Reading Comprehension Strategies

Hannah Richardson

Longwood University SLIB 500

1. Analysis of Test Data

For this assignment, I am looking at the school where I taught most recently, [Redacted]

Middle School in [Virginia]. In the 17-18 school year, 7th grade students had a 75% pass

rate on the English: Reading SOL test, which is the minimum passing rate for

accreditation. When I was teaching there, I observed that one strand students consistently

struggled with was main idea, so I will be focusing on that for this assignment.

2. Description of Learners

In the 17-18 school year, there were about 300 7th grade students. Roughly 14% were

students with disabilities, 24% were ELLs, and 55% were economically disadvantaged.

3. Context of Lesson

Students have already had practice with the annotating strategy TTBME. In this lesson,

they will see how using the TTBME strategy can help them identify the main idea. This

lesson supports SOL 7.6 “The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of a

variety of nonfiction texts. g) Identify the main idea. h) Summarize text identifying

supporting details.”

4. Reading Comprehension Strategy

Students will work on the reading comprehension strategy “determine main ideas.” I have

seen that main idea is a difficult concept for students to grasp, as they often get caught up
 in supporting details or broad topics. While this strategy will help improve their overall

reading comprehension, it will also help build a foundation for their inquiry skills, as an

understanding of main idea is essential to effective research skills.

5. Materials Used

Articles from Newsela - students are familiar with the website Newsela and its various

features. Because Newsela has the option to adjust the reading level of a text, I can

differentiate for SWD & ELLs.

Paper and pencils - students will hand-write their TTBME annotations.

6. Specific Activities

As a group, we will read a one-page article from Newsela and complete a whole-class

TTBME annotation (Title, Topic, Beginning, Middle, End: after dividing the article into

three parts, we summarize each part). After completing the TTBME as a class, we will

decide what the main idea of the article is. The co-teacher and I will guide students to

make sure that the main idea is addressed in all three parts of the article, that it differs

from the topic we identified in the beginning, and that it is not too broad or too narrow.

Then, students will choose one of several articles the co-teacher and I pre-selected. Each

student will complete a TTBME annotation independently and write what they think the

main idea of the article is. After they have finished, they will share their responses with a

partner and together decide if their main ideas are appropriate (addressed throughout the

article, different from topic, and not too broad/narrow).

7. Assessment
 The co-teacher and I will informally assess as we circulate, monitor, and prompt students

throughout the lesson. More formally, we will read through their TTBME & main idea

papers to see which students seem to have a good understanding of main idea, and which

will need more support and practice. The teacher may use the assignment as a grade; as

the librarian, I would want to get an idea of how students are doing with main idea as a

whole, so that I could approach different content-area teachers with similar lesson and

practice ideas.

8. References

English Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools. (2017). Retrieved from

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/english/index.shtml

Virginia Department of Education School Quality Profiles: [Redacted] Middle School.

Retrieved June 24, 2019 from ​http://schoolquality.virginia.gov