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Explore by Grade Level: Grades 3 - 5

• How do I improve my students’ ability to make inferences?

  In order to infer students need to be able to understand what the author means beyond the literal meaning of the words.  This is often easier said than done.  While inferring is something that people do daily, for some students it doesn’t occur naturally while navigating text.  95 Percent Group has created a process that helps to support this abstract concept through the use of specially created passages and mats. 
  
  Download this passage to help your students better understand the process of inferring. 
  
  
  
  

• How do I help my students become more effective while reading informational text?

  Finding the right tools and techniques to assist in teaching informational text can sometimes be a challenge.  In order to be successful in informational text, good readers need to use a number of skills that may not come naturally.  These skills include determining the text type, using text features effectively, combining details from different places in the text and deciding what is important. 
  
  Download this graphic organizer to help your students identify the text type.
  
  
  
  

• How do I accelerate my student’s vocabulary learning?

  Vocabulary is often considered the gatekeeper to comprehension. Reading more complex text will require students to learn unknown words when they come across them in text. To draw from a common analogy, teaching a student the meaning of one word at a time is like giving a hungry person a fish; teaching the skills to figure out any unknown word is teaching the student HOW to fish.  One of the most important skills in learning unknown words is to show students how word parts contribute to meaning.
  
  Download this mat and cards that will help your students understand how Latin roots and affixes work together.
  
  
  

• How do I convert my students into active word learners?

  Once students enter grade 3 the number of words they need to learn each year increases to somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000.  It’s impossible for any teacher to teach all of the words they need to learn!  Half the battle is convincing your students that there is more to the words than meets the eye.  For instance, did you know that the origin of a word often impacts how it is spelled?
  
  Download this document that will help you explain some common spelling differences among Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Greek words.
  
  
  

• How do I ensure that all of my students have the skills needed to read fluently?

  Gaps in phonics knowledge can slow text processing down enough to impair comprehension.  The issue looks like it’s a fluency deficit but providing fluency practice without identifying the problem can cause more harm than good.  It’s surprising that some older students are still struggling with phonics patterns that are supposed to be learned in first grade. 
  
  95 Percent Group has developed a continuum that shows which phonics skills students should have mastered in each of the early grades – 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd.  This information can be helpful regardless of which core program you teach. 
  
  Download the continuum.
  
  
  

• What do I do about students who can’t even read some of the easy words?

  Many students who struggle to read some of the easier words do so because they are uncertain about how to pronounce the vowel. Teaching students the closed syllable pattern and its corresponding short vowel sounds provides a foundation upon which to add more complex vowel pattern. This type of pattern instruction is more engaging and interactive when teachers use manipulatives. 
  
  Download this lesson using colored chips to teach short vowel patterns.