If We’re Not Teaching Comprehension, What Are We Doing?

1. Assessing Comprehension Most of the instructional time in adolescent classrooms is spent asking questions to see if students understood what they read. Telling Most instruction that occurs in secondary classrooms is teacher telling, literally telling children what we want them to learn, rather than teaching them how to learn it. (Alvermann, Dillon, O’Brien, & Smith, 1985; Davey, 1988, Menke & Davey, 1994; Murden & Gillespe, 1997; Ratekin et al., 1985, Roe, 1994) If We’re Not Teaching Comprehension, What Are We Doing?

2. So no wonder they don’t comprehend…. Most observations indicate that teachers do not use questioning or telling to teach students HOW to understand. There is no teaching of process, only evaluation.

3. Does it make a difference if teachers teach comprehension strategies? • The National Reading Panel indicates that there are large statistical differences in performance between students who are supported in their comprehension development by instruction and those who are not. Teachers can be taught to teach comprehension strategies effectively; after such instruction, their proficiency is greater, and this leads to improved performance on the part of their students on awareness and use of the strategies, to improved performance on commonly used comprehension measures, and sometimes, to higher scores on standardized reading tests. (Williams, 2002, p. 255)

4. What Good Reading Teachers Do(Ash & Hagood, 1998) • explicitly discuss the expanded things good readers do • provide teacher-directed frameworks to supplement self-directed strategy use • model the self-directed strategies that good readers use • expect their students to use these self-directed strategies first with a teacher’s guidance, then on their own

5. Teacher-Directed Frameworks • K-W-L • Reciprocal Teaching (RT) • Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE) • Questioning the Author (QtA) • Teaching the Text Backwards • I-Charts

6. Strategic Learning Declarative Knowledge ProceduralKnowledge Conditional Knowledge Ash, 2000, adapted from Garner, 1990

7. Strategic Instruction Declarative Knowledge Teacher Modeling and Explicit Explanation ProceduralKnowledge Directed Student Strategy Use with Guided Feedback; Student Reflection on Strategy Use Conditional Knowledge Ash, 2000, adapted from Garner, 1990 Independent Student Strategy Use with Guided Feedback; Student Reflection on Strategy Use

8. Questioning the Author (QtA)(McKeown, Beck, & Worthy, 1993) • Purpose: QtA attempts to enhance student engagement with both narrative and expository text, particularly text that is difficult and not “friendly” to the reader. • Rationale: QtA is grounded in the constructivist view of reading that sees the reader as an active participant in the reading process. By asking students to view the text with a reviewer’s eye, they become more critical and active readers of the text.

9. QtA Procedures Planning • Identifying major understandings/potential problems • Segmenting the text • Developing Queries

10. Initiating Queries Purpose: to draw attention to main ideas and make clear that they are produced by the author. • What is the author trying to say here? • What is the author’s message? • What is the author talking about?

11. Follow-up Queries Purpose: to help students consider the ideas and thoughts behind the author’s words • What does the author mean here? • Does the author explain this clearly? Purpose: to help the students connect ideas intra- and intertextually • Does this make sense with what the author told us before? • How does this connect to what the author told us here?

12. Follow-up Queries (cont.) Purpose: to help students figure out why authors included particular aspects of the text (or left particular aspects out) • Does the author tell us why he/she said that? • Why do you think the author tells us this now?

13. Narrative Queries Purpose: to assist students in thinking about characters and their motivations • How do things look for this character now? • Given what the author has already told us about this character, what do you think he’s/she’s up to? Purpose: to focus students on the author’s crafting of the plot • How does the author let you know that something has changed? • How does the author settle this for us?

14. Implementing • Classroom Organization • Introducing the Concept of Author Fallibility • Think Aloud of QtA • Discussion

15. Discussion Techniques • Marking – drawing attention to a significant comment made by a student. • Turning back – turning students’ attention back to the test for further clarification or turning responsibility for figuring out ideas back to the students. • Revoicing – helping student rephrase ideas they are having difficulty enunciating.

16. Discussion (cont.) • Annotating Modeling – helping demonstrate to the students how they might interrogate a phrase, if they are having difficulty doing so. • – filling in the gaps in the text for the students when they are unable to. • Recapping - summarizing and synthesizing information as a model for the students and to help them put together the major ideas they have constructed up to that point.

17. QUESTIONING THE AUTHOR: • Questions to think about • What is the author trying to tell you? • Why is the author telling you that? • Does the author say it clearly? • How could the author have said things more clearly? • What would you like to say instead?

19. References • McKeown, M. G., Beck, I. L., & Worthy, J. (1993). Grappling with text: Questioning the author. The Reading Teacher, 46, 560-566. • Beck , I. L., McKeown, M. G., Hamilton, R. L., & Kucan, L. (1997). Questioning the author: An approach for enhancing student engagement with text. Newark, DE: IRA.