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Background Knowledge
By activating your students' background knowledge you can help them create a schema related to the story and help make connections while reading (related to text to self, text to text and text to world experiences). By making relevant information easier to access, your students are better prepared to learn new information and understand the text. Set a purpose to help your students know why they are reading and what they should pay attention to.
Activity - Set the Purpose for Reading
Classroom Discussion: You meet many people at school, at activities and other places. Some of them you become friends with and some you don't. What makes a good friend? What makes it hard to be friends with someone? What are some of your favourite things to do with your friends?
Purpose of Reading: Bridge to Terabithia explores the development of a friendship between Jesse and Leslie. At first they did not get along but as they get to know each other they create their own magical world. Let's read to find out how their friendship grows.
Activity - Introduce the Characters
Draw it: In this book, Jesse (the main character) has many siblings. In order to help your students understand how the characters are connected, draw out a character web or family tree with your students. This will provide your students with a visual reference for who the characters are, which will allow them to focus on understanding the text.
Before Reading
Background Knowledge
Our view of reading comprehension led us to think of "The Umbrella Model". This model is focused on asking & answering questions as reflective of reading comprehension. This was supported by foundation reading strategies, and strategies to use before during, and after reading. Teacher strategies and strategies to support motivation for reading are also important influencers.
Bridge to Terbabithia
Make Predictions
Have your students think about what is going to happen in the story. This will give them motivation and a reason for reading. Children can then use their predictions as hypotheses to test their understanding while reading. By making their thoughts and predictions active in their minds and visible on paper, your students continue to reflect on their own experiences and knowledge and then connect them with the text.
Make Predictions
Activity - Prediction Tracking
By Katherine Paterson
Vocabulary
Prediction Chart: Good readers make predictions before, during and after reading. Use your schema (background knowledge!) and clues from the cover of the book to predict what will happen next.
Click here to see a chart you can use!
Vocabulary
Teaching vocabulary prior to reading a text can help your students understand what they are reading. This can reduce some of the cognitive demands placed on students while reading (decoding, understanding, making connections). Teaching vocabulary before reading helps students have the meaning of new words right at their fingertips! It is important to choose Tier 2 words; these are words that your students may not encounter everyday but are integral to understanding the novel. Students in your classroom will benefit from lots of practice and repetition with these words.
Examples of Tier 2 Words
Activity - Student Friendly Definitions
Student Dictionary: Have students come up with their own definitions for the target vocabulary words. You can play games like "word sorts" or matching games to strengthen the connection between the words and their meanings.
Click here to see a chart you can use!
Activity - Word Parts
Word Detective: Students can search for smaller words within their Tier 2 vocabulary words. This will mean you may need to pre-teach some affixes so that they know what to look for. This will help students use these skills when they encounter new words as they read.
Here are some other fun activities you can use with students to further enhance their vocabulary:
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Recipe/00013/
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Recipe/00058/
Complex Sentences
complex sentences
Complex sentences help us talk about the sequence and timing of events, it contributes to the cohesion of a narrative and makes writing more sophisticated, which cannot be done in simple sentences. Remember though, that some of your students with executive function difficulties may not be able to understand longer sentences due to their working memory capacity. Strategies like explicitly teaching, chunking and repeating will be important to help your students succeed in understanding longer, complex sentences. Figurative language also makes sentences more difficult to understand. Figurative language does not have everyday, literal meaning. It is often used by writers to make stories come to life by making them more interesting. Examples of figurative language in Bridge to Terabithia include similies, metaphors and idioms.
Activity - Embedded Clauses with Kung-Fu Panda
A complex sentence joins one or more dependent clauses to an independent clause and these sentences usually have a subordinating conjunction (e.g., because, when, although) or a relative pronoun (e.g., that, which, who). An example from the text includes: "It was said in the upper grades that Mrs. Myers had never been seen to smile except on the first and the last day of school." Students will require modelling and repetition through explicit instruction. The goal is for your students to understand the components of a complex sentences so that when they read, their cognitive demands are not focused solely on the structure of the sentence but rather the meaning.
Activity - Figurative Language
Figurative Language Board: Using examples from the book, introduce students to figurative language writing styles like similies, metaphors and idioms. As you continue to read, encourage students to show their understanding by adding to the board. This will be a nice visual resources for your students and can allow them to learn from each others' examples.
http://www.ladybugsteacherfiles.com/2012/11/authors-technique-board.html
Narrative Structure
Explicit instruction about narrative structure provides your students with a predictable way that the story will unfold. This predictability should make story comprehension less demanding and more meaningful.
Activity - Story Organizer
Graphic Organizer: You can use a graphic organizer to explain the sequence of story narratives. This organizer can then be used while reading the book.
Check out some sample graphic organizers here!
During and After Reading
Narrative Structure
Note Taking
Note taking is a good way for students to jot down main points, interesting sentences or ideas and/or any questions they have as they read. This helps students make their thinking concrete so that they do not need to rely on their memory capacity when it comes time for discussion.
Activity - Note Taking Symbols
Post-it!: Use post-its with different symbols to have students mark their books while reading.
Visualization
Activity - Reading Artists
Having your students visualize the book as they are reading makes reading active and facilitates reading comprehension. You could even have your students draw what they are envisioning in order to reduce their working memory demand and provide a more visual representation of the text.
Artistic Response: Students will create an artistic representation of the text. Use any medium of choice! (drawing, cutting, painting, drama, music, puppets, dance)
Click here for more information!
Summarizing
By encouraging your students to summarize what they have read, you will be able to have a better idea about what they understood. Summarizing will help your students monitor their own comprehension and allows them to consolidate and update their own understanding. Depending on your students' strengths and weaknesses you can chose an appropriate form of summarization. Students with executive fucntioning difficulties will likely benefit from a more visual or written form of summarization that can then serve as a reference as they continue to read.
Summarizing can be done orally, visually or through written text.
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Oral summaries: can be completed through small group discussions
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Visual summaries: semantic webs, Venn diagrams or drawings
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Written summaries: summarize main points, use key words, write in point form or lists
Activity - Stick Stories
Quick Drawing: Students are instructed to draw "quick" stick drawings that represent the characters, setting and chronological sequence of events.
Urkainetz (1998) provides an excellent example of this technique. Click here to see more!
Monitor Comprehension
One of the goals for reading is to have students be able to independently monitor their own comprehension while reading. However, students with executive function difficulties will require support and scaffolding in order to learn the skills to monitor their own understanding of text. This includes explicit instruction of "fix up" strategies to repair comprehension breakdowns.
Examples of "fix up" strategies include:
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Re-reading parts or all of the text
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Looking ahead (making predictions)
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Stopping and relating to your own knowledge and experiences
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Asking for help when you don't understand
Activity - Flag Your Strategy
Highlight and Flag: As reading, have your students "flag" their observations to make their thinking more visible. This will require some pre-teaching about comprehension monitoring strategies used such as, connect, question, infer, monitor for meaning and evaluate. You may decide to focus in on one or two strategies per chapter.
Activity - Roll and Retell
Roll the Dice: This game can be played in groups to encourage conversation between your students. The student will answer the question corresponding to the number that they roll. If they do not know the answer they will need to use a "fix up" strategy to find the answer! You can provide each student with a blank roll and retell sheet to fill out and keep in order to reference during reading.
Note Taking
Visualization
Summarizing
Monitor Comprehension
Before Reading
During and After
Chapter 1
cuds
puny
sloshed
obediently
peculiar
slooching
worship
fetch
Chapter 2
scalding
tremble
genuine
anticipation
pandemonium
hypocritical
cagey
huffily
Chapter 3
swooshed
radiator
roused
repulsive
conspicuous
grudgingly
retreating
inherited
Chapter 4
consolation
melodic
thrumming
upheaval
deliberately
regally
ominously
solemn
Chapter 5
revenge
vigorously
regicide
pacing
parapets
crimson
snickered
plunged
Chapter 6
surplus
speculation
foundling
paralyzed
sprawling
squabbling
grieve
promptness
Chapter 7
absent-minded
reluctant
devilish
garish
obliged
deserting
sassy
realm
Chapter 8
wail
bargaining
sanctuary
unison
complacent
decent
vile
genuine
Chapter 9
earnest
mournfully
conspiring
sodden
sporadically
plodding
vanquished
horrid
Chapter 10
scrawny
prissiest
vaulted
idly
intently
liberated
kinship
pouting
Chapter 11
relentlessly
consciousness
uncertainty
accusation
doused
dredging
rumpled
dread
Chapter 12
snicker
smothering
stranded
emphasis
leisurely
piteously
bear
constricting
Chapter 13
allegiance
chaos
fragile
barked
rhythmic
procession
leaden
sincere
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