Reading Test Prep: Use Student Misconceptions to Improve Student Performance

My students have been completing Daily Common Core ELA practice.  It is like a DOL and other types of morning practice.  The biggest difference is it contains really short Common Core aligned passages and questions for quick daily review.  No matter what resource you use, discussing the correct answers and the errors that students make can be so valuable.  It can really boost student understanding of concepts.  

This was one question that a few of my students got incorrect and is a common type of error students in general make.  I call it a dense text question.  This one paragraph has many details and information packed into it (on purpose).  Students that read carefully and went back to the text to locate their answer did well.  Even students that did not do this at first,  began to improve later when this type of error was brought to their attention.

Sometimes students only have partial knowledge of a concept.  Analyzing reading comprehension errors can really help distinguish students that fully understand a concept from those that don't. Having students think about their thinking and how they determine their answers can really improve comprehension.

For more information about quick, Daily Common Core ELA Practice access your grade level below.

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Middle School Test Prep Strategies: Using Student Misconceptions to Help Students Improve

One of the best strategies for helping students improve whether it is reading or math is through having students analyze their own errors.  

This is the daily Common Core practice that I completed with my middle school students yesterday.  For five minutes at the beginning of class, we complete Daily Common Core ELA practice as an opening activity before going into the rest of the lesson.  We have been using this as test prep and this is my sneaky way of giving them background knowledge before we read novels and short stories.

One of the most common reading errors students make is they do not read carefully.  After students complete any type of test prep, it is so important to discuss the correct answers as well as faulty logic or poor strategies that would result in a wrong answer.

This was a another question that was missed by some students.  A few students missed this question because of a combination of not reading the passage carefully and the lack of background knowledge.  High school literature really gets into time period prose.  To help students get prepared at the middle school level, Common Core has really increased their expectations of what students should come to high school knowing.  As a result, I deliberately wrote this one day passage using 19th century Victorian dialect and with issues of that time period to give students exposure.   This will help with Common Core and also helps me find out what students already know.  

A few students did not read the text closely and totally missed some important information that could have helped with answering this question.

Having students talk about their thinking while answering questions and discussing correct and incorrect answers has proven to be helpful.

For more information about the Daily Common Core Passages that were used, click a link below.

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Using Interactive Common Core Reading Journals to Teach Theme

The students that I work with at each of the grade levels just completed mini lessons on theme.  This is the interactive notebook page that each of them created and use as a reference.  Common Core Standard RL.2 refers to it as theme.  For informational text, it is usually called the central idea (RI.2).  In both cases, Common Core wants readers to understand the deeper meaning of the text.

After we complete the lesson each day, the younger students review using theme flashcards (yes, common theme flashcards). Then, they use theme task cards in their literacy center station.  The middle school students faithfully use the theme exit slips each day as a review.
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Students often get theme and main idea confused.  The Venn diagram has really been helpful with getting them to understand the difference.

Yellow watercolor paint was painted along the edge of the paper.  Common Core tabs have been added to the student journals to make it easier for us to locate information.

This is a new foldable.  This helps with Common Core Standards RL.3 and RI.3.  Across the grade levels, Common Core wants students to understand, describe, and/or analyze the connections between ideas or events.  The arrows were drawn to help students remember this while they read.  This will be used with my students within the next few days.

Five Weeks of Daily Common Core Practice

Common Core morning bell work in just five minutes a day.  These quick and short passages help students cover multiple Common Core Standards each week.  As the weeks progress, standards are reviewed to assist students in gaining mastery with the standards.  A variety of reading passages are covered across the grade levels including:  realistic fiction, historical fiction, historical informational text, scientific text, technical text, memoirs and plays.

Use them as quick morning work as students enter the classroom or use them as nightly Common Core homework.
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{Freebie} Resource to Teach Students to Apply Reading Strategies

If you have students that do not apply reading strategies, I share in your pain (weep).  This can be so frustrating.  One day, the thought came across my mind that there are a multitude of resources out there for reviewing skills, but there are no games or activities that focus on getting students to remember to apply strategies.  

I have been using this with my students that are resistant to applying strategies, and by golly it is actually working!!!

I want to share this freebie with you guys too.  Click Here

(P.S.  Sorry about the glare.  I tried, but no matter what I did, I couldn't avoid it in the pics.)