comprehension prog?

Although this doesn’t provide the level of prepackageed assessments that I think you are looking for, the approach I have found to be most effective is to first teach comprehension skills using LMB’s Visualizing and Verbalizing. Then, after students are proficient at the sentence by sentence level at least, reinforce the comprehension skills students find most difficult with the Specific Skills Series from SRA.

The Specific Skills Series is leveled (K-8, I believe) and focuses on single skills such as Getting the Main Idea, Drawing Conclusions, Inferences, Sequencing, etc.
Karyn

If they don’t have problems, per se, in comprehension (and I don’t know how you would know for sure if there are decoding problems), I think Visualizing and Verbalizing might be overkill.

OTOH, I have problems, if you are using something as structured as Wilson, to then get into non-decodable text. You might be able to find some decodable text and use that as a supplement. However, it is unlikely you are going to get very interesting text that way. You may defeat your purpose by using non-decodable text and encourage guessing.

One possibility is to read to your students and work on comprehension from that aspect. You can have them listen for main idea, facts, inference and so forth. It is probably what I would do.

—des

Hmmm…. I thnk there’s room for both — we did paired oral reading with non-decodable text as part of every lesson at The NEw Community School. HOWEVER — it was closely monitored so guessing wasn’t allowed. Every blooming mistake was corrected. Then there was usually 5-10 minutes of independent silent reading, though (but generally not at the very low levels). YOu gotta get to that independent reading at some point.

We also did a lot of direct comprehension instruction, though it wasn’t a formal program because we had the enviable luxury of 1:2 classes and could really individualize.
The materials we used were things like Carlisle’s Reasoning and REading (which doesn’t have enough practice of each kind of exercise, so I’d use them as models and make more & more & more). We’d teach Main IDeas with a structure that you can find at my website (www.resourceroom.net) in the “Reading comprehension” section, including some (but never enough :-)) practice exercises.
You can also tie in writing — things like generating lists of items in a category (What are 25 things you can find at the grocerys tore? for a simple one… simple for *us* you mean! … then “what are 25 things you would see at the mall”… then “how many things can you list that are underground?” … “small and expensive…”?)
Phrasing is also a good comprehension skill to teach & that’s on my site, too.
Language! is a program a bit like Wilson but including a fair amount of comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and writing; they’re coming out with a third edition. If the school is already invested in Wilson, though, they’re probably not ready for that leap. It’s a very viable competitor and they’ve put a lot of effort into making the design more sophisticated and interesting.

Oh, and you can do a *LOT* of work on comprehension just with oral language, and reading aloud (which is one way to tell if there are real problems of the LD sort even if the kiddo can’t decode).

>Hmmm…. I thnk there’s room for both — we did paired oral reading with non-decodable text as part of every lesson at The NEw Community School. HOWEVER — it was closely monitored so guessing wasn’t allowed.
Every blooming mistake was corrected. Then there was usually 5-10

I think that would be the key, if you could control guessing to that extent… Otherwise, I think that you might be inviting more trouble than it’s worth.

>minutes of independent silent reading, though (but generally not at the very low levels). YOu gotta get to that independent reading at some point.

Agreed but it would depend on how well the kids decode and what level they are on Wilson. If they are on level 3 maybe not. If they are on level 6-7, it might be easier.

> You can also tie in writing — things like generating lists of items in a category (What are 25 things you can find at the grocerys tore? for a simple one… simple for *us* you mean! … then “what are 25 things you would see at the mall”… then “how many things can you list that are underground?” … “small and expensive…”?)

These are great ideas.

> Phrasing is also a good comprehension skill to teach & that’s on my site, too.

This is actually part of Barton (another OG based program), and I see no reason why you couldn’t do this with Wilson, it may be for what I know.
You have the kids work with sentences and find a “who phrase” a “did what phrase” and a “where phrase” (underline them, etc) and then have the kids read with phrasing. It is very cool and the kids really do get this if they are explicitly taught. It is part of comprehension (how do you understand if everything runs together) but also fluency.

Another neat thing in Barton is a kind of Chinese menu reading exercise.
You have a list of who or what phrases based on decodable text.
Say:
the rat
a kid
a big fat cat
(up to six)

Did what:
did run
sat
can bat

Where:
in a hot pot
in a lap
in a cab

The kid reads the phrases and then combines them for real and silly sentences. The kids always really enjoy this, and it really helps with fluency and indirectly comprehension.

> Language! is a program a bit like Wilson but including a fair amount of comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and writing; they’re coming out

Well i think there are some advantages to some of the newer OG programs, in terms of depth but a lot of systems are quite involved with Wilson. Glad they are at least involved with something that works.
:-)

—des