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 implement specific reading strategies, repeated readings, and graphic organizers.

Comprehension Strategies

Comprehension strategies are techniques used to help children understand the material they read. These strategies are important because they provide students with a tool that is essential to their learning process. If you teach your students comprehension strategies most likely your students’ comprehension skills will increase because they will be able to retain meaning from the text. The case study states that Orlando enjoys group activities but is unable to answer simple comprehension questions. The comprehension strategies listed in the article are predicting, summarizing, retelling, rereading and questioning. 

•  Predicting is a strategy that is use before reading the story. Students are able to look at the title of the story and predict what the story is about. Students can also make predictions by looking at the pictures, characters and themes in the story. This strategy would be helpful for Orlando because it would allow him to predict the outcome of the story and be able to see if his predictions were accurate after his teacher reads the story. Depending on how close his predictions are to the actual story helps Orlando to judge how well he understood the story. “Predicting sets a purpose for learning and guides comprehension-“Hmm. That is not what I thought was going to happen. Did I read that correctly or do I need to read more to find out how this works out?” (The IRIS Center-Orlando Case Study).

• Summarizing is a strategy that enables students to focus on key words and phrases from the text that are worth remembering."As we read a text, we keep a summary in our heads, which helps us understand the rest of the story and discuss the whole story at the end." (Pinnell & Fountas, 2011). If Orlando summarizes the story, it will help him to understand the main idea of the story. He will be able to tell what happened in the story using his own words.

•  Retelling occurs after the story has been read. This gives students a chance to retell the story. This strategy will show if Orlando is able to remember the order the events took place in the story he read or listened to. As Orlando retells the story his teacher will be able to see if he know the main idea of the story. It will allow Orlando a chance to show if he remembers the characters and setting of the story.

• Rereading is a good strategy because it helps children to become familiar with the story. Students may not read a passage well the first time but after rereading it a few times it helps them with fluency. “Rereading and revisiting favorite text is very beneficial.” (Pinnell & Fountas, 2011). This strategy would be helpful for Orlando because it would give him a chance to become familiar with the story. It would help him read with fluency.

• Questioning readers should be able to answer the following questions of text who, what when, where and how (The IRIS Center-Orlando Case Study). This strategy would help with Orlando’s comprehension skills. If Orlando is able to answer the questions it shows that he understood who the story was about, when the story took place, where the story took place and how.

Graphic Organizer

Graphic Organizer helps children recall events, characters, problems, etc. in the story. A graphic organizer is a diagram used to help children identify different elements in the story. Graphic Organizers come in many different shapes and styles. They can be used for different grade levels. They can be used in independent or group activity. Graphic Organizers can help students remember the material they read. (The IRIS Center-Orlando Case Study)

 

The book that I chose was "The Three Bears" by Paul Galdone. I work at Elizabeth Public Schools, the school that I work at has a dual language program in which two languages (English and Spanish) are used for instruction, every two weeks students switch classrooms. For this reason, my graphic organizer is in Spanish. I would use different visual strategies to help Orlando with his reading comprehension. The following pictures were taken in my classroom during Read Aloud activity. These pictures demonstrate different ways to engage students in the story by predicting, summarizing, retelling, rereading, and questioning. Finally, Orlando should be able to name the characters, the setting, the problem, and solution by completing a story map and using his own words to communicate.

References 

Fountas, I.C., & Pinell, G.S., (2001). Literacy Beginnings: A Prekindergarten Handbook. Pourtsmouth, NH 

http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/Early reading Level A. Case 4

Welsh, Jodi G., (2008, October) Playing within and Beyond the Story: Encouraging book-related pretend play. The reading Teacher, 62(2) 138-148