Transcript Chapter Title - Emerson Alternative High School

Informational Reading
JoyLynn Gleave
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
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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, cause-effect, 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
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)
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Informational reading instruction should 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 previous
understanding (Prado 2004)
What?
 Connecting World Knowledge Strategies
 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
Preview
 Click and clunk
 Get the gist
 Wrap up
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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)
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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
Relevance
 Choice
 Collaboration
 Success
 Conceptual theme
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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
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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, math, and Social Studies.
 No single test captures the complexity of
comprehension, the best idea is to use a variety
of methods
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See the Comprehension Assessment: Response Formats
chart on page 701
How?
 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:
Right there
 Think and search
 On my own
 Author and me
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How?
 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
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How?
 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
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How?
 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
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See QtA queries and discussion moves charts on pages 734
and 735 as well as lesson scrip on 736-738
How?
 Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI)
 Activating background knowledge
 Questioning
 Organizing graphically
 Structuring story
 Summarizing
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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)