reading in the content areas facilitated by: lisa d. menges, liu #12 staff developer, division of...
TRANSCRIPT
Reading in the Content Areas
Facilitated by:
Lisa D. Menges, LIU #12
Staff Developer,
Division of Instructional Services
Today’s Objectives:
To create an awareness of the need for content area reading instruction.
To recognize there are strategies used before, during, and after reading.
To leave today with strategies you can implement in your classrooms tomorrow.
Cause for Concern
According to the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 37 percent of fourth graders and 26 percent of eighth graders cannot read at the basic level; and on the 2002 NAEP 26 percent of twelfth graders cannot read at the basic level.
That is, when reading grade appropriate text these students cannot extract the general meaning or make obvious connections between the text and their own experiences or make simple inferences from the text. In other words, they cannot understand what they have read.
Sixty percent of America's prison inmates are illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.
Graduates and dropouts with poor reading and literacy skills are statistically:
Less likely to find employment, even low paying jobs;
More likely to have jobs that do not pay well enough to allow the wage earner to support a family;
More likely to require public assistance;
More likely to serve time in a correctional facility.International Center for Leadership in Education
To participate fully in society and the workplace in 2020, citizens will need powerful literacy abilities that until now have been achieved by only a small percentage of the population.
Reading is the key enabler of learning for academic proficiency
across all subject areas and over all grades.
Hasselbring and Daggett, 2007
Think – Pair – Share
What is the role of a content area teacher regarding
reading instruction?
Content Area Teachers Are
…expert readers of the texts in their disciplines. They have a responsibility to explicitly teach their students the skills needed to understand their subject area texts in addition to teaching the content of the text itself.
In a study done by the International Center for Leadership in Education of the top performing high schools and most improving high schools, reading is being taught in the content area in all of these schools.
Content Area Reading Instruction Is:
Providing students with instruction that:
familiarizes them with the structure of expository text;
promotes content area vocabulary development;
promotes word identification skills;
builds reading fluency; and
emphasizes and directly teaches how, why, when, and where to use a repertoire of comprehension strategies.
Texas Education Agency
“I don’t have time to teach reading.”
Employing the use of content area reading strategies can result in more instructional time to focus on content.
Struggling Readers:
The main difficulties that confront struggling readers fall into two categories:
• A lack of reading fluency
• A lack of comprehension skills
Reading Fluency Is:
Expression
Accuracy
Reading Rate
Smoothness
Choral Reading
Makes all students active participants in the reading process.
Helps develop fluency in reading.
Better readers and fluency makes for better comprehension of the text being read.
Choral Reading
Patriots and Loyalists
Struggling Readers:
The main difficulties that confront struggling readers fall into two categories:
• A lack of reading fluency
• A lack of comprehension skills
Comprehension Skills Include:
Schema
Vocabulary knowledge
Listening comprehension skills
A repertoire of reading strategies
Visualization skills
Good Readers…Are better able to learn, may learn more
content, and become independent learners,
Preview text and activate schema before reading,
Monitor comprehension during reading, &
Synthesize and summarize after reading.
What do you read?
Narrative vs. Expository Text
90% of what we read is nonfiction, expository text.
The majority of texts that students are expected to read in content area classes are expository texts.
Expository text exposes readers to complex concepts through a variety of text structures.
Three Interactive Elements of Reading
Reader Climate
Text Features
Teaching Reading in the Content Areas, Barton & Billmeyer 1998
Monitoring Comprehension through
Text Structure:
While most pieces of fiction (narrative text) follow the same or similar general organizational patterns, different expository texts can have very different text structures. Therefore, it is important to teach students to recognize common text structures found in expository texts.
Types of Text Structures:Description
Cause/Effect
Time/Order
Directions
Problem/Solution
Compare/Contrast
Text Structure
One difficulty to resolve in crocodile
watching is transportation. How can an observer get close enough to watch without scaring it away or being attacked?
Problem/Solution
Text Structure
The crocodile is a master of deception in the water. It stalks its prey and then swiftly closes in for the kill.
Description
Text Structure
When observing a crocodile, first you must…
Directions
Text Structure
The power of the crocodile is like that of a monstrous machine. With one lunge it can destroy its prey and protect the kill from other predators.
Comparison/Contrast
Text Structure
We observed the crocodile as it
stalked a raccoon moving through the moonlight toward the edge of the water. As a result of a noise we made, the raccoon bolted…
Cause/Effect
Text Structure
Archaeologists have helped us to understand that the evolution of the crocodile began with…
Time/Order
Modeling Text Structures with Math
Before Reading Strategies
Activate schema
Determine purpose
Pique interest in reading
Read Aloud
A strategy used before reading to determine background knowledge and stimulate interest in an upcoming unit;
Provides mental representations of content learning;
Builds reading fluency: expression, accuracy, rate, and smoothness
Modeling A Read Aloud
Other Before Reading Strategies
Brainstorming
Anticipation Guides
K-W-L
Graphic Organizers
During Reading Strategies
Evaluate predictions
Identify main ideas
Make connections
Monitor comprehension
INSERT
A strategy used to monitor your thoughts and understanding of information during reading.
! = Wow! That surprised me.
+ = This is new information
* = I already knew that
? = I don’t understand. I wonder…
Developing Questions for Reading
Concept Ladder
After Reading Strategies
Summarize
Analyze and Synthesize New Information
Make Generalizations
Draw Conclusions
Good Readers Reflect on the content while reading and
reflect on what they have read after they close the text. Good readers:
• Process information in relation to their reading purpose;
• Analyze information in relation to their pre-existing schema, revising schema as needed; &
• Make inferences and draw conclusions.
SummarizationTraining students to identify text structure leads
to students being able to create a macrostructure and create better summaries of the text.
Synthesis lends itself toward the achievement of creating a new perspective or thought out of what one is reading, summarizing provides more of an opportunity to understand and restate the text.
Ambruster, Anderson, and Ostertag
Exclusion Brainstorming
DirigibleSurvivorTranquilSubtleMooringMundaneAdventureAnticipationTransatlanticOceanGreedTrainedLavishBreathlessMediocreTimelyEmptyTelevisedGentleincredulous
Questioning the AuthorQtA
Application of a reading strategy before, during, and after reading
Uses queries, rather than traditional questions to engage readers and build understanding while reading
Facilitates a query-driven discussion after reading
