Strategies to Enhance Technical Reading Skills

1. Strategies to Enhance Technical Reading Skills Teresa Rogers Butler County ATC Summer 2010 www.butlercountyhealthsciences.com

2. Objectives • Participants will: • Review characteristics of good readers • Discuss a variety of instructional strategies for teaching reading skills including: • Modeling • Reading aloud • Think – Alouds • Graphic Organizers • Sticky Notes • Highlighting • Jigsaws • Review fix-up strategies

3. Technical Reading • Many students struggle when confronted with technical or informational materials. • They do not know how to: • Use questions before, during, and after reading • Monitor their reading for comprehension • Use fix-up strategies • Communicate learning through personal response, text connections, or new understandings.

4. Characteristics of Good Readers

5. Organize Text • Recall important details that relate to the author’s purpose and main idea (the big picture) • Recall the sequence • Differentiate between main ideas and less important ideas during and after reading • Use textual aids and visual cues • Consider purposes – author’s, reader’s, teacher’s

6. Connecting to Background Knowledge • Text-to-self – connections that readers make between the text and their past experiences • Text-to-text – connections that readers make between what they are reading and another text • Text-to-world – connections that readers make between what they are reading to the real world

7. Making Inferences and Predictions • Ability to read between the lines to grasp the deeper, often hidden, meaning of the text • Use all aspects of text (e.g., visuals, headings) to create inferences • Reflect on previous texts or experiences to make a connection or assumption • Relate text to current events and classroom themes • Use cause and effect and fact and opinion to infer and predict • Generate relevant predictions with logical evidence that related to main idea and/or author’s purpose • Revise predictions based on new evidence in text

8. Visualizing • Creating mental pictures from the words in the text. • Allows the words on the page to become real and concrete.

9. Generating and Answering Questions • Generate relevant implicit and explicit questions to interact with text • Generate questions that the author wants the reader to ask • Use questions before, during and after reading • Actively seek to answer questions during reading

10. Determining Word Meanings • Use sentence structure and semantic clues to predict word meaning • Use context to figure out the meanings of multiple-meaning words • Use knowledge of key vocabulary, prefixes, suffixes, and roots

11. Monitoring One’s Own Comprehension • Use fix-up strategies when comprehension breaks down • Adapt reading and thinking to fit the type of text (narrative/poetry, technical, expository/social science, science, math)

12. Instructional Strategies

13. Model Comprehension • Teachers are the best qualified people to show students how good readers think. • We should model our thinking when reading challenging content texts and performing tasks such as filling in graphic organizers, drawing mental pictures from texts, and creating written responses.

14. Reading aloud is vital for building fluency and language. • Think-alouds are effective ways to show students how proficient readers think while reading. • We can show • the many complex habits that help us comprehend • how much mental work it is to read for meaning • how we also get stuck, figure out words, ask silly questions, make predictions, infer, etc.

15. Scaffolding Student’s Comprehension • Students need to be given opportunities to do what the teacher has modeled. • Teacher assistance gradually diminishes as students master the skill. • We want to do more than help students succeed at specific tasks such as answering questions about a text or filling in charts. • Instead, we want to develop into mental habits that kick in automatically when students read any type of text in the future: SAT tests, DVD machine instructions, newspaper article, project reports, business letters, etc.

16. Giving Mini-lessons • Short and targeted lessons that teach a particular aspect of reading when the need arises. • Introduce skill – let students know what they are about to learn • Teacher modeling – show students the strategy, teacher think alouds are effective • Student modeling and guided practice – have students gradually take charge of the strategy and begin to require less support from you.

17. Written Responses • Coding with sticky notes • Making notes in the margins • Circling, highlighting, bracketing, and underlining the text

18. Graphic Organizers • A visual representation of knowledge, concepts, or ideas • Help students to see the relationships between facts, terms, ideas, etc. • Can be used in all phases of learning from brainstorming to introduce a topic to presentation of information to review • Can be used as whole group, small group, or individual activity

19. What Type of Materials Do I Use? • Content – articles that support and build background knowledge of the content we are teaching or help students make connections • Strategy practice – short pieces that push our thinking, perhaps demanding that the reader ask questions, infer meaning, or synthesize information to understand • Features – pieces that contain features that signify importance, such as headings, bold print, italics, and captions

20. Form – select a wide variety of different writing forms, including essays, letters, feature articles, and columns to expose students to the different characteristics of each form • Text-structure – use different short-text forms to examine different cue words and text structures. • Perspective – articles that support different opinions • Surprising information

21. Strategies in Practice

22. Making Connections - Oral Responses • Discussion • Small or whole group discussion about various types of connections we make when we read • Verbal Responses • “That reminds me of…” • “I have a connection…” • “Remember when…”

23. Making Connections - Written Responses • Text Codes • R – reminds me of • T-S – text-to-self connection • T-T – text-to-text connection • T-W – text-to-world connection • Two-Column Note Form • Quote or Picture from Text / My Connection • What the Text is About / What It Reminds Me Of • Words in the Text / My Personal Connection • Words in the Text / My Connection to Another Text • Words in the Text / My Connection to an Issue, Event, or Person

24. Questioning - Oral Responses • Discussion • Small or whole group discussion about various questions we have about a topic • Verbal Responses • “I wonder…” • “How come…” • “Why does…” • “I’m confuse about…” • “I’d don’t get it…”

25. Questioning - Written Responses • Text Codes • ? – I don’t understand this • Two-Column Note Form • Quote or Picture from Text / My Connection • What the Text is About / What It Makes Me Wonder About • What I Know / What I Wonder • What I Learned / What I Wonder • Questions / Facts

26. Questioning - Other Responses • Other Responses • Question of the Day – • Each day, challenge a different student to come up with a sincere question about a unit of study for others to answer. • Or, use a question from the unit of study as bell work or an exit response • Question Webs • Three Column Note form listing questions “Before, During, and After”

27. Visualizing - Oral Responses • Discussion • Discuss how words in text make pictures in the mind • Verbal Responses • “I get a picture in my mind…” • “I can see …” • “I visualized…”

28. Visualizing - Written Responses • Text Codes • V - visualized • Two-Column Note Form • Quote or Picture from Text / My Mental Image • What the Text is About / What I See • Words on the Page / Picture in My Mind • Words on the Page / My Mental Map of What Happened

29. Visualizing - Other Responses • Other Responses • Drawing what is visualized during reading or after hearing something is read • “Sketch to Stretch” – have students fold a sheet of paper to desired number of squares. As you read section aloud, students draw the process being described

30. Inferring - Oral Responses • Discussion • Discussion about implied meanings, reading between the lines, using old and new information to understand, evaluate, analyze, predict • Verbal Responses • “I think…” • “Maybe it means…” • “I’m guessing that…” • “I predict…”

31. Inferring - Written Responses • Text Codes • I – Inference • P – Prediction • + - Prediction or inference is confirmed by text • - - Prediction or inference is contraindicated by text • Two-Column Note Form • Quote or Picture from Text / Inference • Facts / Inference • Questions / Inference • Prediction / Confirmed or contraindicated

32. Determining Importance - Oral Responses • Discussion • Discussion about the difference between important facts and interesting facts • Verbal Responses • “This is really important…” • “The main point is…” • “The key thing to remember is…”

33. Determining Importance - Written Responses • Text Codes • I – Important • * - One star – two stars depending on importance • ! - Important • Two-Column Note Form • Topic / Details • Words from the Text / Important Ideas • What’s Interesting / What’s Important

34. Synthesizing - Oral Responses • Discussion • Discussion about what students have learned and how they can apply or use that knowledge • Verbal Responses • “I get it…” • “Now I can….” • “Now I know why…”

35. Synthesizing - Written Responses • Text Codes • I – Important • * - One star – two stars depending on importance • ! - Important • Two-Column Note Form • Topic / Details • Words from the Text / Important Ideas • What’s Interesting / What’s Important

36. Teaching Fix-Up Strategies • Remind students that good readers monitor their understanding by asking, “Do I understand this?” • If not they use the following fix-up strategies. • Slow your rate of reading, reread • Look back over the text for context clues • Read ahead • Use pictures, graphs, etc. for clues • Use a dictionary or glossary • Read aloud • Ask for help

37. Whole Group Procedure • Jigsaw – • Allow students to work in groups • Give each group a section of the text • Provide time for students to work on the skill • Allow each group to share their information with the class

38. Classroom Resources • Highlighters of different colors • Sticky notes of different colors and sizes • Index cards • A variety of text

39. Summary • Teachers can greatly impact student reading ability by incorporating simple strategies in their everyday lessons. • The success of these strategies can be greatly improved through mini-lessons and by teacher modeling. • Consistent use can help students learn to use these independently and increase their success now and in the future.

40. Works Cited • Wilhelm, Jeffery. 2001. Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies. New York: Scholastic. • Allen, Janet. 2000. Yellow Brick Roads: Shared and Guided Paths to Independent Reading 4-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. • Harvey, Stephanie. 1998. Nonfiction Matters. Markham, Ontario. Pembroke • Goudvis, Anne. Harvey, Stephanie. 2000. Strategies That Work. Markham, Ontario. Pembroke