COMPREHENSION STRATEGIESR. Grant

-Why we read the word and the world-

Basic Goals of Reading

To enable the learner to gain understanding of the world and of themselves

To develop appreciations and interests

To help the learner to find solutions to their personal and group problems

To develop strategies to support independent understanding and thinking

Teachers’ Role

To support comprehension teachers need to: Activate students’ prior knowledge Guide students’ reading of a text Foster active and engaged reading Reinforce concepts gleaned from the text

reading Encourage careful/critical thinking Pursue inquiry on different topics

Approaches for constructing meaning

Visualizing

Monitoring

Inferencing, including predicting

Identifying important information

Generating and answering questions

Synthesizing

Summarizing

More approaches for constructing meaning

Tapping prior knowledge Organizing ideasFiguring out unknown wordsMaking connectionsComprehension monitoringApplying fix-up strategiesRevising meaningPlaying with words

Guidelines for Skill and Strategy Instruction

Teach mini-lessons

Differentiate between skills and strategies

Provide step-by-step explanations

Use modeling

Provide practice opportunities

Apply in content areas

Use reflection

Hang charts of skills and strategies

Modeling

The process of showing or demonstrating for someone how to use or do something s/he does not know how to do.

The process by which an expert shows students (non-experts) how to perform a task.

A component of scaffolding learning within the constructivist framework.

Types of Modeling

Implicit modeling

Explicit modeling Talk-alouds Think-alouds

Where modeling takes place

During daily activities

Process writing

Literacy lessons

Mini-lessons

Guidelines for Effective Strategy Instruction

Determine the need for instruction on the basis of student performance

Introduce only 1 or 2 strategies at a time

Model and practice the strategy in the meaningful context of a reading experience

Model each strategy at the point where it is most useful

Guidelines – (cont’d)

Be sure that modeling and practicing are interactive and collaborative activitiesGradually transfer modeling from yourself to the studentsHelp students experience immediate success Encourage the use of a strategy across the curriculumGuide students to become strategic readers

Mini-lesson

Introduction (includes telling why and when strategy can be useful)

Teacher modeling

Student modeling and guided practice

Summarizing and reflecting

Follow-up to mini-lesson

Independent practice

Application

Reflection

Comprehension Strategies

Reciprocal Teaching(RT)

RT is an interactive process in which the teacher and students take turns modeling 4 strategies after reading a meaningful chunk of text

Strategies in RT Predict Question Clarify Summarize

Summarizing steps

Delete trivial information

Delete redundant information

Substitute superordinate terms for lists of terms

Integrate a series of events with a superordinate action term

K-W-L

Purpose: intended to help teachers become more responsive to helping students access appropriate knowledge when reading

Rationale: students need a mix of individual and group activities and procedures to scaffold their own ideas and interests

Audience: any age level with expository text

K-W-L Procedures

Step K- What I know

Step W- what do I want to learn

Step L- What I learned

K-W-L modifications

K-W-L Plus (incorporates mapping and summarizing)

K-W-H-L (H stands for How do I intend to learn; what resources, tools will be needed

K-W-L with paragraph frames (incorporates writing)

K-W-L with focus questions

Anticipation Guides

Purpose: to activate student;s knowledge about a topic before reading, and provide purpose by serving as a guide for subsequent reading

Rationale: prediction serves to activate prior knowledge; controversy can be an effective motivational device

Audience: any grade level

Anticipation Guides-procedure

Identify major concepts

Determine students’ knowledge of these concepts

Create statements

Decide statement order and presentation mode

Present guide

Anticipation Guides-procedure (cont’d)

Discuss each statement briefly

Direct students to read the text

Conduct follow-up discussion

Text Preview

Purpose:

1) build students’ background knowledge about a topic before reading

2) Motivate students to read

3) Provide an organizational framework for comprehending a text

Text Preview

Rationale: comprehension is enhanced when readers draw on their prior knowledge and are interested in the topic

Audience: upper elementary through high school

Text Preview-Procedure

Preparation and construction of text previews An interest-building section A synopsis of the selection A section that includes a purpose-setting

question or directions for reading

Text Preview-Procedure

Presentation of text previews Tell students that you’re going to introduce a

new story Read the interest-building section of the

preview Give time for students to relate the information

to their prior knowledge and discuss it Read remainder of preview Direct students to read the selection

ReQuest Procedure

Purpose:1) Formulate their own questions and

develop questioning behavior2) Adopt an active, inquiring attitude to

reading3) Acquire reasonable purposes for reading4) Improve independent reading

comprehension skills

ReQuest Procedure

Rationale: it is important for students to develop their own abilities to ask questions and set their own purposes for reading

Audience: all levels and all ages

ReQuest Procedure

Procedures Preparation of material Development of readiness for the strategy Development of students questioning behaviors Development of students predictive behaviors Silent reading Follow-up activities

Question-Answer Relationships

Purpose: enhance students’ ability to answer comprehension questions by giving them a systematic means for analyzing task demands of different question probes

Rationale: students become independent comprehenders by learning how to respond to different types of comprehension questions

Audience: grade four through eight

Question-Answer Relationships

Procedure Lesson 1: introduce students tot the task

demands of different questions, provide practice at identifying task demands related to answering questions

Lesson 2: provide students with review and further guided practice as they read slightly longer passages

Extend task to longer selection

Think-Alouds

Purpose: to help readers examine and develop reading behaviors and strategies

Rationale: with teacher modeling students will realize how and when to use effective processing strategies for understanding

Audience: all levels

Think-Alouds: Procedures

Teacher modeling Make predictions or show students how to

develop hypotheses Describe your visual images Share an analogy or show how prior knowledge

applies Verbalize a confusing point or show how you

monitor developing understandings Demonstrate fix-up strategies

Think-Alouds: Procedures

Student partnerships for practice

Independent student practice using checklists

Integrated use with other materials

More Effective Comprehension Strategies

Dialogical-Thinking Reading Lesson

Inquiry Chart

Graphic Organizers (story maps, semantic web)

DRA and DR-TA

Inferential reading

SQ3R

Discussion

Reciprocal Teaching