Cracking the Code: Reading Practice for Fluency and Comprehension

In this class, learners will focus on one reading passage each week. My lessons are well-organized with clear goals, but are taught in a fun atmosphere with engaging and interactive components. Texts will vary, poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, to expose readers to language in a variety of ways. Texts will generally be at a 1st/2nd grade level. Each session will stand alone, and students can join for one class or all! Sessions will follow this general format:

1. Phonics or fluency mini-lesson based on the passage
2. Individual reading of the passage
3. Round-robin or choral reading of all or part of the passage
4. Comprehension skill related to the text (main idea and details, sequencing, compare and contrast, asking questions, reading with purpose, vocabulary, retelling, summarizing)

This class is a follow-up to my "Beyond Sound it Out" course. Students joining this class should have a basic understanding of long vowels (and various spellings for those sounds), digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh), diphthongs (oi, ow, aw), and multi-syllabic words to be most successful.

Passages used will be from readworks.org, Reading Simplified, or other sources from which I've received permission or are in the common domain, and will be provided before the class as well as viewable on the teacher's screen.

Because comprehension and phonics skills can arise organically from a group of students, comprehension topics will be responsive to student input and needs.

Topics for the Week Of:


August 12: Poetry
August 19: Readers Theater
**Classes resume in September
September 9: Unusual Creatures (only some sections running)
September 16: Intelligent Animals
September 23: Sports
September 30: Fables
October 7: Reader's Theater
October 14: Careers
October 21: The Human Body
October 28: Fiction
November 4: Greek myths
November 11: Poetry
November 18: Reader's Theater
November 25: NO CLASS
December 2: Transportation
December 9: Poetry
December 16: Reader's Theater
**NO CLASS the weeks of December 23 and 30. Classes will resume the week of January6.
January 6: Reptiles
January 13: Fiction
January 20 Music
January 27: Snowbirds Song
February 3: Reader's Theater
February 10: The Human Body
February 17: Whimsical Poetry
February 24: Fiction
March 3: Reader's Theater
March 10 and 17: NO CLASS