Introducing Monitor and Fix Up

Although the CAFE wall in our classroom had a nice assortment of strategies under each heading, I quickly realized as I conferred with students that we were still missing an important one: Monitor and Fix Up. Too often students were reading a word that didn't make sense, but they continued to read as if it did.

To add an element of fun, I decided to teach the strategy by turning the lesson into a contest. Here is how it went.

"Boys and girls, I have been listening to a lot of readers in our school the last two weeks, and I have discovered an important secret. The students who are really great readers are always thinking while they read. If they read something either in their heads or out loud that doesn't make sense, they stop, go back, and fix it. Other students keep going, even if something doesn't sound right. The students who stop are using a strategy called Monitor and Fix Up and it's a really smart thing to do."

"I'm going to introduce you to the strategy through a game today. It is all of you against me. (Cheers erupted.) Each one of you needs one of these red construction-paper hands. While I read, you are going to listen carefully. Be a thinker. When your brain says, "Wait, That didn't sound right," put this red hand out as a signal that I need to stop. It is a silent signal, so show me with the hand, not your voice. When you signal me to stop, I will go back, use one of the strategies on our CAFE wall to fix up the error, and then keep going. You get one point each time you stop me when I make an error. I get a point if you don't catch it when I make an error."

Someone immediately wanted to know what would happen if they put the hand out when I didn't make a mistake. "Then I get a point." This thwarted the "put the hand up no matter what" strategy that had formed in the shrewd child's mind.

I read the hilarious Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs as retold by Mo Willems, but you can use any favorite read-aloud for this lesson.

I made about six errors throughout the course of the reading. Students enthusiastically monitored while I read, thrust the red hands forward, and then I modeled how to fix up my errors by using the following strategies from our CAFE board:

• Cross-check.
• Flip the sound.
• Chunk letters and sounds together.
• Skip the word, then come back.
• Blend sounds; stretch and reread.

The students listened intently and won with six points to my two. They were encouraged to be serious thinkers and growing readers by monitoring their own reading during Daily 5. Sharing that day focused on the success they experienced.  Because of the shared lesson, I was able to confer with individuals and when necessary, anchor back to the monitor and fix up lesson. 

Most of the students wanted to keep the construction-paper hands, which are now serving as bookmarks and visual reminders to always be monitoring for understanding.