Three activities in Foundations & Frameworks strengthen reading comprehension in different ways—I think of them as a three-course meal:

1. The Collaborative Comprehension Preparation is an appetizer, exciting students with new words and some more insight into the upcoming lesson (“meal”).
2. Our Collaborative Comprehension Session is the main course—a multitude of conversations (“food choices”).
3. The Intellectual Art is the finishing touch (“dessert”).

Students are able to have a rich experience with the text in different scenarios (whole group, small groups, independent). As students go through this learning process, they are taking more control and developing individualized ways of learning and understanding content.

I love this Vocabulary process because it is effective and not too time consuming.

I started using this way of introducing vocab words after the PD last school year and I saw a huge difference in student application. It gave them multiple opportunities to practice using the word and gave me a chance to see their improvement. They were more likely to retain the word and able to use it more broadly because they had multiple examples to select from.

When I did introduce words visually, they focused on recalling them as fact, not how to manipulate the word in different contexts. Each time students practice using new words, we are guiding them to dig for deeper understanding.

This approach promotes appropriate and achievable levels toward mastery of content very well.