Children who cannot read at grade level expectations by the end of the third grade face serious obstacles in their academic career and experience limitations in their career opportunities.
Your participation as a Reading Pal can help a young student during their time in grades K-5, to gain critical reading skills that are so vital to academic success.
Children who cannot read at the third grade level by the end of the third grade face serious obstacles in their academic career and experience limitations in their career opportunities.
Your participation as a Reading Pal can help a young student during their time in grades K-5, to gain critical reading skills that are so vital to academic success
What is the role of a Reading Pal?
Your role as a Reading Pal is to join the student in their assigned online lesson. During this past year, schools have used a virtual classroom environment to provide ongoing educational content. Elementary school students, as a group, experienced challenges in engagement with the virtual class.
We have seen impressive results when an adult participates with a student during the lesson presentation. The Reading Pal ensures that the student stays engaged in the lesson and your role is to listen to the responses the student provides to the teacher’s question. As a Reading Pal, you will pause the video lesson periodically to give the student time to reply to the teacher’s questions.
You will verify that the student made the correct response and if a student pauses or does not respond correctly, you may clarify the teacher’s request, being sure the student understands the question.
Does the Reading Pal act as the teacher?
The Reading Pal role is not a substitute for the teaching instructions in the recorded lesson. You can resolve any confusion in the student’s understanding of the directions provided in the recorded lesson and you can replay any part of a lesson to address a student’s question about how to read a word or phrase. If the student does is not able to answer the question, you can replay the lesson segment where the teacher explains the strategy to read a word or phrase.
How much preparation is necessary to be an effective Reading Pal for a specific lesson?
A Reading Pal must be familiar with the lesson content, the types of questions asked and the answers to those questions. We have teacher versions of the workbooks that provide the correct answers including example sentences in those lessons that have a writing component.
We schedule Reading Pal sessions according to your availability and the student’s availability. Each lesson engagement or Reading Pal session is approximately 20 to 30 minutes
Our experience has shown that students make the most progress when they engage in a lesson with a Reading Pal at least three times per week and optimally five times per week.. You are conducting a reading session with that student to enable the student to have a complete and full understanding of the reading skills taught in that session. There is a definite lesson format that is repeated throughout the course for learning specific reading skills, such as learning words that rhyme, and reading phrases that describe an image. Sight word exercises are repeated throughout the course.
How to get started
Click on this button ( Information about being a Reading Pal) to indicate your interest in being a Reading Pal.
