Teaching Comprehension

1. Teaching Comprehension • Dolores Durkin did a landmark study (1978-79) on teaching comprehension. She found a great deal of testing comprehension, but not teaching! • Pressley visited 4th/5th grade classes. He found little evidence of students being able to self-regulate comprehension processes or being taught strategies. • Allington writes Accelerated Reader and Barnell Loft comprehension materials (Find the Main Idea, Levels A, B, C, etc.) provide anything but activities that assess student strategy use. He calls them “assign and assess” because there is no instruction!

2. How can we help struggling readers? • Struggling readers can benefit enormously when we construct lessons to make the comprehension process visible. --demonstrations of effective strategy use (model, explain, thinks aloud, shows how to “do it”) • --shared demonstration (teacher suggests, supports, explains, responds/student listens, interacts, questions, collaborates, responds, tries out) • --guided practice (student applies learning, takes charge, practices, problem solves, self-corrects/teacher validates, teaches as necessary, evaluates, observes, encourages, confirms) • --independent practice (student initiates, self-monitors, self-directs, applies learning, problem-solves, confirms/teacher affirms, assists as needed, responds, acknowledges, coaches, sets goals) --lots of opportunities to apply the demonstrated strategy over time

3. Strategy Instruction • Takes time! • Most successful interventions tapped a single strategy and developed that strategy through longer-term instruction and repeated application activity. (See steps in previous slide). • About 4-10 weeks of focused instruction and application of a single strategy. • Greatest improvements were found among lower achieving students.

4. Collaborative Strategic Reading and Reciprocal Teaching • Reciprocal teaching (Palincsar and Brown, 1984) involves teaching comprehension strategies in the context of a reading group --students taught to make predictions --students question themselves about ideas in the text --seek clarifications when confused --summarize content Adult teacher explains and models these strategies, but quickly transfers responsibility to members of the group. One student will be the group leader. Assumes that eventually students will internalize use of the four strategies practiced. (Vgotsky says individual cognitive development results from participation in social groups. Negative parts: may be more literal level questions than preferred Collaborative Strategic Reading – from text

5. Pressley did comprehension studies at Benchmark School • Students were provided instruction about how to carry out strategies • Teachers modeled focal strategies • Students practiced strategies, with teacher guidance and assistance as needed • Information presented about why the focal strategy was important (attribution training) • Information about when & where to apply strategies • Goal for students to take over their own reading; make predictions, talk about questions, report the images they get during reading, discuss parts of the text that are hard and generate interpretations, write summaries

6. Before, During & After ReadingStrategies • Yopp & Yopp book has fun examples! • Great rubric for think alouds: BEFORE READING: did the reader notice cues for prediction, such as title, heading, pictures, author, charts, graphs? Make suitable prediction about the text, topic & genre? Bring up something he or she already knows about the genre, topic, author?

7. More on rubric for Think Alouds • DURING READING: Did the reader…..comment on what was read? Ask questions to be clarified? • Try to answer his/her own questions and clarify what didn’t make sense? • Relate what was being read to prior knowledge? • Summarize and/or retell the gist to that point? • Check guesses or predictions? • Reread or read ahead when trying to make sense? • Describe visualizations? • AFTER READING: Did the reader…..summarize or retell? Respond? Critically reflect?

8. Summarizing and Retelling • Retelling rope • Allington’s example of teacher reading and rereading Stellaluna • Model illustrates effective comprehension strategy instruction: teacher provided enormous support initially; then created collaborative activities where children had to verbalize their thinking • Then sustained engagement with summarizing activity • Then gradually moved students to greater and greater independence in using the strategy • Finally, by the end of the year, students could produce story summaries of books read they read and books read to them.

9. How Cognitive Reading Strategies Teaches Main Idea or Summarizing • Scan – look for titles, pictures, special print • Get the details – look in book and collect facts • Put the details together (and think about your life experience) • Say it in 5-10 words

10. Thoughtful Literacy • Helping out students to add dimension to their lives: “responding to a story with giggles, goosebumps, anger, refulsion, etc.” • More than remembering what a text said • Engaging the ideas in the text, challenging those ideas & reflecting on them • Example of thoughtful literacy – Shells (short story by Cynthia Rylant)

11. Literature Circles • Program to help students talk about books together (Daniels, 1996) (Daniels, Bizar, 1999) • Each person is assigned one role for a discussion period. Child uses a worksheet to prepare for this role. • Groups stay together for each novel/all read same book • Major roles include Questioner, Passage Master, Word Wizard and Artful Artist. • Students take different roles for different discussion days, so all learn to look for vocabulary, all learn to develop questions & serve as discussion director, etc. • Students learn how to contribute to discussions and engage when reading • Students should not just think about their role, but rather also the text as a whole. • See “bookmark” samples for roles

12. Sketch to Stretch • Developed by Short and Harste with Burke (1996) • Small group drawing activity • Everyone reads the same story; then each child draws a single image or theme or central message of the story • First child shows his drawing and others comment on what they see • Finally the artist has closing comments, explaining what was intended • Each member then shares similarly and others comment on what they see • “Understanding how students think when they read is difficult; drawing provides a window on the thinking and meaning construction that may not be available from other, more verbal activities.” (Blachowicz, Ogle)

13. Save the Last Word for Me& Say Something • Both strategies help make personal connections to texts • For Say Something, students read in pairs. When they have read to a certain section, they “say something” to one another about something they read---a summary, raise a question, connect to a character or story happening. • For “Save the Last Word for Me”, students write a quote on an index card. When group finishes reading, students share their quotations, one at a time and others in the class comment on each quotation. When others are done, the person who selected the quote says why that quote was selected. This can be used whole class or with a small group.

14. Question Answer Relationships(QAR) • Involve students in evaluation of types of questions and ways they can respond and the kinds of questions useful to them. • “Right There” Questions • “Think and Search” Questions • “Author and You” Questions • “On My Own” Questions – You can answer this without even reading the story and you use your background knowledge

15. Junior Great Books and Great Books Discussions • With Junior Great Books, there are short story text selections by various grade levels, which the teacher reads aloud initially and children do several rereadings. • There are two or three interpretive questions with no specific answers. Students write their responses. Students must show evidence from the text. Then they engage in an oral discussion on the questions. • Teacher keeps a record of the discussion from a seating chart. Teacher notes student contributions.

16. Informational Book Discussions • Leal (1992) investigated discussions of realistic fiction, narrative nonfiction and expository nonfiction. • The best discussions were with narrative nonfiction! • --more content to talk about • --purpose of discussion was more apparent • --students wanted to learn from one another

17. Socratic Seminar • “Powerful teaching and learning strategy that improves comprehension and challenges students to think and apply knowledge on increasingly higher levels.” (Horn) • Class reads play, poem, historical document, short story • Each student then writes a response—lets students reflect and make connections to prior knowledge and construct meaning. • Students write three open-ended questions for the discussion. • Students identify vocabulary words that are new or that they find particularly interesting. • Actual seminar discussion takes place – teacher leads initially and then students take over. Leader poses the questions and students take turns discussing. • Final step is a follow-up written response where students reflect on the discussion and apply their new learning. • In this type of discussion, students listen to peers, thinking is backed up by evidence from the text, student responses are longer than in regular class discussions. • See sample text and questioning

18. Case Studies of Instructional Readers: Tyler • Rising 5th grader • What are concerns primarily in this case?

19. Case Study: Kyla • Rising 4th grader • What are the concerns with Kyla’s reading?

20. Case Study: Kylie • Rising 5th grader • Asperger’s or autism continuum

21. Case Study: Alfred • Rising 5th grader • English Language Learner