home

=Welcome to the WELS Literacy Wiki!=

This is a place to find and share ideas about how to help our students improve their reading.
The Extensive Reading Foundation has published a guide for teachers interested in extensive reading. []
 * Featured Article**

This is the powerpoint from the **VicTESOL conference** Thanks to all who attended the session These are the **handouts** with a third page of further reading

What are the 6 Reading Comprehension Strategies?

Thinking aloud helps us understand how we predict, visualise, summarise etc. || Narrative, Procedure, Description etc || Text Features: Table of contents, Index, Diagrams, Headings etc || I can picture… I can see the… I can visualize… The movie in my head shows… I can taste/hear/smell the… I can feel the… || before, during, and after reading to better understand the author and the meaning of the text. Ask questions of the author, yourself, and the text: What is the author trying to say? What is the message of this piece? Do I know something about this topic? What do I think I will learn from this text? How could this be explained to someone else? What predictions do I have about this reading? ||
 * Predicting |||| Good readers think about what the book will be about before they read. They read then stop and think about what will happen in the story. Predicting helps us understand what we read. ||
 * Summarising |||| Good readers stop and summarise. Summarising is thinking (or saying or writing) just the important things in the story . ||
 * Think Aloud |||| Good readers can say out loud what they are thinking when they read (or solve a maths problem)
 * Text Structures and Features |||| Good readers use their knowledge of text structures and features to help them understand what they read ||
 * ^  || Text Structures:
 * Visualising |||| Good readers create pictures in their minds while they read. While reading, note places where you get a clear picture in your mind that helps you understand the text:
 * Questions and Questioning |||| Good readers ask questions

Animations: [] Five classes ranging from SL to 1S enjoyed these films from the Dust Echoes website in term 3. They are very engaging and useful for teaching comprehension stratgies. Each film is only a few minutes long. They generate lots of discussion and are especially helpful for showing students how their own questions help them understand texts. Lesson plans to go with these films will be available shortly. Films used so far: 'Whirlpool', 'Spear' and 'Mermaid Story' - There is no talking in these three films. Digital Literacy - Literacy for the 21st Century Some ideas about digital literacy and new technologies Reading Strategies A 6 minute video on reading strategies  []

Quick Ideas
Passouts - students line up at the end of the lesson and tell the teacher one thing before they leave (one thing you remember about the story, one word you remember, one thing you learned, one thing another students said in the lesson etc). What the students tell you lets you know how much they remember. When they know they will have to tell you something about the lesson it helps them to concentrate and retain information.

Lesson Plans You might find something useful on the Lesson Plans page. Adapt and change these plans to suit your own needs and interests. Approaches to the teaching of reading (links to websites and short videos) This wiki is aimed at teachers of secondary students.

The WELS maths wiki is at http://wels-maths.wikispaces.com/ Another wiki on reading comprehension: http://literacymalden.wikispaces.com/Comprehension And another wiki on reading comprehension http://readingcomprehensionstrategies.wikispaces.com/Comprehension+Strategies

email: mcall.kate.k@edumail.vic.gov.au