Embedded Reading in Spanish

Having just learned about embedded reading from Laurie Clarq at the most recent Central Ohio TCI meeting I encourage anyone interested in improving reading comprehension in their students to visit:  https://embeddedreading.com

Here is my take:

Teaching reading skills in a foreign language can be tricky.  We are wont to teach students and expect them to use task-based strategies that include finding keywords and using context clues to break apart the text.  I agree that these skills aid students and help with comprehension of particular parts of the text.

Unfortunately, students with lower level reading skills are often intimidated by big chunks of text and often shut down in the face of a paragraph.  Our job is to build the confidence of the student and task-based strategies often undermine our attempts to do so with struggling readers.

Enter embedded reading.  By working with a text from the bottom up, starting with basic phrases and building a story, we can meanwhile fortify our student’s confidence and scaffold them to success.