Self- Monitoring and Fix-Up Strategies

One thing I have noticed about my third graders is that they do not self-monitor. They will say a word and, even if it does not makes sense, continue reading. Then, unsurprisingly, when they get to the end of the story or article, they have no idea what it was about. As a result, I have been trying to get my students to make a conscious effort to self-monitor more while reading. 

We began with an anchor chart. We discussed how I will not always be there when they are reading, so they need to learn how to "fix-up" their reading on their own. We talked about how self-monitoring might involve stopping to reflect after a sentence, paragraph, or page to make sure they understood what they just read. They might be confused on a word, or confused by the information in the passage.

Together, we brainstormed a list of things students could do if they realized they were confused in their reading. We wrote these ideas down on the anchor chart, and students wrote them on their small copy of the chart in their reader's notebooks.

For the first book, I modeled how to use a t-chart to self-monitor. I recorded the page(s) number and then wrote a brief 1-2 sentence summary of what I read, as well as any questions I had. After we went over my example, we went back into the text and answered the questions I had "gotten stuck on" while reading. With the next book, we completed the t-chart in students' reader's notebooks together. We went back and answered the questions at the end.

For the final text, I selected an article. With this text, students created the t-charts independently in their reader's notebooks. I have noticed that students are making a much more conscious effort to problem-solve on their own, instead of waiting for help. This is definitely something that we will continue to practice throughout the year. I think it is important to remember that while this seems like such a natural skill, for struggling readers, it often does not come naturally.

How do you help your students self-monitor their reading?

Fix-up Strategies

My tier 3 fifth grade group is a pretty intensive group. I noticed that these students do not self-monitor when they are reading, and as a result, they do not problem solve. For this reason, I decided to give an explicit lesson on fix-up strategies.

We began by creating an anchor chart together. (The students even wrote on the chart for this one!) In this lesson, we focused on what to do when we do not understand specific words and when we do not understand what is happening in the story. Students did not really have trouble identifying when they did not understand a word, but they had a hard time realizing where meaning broke down in the story/article. To help correct this, we practiced self-monitoring with several texts.

First, we read shorter articles and gradually moved to longer texts, finishing with a chapter book. With each article, the students read the article independently first. As they were reading, they filled out a self-monitoring graphic organizer. If you would like your own graphic organizer, click on the image below!

Then, we read through the article together and went over the words and parts of the story/article that the students struggled with. Together we problem-solved and figured out what the challenging word or part of the story meant. We recorded what fix-up strategy(ies) we used on our graphic organizer.

Identifying exactly at what point meaning breaks down is a challenging concept for my students. With repeated practice with a variety of texts, my students showed great improvement. Near the end, students were problem-solving some on their own. We will continue to work on this skill.

How do you teach your students to self-monitor when they are reading?