It is not often that I leave a professional development session thinking, “This reading strategy is definitely the magic bullet.” However, I have to admit that this fall, this one strategy stuck out for me and my team. So let me share with you something that we thought was so simple to implement and yet highly effective for our English language learners: drop-in reading!
Where Does the Drop-In Reading Strategy Come From?
I first heard this term being used by Nancy Motley, author of, “Small Moves, Big Gains.” While she did not coin this term herself, she demonstrated this simple technique at the professional development session. To be clear, this is not, “Drop Everything and Read,” which is a completely different program.
What is Drop-In Reading?
Drop-in reading is when the teacher highlights, underlines, or bolds words or phrases in a text. Students are then asked to drop in and read those words as the teacher reads aloud the text to the class. Yes, it is that simple! The best part was that I was able to implement this strategy the day after learning about it, and you can too.
Not sure where to start? I started with my agenda and began to bold the action verbs in our objectives: define, identify, analyze, compare, support, create, etc. Our ESL or EB students often struggle with picking up on academic language, and I saw it as a simple way to begin to reinforce it, especially in content classes where students are mainstreamed with the general population.
What are the Benefits of This Reading Strategy?
First, it increases engagement in the classroom which is a big part of what our administrators want to see. Asking students to drop-in to read a few words or phrases is a low-risk way for them to participate in a classroom task.
Secondly, in regards to learning English as a language, I love using it with our reading lessons that have a specific grammar focus. Drop-in reading not only allows students to reinforce vocabulary but also to strengthen their grammar. My students are currently learning the simple past tense. How easy it is to take the reading passage from that unit, bold all the irregular past tense verbs, and ask students to drop in and read those verbs specifically. As a teacher, the bonus is that I get to check students’ pronunciations.
This reading strategy also builds reading fluency. Even though you are only asking students to read some words or phrases of a reading text, they still need to read the complete text to know when to drop in. They don’t realize it, but they are reading, and generally, they are reading actively. While they are listening to me read the text, they are also reinforcing phonetics and sight word knowledge.
And while I am talking about fluency, let’s highlight how this builds listening fluency as well. Since students must listen attentively to know when to drop in, they are building their listening fluency by increasing comprehension and processing knowledge in real-time. Win-win!
Finally, it creates an engaging learning environment. I don’t allow students to “sit out,” on the learning. When we drop-in read, everyone is following along and reading with me. And hearing a class of students read at just the right time feels so good too.
💡Hot Tip: Have students do the circling of the words for you! Below is an example from my short story unit, where students first identified our vocabulary words, and then dropped in to read them.
So where can you incorporate the drop-in reading strategy? Here are some ways my team uses it:
✅sight words with specific phonetic patterns or vowel combinations
✅background or content vocabulary that appears in our reading text
✅dialogue or imagery phrases that are analyzed later
Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts! I hope this easy-to-use reading strategy brings some added benefits to your classroom as it has with mine! Enjoy teaching!
