Reading Comprehension What the Research Says

1. Reading Comprehension What the Research Says

2. Why this Research? 1. High School graduates are facing increased need for high degree of literacy, including the capacity to comprehend texts, but comprehension outcomes are not improving. 2. Students in the U.S. are performing increasingly poorly compared to students in other countries especially in later years of schooling when discipline-specific content is central to the curriculum. 3. Unacceptable gaps in reading performance persist between children in different demographic groups despite efforts to close the gaps; the growing diversity of our population will likely widen those gaps further. 4. Little direct attention has been devoted to helping teachers develop the skills they need to promote reading comprehension, ensure content learning through reading and deal with the differences in comprehension skills that their students display. 5. Policies and programs (e.g., high-stakes testing, subject-related teacher credentialing, literacy interventions) intended to improve reading comprehension are regularly adopted, but their effects are uncertain because the programs are neither based on empirical evidence nor adequately evaluated.

3. A Heuristic for Thinking About Reading Comprehension

4. A proficient reader is capable of acquiring new knowledge, understanding new concepts, is capable of applying textual information appropriately, and is capable of being engaged in the reading process and reflect on what is being read. Reading comprehension is the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. It consists of three elements that occur within a sociocultural context:

5. 1. The Reader a. cognitive capabilities b. Motivation c. knowledge e. Experience 2. The Text a. wording (surface code) b. idea (text base) c. mental models (the way the information is presented or processed) 3. The Activity (the process outcomes--may change) a. comprehension b. knowledge c. application/problem solving d. engagement with text 4. The Context (external and internal environment) a. group differences (interpretations of the world, communication about it and transmission of information) b. individual differences

6. Reading Comprehension What We Already Know But Act As If We Don't

7. 1. Instruction in reading fluency leads to significant gains in word recognition and fluency, but only moderate gains in comprehension. 2. Instruction of comprehension can be effective in providing students with a repertoire of strategies that promote comprehension monitoring and foster comprehension. 3. The explicitness with which teachers teach comprehension strategies makes a difference in learner outcomes, especially for low achieving students.

8. 4. There are many hypotheses about the role of instruction in explaining and addressing the problems of poor comprehenders. a. Many students come into classrooms without the requisite knowledge, skills and dispositions to read the material placed before them. b. Many students have been denied the kinds of instruction that advance reading comprehension because, too often, teachers working with low-achieving students focus on low-level factual reading, or interrupt poor readers more frequently than their errors would justify. c. Students with a history of reading challenges read less and accrue less background knowledge to bring to the reading of new text.

9. 5. The role of vocabulary instruction in enhancing comprehension is complex and confounded by the complexity of the relationships among vocabulary knowledge, conceptual and cultural knowledge, and instructional opportunities. 6. Teachers who provide comprehension strategy instruction that is deeply connected within the context of subject matter learning (science & history) foster comprehension development. 7. Using a variety of genres of text (informational, narrative, expository) diversifies instructional opportunities as assessed by how students approach text with a particular plan of action when they are aware of the structure. They organize text as they read, and they recognize and retain the important information in the text. Students who are unaware of text structure, retrieve information from text in a seemingly random way and do not retain important information.

10. 8. Teachers who give students choices, challenging tasks, and collaborative learning structures, increase their motivation to read and comprehend text. 9. Effective teachers enact a wide range of instructional practices that they use thoughtfully and dynamically. 10. Despite the well-developed knowledge base supporting the value of comprehension instruction, it continues to receive inadequate time and attention in typical classrooms in both elementary and secondary grades.

11. Reading Comprehension What We Need to Do/Know

12. 1. Teachers need guidance about how to combine and prioritize these various instructional approaches in the classroom. 2. Teachers working in high-poverty schools need guidance on how to combine and prioritize various instructional approaches in the classroom, especially while attending to the poor word-reading skills their students often bring to the middle and later grades. 3. Although 48% of the variance in student achievement is attributable to home and family factors that are largely out of the school’s control, 51% of the variance is attributable to controllable factors, 43% of which can be attributed to teacher quality. We need to focus on the 7 hours we have students and do what we can that is within our control.

13. “Teachers who exhibit increased teacher quality and expertise have deep knowledge about the reading process and reading comprehension. They also have the knowledge and skills to implement research-based instructional strategies in their teaching, ideally while also making their practice-based reflections on those instructional strategies available to researchers.” 4. How can we bring about increased teacher quality and expertise in teaching reading comprehension?