comprehension in the primary classroom michael c. mckenna university of virginia

Comprehension in the

Primary Classroom

Michael C. McKenna University of Virginia

Where to find this PowerPoint

http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/~mmckenna/garf.html

Our Goal: Build Real Literacy

The knowledge and skills that allow all children, from all families, to read and write authentic texts for authentic purposes

Comprehension

It’s the one thing we all agree on as the most important goal in reading instruction

So why is it so difficult?

Anticipation GuideYes No If children successfully learn how to

decode, then comprehension will take care of itself.

Yes No If children are reading at instructional reading level, comprehension will take care of itself.

Yes No If children cannot decode, then they cannot be taught comprehension.

Yes No Teaching comprehension means teaching a series of skills.

Today’s Goals What is comprehension? How do we assess it? How might we teach it in the K-3

classroom? How do we help teachers develop

their expertise? How can you increase the quality of

comprehension instruction for your reading program?

www.guilford.com

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1465/

http://www.rand.org/

What is comprehension?

Comprehension is understanding what is heard or read.

Comprehension of any text involves creation of an integrated and coherent representation of the text.

Comprehension may or may not lead to memory for text or text ideas.

Defining ComprehensionText comprehension is a very

complex combination of extraction and construction

Text comprehension is constrained by knowledge

Text comprehension is constrained by decoding

and fluency Internal

Text Model

CognitiveCapacities Motivation

Vocabulary Knowledge

DomainKnowledge

LinguisticKnowledge

StrategyKnowledge

RAND Reading Study Group, 2002

RAND’s heuristic for thinking about reading comprehension

Comprehension Assessment

“Comprehension cannot be measured . . . because it is not a quantity of anything.”

(p. 53)

Smith, 1988

Frank Smith

Good Assessment Formats

Must extend beyond mere parroting of information

Should assess the extent to which the child has truly processed the content

Should be based on texts of more than a single sentence

Should account for prior knowledge

What barriers can you see to implementing these good assessment formats?

Two reasons to assess comprehension

1. To assess overall comprehension ability

2. To assess the comprehension of a specific text.

Comprehension Assessment Formats

1. Questioning

The teacher asks the child specific questions following reading. Answers are evaluated and quantified.

Advantages• Scoring tends to be straightforward• Questioning mirrors high-stakes testing formats• Questioning may permit modeling by teacher

Drawbacks• Question selection may skew results• Questions may fail to target important points• Reading dependent questions can be hard to write

3 Considerations for Questions

1. Type2. Reading Dependency3. Readability

CriticalJudgments

“Reading beyond the lines”

InferentialImplicitly stated facts

“Reading between the lines”

LiteralExplicitly stated facts

“Reading the lines”

PlutoThe planet Pluto is currently the furthest of

the nine planets from the sun. It consists of frozen methane and ammonia so that some scientists have described it as a “snowball in space.”

Pluto has a surface temperature of –395ºF. It has no gaseous atmosphere. Pluto is a dark place, so distant that the sun appears to be no more than a bright star.

Like earth, Pluto has one moon (Charon). Pluto is much smaller than earth, however, and has only a tenth of earth’s gravitational pull.

Questions about Pluto

How cold is Pluto?

Is there life on Pluto?

Should we send people to Pluto?

If Goofy can talk, why can’t Pluto?

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) was never president, but his picture is on the ten-dollar bill.

Prior Knowledge Passage Content

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

1. Whose picture is on the five-dollar bill?2. Was Alexander Hamilton ever president?3. In what year did Hamilton die?4. Whose picture is on the Mexican ten-peso note?

Comprehension Assessment Formats

2. RetellingThe teacher asks the child to recall as much as possible about a passage that s/he has just read. The teacher may then prompt missing details through probe questions.

Advantages• May suggest how child has organized content• Does not require extensive questioning

Drawbacks• Ill-structured and hard to quantify• Reticent students may be penalized unfairly• Must be individually administered

Other Comprehension Assessment Formats

Example of Cloze

One morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had ___________ during the night. It ___________ everything as far as ___________ could see. After breakfast ___________ put on his snowsuit ___________ ran outside.

– The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats

Example of Cloze

One morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had ___________ during the night. It ___________ everything as far as ___________ could see. After breakfast ___________ put on his snowsuit ___________ ran outside.

– The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats

fallencovered

heheand

Example of Maze

One morning Peter woke up and looked out

rustedthe window. Snow had fallen during the

aboutcovered

night. It slowly everything as far as . . .hurried

Example of Picture Selection

The ball is on the table.

To what extent are these comprehension formats useable to Reading First teachers? What questions do they raise for you?

ComprehensionMonitoring

Afflerbach, 2002

“Accomplished readers evaluate their progress toward a goal at both micro- and macrolevels.”(p. 97)

Peter Afflerbach

Is this story making sense?

Does this sentence make sense?

Afflerbach, 2002

How Can Teachers Foster Self-Assessment?

Questioning and Student Response Checklists and Observation Forms Performance Assessments Portfolios Paper-and-Pencil Tests

Initiate-Respond-Evaluate (IRE)

Cazden, 1986

1. Teacher asks a question.

2. Student responds to the question.

3. Teacher orally evaluates the response.

CourtneyCazden

Example of IRE

Teacher: Let’s see how well you understood this paragraph. Who can tell me the main idea?

Student: It’s about snakes and what they eat.

Teacher: Good. Who’d like to read the next paragraph?

Example of a Comprehension Checklist

Before I read, I think about why I am reading. I often ask myself, “Does this sentence make sense?”

I stop after each paragraph and check to see if I understand so far.

When something doesn’t make sense, I read it again or keep reading to see if that helps.

When I finish, I ask myself if I understand well enough.

Example of a Performance Rubric

My Teacher’s My RatingRating

1 2 3 4 5 Answers to questions at end 1 2 3 4 5of the chapter

1 2 3 4 5 Questions I wrote for the 1 2 3 4 5author

1 2 3 4 5 The chapter summary I 1 2 3 4 5wrote

1 2 3 4 5 The chapter outline I 1 2 3 4 5completed

To what extent would it be useful to foster self

assessment strategies in Reading First classrooms?

Now that we know what comprehension is and how it might be assessed, we turn attention to how it might be developed in your classrooms. We’ll start with some basics, and then move to more specific research-based findings.

Strategies are ways of using skills for specific purposes.

Strategies . . .

• change with the situation;

• must eventually be guided by the reader, not the teacher;

• can be modeled and taught.

Comprehension strategies demand extensive cognitive resources and they don’t work for every reader or for every teacher – look for upcoming research into other methods for improving comprehension, including approaches to questioning and to improving reading engagement.

Sinatra, Brown & Reynolds, 2002

Explicit Instruction Model

Present and explain the strategy. Model the strategy for students. Use the strategy collaboratively. Provide guided practice. Provide independent practice.

Duke & Pearson, 2002

To what extent are you seeing this model in action in your classrooms? What barriers are you still facing?

The State of Comprehension Instruction

Dolores Durkin (1978-1979) observed 4th grade teachers assessing and assigning, but not teaching comprehension– Little evidence since then that anything has

changed, at least not on a large scale

NRP Report on Comprehension

Vocabulary

Teacher Preparation and

Comprehension Strategies Instruction

Text Comprehension Instruction

There is much that NRP said we DON’T know about teaching comprehension

What are the best ways of teaching teachers?Does comprehension strategy instruction transfer to

content learning?Which strategies work best at which ages and

abilities?Do effective strategies work with all genres?

But here are the NRP Findings

• Many approaches have some level of research evidence.

• For example, stressing mental images and mnemonics can be effective.

• But seven instructional approaches have a clear scientific basis.

1. Comprehension monitoring2. Cooperative learning3. Graphic and semantic organizers

(esp. those stressing text structure)4. Question answering5. Question generation6. Summarization7. Combinations of 1-6

Key Instructional Approaches

Comprehension Monitoring

“Make them make it make sense.”

Jack Miller

Using “Fix-Up” Strategies

• Rereading• Reading on• Reflecting• Seeking outside

information

Modeling Fix-up Strategies

• Rereading

• Reading ahead

• Reflecting

• Seeking information outside the text.

Cooperative Learning

Reciprocal Teaching

Palincsar & Brown, 1984

Reciprocal Teaching

• was inspired by ReQuest.

• Helps small groups apply strategies together.

• is by far the most thoroughly validated approach to comprehension strategy instruction.

Strategies in Reciprocal Teaching

• Predicting

• Clarifying

• Questioning

• Summarizing

Stages in Preparing Students

• Teach the four key strategies.

• Model how to apply the four strategies.

• Provide practice in applying the strategies, and gradually shift more responsibility to the students.

A Reciprocal Teaching Lesson

Form mixed groups of 4-6

Introduce the topic.

Remind students of the strategies.

• Predict• Read• Clarify• Question• Summarize

Appoint a “teacher” in each group.

Post the steps for all to see.

Choose one student as the teacher

Preview the text and determine a stopping point based on the headings

Read the first sectionHave the leader guide the RT

discussionChoose a new leader and

continue to work through the steps

How could reciprocal teaching be integrated

into Reading First classrooms?

Story Maps

Graphic and Semantic Organizers:

A story map (or story grammar) is a method of teaching children about how narratives tend to be structured. It involves a diagram of key events and questions that stem from the diagram.

The logic is that children will better comprehend a story if they know how stories are structured.

A story map works best with novice readers. Better readers are able to infer story structure on their own. Research suggests that story maps can be used effectively at least as early as grade 3.

– National Reading Panel

Steps in Using a Story Map

1. Have the students read the story or conduct a read-aloud.

2. List key events under these headings:a. Settingb. Goalc. Plotd. Ending

3. Use these events to ask questions.4. Progress to more speculative questions.

Beck & McKeown, 1981

Example of a Story Map

Setting Characters: Jack, his mother, the giantPlace: Jack’s home, road, giant’s castleWhen and where did this story occur?Who is the main character?

Problem Jack must sell cow but trades for beansWhy did Jack trade?

Goal To see if bean stalk is worth the bad tradeWhat did Jack do when he found the stalk?

Ending Jack steals from giant, flees, cuts down stalkWhat did Jack do in the giant’s castle?What did the giant do?What happened to the giant?Was Jack a good guy or a bad guy?

Generating Questions

Answering Questions

Question-Answer Relationships

QARs

Taffy Raphael

Teaching children to answer questions

Question and Answer RelationshipsIn the Book In your Head

Right There Author and You

Think and Search On your own

Raphael, 1986

Although the United States did not enter World War II until December of 1941, the war actually began in September of 1939. World War II ended in August of 1945.

Right ThereWhen did World War II end?

Think and SearchHow long did World War II last?

Author and YouHow long had the war been over when you were

born?On Your Own

Why do you think the U.S. didn’t enter the war in 1939?

Summarizing

Teaching children to retell

• Start with a story map, appropriate to the grade level– Simple beginning, middle, end map for first

and second grade– More complex map for third and fourth

grade

• Model, model, model using the story map to retell stories you are reading aloud or reading in small groups

Teaching Children to Summarize

Hare and Borchardt (1984) developed procedures for direct instruction in summarization.

Before you start to write1. Make sure you understand the text2. Look back and reread to check for understanding3. Reread a paragraph. Ask yourself what the theme is. Find a topic sentence or write one.

Summarizing, cont.

While you are writing1. Collapse lists2. Use topic sentences3. Get rid of unnecessary details4. Collapse paragraphs

After writingPolish your work. Make sure that your summary sounds

natural.

To what extent do you see these single strategies in your materials?

Read-Alouds

Smolkin & Donovan, 2002

“[R]esearch has almost universally supported the idea that reading aloud to children leads to improved reading comprehension.” (p. 144)

These children are ready to acquire comprehension strategies, but they tend not to be proficient decoders.

So, what’s a teacher to do?

The Domino Theory

Teach children to decode first, and put off vocabulary and comprehension

instruction until later.

Smolkin & Donovan, 2002.

“If we want children to reason their ways through texts during a time when they cannot yet read, then the social context for comprehension acquisition must be a read-aloud of text.” (p. 144)

What kind of read-alouds shall we have?

Two Types of Read-Alouds

1. Teacher Directed Planned with carefully placed questions IRE model employed

2. Fully Interactive Model Planned questions may be modified Teacher embeds commentary Flexible scaffolding provided Students collaboratively support one

another

“The Five-to-Seven Shift”

During this age range, children become able to think “multi-dimensionally,” a requirement of comprehension, and to reason with others in group settings.

This argues for fully interactive read-alouds!

Interactive read-alouds tend to work best with information books.

– Smolkin & Donovan, 2002

In a nonfiction interactive read-aloud, a teacher can . . .

Link a word to its context

Help children infer causal relationships

Tell about how texts are structured

Model the use of fix-up strategies


T: “In 1612, French explorers saw some Iroquois people popping corn in clay pots. They would fill the pots with hot sand, throw in some popcorn and stir it with a stick. When the corn popped, it came to the top of the sand and made it easy to get.”

C: Look at the bowl!T: Okay, now it’s hot enough to add a few kernels.C: What’s a kernel?C: Like when you pop.T: It’s a seed.C: What if you, like, would you think … a popcorn seed.

Like a popcorn seed. Could you grow popcorn?


T: Oh, excellent, excellent question! Let’s read and we’ll see if this book answers that question, and if not, we’ll talk about it at the end.


T: Alright, it hit the reef. Why did it hit the reef? Because it got . . . (no response from children). What did it say? It said there was

C: A storm.

T: Storm, right.

C: They couldn’t see.

T: Right, it did say that. Because they couldn’t see, and if they were out . . .

C: Were the people surprised?

C: The storm blew it into the rocks.

T: Exactly.

T: “And 100-year-old popcorn kernels were found in Peru that could still be popped.” Now. This guy is doing different . . . It’s kind of like two stories are going on. What is this part giving us?

Cs: (together) Information

T: It is. And what is this doing?

C: It is telling you.

T: It’s giving us, right, steps of how to make the popcorn.

C: And he has a big old speech bubble.

T: Yes, because he’s reading about this, remember? And so his speech bubble is him reading this book about this (pointing to pictures of native peoples).

T: “Insects live on the tree, too. This big cicada just crawled out of its brown, shell-like skin. For several years . . . (teacher pauses. The next word in the text is ‘it’)” Let’s start back here. “Insects live on the tree, too. This big cicada just crawled out of its brown, shell-like skin.”

C: (interrupting) We already read this.

T: I know, but see, sometimes if you stop, it helps [to go back] It didn’t make sense just reading [further in the text]

To what extent are you seeing fully interactive read alouds?What barriers are you facing?

Rules of Thumb

Children benefit from comprehension instruction in which they are active and engaged learners, expected to form an integrated and coherent understanding of the text.

Rules of Thumb

Children benefit from comprehension instruction in which they are explicitly taught how to use different kinds of knowledge: text knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, and world knowledge

Rules of Thumb

Children benefit from comprehension instruction that is organized so that they are explicitly taught a variety of cognitive and metacognitive strategies.

Rules of Thumb

Children benefit from comprehension instruction that is organized so that teachers are continually assessing individual students and using that assessment to plan instruction.

Putting it all together

Before reading:

Teach individual words that will be difficult to decode or to understand

Model a strategy that will be useful in the day’s reading. Give declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge.

During reading:

Interrupt the reading at critical junctures to support strategy use.

Engage children in discussions or written responses.

After reading

Engage children in discussion or written responses.

Review and evaluate the text content.

Review and evaluate strategy use.

Implementation Across Ages and Stages

Kindergarten Read alouds and shared readings of high-quality children’s literature

First Grade Read alouds and shared reading of high-quality children’s literature

Second Grade Read alouds of high-quality children’s literature AND reading instruction

Third Grade Read alouds of high-quality children’s literature AND reading instruction

How do we help teachers develop their expertise?

Supporting Teachers

History• Individual strategies taught through

think aloud approaches• Use of gradual release of responsibility

models (modeling, scaffolded practice, individual application)

• Introduction of multiple strategies approaches

Many Additional Struggles for Teachers

• Differentiate between strategies and skills– A skill is something that we do automatically– A strategy is a set of procedures that we can

employ to solve a problem

• Differentiate between cognitive strategies and instructional strategies– Predicting, accessing prior knowledge, and

generating questions are cognitive strategies– KWL is an instructional strategy

Doesn’t that sound a lot like what we are asking Literacy Coaches to do in all areas of the curriculum?

Professional development cycle

Select your focus

Build

KnowledgeConnect

research to practice

Provide support and

follow-up

Building Knowledge of Comprehension and Instruction

A resource that might help you to build teachers’ language for explaining comprehension strategies.

Building Knowledge of Comprehension and Instruction

Analyze and understand the instructional program in your school.

Your reading program materials

Connect Research to Practice

Observe to investigate the extent to which teachers are using the resources they have.


Analyze available data to see the relationship between instruction and achievement.


Provide time for cooperative discussion and planning for comprehension instruction.

Provide Support and Follow-Up

Model comprehension instruction in read alouds, in whole-group lessons, and in small-group lessons


Consider collecting video-taped lessons and arranging peer visitations


Design connections to comprehension instruction that are appropriate for independent work

Where are you now with regards to comprehension instruction?

Where do you want to go?

How are you going to get there?

Afflerbach, P. (2002). Teaching reading self-assessment strategies. In C.C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 96-111). New York: Guilford.

Anderson, V. (1992). A teacher development project in transactional strategy instruction for teachers of severely reading-disabled adolescents. Teaching and Teacher Education, 8, 391-403

Anderson, R., & Pearson, P.D. (1984). A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading. In P.D. Pearson,R. Barr, M. Kamil, & P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research (pp. 255-291). New York: Longman.

Beck & McKeown, 1981). Developing questions that promote comprehension: The story map. Language Arts, 58, 913-918.

Block, C. C., Shaller, J., Jy, J. A., & Gaine, P. (2002). Process-based comprehension instruction. In C. C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 42-61). New York: Guilford Press.

Brown, R., Pressley, M., Van Meter, P., & Schuder, T. (1996). A quasi-experimental validation of transactional strategies instruction with low-achievement second-grade readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 18-37.

Cazden, C. (1986). Classroom discourse. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 432-462). New York: Macmillan.

Duffy, G.G. (2002). The case for direct explanation of strategies. In C. C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 28-41). New York: Guilford Press.

Duffy, G.G., Roehler, L.R., Sivan, E., Rackliffe, G., Book, C., Meloth, M.S., Vavrus., L.G., Wesselman, R., Putnam, J., & Bassiri, D. (1987). Effects of explaining the reasoning associated with using reading strategies. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 347-368.

Duke, N. K. & Pearson, P. D. (2002). Comprehension instruction in the primary grades. In C.C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 247-258). New York: Guilford.

El-Dinary, P. B. (2002). Challenges of implementing transactional strategies instruction for reading comprehension. In C.C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.) Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp.201-215). New York: Guilford Press.

Kintsch, W. (1994). The role of knowledge in discourse comprehesion: A construction-integration model. In R.. Ruddell, M. R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and Processes in Reading (4th ed). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Palinscar, A.S., & Brown, A. l. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1, 117-175.

Pearson, P.D., & Gallagher, M.C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 317-344.

Pressley, M. (2002). Comprehension strategies instruction: A turn-of-the-century status report. In C. C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 11-27). New York: Guilford Press.

Pressley, M., El-Dinary, P.B., Gaskins, I., Schuder, T., Bergman, J., Almasi, L., & Brown, R. (1992). Beyond direct explanation: Transactional instruction of reading comprehension strategies. Elementary School Journal, 92, 511-554.

Pressley, M., and Collins Block, C. (2002). Summing up: What comprehension instruction could be. In C.C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.) Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp.383-392). New York: Guilford Press.

RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Education.

Raphael, T. (1986). Teaching question-answer relationships, revisited. Reading Teacher, 39: 516-523.

Sinatra, G. M., Brown, K. J., & Reynolds, R. E. (2002). Implications of cognitive resource allocation for comprehension strategies instruction. In C. C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 62-76). New York: Guilford Press.

Smith, F. (1988). Understanding reading (4th ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Smolkin, L.B., & Donovan, C.A. (2002). “Oh, excellent, excellent question!” Developmental differences and comprehension acquisition. In C.C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices (pp. 140-157). New York: Guilford.

Sweet, A. P., & Snow, C. E., Eds. (2003). Rethinking reading comprehension. New York: Guilford Press.

comprehension in the primary classroom michael c. mckenna university of virginia

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