Transcript Slide 1

Comprehension
• What is your definition?
• The ability to use a variety of perspectives,
including an author’s intentions, specific textual
references, personal experiences, and sociocultural influences, to generate viable
interpretations or meanings in transaction with a
variety of texts. (Serafini, F. 2006)
• Reading comprehension is the process of
generating, articulating, negotiating, and revising
interpretations and understandings within a
community of readers (Serafini, 2006
How Do We, as Teachers, Affect
Comprehension?
• The single greatest factor to impact a child’s
learning is the quality of the teaching
• Strategies must be useful, useable, and focused
on obtaining meaning
• Quality teachers create life-long learners/readers
– Demonstrate a love of learning and reading
– Model appropriate learning and reading behaviors
– Teach explicit strategies for learning and comprehension
What Reading/Comprehension
strategies should be taught?
• What strategies do you
teach?
• What the experts and
literature say:
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Schema-Prior Knowledge
Visualizing
Questioning
Summarizing
Determining what is
Important
Inferencing
Monitoring Comprehension
and Meaning
Synthesizing
Text Structures
Demonstrating Fluent & Proficient
Reading Strategies
• Whole group modeling &
discussions
• Guided reading
• Think alouds
• Guide on the side
• Shared readings
• Paired readings
• One-on-one reading
• Reading conferences
• Charting the strategies
• Reflection
– Constant and continual
discussion using specific
understandable language
that focuses readers on
what strategy might be
used and how it might be
helpful.
– Constant and continual
questioning of what
strategy was used and how
it helped to understand
what was read.
The Key Ingredient - Scaffolding
• Your Scaffolding definition:
• Our definition: In connection with the ZPD,
assisting and supporting students and gradually
transferring responsibility from the teacher to the
student as the students demonstrate proficiency
in using strategies to construct meaning
Characteristics of Effective
Comprehension Teaching
• What, do you think,
are some of the
characteristics?
• We believe that
comprehension
teaching needs to be:
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Preplanned
Deliberate
Explicit
Engaging
Interactive
Preplanned
• Teacher selects strategy to teach
• Teacher selects appropriate text
• Teacher plans how to introduce the
strategy
• Teacher plans think alouds to make the inthe-head invisible strategy visible to the
student
Deliberate
• Make it concrete and visible to the students
• Answer student questions
• Repeat student questions in order to
confirm or question the students for further
clarification
Explicit Teaching
• This is the most important characteristic
– One’s ability to bring to conscious awareness one’s
learning and reading processes (Allington and
Walmsley, 1995)
– The degree of clarity of a particular lesson (Bomer,
1998).
– Instruction at the point of use (Price, 1998)
– Instruction that focuses on a strategy, practice, or
particular aspect of reading process, calls to
conscious attention what is being taught, and strives
to clarify for students the expectations we have for
their learning (Serafini, 2004).
Explicit Strategy Instruction
• Strategy instruction (Courtney, 2006):
– Makes the invisible in the head strategies (of
teachers) visible through clearly and deliberately
verbally explaining and demonstrating (modeling)
strategies,
– scaffolding and supporting this learning by building
upon prior knowledge and prior experiences,
– thinking aloud,
– bringing to conscious attention and awareness what
good readers do as they construct meaning
(Courtney, 2006).
Engaging
• Choose books that interest the students
and are appropriate for the strategy
• Remember you are teaching proficient and
non-proficient readers
• Use drama – act, use voices, etc.
• Be joyful in your reactions to students
• Always build community
Interactive
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Brainstorming
Guessing
Predicting
Scaffold continuously
Keep the focus on meaning construction
The Process
• Teacher explanation of the strategy using precise and exact
language,
• Teacher Modeling: demonstrating what the strategy application
would look and sound like,
• Teacher making her/his thinking visible,
• Guided practice: practice and discussion with the whole group –
collaborative talk,
• Practicing the strategy with a buddy, small group and/or
independently,
• Scaffolding by the teacher: raising individual strategy use to
conscious awareness through engaging, questioning, prompting,
modeling, explaining, telling, challenging, reflecting, clarifying,
leading.
• Bringing the group together to discuss any bumps and how the
strategy worked in order to further reinforce the strategy use –
further raising strategy use to conscious awareness.
• Teacher constantly provides for independent practice and creates an
atmosphere of self-reflection and self-regulation.
Are They Getting It?
(Assessment)
• Oral reading analysis: running records, miscue analysis,
retrospective miscue analysis.
• Retellings
• Interviews
• Teacher Observation
• Post ITs – how readers mark tests and reporting out
• Reading reflection logs
• Reading conferences
• Questioning: bringing to reader’s conscious awareness
what strategy s/he used and how it helped (help reader
to think about his/her thinking – becoming
metacognitive).
The Result: A Metacognitive
Reader
• When a reader is metacognitive s/he
recognizes first and foremost there is
confusion and then flexibly and
strategically selects the most appropriate
strategy to use in order to construct
meaning.
Downloads & Contacts
• Presentation
– http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/rking/Ireland.ppt
– http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/courtney/Ireland.ppt
• Contacts
– Dr. Ann Courtney [email protected]
– Dr. Rick King [email protected]
– Dr. Joan Pedro [email protected]
References
Allington, R. L. (2001). What really matters for struggling readers: Designing researchbased programs. New York: Longman.
Allington, R. L., & Johnston, P. H.. (2002). Reading to learn: Lessons from exemplary fourthgrade classrooms. New York: Guilford Press.
Allington, R.L. & Walmsley, S.L. (eds). (1995). No Quick-fix: Rethinking literacy programs in
America’s elementary schools. NY: Teachers College Press.
Behrman, J R., & Birdsall, N. (1983). The quality of schooling: Quantity alone is misleading.
American Economic Review, Vol. 73, No. 5. pp. 928-946
Bomer, R. (1998). Transactional heat and light: More explicit literacy learning. Language Arts.
76 (1): 11-18
Courtney, A. & Montano, M. (2006) Teaching comprehension from the start: One first grade
classroom.61(2), Young Children.
Courtney, A., King, F.B., Pedro, J. (2006) Paradigm shift: Teachers scaffolding student
comprehension interactions. Thinking classrooms. 7(1).
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content literacy. Portmouth, New Hamshire: Heinemann.
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understanding. York, ME: Stenhouse.
Keene, E. O., & Zimmermann, S. (1997). Mosaic of thought: Teaching comprehension in a
reader’s workshop. Portmouth, NH: Heinemann.
McLaughlin, M., & Allen, M. B. (2002). Guided comprehension: A teaching model for grades
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Miller, D. (2002). Reading with meaning: Teaching comprehension in the
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Pressley, M. (2000). What should comprehension instruction be the instruction
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Publishers.
Pressley, M., Allington, R.L., Wharton-McDonald, R., Block, C. C., & Morrow,
L.M. (2001). Learning to read: Lessons from exemplary first-grade
classrooms. New York: Guilford Press.
Pressley, M. & Block, C.C. (2001). Comprehension instruction: Research-based
best practices. NY: Guilford.
Price, D.P. (1998). Explicit instruction at the point of use. Language Arts. 76:1926.
Serafini, F. (2006). Around the reading workshop in 180 days. Portsmouth, NH:
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Serafini, F. (2004). Lessons in Comprehension. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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