How I Work With Students on Self-Monitoring Reading

Teaching children to read takes a LOT of work. Important work. Powerful work. Work by students, work by us. There are SO many layers in learning to read, that it can very difficult AND very rewarding to teach. I am a former balanced literacy teacher converted to science of reading teacher. I still strongly believe that self-monitoring reading habits are important to build early in order to create a foundation for comprehension.

We all teach students that do this and sometimes we go a little gray in the hair department or have an extra dose of coffee while we try to figure out how to reach them the best.

 

In the past I’ve tried a variety of techniques and strategies…with varying degrees of success…depending on the reader (of course).

 

1) Trying to “catch” them self-monitoring reading and comment on it,

 

“You just caught yourself! You worked it out and now you’ll understand!!”

 

“That sounded goofy/wonky/like gobbledy-gook and you stopped to figure it out! Whoop Whoop!”

 

“Did you just notice your reading work? You didn’t just keep reading to get to the end, you were determined to figure that word out!”

 

2) Sent WOW notes home to parents…so that kids are proud of their hard work and race to their parents to share their love note and then the parents know to congratulate and notice self-monitoring reading behaviors while their sweethearts read to them.

 

3) Recorded tally marks next to goals on goal-setting pages from Building STAR Readers. That pack is all about building STAR habits while reading, including self-monitoring reading. STAR habits are reading comprehension habits with STAR as an acronym for S=Study T=Think A=Ask R=Respond.

4) Have them use sticky notes to mark spots in their books to encourage them to slow down and be more aware of their thinking which lays a foundation for self-monitoring reading. (This image is found at Julie Ballew’s site.) I pinned it to my School Stuff Board so I always have it handy. 

5) While reading aloud to my class, I make intentional and unintentional mistakes and stop to demonstrate self-monitoring reading to fix it up. For example, read, “She ate the candles.” Students can help you identify that it does NOT make sense. You can show them the text and have them help you figure out what it really says (She ate the candies.)

6) Whole group, small group and partner work to find proof and cite evidence in reading passages such as these from Finding Proof . 

 

This is all well and good….BUT…I’m not in small group or one-on-one settings every minute with every kid. #notpossible

 

We have to teach them to TAKE CHARGE of their own reading so that they self-monitor without us – every time, all the time.

 

I struggled to find resources for exactly what I was looking for, so I made one…

 

There are a variety of options for students to practice….I use the teaching projectables to introduce and practice theself-monitoring concepts and then follow up with having students work on the printables. I also included tracking forms so students can visually see how they are doing in regards to self-monitoring…

 

This pack is available as part of my Reading Workshop Bundle as well as in a Self-Monitoring Mega Bundle which contains some extra printables for practice looking closely across a whole word from beginning to end.

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