Dear Parents,
After thorough evaluation, I have come up with an
intervention plan for your child. This intervention plan is designed to meet
the Ontario Curriculum Expectations in Language Arts.
Note: This intervention plan was designed for students who are struggling with Reading Comprehension, and who have scored C- or below on their most recent reading comprehension tests. However, this plan can be followed by all students. Everyone will definitely benefit Insha'Allah.
Reading
Comprehension: We have been working on the “Short Story”
unit since the beginning of September. We are still working on it. In order to
aid students in reading, they must do some work at home (other than their
homework). Below is an intervention plan with specific ideas, questions and
strategies that will help make students’ reading comprehension skills better
Insha’Allah.
1. Students
should go to the Public Library and choose a book that is appropriate for their
grade level. If you are not sure whether the book your child chose is
appropriate for his/her grade level, do not hesitate to ask me.
2.
Before
Reading: Students must answer the
following questions before they begin to read. These questions must only be
answered based on the book’s cover and the book’s title.
A. Why
do I want to read the story?
B. How
do I picture the setting?
C. What
clues do I get from the title?
D. What
do you think the story is mainly about?
3.
During
Reading: Students must answer the following questions as they are reading the
book
A. What
is this chapter/section about?
B. How
do I feel about the main characters?
C. Why
does the character feel/act a certain way?
D. How
does the story/text remind me of myself?
E. How
will it end?
F. Pick
about 2-3 paragraphs in every chapter and ask your child to identify the main
idea of the paragraph, its topic sentence, the supporting details and its
closing sentence.
These are some basic
questions that students must answer as they are reading a literary text.
Students must think about the text by making connections in 3 ways:
-Making Text-to-self
connections: Text-to-self connections
are highly personal connections that a reader makes between a piece of reading
material and the reader’s own experiences or life. An example of a text-to-self
connection might be, "This story reminds me of a vacation we took to my
grandfather’s farm.
-Making text-to-text connections: Text-to-text connections involve
connecting big ideas and themes across texts. There are some important
questions to keep in mind while making this connection such as:
What does this remind me of in another book I’ve
read? How is this text similar to other
things I’ve read? How is this different
from other books I’ve read? Have I read about something like this before? Are
there similarities / differences in
genre, author, topic, theme, message, plot, characters, text structure
or vocabulary?
-Making text-to-world connections: Text-to-world connections are
extremely important since they make the texts read come alive in our world.
Students need to connect real world happenings to the text by keeping in mind
the following questions:
What does this remind me of in the real world? How
is this text similar to things that happen in the real world? How is this different from things that happen
in the real world? How did that part
relate to the world around me? Are there similarities / differences in
something I have seen on TV, Radio news, a newspaper story, historical events
or current events.
4.
After
Reading: When students have finished reading the text, they
must answer the following questions:
-How
did the story make me feel?
-What
do I like/dislike about the story?
-How
are the characters’ feelings and actions different? (at the end)
-What
is the author trying to say?
-What
is the theme?
-Summarize
the book (1-2 pages double spaced)
Below
is a book report format that you could use with your kids at home. Please note
that this report will not be formally evaluated in school. The purpose of this
report is to give students more practice. We will be doing our own in-class
book reports in the next term Insha’Allah.
Classic
Book Report
Answer the following questions.
1. Who is the author of the book?
2. What is the title of the book?
3. Who are the main characters in the book?
4. Where is the setting of the story?
5. What is the main problem?
6. How is the main problem solved?
7. Did you like/dislike the book? Why/why not?
Some
creative ideas that students enjoy (these are great to test students’ knowledge
of the texts read)
1. Give
the story a different ending.
2. How
will the story be different if it happened on Mars? Explain.
3.
If you were the main character of
the story, how would you have handled the conflict? Explain in 1-2 paragraphs.
I hope that this helps. If you have any questions,
please do not hesitate to e-mail me.
Jazakum-Allah Kahayran for all your support!
