READING COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTIONAnn Morrison, Ph.D.

National Reading Panel Report (2000)

• Meta-analysis of 20 years of research on reading instruction

• Determined that there were 5 essential skills that must be taught to achieve proficiency in reading• Phonemic awareness• Phonics• Fluency• Vocabulary• Comprehension

• Question: What do emergent readers need to be taught in addition to these or that is slightly different from these?

Access the NRP report at• http://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/der/branches/cdbb/

Pages/nationalreadingpanelpubs.aspx

NRP Report Results Should be Adopted with Caution• Methodological Issue: Criteria for research studies

included in the meta-analysis:• Published in English in a refereed journal;• Focused on children’s reading development in the age/grade range

from preschool to grade 12; and• Used an experimental or quasi-experimental design with a control

group or a multiple-baseline method.

• What is the problem with these inclusion criteria?

• Take away: Always ask about the details of information that is presented as “evidence based”. Results aren’t always appropriate for every population.

Reading Comprehension • Examples of RC instruction for narrative text

• Activating background knowledge• Previewing text• Predicting what might happen next in a story• Graphic organizers

• Examples of RC instruction for expository text• Summarization• Main idea• Text structure awareness• Graphic organizers