Transcript Chapter Title - Emerson Alternative High School

INFORMATIONAL READING
Megan Miller
WHAT?
 Informational, or expository, text communicates facts
about the natural or social world (Duke 2006)
 Informational texts tend to be more complex, diverse
and challenging than narrative texts and understanding
them requires more abstract thinking (Sadler 2001;
Alvermann and Eakle 2003; Fisher and Frey 2004)
 It is important to integrate comprehension instruction
into content-area teaching, particularly for adolescents
WHAT?
 Torgeson et al. (2007) make the following
recommendations for improving adolescent literacy
instruction in content areas
 Provide explicit comprehension strategies instruction
throughout the day
 Include plenty of open, sustained discussion of reading content
 Hold high standards for text, conversation, questions, and
vocabulary
 Build motivation and engagement with reading
 Teach essential content knowledge
WHAT?
 Informational Text Structure
 Information texts use a limited number of organizational
structures, including description, compare -contrast, causeeffect, problem/solution, and time order
 See Information Text Structures and Signal Words chart on
page 683
WHAT?
 Graphic Organizers – see pgs 684 & 685
 Because they are concrete representations, graphic organizers
provide a means for students to
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Record information about underlying text structures
See how concepts fit within text structures
Focus on the most important ideas in the text
Examine relationships among text concepts
Recall key text information
Write well-organized summaries
 (Armbruster et al. 2001; Trabasso and Bouchard 2002)
WHAT?
 Considerate Texts
 Facilitate comprehension and learning
 Three overlapping features characterize and help define
considerate text (Armbruster 1996)
Structural cues: aspects of text that suggest, indicate or emphasize
its structure
Coherence: main ideas are explicitly stated, information limited to
that which supports the development of a main idea, a logical
ordering of events and ideas, the use of signal words to clarify
relationships between events and ideas, and smooth transitions
between topics
Audience appropriateness: the extent to which the text matches
world knowledge that readers are likely to have
WHAT?
 Strategy Application
 When comprehension instruction is tied to content are
learning, it is important to read with a purpose in mind (Neufeld
2005)
 Informational reading instruction be done in meaningful
contexts and for authentic purposes
 When comprehension strategies are closely linked with
knowledge in a content are, students are more likely to learn
the strategies fully, perceive strategies as valuable tools and
use them in new learning situations
WHAT?
 Connecting to World Knowledge
 Students learn new information from text by linking it with
knowledge that stems from their pervious experiences
 When reader’s world knowledge matches what is present in
the text, they assimilate the new information, connecting it
readily into their existing schema for the topic
 When their world knowledge conflicts with information
presented in the text, either readers accommodate by
modifying their schema to fit the new information or they
reject the information and maintain their pervious
understanding (Prado 2004)
WHAT?
 Connecting World Knowledge Strategies
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KWL charts
Pre-reading and predicting
Asking questions
Answering questions
Constructing mental images
Summarizing
WHAT?
 Multiple-Strategy Instruction Program: CSR
 Encourages students to self-monitor their comprehension by
using a set of four comprehension strategies
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Preview
Click and clunk
Get the gist
Wrap up
WHAT?
 Reader Response
 Enhance reader interactions with informational texts
 Discussion oriented instruction: Questioning the Author teaches
students to question what they read, to think, to probe, to
associate, and to critique
 Writing for content-area learning: important for students to make
reading/writing connections with informational text by studying the
authors’ writing styles, writing reviews of texts, making
improvements to existing texts and producing their own
informational texts (Duke 2006)
WHAT?
 Motivation and Engagement with Reading
 Engaged readers are knowledge driven, socially interactive,
and strategic
 Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI): primary aim is to
increase students’ reading engagement
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Relevance
Choice
Collaboration
Success
Conceptual theme
WHAT?
 Web-Based Text
 When a student lacks world knowledge it is easier for them to
use web-based text as long as options for navigation and
browsing are limited
 Can be more engaging than traditional text
 WebQuest: poses open-ended problems that students solve
using internet resources
 Organizes the learning task and prevents endless searching for
information
See strategy applications in web-based text chart on page 697
WHY?
 Builds content knowledge and vocabulary
 Capitalizes on students’ interests, curiosities, and
experiences
 Presents opportunities for students to develop areas of
expertise
 Prepares students for the types of texts they will read
most frequently as adults
 Supports students in both answering and raising
questions
 Serves as a tool for both solving and posing problems
 Duke 2004, 2006
WHEN?
 Primary grade students need increased instructional
time with informational text
 Use age appropriate texts that appeal to students’
natural curiosity
 After grade 3 it is important to help students expand
their knowledge in content areas such as science and
math
 No single test captures the complexity of
comprehension, the best idea is to use a variety of
methods
 See the Comprehension Assessment: Response Formats chart
on page 701
HOW - QAR
 Questions- Answer Relationships (QAR)
 Research based method and language framework to enhance
student’s ability to talk about answer comprehension
questions
 Analyze differences between questions with answers in the
text and those with answers in student’s background
knowledge or experiences
 Four categories:
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Right there
Think and search
On my own
Author and me
HOW-SUMMARIZING
 Summarizing
 Paragraph shrinking
 Identify who or what a paragraph is mostly about
 Identify the most important information about the who or what
 Shrink all the information into one main -idea statement of 10
words or less
HOW-CSR
 Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)
 Before Reading: Preview, scan, brainstorm what you want to
know, predict what you will learn
 During Reading: click and clunk, get the gist
 After Reading: Wrap up, ask and answer questions, review
what you learned
 Click and clunk: words or concepts whose meanings are
understood “click”, words or concepts they don’t understand
“clunk”
 Get the gist: Identify the most important ideas in the reading
HOW-QTA
 Questioning the Author (QtA)
 3 goals for QtA lesson planning
 Identify the major understandings and potential obstacles in the
text
 To segment the text or determine where to stop reading and initiate
discussion
 Develop initiating queries and potential follow up queries
See QtA queries and discussion moves charts on pages 734 and 735
as well as lesson scrip on 736-738
HOW-CORI
 Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI)
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Activating background knowledge
Questioning
Organizing graphically
Structuring story
Summarizing
 Goal is to increase engagement and motivation to read
through interest, ownership, social interaction, confidence, and
content mastery
 See charts for goals and motivational practices on pages 740
and 741
CONCLUSION
 Students’ success or failure in school is closely tied to
their ability to comprehend informational text
 Students need to develop skills to read, interpret and
understand informational text that is often associated
with content area learning in relation to their currently
held background knowledge
 “Middle and high-school students spend most of their
time in content-area classes and must learn to read
expository, informational, content -area texts with
greater proficiency” (Torgensen et al. , 2007)