New York State Elementary Test Prep- ELA 4- Grade 1

Children learn to read by reading. As children read stories they learn a great deal about print. Early readers begin to understand that it is their job to find cues to help them work out what the text says in a book. Good readers focus on meaning but can also use language structure or visual information as cues to help them problem solve new texts. Children learning to read must use powerful, in-the-head strategies such as:

Searching for and using meaning, language structure, and visual information.
Self-monitoring or checking on oneself to make sure that what is read makes sense.
Cross-checking one source of information against another.
Self-correcting through predicting, monitoring, or searching information to make cues match and get words right.

Teacher Prompts

In Guided Reading by Fountas and Pinnell the following prompts are suggested to support a reader's self-correction behaviors:

Something wasn't quite right.
Try that again.
I liked the way you worked that out.
You made a mistake. Can you find it?
You're nearly right. Try that again.

Teaching for Strategies (Self-Correcting)
Reading Aloud	Provide a demonstration of stopping within a text and predicting or searching cues to self-correct. Stop and talk about why you have to look for more information (e.g., "Oooops! That didn't make sense... "). Reading aloud develops knowledge of how texts are structured while increasing vocabulary. It makes complex ideas available to children.
Shared Reading	Using enlarged texts, (big books, charts, poems), teachers can demonstrate and explain strategies. Demonstrate the need to reread, search, or check other cues when monitoring or problem solving in text reading. Use Post-it notes to cover words and have children make predictions - then letter-by-letter (or chunk-by-chunk) - show the child more visual details and allow them to change their predictions.
Guided Reading	In small groups a teacher can make teaching points as children are engaged in reading whole texts. It provides an opportunity to problem-solve and use strategies while reading for meaning. Teachers can guide, demonstrate, reinforce, and explain self-correcting behaviors to readers.
Independent Reading	Reading on their own provides opportunities and challenges to apply reading strategies. Readers independently solve problems while reading for meaning as they read or reread familiar texts.