What types of activities can Mrs. Garcia use to increase her students’ reading skills?
Page 3: PALS Activities
When implemented among high-school students, PALS requires that learners engage in three activities designed to build fluency and comprehension. Once they’ve completed an initial round of training, students implement the activities during each session in a prescribed order: Partner Reading with Retell, Paragraph Shrinking, and Prediction Relay.
At the beginning of each of these activities, the lower-performing reader serves as the tutor (i.e., the Coach) and the higher-performing one takes on the role of tutee (i.e., the Reader), modeling good reading skills. After five minutes, the students switch roles. The pairs proceed through each of the three activities in the same manner. The teacher selects appropriate text for each student pair based on the reading level of the weaker reader.
It is essential to the success of PALS that, as the students engage in peer tutoring activities, the teacher move about the room to monitor their work. Doing so also creates an opportunity for the teacher to offer feedback to students about how well they are:
- Reading
- Implementing the PALS activities
- Working with their partner
|
|
|
| Partner Reading with Retell |
|
12 minutes |
| Paragraph Shrinking |
|
10 minutes |
| Prediction Relay |
|
10 minutes |
Activity
Skill
Length of Activity