MSV Strategy Intervention Task Cards for Emerging Readers

One of the biggest rewards when teaching emerging readers how to read is getting them over the teacher-dependent "I'm stuck! (puppy dog eyes)" hump to the self-dependent "I got this! (eyes stay on the page)" side of reading. You all know the students I'm talking about...they are beginning readers, reading somewhere between Level A and E...maybe even G, H or I. These are students who, without you, don't actually read independently, or fake read because no one is actually listening to them or holding them accountable to actually reading the words on the page. They are students who, for the most part, don't know what to do when reading on their own because the adult reader (or readers) in their lives, "tell them" when they come to tricky parts in the text. However, these tricky parts are the critical junctures in their reading journey they need to learn when, where and how to independently, with your strategy support, not telling support, crack the code of how language looks and sounds.

Many students reading at level A-E often do not get enough reading practice at reading connected text...whole sentences or whole pages of text. Many of these students do well with isolated practice of letter names, letter sounds, single words, sight words, or pretty much any early reading lists of any kind, but they don't have enough exposure to reading whole books or whole pages of text...at levels A-E. In addition, this isolated practice and single page alphabet worksheets don't give them enough practice getting stuck where they actually have to do some real word/sentence problem solving. And, often, these worksheets or isolated practice games don't have enough context to figure out if "the fix" sounds right or looks right with the rest of the words...because there isn't enough there to check.

Then, when these students are actually given text at levels A-E (or higher for non self-correcting students) there are several lines of text per page and students are concentrating so much on the mechanics of reading, solving the words (even though they aren't solving them correctly) that they don't listen to themselves and process what the words sound like when they're saying them and decide if what they said makes sense or not. When students read out loud and read words wrong and keep reading, they are not using the skill of self-monitoring. In this case, a teacher or parent will jump in, often too soon, and say something about the way it was said like "that doesn't sound right" or "does that sound right?" and that is called, self-monitoring FOR the child, which is "ok" to a degree. It is not our job to do this for the child with every error, nor is it our job to do this for every page of every book, nor should let a child read an entire book with several errors with no reteaching to a at least a few of the those errors when they are done. At some point, we must teach children to listen to themselves, and ask themselves, "Does what I just said makes sense? Sound right? and Look Right? and match the words on the page?" When we can begin to get students to ask themselves these questions instead of relying on us to ask them these questions, they are on their way to becoming self-monitoring readers. Because, once students can ask themselves these questions, they will begin to answer these questions and when they answer themselves NO, we will praise, encourage, model, and affirm how and when they "go back" and try it again with something that looks right, sounds right and makes sense. This should be often for emerging readers. The more often this occurs, the most likely this reading behavior will become a habit of mind.

Recently, I have created two products to help with the very skill of teaching emerging readers to self-monitor their own oral reading. One, is the Great Readers Strategy Card.

Click on the image to purchase this product.
As a trained Reading Recovery teacher, the fix-up strategies included on this card, are exactly the strategies emerging readers need to become independent, self-monitoring readers. You will encourage strategy use a lot in the beginning, but with enough repitition and redirection to the Strategy Card (instead of you) students will learn that they can do something on the card for help instead of look at you. This is what you want.

The card is front/back with 6 fix-up strategies on the front and 3 self-monitoring strategies on the back. In the past, I have used some of these strategies with the beanie baby analogies,,,,but for many students, the strategy did not transfer from the beanie baby to the text...they could remember Eagle Eye and that's it...they couldn't remember what to do with the eagle. So, using real pictures, this strategy card uses kid-friendly pictures and phrases to remember and apply the strategy.

These Strategy Cards endorsed by many teachers including the Brown Bag Teacher on Instagram! The Brown Bag Teacher is Catherine Reed, a first grade teacher in KY.

In addition to the Strategy Card itself, there are 9 minilessons included and 9 posters to use while teaching each minilesson.

Here's ONE minilesson and on minilesson poster up close:

In addition, I have created a set of Reading Intervention Task Cards for students in need of MSV help...the non self-correcting, non self-monitoring readers. These cards are designed to help students notice and hear how some words in sentences are only slightly different in size and shape but change the entire meaning of the sentence. These task cards are designed to provide opportunities to have conversations with students about the way language looks and sounds and how when we look closely to the text AND listen carefully to what we say, we self-correct when it doesn't look and sound right.

There are 24 task cards per set. There come color and black/white, and either full page or quarter page. Here is a sample task card:

The rest of the task cards are available HERE.
Enjoy! & As always, HAPPY READING!