The Characters

Often times, when people think of reading, they think of it as a passive way to spend their time. In reality, when you read, you brain is actively engaged in decoding and comprehending. Ms. Leom invited some of her "friends" to class to help students understand the many "hats" a reader wears to be an engaged and active reader ...

Madame Prediction encourages predicting

Queen of Questions, "Queenie" supports asking questions

Clara Clarifier believes in "fixing-up" questions and parts that don't make sense

Sunny Summerizer summarizes what she reads, retelling the important details, often the sequence they happen

Once we met all of Ms. Leom's friends, we took notes to review what we learned ...

This is what the learning looked like when the students recorded their learning ...

As Ms. Leom is working with students in small groups, these are some of the strategies we are developing. We talked about there is not an exact order. Your practice actively selects the strategy you need to help you understand. 

We read a text about the Northeast, our area of study in Social Studies to practice and apply our strategies.

Predicting, asking questions, clarifying, and summarizing are strategies of Reciprocal Teaching. For students, Ms. Leom calls these the strategies of "Reciprocal Reading". Affectionately, students in our class, call them "the ladies", "the hats", or "the characters".