| Background knowledge |
What do we already know about: The time of the story?
The story setting? The people in the story? The story
events? |
| Pictures |
What can we predict about the story from the pictures?
Pictures can jog background knowledge of setting, time,
or familiar experience. |
| Meaning |
Understanding the context of a story helps to get the
particular meaning of a word, e.g. the word "warrant" in
text. What does it mean in this passage? |
| Structure/Grammar |
What word would "make sense" here? e.g."She
ate____and eggs for breakfast." |
Sound/Symbol
Correspondence |
This helps to support/deny our guess about what a word
might be, based on past experience or common sense. For
example, in the sentence below, the initial consonant
would help us to support/ deny a guess. "She ate b____
and eggs for breakfast. "If we had guessed "bacon", our
guess would be supported. If we had guessed "ham", our
guess would be denied and we would think again. |
| Supporting techniques |
Examples |
| Re-tell periodically
during the discussion of
background information
and pictures |
What do we know so far? Use symbols for whom, what,
where, when and how as memory devices. |
| Re-read when needed to
consolidate meaning |
This also helps in proof-reading. As learners read over the
passage each time they gain more word recognition -
initial reading is focusing on the meaning of the words not
the meaning of the text, but as word recognition increases
there is less interference with the meaning of the text. |
| Pause-Prompt-Praise |
When a learner struggles with an unknown word or has
misread a word, practitioners should pause, prompt and
praise.29 |