USING TECHNOLOGY TO DEVELOP COMPREHENSION SKILLS IN THE CONTENT AREA

IRA Conference: Whitney Westfall

PROBLEM WITH READING TODAY

According to the International Reading Association (IRA),

• Students read BUT do not understand

• Little comprehension instruction given in the classroom

• Students need more strategies to be metacognitive readers & thinkers

A SOLUTION

According to the IRA,

• Although comprehension improves through extensive reading, researchers have concluded that comprehension could improve more if all readers were taught to use the comprehension strategies that good readers use

START COMPREHENDING: STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ACTIVELY READING TEXT

•The START framework can improve students’ reading-comprehension achievement and instruction through the modeling and scaffolding of eight comprehension strategies during teacher read-aloud.

8 COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES OF START

1. predicting/inferring

2. visualizing

3. making connections

4. questioning

5. determining main idea

6. summarizing

7. checking predictions

8. making judgments

start

BEFORE READING: PREDICTING

• Blabberize How to make a blabber (with student examples) Example with “A Bad Case of the Stripes”

• Glogster How to make a glogster Example with “Sniffy and Fluffy Have an Adventure”

• Pinterest Resources http://pinterest.com/momma2c/predictions/ http://pinterest.com/12trey16/predicting/ http://pinterest.com/mbnickerson/predicting/

Ilivid.com: Used for downloading strategy songs from youtube

BEFORE READING: INFERRING

• AnimotoHow to create an Animoto video

BEFORE READING: INFERRING

• AnswerGarden

DURING READING: VISUALIZING

• Tagxedo

DURING READING: MAKING CONNECTIONS/QUESTIONING

• VoiceThreadExample of 5th grade students asking questions

during their Egyptian Unit. Students watched the created content and asked questions about the information.

Example of 2nd grade students making connections to information learned during their animal unit.

Example of 1st grade students fall unit on apples. Here, students read their poems while it’s displayed on screen.

Example of 4th grade students explain their robots. Example of 3rd grade students using voice thread

on math facts.

AFTER READING: MAIN IDEA

• PreziHow to make a PreziExample of a Prezi for finding the main idea

AFTER READING: SUMMARIZING/CHECKING

• FotobabbleHow to create a FotobabbleExample of a student using fotobabble to retell her

story. Students from another class had to try to guess the story based on the summary.

• Polleverywhere

Check it

AFTER READING: MAKING JUDGMENTS

• Photostory

OTHER RESOURCES

• Scoop It: tool is helpful for parents to have access to sites based on what is being taught in the classroom for support

• Fodey: tool can be used during writers workshop at a center or whole group with the newspaper generator

• PhotoPeach: tool is great when going on observation walks (create pictures w/captions)

• Voki:  tool can be used for children to tell about themselves 

• Vocaroo: tool is helpful for recording to model fluency or to share their writing in writing workshop

Thank you for your time and patience!