Hye frens! I have difficulties in teaching comprehension with kids who can't really read. How do you manage the lesson and do you have any methods/strategy to create a lesson that is stable to the class students mixed abilities? thnx

Well, that's a broad question...right now is your focus teaching them the mechanics of reading, or can they read, just not very well?
If they can read, have you looked at the Crazy Professor game? Also, to increase their reading fluency (which will lend quite a bit to comprehension) play Super-Speed EVERY DAY.
There's no 'magic answer' to teaching low readers, but there are many things that can help.
You can also read out loud while they read along, and they have to create gestures to go along with what you're reading. You'll need to read slow, but they'll learn to keep up as they practice and as they watch you model.
Also, try Biff's Illustrious Brain Toy... Desktop Action Figures! Students use their hands to make puppet-type figures, or use two fingers on the desk to make 'legs' for their action figure. Using their hands as characters, students must act-out what was just read. (Let me know if you need more explanation on this)

Jackie's ideas are really great! If they can't read because there is a disability, they might be able to comprehend if it was read aloud to them. If it's because they don't understand the English, it would be better to get something for them that they do understand. If you're trying to teach a comprehension strategy to the whole group, you could pick an easy story that everyone understands.

One strategy I have used to build comprehension is think alouds, with my Kindergarten class. I will read part of a non fiction story and plan to stop in areas where I feel like most of my class has some background knowledge(books about bugs, sea creatures and so on). I talk about the "text to self connections" that I have made and ask them to turn and talk (I do this in Kindergarten at the beginning of the year, but by the end of the year I have used teach/okay) to their partner about what connections they have made to the text. This also builds vocabulary development with your ELL's and those others that can benefit.
I use a program called the Primary Comprehension Toolkit. It has many other strategies like note-taking on 3 postits that are on a regular piece of paper. Each time you stop reading and ask them to write they can draw a picture and add words to it, showing what connections they have made to the nonfiction story.
Good Luck!

i might try ur strategies guys~ thnx for the replies

Hi I teach students specific strategies for comprehension and use gestures to teach it. For example I taught them to make connections to themselves when reading and did a motion of putting hands together and pointing to themselves. Then we got really excited telling our partner about the connections we made in the books we read

clievendag would you possibly be willing to let me know what gestures you use to teach reading strategies. our school's reading curric. is developed around strategies and I think that the gestures would really help the kids grasp them better. Thanks

CMOrtiz
We have the aged old Open Court series. It has us teaching a few of the major strategies. I have made a memory gesture for each one of them. You can try these if you want, but once you get started, the gestures come easy and you may even enlist your students to help out...gives them more buy in.

Questioning-Shrugging shoulders with raising eyebrows
Prediction-rubbing a genie's lamp(predicting what will come out)
Visualizing-make a thought bubble above your head
Summarizing-moving hands away from your mouth
Inference-different each time, based on kids

Try them and then add some of your own.

Let us know how it goes.

Chris

I have used gestures with many of our curriculum's (HMR) comprehension skills and they really help the students remember what to do.

For this section of the series, we are studying
Making Inferences (students put 3 fingers down so it looks like an M then put the M over their eye-- M: making --over their eye: inferences- you have to read between what the author says and see what they don't say- that's why your eye is partially covered) That seems long, but it was very effective for them. Their teacher last year taught it to them, and they remembered it and taught it to the rest of the class.

Compare (hands clasped) and Contrast (two fist next to each other) Pretty sure that one is from a WBT video?

Sequence of Events (hands flat palm down, one high, the next lower, then move the top hand under that-- kind of like showing steps)

I hope that isn't confusing, but I think finding gestures to go with might help. Also, if they are non-readers, you can use a read aloud, or even a video (reading rainbow type?) to stop and teach the comprehension strategy so they aren't trying to navigate decoding and comprehension at the same time. If you could find the reading rainbow of a book, go over the comp skills, then get them the book to read through... if might be interesting to see how they do with that.

Please tell me more about Biff's Illustrious Brain Toys! I am so excited to know more!!!