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The 5th grade reading program is designed to
foster a love of reading and to develop the skills
essential to students becoming effective, lifelong
readers. The program provides opportunities for
learning experiences in listening, vocabulary
development, and comprehension strategies. Students
read a variety of genre in both the fiction and
non-fiction categories. They become sensitive to
the structure of the various forms and learn
appropriate strategies to optimize their
comprehension. These strategies include previewing
and predicting, confirming predictions, using prior
knowledge, self questioning, adjusting reading
rate, using picture clues, using typographic clues,
visualizing, using graphic clues and rereading. As
a result of students' focus on comprehension,
students develop into readers who learn how to
relate the text to themselves, the world, and other
texts. They learn to be critical readers who also
are sensitive to authors' techniques.
The importance of students developing stamina as
silent readers is recognized since this provides
the opportunity for all students to practice their
strategies. Teachers are aware of the importance of
structured silent reading that focuses on specific
skills and/or strategies. This silent reading may
follow a mini-lesson modeled by the teacher to
focus students' attention to a specific text aspect
or strategy. Oral reading may be done in small
groups as a second reading or for selected parts of
a text that support a student's response. The use
of Roger Farr's Think-Aloud continues to be modeled
and practiced in order for students to recognize
the necessity of thinking as they are reading.
Reflective written responses are scored with the
state reading rubric. Graphic organizers,
retellings, and group discussions are used to
explore students' understanding of textual content
and ideas.
Harcourt Brace's (1999),
Signatures and selected trade books
provide the basic materials to support the fifth
grade reading program. An anthology and selected
copies of trade books, fiction and non-fiction are
used in the instruction of strategies that need to
be further developed for effective reading
comprehension. Teachers also work with the media
specialist in the selection and use of additional
appropriate print materials and technology to
support the program.
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