Reading & Learning in the Content Areas

Reading & Learning in the Content Areas Presented by Ginger Kowalko Educational Consultant Lori Rae Smith Director, Student Achievement Bethel School District

Outcomes Participants will… • receive a brief review of last session • receive in depth instruction in vocabulary techniques that have broad application to expository text • be able to apply these techniques in the classroom

Secondary Literacy Ideally, secondary literacy would focus solely on “. . . the core of reading: comprehension, learning while reading, reading in the content areas, and reading in the service of secondary or higher education, of employability, of citizenship.” Reading Next, 2004, p. 1

“. . . as many as one out of every ten adolescents has serious difficulties in identifying words.” Curtis and Longo, 1999. Adolescents and Literacy: Reading for the 21st Century, p. 8

Reading Activity

Accuracy • Independent – 98% to 100% • Instructional – 95% to 98% • Frustrational – Below 95% • To be successful on Oregon’s Reading & Literature Assessment, students needed to be at the independent level

Comprehension RequiresCalifornia Reading & Literature Project/ AB 1086 Training Manual Word Recognition Speed & Accuracy Language Comprehension Vocabulary, syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics Knowledge of Text Structures Narration, exposition, poetry, other Comprehension Strategies Monitoring during reading, using “fix-up” strategies, coping with task requirements Background Knowledge Content and language Motivation and Attention Needs, purposes, and intentions for comprehending

What does the research say?

TWO PRONG APPROACH READING INSTRUCTION CONTENT LITERACY

A comprehensive literacy solution for middle and high schools Reading teachers must teach them basic and advanced reading skills as intensively and skillfully as the school can manage. Content area teachers must be part of the solution Torgesen 2006

Academic Content Competence: Every Student Succeeding (ACCESS) • Provide all students access to the content being taught • Ensure opportunity to reinforce content literacy and reading skills • Increase the amount students receive in reading instruction without taking away from content ACCESS ACCESS

ACCESS Toolkit • Academic • Content • Competence: • Every • Student • Succeeding

Access for ALL Students • Special Education • English Language Learners • Striving Readers • At-Risk Learners

ACCESS “All students, regardless of their personal characteristics, backgrounds, or physical challenges, must have opportunities to study – and support to learn […]. Equity does not mean that every student should receive identical instruction; instead, it demands that reasonable and appropriate accommodations be made as needed to promote access and attainment for all students.” EDThoughts: What We Know About Mathematics Teaching and Learning 2002 McRel

A Framework Based on Research Combines research on: • Before/During/After Reading Strategies • Big Ideas of Reading • Decoding (phonemic awareness and phonics) • Fluency • Vocabulary • Comprehension

New Word Meanings • Materials • A List of Key Terms or Vocabulary Words From the Lesson • An Overhead Transparency of the New Word Meanings Template • A Copy of the New Word Meanings Template for Each Student • Steps: • Identify 4 or 5 vocabulary words or key terms from the lesson and write them on the overhead transparency or on the board. • 2. Direct students to read the words and then write them in the boxes on the left side of their paper. • 3. Direct students to write these words in the boxes on the left side of their paper. • 4. Define and explain the key terms and help students list the critical attributes of the word in the middle box. • 5. Teacher asks class to suggest a sentence, an example, or a picture that will represent the word. After discussing ideas, the class • completes the remaining box with their representation of the word. • 6.Students should keep their “New Word Meanings” pages in a binder. Words from previous lessons should be reviewed periodically.

ACCESS Toolkit techniques feature 1. Explicit Instruction which: • is teacher directed • relies on clear explanations • guides student use (“I do it, we do it, you do it”) • precedes application activities 2. Active Engagement which: • requires written responses and/or oral responses (individual, choral and/or with a partner)

Transportable & Transparent • Transportable = using strategies learned in one class to comprehend in another • Transparent = strategies that become part of a student’s thinking and automatically applied • “When strategies are transportable and transparent, students focus more on the content being taught than on how they are being taught.” Ivy & Fisher, Creating Literacy Rich Schools for Adolescents, ASCD, 2006

De coding “No comprehension strategies are powerful enough to compensate for not being able to read the words within a text.” Archer, Gleason, Vachon, 2003

Decoding Successful Readers • Read multisyllabic words and use strategies to figure out unknown words • Make connections between letter patterns and sounds and use this understanding to read words • Break unknown words into syllables during reading • Use word analysis strategies to break difficult or long words into meaningful parts such as inflectional endings, prefixes, suffixes, and roots Struggling Readers • May read single-syllable words effortlessly but have difficulty decoding longer multisyllabic words • May lack knowledge of the ways in which sounds map to print • Have difficulty breaking words into syllables • Often do not use word analysis strategies to break words into syllables From Effective Instruction for Adolescent Struggling Readers, A Practice Brief, Center on Instruction, 2008

Decoding Techniques • Working With Words • Working with Word Families

Fluency • Accuracy • Rate • Expression

Fluency Successful Readers • Read 100-160 words per minute (at the middle school level) depending on the nature and difficulty of the text • Decode words accurately and automatically • Group words into meaningful chunks and phrases • Read with expression • Combine multiple tasks while reading (e.g., decoding, phrasing, understanding and interpreting) Struggling Readers • Read slowly and laboriously • May continue to struggle with decoding or may decode correctly but slowly • May not pause at punctuation or recognize phrases • Often lack voice or articulation of emotion while reading • May lack proficiency in individual skills that result in dysfluent reading and limit comprehension From Effective Instruction for Adolescent Struggling Readers, A Practice Brief, Center on Instruction, 2008

Fluency Techniques • Cloze Reading • Choral Reading

Vocabulary The knowledge of words and word meanings.

Vocabulary Successful Readers • Are exposed to a breadth of vocabulary words in conversations and print at home and at school from a very early age • Have word consciousness • Understand most words when they are reading (at least 90%) and can make sense of unknown words to build their vocabulary knowledge • Learn words incrementally, through multiple exposures to new words • Have content-specific prior knowledge that helps them understand how words are used in a particular context Struggling Readers • Have limited exposure to new words • May not enjoy reading, and therefore do not select reading as an independent activity • May lack word consciousness, including an awareness of the complex and varied nature of words in written and oral language • Are unable to comprehend consistently what they read or to learn new words from reading • Lack the variety of experiences and exposures necessary to gain deep understanding of new words • Often have limited content-specific prior knowledge that is insufficient to support word learning From Effective Instruction for Adolescent Struggling Readers, A Practice Brief, Center on Instruction, 2008

VOCABULARY Can be acquired incidentally via: • Oral language experience • Wide reading • Volume of words read • Frequency of new/unfamiliar words read Can be acquired intentionally via: • Explicit instruction • Specific word instruction • Word learning strategies From Vocabulary Handbook, Diamond & Gutlohn, 2006

VARIATION IN AMOUNT OF INDEPENDENT READING % Independent Reading Words Read Minutes Per Day Per Year 98 65.5 4,358,000 90 21.1 1,823,000 80 14.2 1,146,000 70 9.6 622,000 60 6.5 432,000 50 4.6 282,000 40 3.2 200,000 30 1.3 106,000 20 0.7 21,000 10 0.1 8,000 2 0.0 0 Adapted from Anderson, Wilson and Fielding (1988)

The “Matthew Effect” The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Stanovich, K.E., 1986

FREQUENCY OFNEW/UNFAMILIAR WORDS Hayes & Ahrens (1998)

VOCABULARY Can be acquired incidentally via: • Oral language experience • Wide reading • Volume of words read • Frequency of new/unfamiliar words read Can be acquired intentionally via: • Explicit instruction • Specific word instruction • Word learning strategies From Vocabulary Handbook, Diamond & Gutlohn, 2006

The Three Tier System • Tier One • Basic Words (the, and, food) • Tier Two • Words which occur frequently in language, central to comprehension (balcony, murmur, splendid) • Tier Three • Low frequency “specialized” words (anthracite, mycelium, shoal) Beck & McKeown (1985)

Alexander Graham Bell is known as the inventor of the telephone. His assistant was named Thomas A. Watson. Together, Bell and Watson discovered how sound, including speech, could be transmitted through wires, and Bell received a patent for such a device. In 1876, the telephone was officially invented and the first telephone company was founded on July 9, 1877.

The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a herd of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sideways across the meadow. From Tuck Everlasting

What is a Plant? Plants are members of the kingdom Plantae. Plants are multicellular eukaryotes that have cell walls made of cellulose. They develop from multicellular embryos and carry out photosynthesis using green pigments chlorophyll a and b. Plants include trees, shrubs, and grasses as well as other organisms such as mosses and ferns.

Selection of vocabulary words • Big idea words related to lesson concepts (“characterization”, “flashback”) • “Academic Toolkit” or “Mortar” words that are high frequency across disciplines (“compare”, “chronology”) • “Disciplinary Toolkit” or “Brick” words that are high frequency within disciplines (“plot”, “idioms”) • Words to engage in literate discourse regarding a topic (relevant to theme, issues – especially with narrativetext) Kevin Feldman, Ed.D. “Developing Content Literacy in Mixed Ability Secondary Classrooms, Grades 4-12 Presented at SOPRIS West Oregon Coast Summer Institute, 2006.

Vocabulary List Sources • Marzano, Robert J., Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement, 2004 • Coxhead, Averil, http://language.massey.ac.nz/staff/awl/index.shtml

The “Bottom Line” Rationale for DIRECTLY Teaching Vocabulary “Given the importance of academic background knowledge, and the fact that vocabulary is such an essential aspect of it, one of the most crucial services that teachers can provide, particularly for students who do not come from academically advantaged backgrounds, is systematic instruction in important academic terms.” Marzano & Pickering, 2005

Vocabulary Techniques • Power Words • New Word Meanings • Quick Words • Semantic Feature Analysis • Original Sentences • Yes/No/Why • Completion Activity

3 Minute Reflection • Minute 1: Summarize the key points of today’s presentation. • Minute 2: Explain how these key points added to your thinking. • Minute 3: Pose questions about points that require clarification.

Next Steps • Session 3 (February 5) • Brief Review • Comprehension Techniques • Putting it all together

Reading & Learning in the Content Areas