Transcript Teaching Comprehension Strategies

Teaching Comprehension
Strategies
Accelerating Your
Students’ Literacy
Achievement in
Years 4–9 Plus
Introducing
Kyran Smith
Dip Tchg
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13 years in education
Deputy principal
‘Great Teaching for Literacy Stories’ project
School leadership – literacy and assessment
Introducing
Neale Pitches
ONZM, BA, MEd Admin (Hons), Dip Tchg
Forty years in education:
- English and history teacher, Hillmorton and Dunstan
- English head, deputy principal
- Wellington High, principal Onslow College
- Learning Media
- South Pacific Press and Lift Education
Background
South Pacific Press and Lift Education
• New Zealand educators and publishers
• Resource developers
• Our comprehension experiences:
o the international reader
o the New Zealand reader
o combining learning theory and literacy research
Seminar Agenda
1. Introductions
2. The Comprehension Issue
3. Effective Comprehension Instruction – a Rich
Learning Model
4. Video
5. Reflection
6. Selecting Support Material
Associate Professor Terry Crooks
The new standards are all about comprehension.
New Zealand students have shown increased ability to decode
but comprehension has shown little improvement.
Students with poor comprehension are not receiving
comprehension strategies instruction.
(Anecdotal comments)
Teaching Comprehension
The purpose of teaching comprehension is
to teach strategies as tools to expand and deepen understanding.
We best do this by … teaching kids a repertoire of strategies they can use flexibly
in many circumstances and with many texts.
Harvey and Goudvis
Comprehension strategies are specific, learned
procedures that foster active, competent, self-regulated
and intentional reading.
Trabasso and Bouchard, 2002
A Rich Learning Model
Known concepts
Long term memory
Selecting
Sorting
Classroom
experiences
Working memory
Integrating
Elaborating
Evaluating
Knowledge structure
(Nuthall, 2007, p.71)
New concepts
We set out to build a rich, 3x3-step model based on
the research evidence:
Whole-Group
Instruction
Co-operative
learning
Independent
Application
Before, during, and after reading
Building metacognition – a gradual release model
Accelerating Literacy Achievement
Seven comprehension strategies:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Making connections
Asking questions
Visualising
Drawing inferences
Determining important ideas
Synthesising info
Monitoring comprehension and repairing
understanding
Accelerating Literacy Achievement
Five text collections: (Content Literacy)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Fiction
Non-fiction (general)
Science
Mathematics
Social studies (Social Sciences)
A new approach to ‘differentiation’
 “On-year” level texts
 Multiple scaffolds:
Audio for all 40 student co-operative texts at each
year level
Collaborative (peer) learning built into whole-class
lessons and student co-operative activities
Digital whole group texts especially engaging
Bespoke graphic organisers
Student reflection journal
… in summary: eight evidence-based principles
for effective instruction
 Teach comprehension strategies singly and in combination
 Use short, engaging, diverse texts
 Use metacognitive strategies before, during, and after reading
 Involve students in interactive learning communities
 Gradually release responsibility
 Include self/peer/teacher assessment
 Offer several opportunities to learn new concepts (3-4+) over a short
space of time, therefore…
 Assume all students will make progress (Learning community)
The Comprehension Landscape
Professional Reading
Reading Strategies
Comprehension Strategies
making
connections
asking
questions
forming and testing
hypotheses
attending and searching
inferring
identifying the
main idea
visualising identifying the
writer’s purpose
and point of view
predicting
analysing and
synthesising
summarising
cross checking
Processing Strategies
evaluating
self correcting
The Literacy Progressions
Rich Learning Model
GRADUAL RELEASE OF
RESPONSIBILITY
Engage
Scaffold and Model
Interact and Reflect
Apply and Assess
Whole-class teaching
- Builds an inclusive learning
community
- Provides an ideal medium
for scaffolding
- Interaction through
“think-pair-share”
Miramar South School Case Study
Pre- and Post-Test Data
2008 and 2009
“The students seem to have made a
staggering leap in their reading ability
unlike any other year I've known!”
Kyran Smith, Deputy Principal,
Miramar South School
Miramar South School
School background
Decile 2
Mixed ethnicity
Pasifika 54% Maori 23%
Somali 16% European/other
7%
Classroom background
Year 8
Students decoding effectively
Comprehension strategies high priority
Knowledge of effective literacy practice
Seeking successful programme model
2008 AsTTle Results
Miramar South half-yearly progress
(2009, as measured by running records)
2009 AsTTle Results
Increase of Students Reading at or above the National Norm
100
90
80
70
60
% of students 50
40
30
20
10
0
Feb
Nov
Boys
Girls
NZ European
Other
Maori
Pasifica
All
Feb
Nov
Hagley High School
Hi …
One of our English teachers has trialled the kit with her Yr 10
English class and has had stunning results. The pre and post PAT
results showed amazing shifts.
We have done a presentation of the results of the trial (including
filmed excerpts) to the Social Sciences and Science depts. There
is considerable interest… we would like to have a look at the
Level 7 English texts, as our Learning Support/ Literacy teachers
felt that the level of the Level 8 texts may be too high for our
year 9 cohort.
Is there any possibility that we could have a look at those texts
please.
Many thanks
Marie Stribling
HOD English
Hagley Community College
Christchurch
The Lesson Focus / Learning Intention
Drawing Inferences – “Elephant Walk”
Students will learn to enhance their comprehension of a text
by using information in the text and their knowledge to infer
deeper meanings and draw conclusions.
This non-fiction text is a report – descriptive, sequential,
cause and effect, problem and solution
The Lesson Focus / Learning Intention
Drawing Inferences – Ready…Aim…Spit
This text for cooperative learning of the strategy of drawing
inferences text is an article – descriptive, enumerative,
sequential
Sample lesson: Explicit instruction
What did Kyran do to include the elements of explicit instruction:
• An explicit description of the strategy
• Modelling of the strategy
• Scaffolding students
• Students articulating what they do as they use the
strategy
• Students applying and reflecting on the strategy.
Effective Literary Practice, Years 5–8
Video
Evidence-based Principles
Expectation
Learning
Community
Deep
Knowledge
Assessment
Engagement
Explicit
Instruction
Content
areas
Gradual
Release of
Responsibility
Revisit
Concepts
Metacognition
Seminar Take-home Resources
www.csi-literacy.com
Elephant Walk
Sample Texts
Summing Up - New Thinking
Digital Shared Reading
• Diverse, on-grade-level texts – to give students broad
experience – not all are “suited” to them
• Explicit / deliberate teaching
• Digital scaffolds
• Interaction – learning community
Summing Up - New Thinking
Cooperative learning: A challenge to our thinking about
‘levelled text, levelled kids’
• Diverse, grade-level texts – to give students broad experience –
not all are “suited” to them
• Scaffolding via peers, audio, learning community
• Audio texts
• Graphic organisers – “bespoke” – developed for that text and
that strategy
Summing Up - New Thinking
Summing up
• We can overcome the concern that levelling has become
too prescriptive – a deficit model
• We can serve ‘digital natives’ with digital texts
• The developmental model we have described is shown to
have major benefits for comprehension achievement for all
students
• We can use multiple scaffolds and a rich learning model to
‘differentiate’
www.csi-literacy.com
Register your interest in more
professional development
http://www.csi-literacy.com/educators/literacy2u.html
Teaching Comprehension
Strategies
Accelerating Your
Year 4–9 Students’
Literacy Achievement