Monitor for Meaning

The students have been studying a variety of Comprehension Strategies over the course of the year. One strategy, Monitor for Meaning, focuses on thinking about their own thinking while they are reading. It is important not to use their 'Distracting Voice!"
Students made speech bubbles that included sentence starters to use to help them think about the books they were reading.
Here are the sentence starters (thinking stems) we used to monitor our thinking:

For our unit on the comprehension strategy 'Monitoring for Meaning,' students have learned a few strategies to help them when they come to an unknown word in their book. These fix-it strategies are modeled after the Beanie Baby figures that were popular years ago. When your child is reading at home, it would be good to refer to these strategies as that keeps the language consistent between home and school!

Here is a brief explanation of each:

Eagle Eye tells you to Look at the Pictures: Have your child look at the pictures for clues to help figure out the word.

Lips the Fish tells you to Get your Lips Ready: Have your child say the first few sounds of the word out loud.

Stretchy Snake tells you to Stretch it Out: Have your child stretch the word out slowly and put the sounds together to figure out the word. As a further point, we prefer to use the phrase “say it slowly,” rather than “sound it out.”

Chunky Monkey tells you to Chunk the Word: Have your child look for a part or a “chunk” that they know (ex: -ing, -old, -and, etc.).

Skippy Frog tells you to Skip it, Skip it: Have your child skip the word, read to the end of the sentence, and then go back and try it again.

Tryin’ Lion tells you to Try it Again: Have your child reread the sentence and try a word that makes sense.

Helpful Kangaroo tells you to Ask for Help: After your child has tried applying some of the strategies as learned, he/she can ask someone else for help.

Dot the Giraffe tells you to Watch the Punctuation: Have your child watch the punctuation (, . ? ! “”). Example: Read with expression when you see the talking/quotation marks.

Flippy Dolphin tells you to Flip the Vowel Sound: In other words, try a long vowel sound if the short vowel sound does not work (example: a vowel will say its own name when an ‘e’ is added to the end as is bit to bite, hat to hate, not to note).