READING COMPREHENSION

READING COMPREHENSION REVIST, REFLECT, RETELL

Set the stage for comprehension • Our job is to create environments where students are challenged to read a wide range of texts deeply and thoughtfully • We need to invite responses and reactions to text • Stretch thinking • Ensure a culture of learning where teachers and student are partners in learning and delving deep into text

What does that look like/sound like? • If we look at this from another perspective…. • Can you think of an example from the text to support our thinking.. • Have you considered… • What strategies best helped you to understand this selection.. • Can you show me a specific place in the text where this strategy helped you understand…

Learners explore, wonder and understand • Literal comprehension engages readers in unpacking the facts, or taking in the sequence of events • Aesthetic responses invite reactions, opinions, connections, or questions about the content and craft- engaging at the emotional level • Critical/analytical responses are those in which the reader challenges a text, an author, the premise behind the work, the validity of the content or the purpose of the piece. • In this level the readers look beyond the text, considering points of view, the authors intent, cultural references or bias • When all three levels of responses are utilised to scaffold reflective reading, readers expand their view of the text by examining, reacting to and analysing the selection

Teach strategies explicitly • Model how good readers react to text, thinking aloud • Explicitly demonstrate strategies and tools you as readers use to record your thinking, expose your thinking and show students your written responses in a highly visual way

Transfer responsibility • Students observe the modeling then student partners replicate the actions of the teacher while she/he coaches from the sidelines • Once the teacher is sure that the processes and procedures are understood individual students apply their learning independently

At the heart of deep comprehension is a teacher who engages in explicit modeling and coaching. Assignments are given only after students observe the teacher actively applying the target learning

Guide the student to consider • What did I learn? • What are my thoughts about this topic, this selection, this author, and a so on….. • What strategies best helped me understand? • Which next steps will best support my work as a reader, a thinker, and a writer?

Create words that teach • List processes used by readers • Quotations from master writers • Work samples that inspire students to reach higher as readers, writers and critical thinkers • Lists of questions reading partners could ask each other

Engage readers in powerful conversation • Float learning in a sea of talk… no need for quiet …..all the time • Historically conversations in classrooms have been teacher controlled • Question = raised hand- one person response- what happens to the other learners? • Change pattern of interaction to ‘distributed discourse model’ • E.g Thinking partners

Scaffold and support accountable conversations • Partner talk needs modeling and coaching • Sit knee to knee, maintain eye contact, and contribute ideas that extend and deepen understanding • See chart page 7 and 8 for ideas for your classroom

Partner read and think • View dvd

READING COMPREHENSION