designing seatwork to improve students' reading comprehension ability

Designing Seatwork to Improve Students' Reading Comprehension AbilityAuthor(s): Judith Scheu, Diane Tanner and Kathryn Hu-pei AuSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Oct., 1986), pp. 18-25Published by: Wiley on behalf of the International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20199301 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 18:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Wiley and International Reading Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Reading Teacher.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.31.195.34 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:23:56 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ira

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20199301?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Designing seatwork to

improve students' reading comprehension ability

// your students find workbooks irrelevant to becoming better

readers, teacher-made worksheets built on basal reader stories can help make the connection and provide practice of important

comprehension skills

Judith Scheu

Diane Tanner

Kathryn Hu-pei Au

In addition to conducting reading

comprehension lessons effectively, many teachers are interested in know

ing how to create independent seat

work activities that will give students

the opportunity to practice and apply

comprehension skills introduced dur

ing lessons. At the Kamehameha Ele

mentary Education Program (KEEP) in Honolulu, Hawaii, we undertook a

project to implement seatwork activi

ties which would provide students with

this kind of opportunity. The project was conducted with the

second grade class taught by the sec

ond author. In this classroom, the chil

dren were divided into five reading groups of five or six students each.

Every day, the teacher gave each group a 20-minute lesson emphasizing read

ing comprehension. Most lessons were

based on selections from basal read ers. While one group met with the

teacher, all of the other children were

engaged in a variety of independent activities, including listening to taped stories and working with the dictio

nary.

Because the majority of her students'

time was spent working independently, the teacher was concerned that this

time be put to good use. She was espe

cially interested in having students

make good use of the 20-minute period set aside for practice of specific com

prehension skills, following the

teacher-led lesson. Her first objective was to have students practice and re

18 The Reading Teacher October 1986



Selected guidelines for developing worksheets

1. The layout of the pages should combine attractiveness with utility. 2. Instructions to the students should be clear, unambiguous, and easy to follow. Brevity is

a virtue.

3. Most student response modes should be consistent from task to task. 4. Student response modes should be the closest possible to reading and writing. 5. When appropriate, tasks should be accompanied by brief explanations of purpose. 6. There should be a finite number of task forms.

7. Workbook tasks should contain enough content so there is a chance students doing the

task will learn something and not simply be exposed to something. 8. The instructional design of individual tasks and of task sequences should be carefully

planned. a. As students become more competent in using a particular skill, their practice tasks

should become increasingly more complex. b. Individual tasks should be do-able by students.

c. Responses should indicate whether or not students understood the task.

d. Tasks should be designed so that their intent is achieved.

9. The skills being practiced should relate to the main reading.

view the important comprehension skills she was teaching. Her second

objective was to have them understand

the relevance of seatwork activities to

becoming a good reader. To meet these two objectives, the

teacher decided that worksheets as

signed as seatwork should be coordi

nated with the students' small group

reading lessons. These activities would

replace the basal workbook pages, as

the teacher's previous experiences indi

cated that these basal pages did not

necessarily reinforce the comprehen

sion instruction in her lessons.

Using Osborn's guidelines This conclusion was consistent with Osborn's (1981) research. Osborn found that basal workbooks, used as

seatwork in many classrooms, have the

appearance of materials written sepa

rately from the rest of the reading pro

gram?of being afterthoughts. Basal workbook pages seldom build upon the

story in the reader, and they generally do not provide students with practice on higher level comprehension skills.

The research literature documented

problems with the design of commer

cially available independent practice materials, and with students' under

standing the purposes for doing seat work (e.g., Anderson, 1981, 1982).

However, we did not find any studies

testing positive models of how these

problems could be overcome. Thus, we set out to test some ideas on our

own.

To achieve the teacher's first objec tive, we followed Osborn's guidelines for developing worksheets, as summa

rized in the Table. We targeted com

prehension skills in the areas of

vocabulary, main idea, cause and ef

fect, and sequencing. By keeping the

worksheet formats clear and simple, we hoped the students would under

stand the tasks they were to complete and focus on the comprehension skills

being targeted. Experience suggests that most second graders have diffi

culty with these skills and could bene fit from instruction in them. In keeping with another of Osborn's recommenda

tions, although we designed each

worksheet to emphasize one particular

comprehension skill, we also allowed

for practice and review of other skills on the same page.

We also followed Osborn's sugges tions to use a tryout procedure, where students are observed using seatwork

materials. In addition, we asked the

students questions to see if they under

stood the purposes of the assignments and the procedures to be followed. The

Designing seatwork 19



Figure 1

Name_

Vocabulary

*Word Bank*

Directions: Fill in the blanks using words from the Word Bank.

Directions: Think about the above story as you answer these questions, f

tryout procedure revealed several weaknesses in the formats, such as un

clear directions and confusing place ment of items. These kinds of

weaknesses were eliminated.

To meet her second objective, the

teacher began discussing the purposes of the worksheet assignments with the children during the small group read

ing lessons. Together, the teacher and

children located the title of the story and book in the upper righthand corner

of the worksheet. They talked about

the skill named on the sheet and the

meaning of that term (e.g., vocabu

lary, sequencing). The teacher at

tempted to show students how the main

idea, cause and effect, and sequencing activities were all related to the basal

story they were reading, and the stu

dents were encouraged to talk about the connections. So that the links

would be reinforced, the students'

completed assignments were often used to start off the next day's lesson.

Planning procedures and sample worksheets The teaching procedures and work sheet formats we developed will be il




Figure 2

Name_ Clpvf.rle.gl -

p.ift-irt Vocabu 1 ary "Wko4-

Mar^ Jo TKard*

Q-Praid before *Word Bank* shared shook many lisfen owned hardly

Directions: Fill in the blanks using words from the Word Bank.

?\l\nc\j Jo

npx/pr_anything of school?_

She, mas afrnict 4o ?vranrl_ibe*_ olher children and -fell aLout-

anything. vShe.

dt'dn'+ -think -fhey would_+o her. MorvJo

reglly did want +o share,, but- ^he. was_

+o -fry. One morning i-t was rainino.

Mary Jo

Coula_w?j-f tor school, ohe was goino

"to

share -the -Pirst~ umbrella she had ever_.

At school she saw other umbrellas. When g

Miss Wille! asked Ker +o share^ ske_her hea<j,| Directions: Think about the above story as you answer these questions. J /. WKqI problem does Mary Jo have af school I

every diayT_g o

_Ui

2. Wh\J is Mary

Jo afraid +o .share? g

.How/ do you -fhink Mary Jo will Solve Ker

problem :_

lustrated by describing those used for a basal story entitled "What Mary Jo Shared" (Udry, 1976). For each of the selected comprehension skills (vocab ulary development, main idea, cause and effect, and sequencing), we dis cuss factors the teacher considered in

planning for comprehension practice and the worksheet format used.

Some information about the story is

helpful in understanding the examples. In the story, Mary Jo's class has shar

ing time each day. Mary Jo is afraid to share but is encouraged to do so by her

teacher, father, and classmates. When

she finally decides to share her new

umbrella, she discovers that most of the other children have umbrellas too, so she doesn't share that day. Another

day she is prepared to share her grass hopper but changes her mind again when she notices a classmate with five

grasshoppers. Her problem becomes so important that she begins dreaming of sharing. Finally her fears are over come when she takes her father to

school, and the other students delight in what Mary Jo shared.

Vocabulary development




Figure 3

Name_ _

Classification _

Directions: Group words from the BANK under each title below

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Think about the story as you answer these questions:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ;

Planning. Our second grade teacher did not rely on the list of words from the basal manual. Rather she chose im

portant vocabulary for instruction and

practice based on her knowledge of the students and their familiarity with the

topic. In planning the reading lesson, the teacher used two criteria to select

vocabulary: the words' importance to the story and the probability that they

would cause difficulty for the students. These are the words she focused on

during small group instruction and in

cluded in the students' seatwork as

well.

Example. The teacher's plan for the first day included the first four pages of the story; she selected share, be

fore, listen, owned, shook, afraid,

hardly, and many as the vocabulary words. The teacher assessed and clari fied students' knowledge of these

words during the discussion. She chose a cloze format (see Figure 1 for

general format) for the students' seat work practice (see Figure 2 for work sheet used).

On another day, the skill of classifi cation was a part of the discussion as

the teacher focused on things that are




Figure 4

Name_

Sequencing

Directions: Read these sentences.

Directions: Write the sentences as they happened in the story.

2.

3.

4.

Directions: Think about the sentences as you answer these questions.

good and not good for sharing. Stu dents practiced and reviewed impor tant vocabulary as well as

classification skills with the format seen in Figure 3. The teacher wrote as

titles above each column "Things Good to Share" and "Things Not Good to

Share." Students selected the words for each column from a word bank with the following items: schoolbag, ele

phant, breakfast, grasshopper, corn

field, moon, kitten, umbrella, moun

tain, letter, window, and frog. This set

included vocabulary from "What Mary Jo Shared" as well as review words

from previous stories.

Main idea

Planning. In the initial planning for instruction of the basal story, the teacher identified at least one possible theme or big idea around which the discussion would center. After the children had gained some knowledge of this theme, it was reinforced in their

worksheets.

Example. The teacher identified

"facing fears" as a possible theme for "What Mary Jo Shared." Rather than

having the children complete an entire worksheet of main idea items, she em




bedded work with the main idea in

worksheets on vocabulary and se

quencing. Using the vocabulary work

sheet she asked: "What problem does

Mary Jo have at school every day?"

(see Figure 2, question 1). On the final

day of work with the story, a question on the sequencing format read: "In

what important way was Mary Jo like

Henry?" (a character in a previous

story who was also afraid of some

thing). Cause and effect

Planning. Though most basal stories at the first and second grade levels do

not contain a clear sequence of cause/

effect relationships, many do contain

incidental cause and effect relation

ships. These incidents can be used for

independent practice of this skill in

worksheet tasks.

Example. "What Mary Jo Shared"

contains examples of incidental cause/

effect relationships. Questions about

these incidents were embedded in vo

cabulary and other worksheets, as in

our main idea example. Using the vo

cabulary worksheet the teacher asked:

"Why is Mary Jo afraid to share?" (see

Figure 2, question 2). Another day she

asked: "Why didn't Mary Jo share her

grasshopper?"

Sequencing Planning. When preparing her les

son, the teacher checked to see if a se

quence of events carried the theme of

the story. If so, students were helped to

identify this sequence during the les sons and the teacher provided review

through seatwork. As students worked

through these activities, they were

practicing the important skill of se

quencing, as well as working toward

comprehension of the story theme.

Problem, events, and resolution are

a typical pattern for a basal story. We

found that practice with these elements

contributed toward a worthwhile cul

minating worksheet that provided for

review and interpretation of important story information.

Example. In "What Mary Jo Shared"

the teacher helped the students identify the steps Mary Jo went through (iden

tifying the problem, taking steps to ad

dress the problem, and solving the

problem) and related them to the

theme "facing fears." This sequence, crucial to the story's development, was

then reviewed independently by stu

dents as one of their culminating ac

tivities (see Figure 4). Beneath the

directions at the top of the page, the

teacher wrote these five sentences:

Mary Jo was happy about sharing her father.

Mary Jo took her grasshopper to

school.

Mary Jo had a bad dream about

sharing.

Mary Jo was afraid to share.

Mary Jo took her umbrella to

school.

Assessments of student learning Several forms of assessment were used

to see if the children had benefited from the project. One was classroom

observations conducted during and af

ter the tryout period. These showed us

that providing the students with a lim

ited number of easy-to-follow formats

allowed them to focus on the compre hension skill itself rather than on the

procedure required to complete the as

signment. The students were moti

vated to complete their worksheets

accurately. When they experienced dif

ficulty, they were able to solve their

own problems more often than not. We

attribute this ability, at least in part, to

the clear and straightforward design of

the final versions of the formats.

We discovered that as the teacher in

troduced and discussed the worksheets

at the end of the reading lesson, the

students began showing an awareness

of the connections. After a time, they were able to differentiate between their

own worksheets and those prepared for




other reading groups by looking for the name of their basal story in the cor

ner of the page. These second graders were also able

to identify purposes of the worksheets

other than "getting it done." For exam

ple, when practicing a sequencing ac

tivity, they could explain that "This is how our story went." When asked

"Where did your teacher get the words for this worksheet?" they could answer

that "They're from our story." When asked why the teacher had chosen those particular words, they replied "So we can learn the hard words."

Students were also Qbserved to show a greater awareness of the theme of the

story, both in teacher-led lessons and in completing worksheets. They started to realize that all stories had certain elements in common. As one

student remarked, "It seems like there are problems in all our stories."

In another form of assessment, we

looked at the students' progress on cri terion referenced tests of reading com

prehension (Crowell, Kamehameha

Reading Objectives System, 1981). The expected rate of growth on these

tests is two levels over the course of a

schoolyear. This class progressed at

the mean rate of 2.3 levels. We realize,

however, that factors other than the

project procedures and worksheets no

doubt also contributed to the students'

performance.

Scheu is an educational specialist, Tanner is a second grade teacher, and

Au is an educational psychologist in the Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu,

Hawaii. They share an interest in de

veloping reading comprehension in struction.

Instrumental vs. artistic literacy and computers "Our popular notions of computer literacy are certainly emphatically instru

mental. While we speak of readers in discussing written literacy, in computing we speaker of users... [and] there are those who see computerization as a de valuation of imaginative thinking in favor of the narrowly instrumental, explicit, and rationalized. This is an inappropriate attempt to equate beginning com

puter literacy with advanced written literacy....Computing is more a practical than an art form at the present time, but as amenable to aesthetic treatment and development as any written format."

Carolyn Marvin and Mark Winther, "Computer-Ease: A Twentieth-Century Literacy Emergent," Journal of Communication, vol. 33 (Winter 1983), pp. 92-108.

References Anderson, Linda M. "Do Students Learn from Seatwork?"

Communication Quarterly, vol. 5 (Summer 1982), p. 2. Anderson, Linda M. Student Responses to Seatwork: Impli

cations for the Study of Students' Cognitive Processing. Research Series No. 102. East Lansing, Mich.: The In stitute for Research on Teaching, Michigan State Uni versity, 1981.

Crowell, Doris C Kamehameha Reading Objectives Sys tem. Honolulu, Hawaii: Center for Development of Early Education, Kamehameha Schools/Bernice P. Bishop Estate, 1981.

Osborn, Jean. The Purposes, Uses, and Contents of Work books and Some Guidelines for Teachers and Pub lishers. Reading Education Report No. 27. Urbana, III.:

Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois, 1981.

Udry, Janice May. "What Mary Jo Shared." In Cloverleaf, edited by William K. Durr, Jean M. LePere, Mary Lou Alsin, Ruth Patterson Bunyan, and Susan Shaw. Bos ton, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.




designing seatwork to improve students' reading comprehension ability

Documents