Iowa Department of Education

Second Chance Reading (SCR) is a program that provides a specific course for struggling readers at the middle and high school levels who are reading below grade level. In middle schools, struggling readers are assigned to a SCR class rather than their regular reading class. In high schools, SCR classes are treated as an elective course. SCR focuses on comprehension skills but also targets vocabulary development and fluency in both fiction and non-fiction texts. Based on a comprehensive analysis of research on reading, SCR combines multiple strategies and practices into a structure for reading instruction and has proved successful in both urban and rural settings.

The program incorporates several strands:

• Extensive independent reading at students’ recreational level;
• Vocabulary development at both age-appropriate and recreational reading levels;
• Comprehension instruction for both lower- and higher-order comprehension tasks in fiction and non-fiction materials;
• Fluency instruction and monitoring; and
• Writing as an assist to comprehension.

SCR Course Elements

• Teacher Think Aloud/Read Aloud is developed around reading selections chosen because they are of high interest and relevance to students and because they are intellectually complex. The teacher models his/her own thinking while posing student to student pairs to practice the teacher modeled comprehension activity. Accompanying the ThinkAloud/Read Aloud are a vocabulary lesson and one comprehension activity that addresses higher-order comprehension objectives.
• Numbered Heads Together is a cooperative Learning strategy in which partners study the meaning of new vocabulary by building associations with the new words and then collaborate to respond to questions about the new words in a teacher-led recitation.
• Cooperative Comprehension - Following the teacher Think Aloud/Read Aloud students work in pairs or small groups to discuss and record responses to comprehension questions.  Generally, cooperative comprehension tasks pose three to five questions of graduated difficulty.
• Dictated Writing is a teacher-facilitated writing activity that addresses a higher-order comprehension question.  Students work with a partner to write to prompts provided by the teacher; the teacher then combines student writing into a class essay.
• Inductive Thinking is a fundamental higher-order thinking strategy used to teach students a process for determining authors’ central themes and main ideas. Students compare and contrast passages from a piece, categorize the passages by common meaning, and form generalizations about their categories.
• Graphic Organizers are a visual representation of concepts, knowledge, or information that can incorporate both text and pictures. Examples include link-word mnemonics, maps, Venn diagrams, and flow charts.  Graphic organizers allow the mind “to see” undiscovered patterns and relationships.
• Independent Reading/Vocabulary - Students read silently books they have selected at their recreational reading level and record on index cards words that are new or unknown to them. Definitions of words are recorded on the backs of the cards.  Each student maintains a personal file of words that they have identified as new. In addition, words introduced by the teacher each week during the read aloud/think aloud are part of students vocabulary file. The heart of every SCR classroom is the SCR classroom library.
• Fluency/Comprehension Tests - On a biweekly basis, students are administered a fluency and comprehension test.  Results of these tests are plotted by each student. The goal is for each student to learn to monitor the speed with which they read various kinds of materials and to monitor their speed so the comprehension does not suffer. Students and teachers work together to determine the appropriate fluency and comprehension goals.
• Cooperative Strategies - In order to more actively engage students in the learning process, cooperative strategies are used frequently in the SCR program. They include:
  • Pair Share is a structure that enables students to share with their peers elements of the books they are reading independently.
  • Round Table is a simple cooperative comprehension exercise in which partners recall information about selections the teacher reads orally to the class is the whole.
  • Vocabulary Pairs is a cooperative activity for partners in which students rehearse/learn vocabulary words from their individual vocabulary files.

More Information

 Second Chance Reading (SCR) Flyer (2008-02-15)

 SCR Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) (2008-02-15)

 2008-2009 SCR Training Sessions (2008-04-30)

 2008-2009 SCR Regional Training Application (2008-02-25)

Contact
Janet Stos
515-281-0127
janet.stos@iowa.gov