Quote: “The ‘three-finger rule’ is a quick way to determine whether a book is a good match for a student: have the student turn to any page in the book, read it aloud, and raise a finger whenever there’s an unknown word. If the student knows every word, it’s too easy, but if there’s one or two difficult words on a page, the book is probably an appropriate choice. If there are three or more difficult words on a page, the book’s too difficult for independent reading” (76, Tompkins).
Comment: This is a great strategy! I have never heard of this trick as a way to determine a good match for reading. I want to implement this rule into my classroom so I can help my students find an appropriate book that will be somewhat challenging, but not enough that they will get frustrated.
Question: What do I do if a student tells me that he/she really wants to read a book, and is determined to read it, but can’t understand hardly anything that’s going on in the story? What would be the best thing to do? Should I tell him/her it may be too challenging and he/she should stop reading? Or do I encourage the student to continue reading even though he/she can’t understand the novel?
That is a great question. I think that students should be allowed to read whatever they want for an independent reading book. While they may not get any information out of it, it will develop their desire to read, and so will not harm the child. If they are constantly asking you for help to read the book, it might be good to advise them to read an easier book, but let the student's make their own choices.
ReplyDeleteI think that would be a great opportunity to help the child to get new techniques to understand a harder book. You could teach the student to keep a flow chart of events if he/she is confused about what happened before (that happens to me) or to keep a name tree to remember who's related to who and other techniques.
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