entirely from the student's own background knowledge.

      Usually, I use this Story Map to combine technology with literacy. I also create activities where the children can fill the map with the different pictures of the story. It is very fun for them and this way they always remember the story with each details.

References:

• Pinnell, G. S., & Fountas, I. C. (2011). Literacy beginnings: a prekindergarten handbook. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

• Http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/Early reading Level A. Case 4 Seven strategies to teach students text comprehension. (2009, August 5).

• Retrieved February 24, 2017, from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/seven-strategies-teach- students-text- comprehension.
• ReadAloud-https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/pre-k-reading-comprehension.