Strategies for Teaching Reading Skills

1. Strategies for Teaching Reading Skills October 6, 2011

2. Why are we having this conversation? • National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) • Contexts for Reading • Reading for literary experience • Reading for information • Reading to perform a task • Aspects of Reading • Form a general understanding • Developing an interpretation • Making reader/text connections • Examining content and structure

3. Basic (265) • Twelfth-grade students performing at the Basic level should be able to identify elements of meaning and form and relate them to the overall meaning of the text. They should be able to make inferences, develop interpretations, make connections between texts, and draw conclusions; and they should be able to provide some support for each. They should be able to interpret the meaning of a word as it is used in the text.

4. Proficient (302) • Twelfth-grade students performing at the Proficient level should be able to locate and integrate information using sophisticated analyses of the meaning and form of the text. These students should be able to provide specific text support for inferences, interpretative statements, and comparisons within and across texts.

5. Advanced (346) • Twelfth-grade students performing at the Advanced level should be able to analyze both the meaning and the form of the text and provide complete, explicit, and precise text support for their analyses with specific example. They should be able to read across multiple texts for a variety of purposes, analyzing and evaluating them individually and as a set.

6. NAEP Results 12th grade 2009 • The average reading score for the nation's twelfth-graders was 2 points higher in 2009 than in 2005. The score in 2009, however, was 4 points lower than the score for the first reading assessment in 1992. • White students, Asian/Pacific Islander students, and male students made gains since 2005. • Thirty-eight percent of twelfth-graders performed at or above the Proficient level in reading in 2009, which was higher than the percentage in 2005, but not significantly different from the percentages in other earlier assessment years.

7. NAEP Results • http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2009/gr12_national.asp?tab_id=tab2&subtab_id=Tab_1#tabsContainer

8. NAEP Results • Overall results • Small gains overall for 8th graders • No change in achievement gap • No change, females continue to out perform males • No gains in lower-income students • No significant change in Ohio scores • http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_2009/state_g8.asp?subtab_id=Tab_1&tab_id=tab1#tabsContainer

9. Characteristics of Good Readers • When they come to an unfamiliar word, good readers use a variety of word analysis strategies, such as context clues, root words, prefixes, suffixes, etc. Poor readers “sound it out,” rarely connecting the word to a meaning. • Good readers are metacognitively aware, they self-correct when they make a mistake. Poor readers often ignore their errors, or fail to notice errors. • Good readers read to construct meaning, poor reader read to decode letters.

10. Characteristics of Good Readers • Good readers read and reread, becoming increasingly fluent; poor readers seldom read leading to problems establishing fluency. • Good readers pay attention to authors and illustrators, seeking out additional choices based on what they have enjoyed in the past, poor readers seldom notice those details and usually read only when material is assigned. • Good readers get excited about books and discuss them with friends, teachers, and family to share their enthusiasm, poor readers don’t discuss what they read unless required.

11. Characteristics of Struggling Readers • Read too fast, blurring words, rushing through punctuation • Do not reread to clarify meaning • Read to finish rather than to understand • Do not predict without prompting • Do not easily make inferences, draw conclusion, or make generalization • Have difficulty summarizing important points from the text

12. Characteristics of Struggling Readers • Do not set a purpose for reading other than to complete the assignment • Do not connect events in the text to other texts, personal experiences, etc. • Do not recognize when comprehension is not taking place, or do not know how to adjust, continues reading • Do not know how to use text features (charts, graphs, typeface, etc.)

14. Strategies To Support Reading Comprehension • DRTA – Directed Reading Thinking Activity • Cycle of predicting and summarizing to enhance comprehension and metacognition • Begin by predicting from the title of the reading • Stop periodically to summarize, then predict what will come next • Works very well with text that is arranged with headings and subheadings, if not students have to find their own stopping places • Often referred to as “chunking” text

15. Strategies To Support Reading Comprehension • Process Guides • Help to guide students through the text to sort out important information • Prepared by the teacher in advance • Points the way through the reading, information student should focus on, information they can skim • For example….

16. Process Guide Example 1. Compare definitions of and purposes for cooperative learning in Cruickshank and Kagan. 2. Don’t worry about knowing STAD, TGT, etc. focus on theories behind cooperative learning and what makes cooperative learning different from group work, such as pgs. 244-45. 3. Focus on purposes, characteristics, definitions, when to use for -discovery learning -constructivism -direct instruction 4. For direct instruction, pay more attention to research based, esp. pages 260, 263-64. 5. Chapter 9, p. 283 difference between formative and summative assessment.

17. Strategies To Support Reading Comprehension • Skimming and Scanning • Skimming – preview or review • Read the first full paragraph • Read the first sentence of each subsequent paragraph • Read the last full paragraph • Scanning • Eyes scan the text looking for a particular piece of information and then stop • Works well to review, good for names, dates, locations, bold type, etc.

18. Classroom Activities That Can Support Reading Comprehension • Linguistic Roulette • 1. Assign a reading selection; it can be one piece for the whole class, or different pieces for different groups. • 2. Divide the selection(s) into smaller sections. • 3. Students read the selected portion of the text. • 4. After reading is complete, students go back and scan the selection and choose a single sentence. They may choose a sentence because it is interesting, exciting, confusing, funny, informative, etc. • 5. Around the group, students share the sentence they chose and the reason for choosing it. Students discuss choices and help each other to clear up any confusion, especially if the choice was because the student didn’t understand. • 6. Repeat pattern until the selection has been read and all students have shared their final sentence choice.

19. Classroom Activities That Can Support Reading Comprehension • Think Aloud • The purpose of a think aloud is to model metacognition in a very overt manner for students, for them to “see inside your head” as you are reading and comprehending. • This is not something that occurs in isolation, it should be in the context of a lesson that uses the material. • You decide how much discussion to include with the think aloud model. Purists of this approach do not include discussion while they are modeling.

20. Classroom Activities That Can Support Reading Comprehension • Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) • Self-generated questions that help keep the reader interested and are used to seek information • Levels of questions • Text explicit – the answer is quoted directly in the text • Text implicit – the answer must be implied from the text • Script implicit – the answer requires text, prior knowledge, and experiences

21. Classroom Activities That Can Support Reading Comprehension • QAR cont’d. • Teacher models several levels of questions • This strategy facilitates comprehension by identifying the type of question being asked and then the resources necessary to answer it • Can be used with individuals or in small group discussions

22. Classroom Activities That Can Support Reading Comprehension • QAR cont’d. • Question labels • Right there (text explicit) • Think and search (text implicit) • Text and you (script and text implicit) • On your own (script implicit)

23. References • Improving Adolescent Literacy (2008) Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey • “No Time, No Interest, No Way!” (1996) Kylene Beers, School Library Journal • Content Area Reading (2010) Richard Vacca, Jo Anne Vacca, Maryann Mraz • When Kids Can’t Read: What Teachers Can Do (2003) Kylene Beers