It’s a well-known fact that I am obsessed with teaching kids to read. Decoding, phonemic awareness, phonics and fluency are a major obsession of mine. So what do I do when I’m trying to read grade level text with the whole entire class, and some of the kids can’t read at that level?
One of the things that I’ve done is set myself free by asking myself one question,
“Do the kids have to be able to decode or sound out the text in order to get the content? Or am I just wanting them to get the content, and I don’t need to worry about decoding at the moment?”
While you might have kids that are not reading on grade level, they still really need to get the content of this textbook or this text. So, set the reading part aside, partner them with somebody that is going to be lovely and generous with them, and read the text. That way they don’t have to do any decoding of the text – but do require them to do all of the thinking!
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