Reading Coaches and Reading Partners

Each summer I go into the school weeks before classes begin and I go through my new class list. I use a spreadsheet to record important information from the previous years such as the student's reading scores, report card grades in Language and Math, birthdates, sending teacher, IEP or ESL, and comments from the sending teachers. The first thing I notice is the wide range of reading skills even within the same grade. However, by sorting the data on the spreadsheet I am able to order the scores from highest to lowest. I usually have 7 or 8 exceptionally strong readers and the same number who are not there yet. (Click here for more on YET) and (Baby Elephant Syndrome.) After getting to know the students, I select some of the top readers and conference them on the importance of being a coach. I tell them how sometimes the best way to learn something is to prepare to teach it and I give them the opportunity to become a coach for a peer who is not YET a strong reader. 

It works very well. The coaches take their jobs seriously and actually become better readers themselves as they find ways of articulating the strategies they use. I make sure the coaching relationship will work on an interpersonal level as well as an academic one, so each tries to be successful for the other. The emergent readers receive individualized instruction and the stronger readers examine and expand their own successful strategies.

Those students who are not part of the coaching activitiy are paired with Reading Partners, a peer of similar ability. They can share favourite stories, read aloud to each other, engage in creative writing and assist in peer editing.