Materials Needed
All three topics go hand-in-hand. Semantic and syntactic cues need to be understood to properly conduct a running record.
- Blank sheet of paper or blank running record sheet
- Pencil
- The carefully selected text
Semantic Cues
Reading Behaviors-What to Record?
- Also referred to as meaning or context clues
- Helps students comprehend texts, words, speech, signs, symbols, etc.
- By looking at the text and pictures, students think about what they already know about a topic to figure out a word they do not know.
- Words read as expected
- Errors (omission, substitution, insertion)
- Asking for help
- Repeating words
- Self-correction
- Multiple attempts
Identifying Cuing Systems
- If the student makes an error while reading, the teacher would begin by writing the letters M (for meaning), S (for syntax), and V (for visual) in the column for errors on the running records sheet.
- Meaning: Did the meaning have an impact on the child's reading?
- Pictures and information
- Syntax: Did the child read the sentence in a grammatical and linguistically reasonable manner?
- Visual: What did the word look like?
Analyzing the Running Record
- By doing some simple calculations from your running record, you can not only get a better sense of how well the child is reading but select more appropriate texts for further running records. It is important to calculate:
- Error ratio
- Accuracy rate
- Self-correction ratio
Example: When reading a story about cats, good readers develop the expectation that the story will contain words associated with cats (tail, purr, whisker). When reading a sentence such as, "My cat likes to ______", students should be able to use their knowledge to come up with an answer such as scratch, play or jump.
A Fishy Story
taught
On Monday I dreamed I caught a fish.
duck
It was as big as a bird. (semantic, meaning)
Thursday taught
On Tuesday I dreamed I caught a fish.
It was as big as a cat.
taught
On Wednesday I dreamed I caught a fish.
It was as big as a dog.
taught
On Thursday I dreamed I caught a fish.
It was as big as a man.
taught
On Friday I dreamed I caught a fish.
It was as big as a horse.
On Saturday I dreamed I caught a fish.
It was as big as a whale.
On Sunday I really went fishing.
taught
I caught a little, tiny fish.
- http://www.youtube.com
- http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/res/teach/rec.html
- http://www.hpedsb.on.ca/ec/services/cst/elementary/literacy/documents/ThreeCueingSystems-detail.pdf
- http://literacyconnects.org/img/2013/03/Phonemic-Semantic-Clues-Handout.pdf
What are running records, semantic cues, and syntactic
cues?
Syntactic Cues
Running Records/Semantic Cues/Syntactic Cues
By Emma Harris
Teaching Semantic Cues
- Involves word order, rules and patterns of language (grammar), and punctuation
- Making sense of the actual words in the sentence
- Cues come from the student's knowledge of correct oral language structures
Example: Going back to the cat sentence, students will be able to look at the sentence and determine that the missing word must be a verb.
"My cat likes to _________."
Running Records
Text Selection
- A tool that teachers use to identify patterns in student reading behaviors
- These patterns allow a teacher to see the strategies a student uses to make meaning of individual words and texts as a whole
- Students read from a benchmark book while the teacher assesses the performance
- Usually taken during early stages of reading
- Early Emergent readers need to take a running record every 2 to 4 weeks.
- Fluent readers: 8 to 10 weeks
- Should challenge a student sufficiently
- hard enough to make some errors
- not too hard that the student becomes frustrated
- known as the instructional level
- At this level, students can extend their cuing systems
- Keep the students' interests in mind for motivation
- Reading unfamiliar books has more accurate results
- Controversial: Should students be able to pick their own text?