Goal:To Improve Teacher Confidence when

Teaching Reading Comprehension2012

What are some of the things we know about teaching comprehension?

http://wallwisher.com/wall/stcomprehension

St Thomas’s School Goal:To improve comprehension of students.

In order to achieve this goal, teachers need to feel confident with teaching comprehension in their classrooms.

Our aim is that teachers will feel more confident about: -the theory behind the teaching of comprehension -the range of strategies they should be teaching -how to explicitly teach comprehension strategies in their classrooms -teaching comprehension in a differentiated classroom WHAT HAVE WE DONE SO FAR?

Teaching staff have taken part in the following PD: • The 6 Step Teaching Process (QAR Now) • First Steps Reading and Writing and CARS & STARS is available as a resource

In 2012 St Thomas’s is taking part in an Australian Government Quality TeachingProject (AGQTP) and the focus of the project is comprehension

• Alison Davis Workshop (21st May 2012)

•Explicit•Explanation•Goal Setting

1 ModelledLessons2 Shared

Lessons3 Guided Lessons4 Independent

Work5 Reflection6

The 6 Step Teaching Process(Gradual release of responsibility model Pearson and Gallagher 1983)

All of the steps of the process should be evident in planning for teaching of comprehension strategies.

Australian Government Quality Teaching Project

Survey of St Thomas’s Staff March 2012 - Results:

With your current class, how easy do you find planning for the teaching of comprehension strategies using the 6 step teaching process?

Very easy 47.1% (8)

Easy with support 35.3% (6)

Difficult but having some success 17.6% (3) Very difficult 0.0% (0) Difficult and unmanageable 0.0% (0)

2. With your current class, how easy do you find the teaching of comprehension strategies in a differentiated classroom?

Very easy 11.8% (2)

Easy with support 47.1% (8)

Difficult but having some success 29.4% (5) Very difficult 11.8% (2) Difficult and unmanageable 0.0% (0)

EXPLICIT TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR READING COMPREHENSIONWORKSHOP BY DR ALISON DAVIS

Dr Alison Davis is the director of Vision Education, a team providing regional PLD in literacy for schools in Auckland and Waikato.

She has a PHD from Auckland University and a 1st class Masters degree in Educational Leadership and Administration.

Her specialist areas are literacy, assessment and schooling improvement. She has led the PEN schooling improvement project in Huntly/Ngaruawahia and the Papakura Achievement Initiative in Papakura.

Alison has been on the writing team for Effective Literacy Practice years 1-4 and years 5-8, the newly published oral language handbooks and the revised literacy progressions.

Alison has also written her own texts – Teaching Reading Comprehension 2007 and Building Comprehension Strategies 2010. She is working on her next book, Strategies for Comprehension: Informational text, due to be published in 2012.

KEY POINTS FROM THE WORKSHOP

*Metacognitive approachMetacognition (Thinking about our thinking)

*Learning must be active - purposeful. Students must engage.How do we get students to engage?Students understand ‘why’ they are learning this and therefore are happy to engage in the learning.(Mark Davidson mentioned that this is also crucial for behaviour management.)

*Teachers need to assist students to ‘make links’ between what they already know and new knowledge.

*Goal Setting – students need to have some individual goals to focus their learning and to make learning active and purposeful. (This is also the first step towards planning for differentiation in a classroom.)

METACOGNITION

Students need to know what reading is, they need to know (be able to explain and demonstrate) the skills and strategies “skilled” readers use.

They need to be able to self-monitor and reflect on their choice of strategies while reading. They need to know when they are reading with skill and when they are not.

Metacognition is important for students of all ages e.g. A prep student might explain that he knew the word ‘cat’ because it started with ‘c’ and he also saw a cat in the picture. He should also explain that he knows to use letter clues and picture clues to help work out words when he is reading.

LEARNING must be ACTIVEFor active learning to occur, students must have ‘cognitive capacity’ – space in the brain for the ‘new stuff’. New space in the brain is created when ‘stuff’ that was once ‘new’ becomes ‘automatic’. (Done on autopilot – we can do it without thinking.)LEARNER DRIVER EXAMPLE

‘New stuff’ needs to be just out of range of what students already know. This allows students to ‘make links’ and ‘build on what they already know’.

• Students need lots of opportunities to practise ‘new stuff’ so that it becomes ‘automatic’. Once skills are taught they need to be maintained – similar to mathematics.

Activating Prior Knowledge is the key to students being able to make links to what they know.

For Metacognition to occur, strategies must be explicitly taught and explained, in language students will understand. Teachers need to model the use of strategies in Context, using the “Think Aloud” teaching strategy, so students see how a successfulreader thinks.

The aim, is for students to be able to explain and demonstrate a strategy using theirown language, and to discuss why they would choose a strategy/strategies for a specific purpose.

When teaching new strategies, teachers must introduce the strategy and explain what it is and how and why it is used. Class goal setting should be part of this explanation and the goal should be displayed for the students and referred to often as the lessons progress.

Reflection at the end of the process is also vital. Reflection could involvestudents making a class chart to explain their understanding of a strategy at a point in time. These charts should be displayed and added to as understanding of the strategy develops.

Students could also make short video presentations to explain and demonstrate the use of a strategy in context.

Key learning goal: We are learning to retell what we have read.

Retell is the strategy by which we tell about what we haveread AFTER we have read it.

Retell helps us to become skilled readers because we learn:• that if we cannot retell we need to read the text again• how to check if we understand what we have read• how to better understand the words and ideas the author has written

Alison Davis has examples of goals written in ‘Student Friendly Language’ for all suggested strategies in her book “Building Comprehension Strategies”.

Here is an example of a class goal for learning about the strategy of ‘retelling’.

Once the strategy has been explicitly explained in language students will understand,the teacher must then model the strategy in context.

THINK ALOUDThis helps students to see and understand how a successful reader might successfullyuse a comprehension strategy. TEACHERS IN LOWER SCHOOL MIGHT HAVE A “THINKALOUD” HAT THEY WEAR. ONCE STUDENTS ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE THINK ALOUDPROCESS, THEY MIGHT BE INVITED TO WEAR THE HAT AND SHARE THEIR THOUGHTSWHILE READING. PUPPETS MAY ALSO BE USEFUL DURING THIS PROCESS.

TEACHERS NEED TO READ THE TEXT PRIOR TO THE LESSON AND MAY NEED TO MAKE NOTES. STICKY NOTES CAN BE LEFT INSIDE A TEXT FOR NEXT TIME.

REFLECTING – Class chart created by teacher and students

Retelling

Retelling is when I talk aloud about what I have read.

Retelling happens AFTER I have read.When I retell, I need to include some detail (information) to make my retell clear for the listener.

I need to think about the order of the story when I retell – (beginning, middle and end) I might use these words (At the beginning, next, then, later, after that…)

I need to make sure that I include all of the most importantparts of the text when I retell.

Reflecting: Develop a chart/ wall display or flip chart on IWB. Teacher and students or groups of students work together to develop a wall display about what they know. The chart can be added to as understanding is developed.HERE IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE:

INFERENCE – What do we know about this strategy?

What I think – I wasn’t told this but I really, really think this is so.

A calculated guess. ??Drawing together different ideas in the story.

Getting inside the author’s head.

Reading between the lines.

Thinking about the bits the author did not tell me.

What is reading?Some ideas from kids taken from Sheena Cameron Reading Workshop:

Reading is a way of finding out more information abouta topic.

Reading is learning and travelling to the author’s imagination.

Reading is a subjectthat helps you in the future. It helps youunderstand. It’s better than sitting on the coach (sic) watchinga box.

Reading is understandingwords and knowing whatthey mean.

Reading is when you read a book and understand it and it paints a picture in your mind.

What is a strategy?

A strategy is a plan to help you achieve something. So a reading strategy helps you achieve understanding when you are reading. Another word for understanding is comprehension.

WHAT ARE THE STRATEGIES?

FIRST STEPS READING RESOURCE BOOK p.113 - 114

First Steps Reading Resource Book

Chapter 4: Teaching Comprehension and Word Identification StrategiesWhat are the strategies? p. 114

*Predicting *Self-questioning *Re-reading*Connecting *Skimming

*Reading On*Comparing *Scanning

*Adjusting Reading Rate*Inferring *Determining Importance *Sounding Out*Synthesising *Summarising & Paraphrasing *Chunking*Creating Images

*Using Analogy

*Consulting a Reference

First Steps also talks about the importance of developing fluency (Chapter 1, p. 30)

CARS and STARS strategies

Finding the Main IdeaRecalling Facts and DetailsUnderstanding SequenceRecognising Cause and EffectComparing and ContrastingMaking PredictionsFinding Word Meaning in ContextDrawing Conclusions and Making InferencesDistinguishing Between Fact and OpinionIdentifying Author’s PurposeInterpreting Figurative LanguageSummarising

Strategies suggested by Alison Davis in her book“Building Comprehension Strategies”

Making connections to prior knowledgePrediction and re-predictionVisualisationAsking and Answering QuestionsInferenceRetell and ParaphrasingSummarisation

Sheena Cameron List of strategies:Activating Prior Knowledge QuestioningVisualising InferringSelf Monitoring Making connectionsSynthesising PredictingSummarising

GOAL SETTING:In order for students of all ages to be engaged and to improve, they need to have achievable goals. Students must be aware of these goals. (Not just parentsand teachers.) School officers should be aware of the goals of students they areworking with.

• Use assessment from Terms 1 and 2 (running records and comprehension tests) to identify comprehension goals. Some goals may become class goals as many students in the group may need to work on developing the same skills.

• Start simply – one or two goals for each student.

• Group students with similar goals. (This is the first step towards differentiation in the classroom.)

• Plan guided lessons to target the goals of groups of students. Think about how school officers and/or parent helpers can also help to support these goals.

• Provide explicit feedback to let students know how they are progressing and how they can improve.

• Include time for student reflection of how they are going towards meeting their goals.

• Class Goal Setting Sheet

• Individual Student Goal Setting Sheet

Class Goal Setting Comprehension SkillsClass:Teacher: Term 3, 2012

Read on to work out words

Include some detail in retell

Tell the difference between fact and opinion

Use letter clues to match words and pictures

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Improve fluency Develop a bank of sight words

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STUDENT GOAL SETTING READING COMPREHENSION NAME: CLASS: DATE: To be a better reader I need to work on the following goals:

How am I going?

How am I going?

Our aim is that teachers will feel more confident about:

-the theory behind the teaching of comprehension -the range of strategies they should be teaching -how to explicitly teach comprehension strategies in their classrooms -teaching comprehension in a differentiated classroom

REFLECTION

Use the “Traffic Light” strategy to reflect on the session:

What will you stop doing in your classroom?

What will you continue to do in your classroom?

What will you start to do in your classroom?

SUMMARY of KEY IDEAS:• Gradual release of responsibility model – Modelled Guided Independent• Explicit explanation of strategies in language that students can understand. Working towards students being able to ‘explain’ and ‘demonstrate’ their choices of strategies in different situations, and reasons for these choices. (Example of Learning Goal written in student friendly language.)• Goal setting – students need to know the purpose of what they are doing and should be setting goals to work towards (Modelled by the teacher. Start off with whole class goals and move towards students having one or two individual goals.)• Reflection – students should be frequently reflecting on how well they are doing in relation to class and personal goals. (This is a vital part of having students who are ‘engaged’ and ‘active learners’.) Class charts should be created by teachers and students as new information about strategies is discovered. (See example of class chart.)• Feedback provided by the teacher must be explicit and provide students with information about how they are going in relation to their goals e.g. “One thing I noticed you doing today during guided reading was…” “Today I noticed you learned to…when you read …”• The ‘think aloud’ teaching strategy is a vital part of allowing students to understand the thinking process of a ‘skilled’ reader (the teacher). Could have a “think aloud” hat in lower school for teacher and students to wear.