Write a response in which you (1) describe an instructional strategy or activity that can be implemented to help Kim better understand her social studies textbook and (2) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
2. Miss Fanjuwa is a second grade teacher. One of her students, John, reads at 30 words per minute.
Write a response in which you (1) describe an instructional strategy or activity that can be implemented to increase John’s reading rate and (2) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
3. Jenny is a third grade student in Mr. Bovi’s class. Mr. Bovi gave a CLOZE test for their science textbook and Jenny scored 30%.
Write a response in which you (1) identify Jenny’s reading level for this textbook (2) describe an instructional strategy or activity that can be implemented to help Jenny understand her science textbook and (3) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
4. Mrs. Swan is planning on reading Mr. Popper’s Penguins with her fourth grade class.
Write a response in which you (1) describe one strategy you could use to ensure continued comprehension throughout the reading and (2) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
5. Miss Lawrence is a fourth grade teacher. She wants to model and explicitly teach a self-monitoring strategy for her students to use as they begin to read Holes by Louis Sachar.
Write a response in which you (1) describe a self-monitoring strategy and (2) explain how it would help students derive meaning from the text.
6. Mr. Ward is a seventh-grade language arts teacher. He has put his students into heterogeneous groups and allowed each group to select a piece of literature to practice comprehension strategies.
Write a response in which you (1) name at least one comprehension strategy the students might be using and (2) identify what evidence would you expect from them.
7. Mr. Knoll’s is a sixth grade teacher who uses learning logs to monitor student’s reading comprehension. He has collected the class’ logs and is evaluating each.
Write a response in which you (1) identify appropriate responses Mr. Knoll’s should see in the learning logs and (2) describe what he should look for in the learning logs that would indicate that the students are reading beyond the literal level.
8. Ms. Fray is a fifth grade teacher whose students are reading the novel Island of the Blue Dolphins.
Write a response in which you (1) describe one strategy you could use to facilitate student understanding of the story elements and (2) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
9. Mr. Arable is a sixth grade teacher. He is beginning a literature unit on the story My Side of the Mountain. In this fifth grade class, Mr. Arable has a group of four resource students reading at the second-grade level.
Write a response in which you (1) describe one strategy you could use to aid comprehension throughout the reading and (2) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
10. Miss June is a first-year middle school social studies teacher who is doing preliminary planning for the upcoming school year. She wants to develop a “bank” of graphic organizers that students can use throughout the school year for the various text structures they will encounter.
Write a response in which you (1) identify one expository text structure she will need to include and (2) explain one strategy you would use to explicitly teach that structure.
11. Mr. Padua is a sixth grade science teacher. He wants to teach his students how to both skim and scan a text.
Write a response in which you (1) describe the difference(s) between skimming and scanning, (2) give an example of when you would have your students do each and (3) explain how you would model and/or teach this strategy.
12. Fourth-grader Tom, an on-grade level reader, is a reluctant independent reader, never choosing to read for pleasure.
Write a response in which you (1) describe how you could determine his reading interests and/or preferences and (2) tell how you might encourage his independent reading.
13. At the end of the first quarter, Drew, one of the 96 students in the 7th grade Core, has yet to attain a passing grade on a test. The teacher, Mr. Moran, has encouraged Drew to keep up with reading the book, and has even distributed special "study questions" prior to each exam, but Drew says that the textbook is "boring and heavy," making it difficult to take home and/or read. Drew’s book generally stays in the classroom, and it is rarely read.
When Mr. Moran contacts Drew’s mother by telephone, he learns that Drew has always had trouble with reading, and that art, skating, and skiing claim most of Drew’s time.
A quick check of Drew’s cumulative file reinforces the mother’s claim: at the end of 6th grade, Drew scored in the 35th percentile in Vocabulary, the 38th percentile in Comprehension, and the 36th percentile in General Reading on the SAT-9. The scores on earlier CTBS tests seem to show a similar level of reading skill. No other testing is in evidence.
Write a response in which you (1) describe one area of need demonstrated by Drew, (2) describe an instructional strategy or activity to help address this need, and (3) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
14. Emily, a third grade student who has experienced reading difficulty, presents some interesting and somewhat atypical responses to the various components of the Reading Inventory that she was given.
Emily’s silent reading comprehension is better than her oral comprehension, not an unusual pattern among more proficient readers. Other evidence, though, shows that she is still struggling with print skills, even though she does well enough on the listening comprehension to show that she has fairly well developed background and vocabulary knowledge. Noting the difference between her flash and untimed scores on both the first- and second-grade lists, it would seem that Emily has knowledge about word identification but has not done enough easy reading to consolidate this knowledge and still has a fairly limited sight vocabulary. This possibility is further supported by the fact that Emily reads orally with a high degree of accuracy, but seems to lack much sense of the meaning of what she has read —perhaps the print is the focal point. Emily obviously has quite a bit of knowledge; this knowledge needs expansion and explicit instruction, of course, but Emily probably is also in need of lots of practice with easily accessible materials.
Write a response in which you (1) describe one area of need demonstrated by Emily, (2) describe an instructional strategy or activity to help address this need, and (3) explain why the strategy or activity you describe would be effective.
