Teaching Reading Comprehension in the Middle School

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Teaching Reading Comprehension in the Middle
School

• Timothy Shanahan
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• shanahan_at_uic.edu

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Why teach reading in the middle school?

• REASON 1
• Full social participation requires a high level
  of readinghigher than can be accomplished in the
  lower grades.

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Why teach reading in the middle school?

• REASON 2
• Reading is developmental and individuals acquire
  it at different speedsnecessitating later
  instruction for at least some students.

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Why teach reading in the middle school?

• REASON 3
• Often early reading instruction is not very good
  or there is something wrong in learning.

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Why teach reading in the middle school?

• REASON 4
• At advanced levels, reading is particularized
  and these specialized reading routines have to be
  learned.

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How can we improve middle school reading
comprehension?

• Answer 1
• Increase the
• amount instruction.

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Increasing Literacy Time

• Teach students how to read math, science, and
  social studies.
• Give strugglers an extra literacy
• period.
• Even more instruction for
• those who still struggle.

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How can we improve middle school reading
comprehension?

• SOLUTION 2
• Teach essential
• skills and strategies.

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Teaching Essential Skills andStrategies

• Reading comprehension
• Vocabulary
• Oral reading fluency
• Decoding (for some)

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Teaching Comprehension

• Greater focus on expository text.
• Teach multiple major thinking strategies
• --summarization
• --questioning
• --previewing/predicting
• --text structure
• --visualizing
• --inferring
• --monitoring
• Teach strategies as strategies.

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Teaching Comprehension(cont.)

• Modeling
• Clear explanation
• --what, when, how, why
• Guided doing
• Independent practice

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Teaching Vocabulary

• Teach deep definitions.
• Build networks of meaning.
• Provide lots of repetition and review.

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Teaching Fluency

• Oral reading
• Guidance and coaching
• Repetition
• Emphasize both decoding and prosody.

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Teaching Decoding

• Only for very lowest students
• Systematic instruction
• More than individual sounds
• --complex spelling patterns
• --decoding

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How can we improve middle school reading
comprehension?

• SOLUTION 3
• Improve quality of
• teaching.

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Improving Quality of Teaching

• Thorough, coherent, systematic instruction
• Appropriate teaching level
• Motivation and engagement
• Teacher knowledge

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Thorough, coherent, systematic instruction

• Enough lessons to ensure success.
• Well organizedso the intention is obvious.
• Clear day-to-day plans.

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Appropriate Teaching Level

• Instructional materials can be too easy to learn
  from.
• Instructional materials can be too hard to learn
  from.
• Materials at or near student reading levels
  allows optimum progress.

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Motivation and Engagement

• Curiosity content should interest students
• Competence students should be successful
• Challenge students should feel like they are
  learning something worth learning

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Teacher knowledge

• Teachers need to know how to model, explain,
  re-teach
• Teachers must be able to recognize learning
• Professional development matters

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In summation,
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Why should we improve middle school reading
instruction?

• Because we care about kids
• Because they need for us to do it
• Because we can

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How can we improve middle school literacy?

• Increasing amount of instruction
• Focusing instruction on key learning
• Improving quality of teaching

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When should we improve middle school reading?

• The time is now
• We know how
• And, the kids are here now

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Thank you very much!
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Teaching Reading in the Middle School

• Timothy Shanahan
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• shanahan_at_uic.edu
• http//www.reading.org/presentations/