Getting It Right:

Comprehension

• What is your definition?• The ability to use a variety of perspectives,

including an author’s intentions, specific textual references, personal experiences, and socio-cultural 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:– 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:– 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 in-the-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

• 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 courtney@hartford.edu– Dr. Rick King rking@hartford.edu– Dr. Joan Pedro pedro@hartford.edu

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