Strategies to Support Reading Comprehension

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Strategies to Support Reading Comprehension
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Fake Reading

• I expected that meaning would arrive if I could
  pronounce all the words.
• Tovani (2000) I Read It But I Dont Get It

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What do we mean by comprehension?

• Activity
• Silently Read The Blonke
• Answer questions
• Discuss answers and how you arrived at your
  answers with a partner

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The Ahas

• Reading is more than decoding
• Most could accurately read the passage -
• Can get some meaning from the nonsense words
  using your structure knowledge (language and
  text)
• Have some sense of it using prediction and
  inference
• Questions are not a true measure of comprehension

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We need to teach students strategies to read text
more effectively to understand what they are
reading.

• A strategy is an intentional plan that readers
  use to help themselves make sense of their
  reading.
• Strategies are flexible and can be adapted to
  meet the demands of the reading task.
• Good readers use lots of strategies to help
  themselves make sense of text.
• Tovani (2000) I Read It But I Dont Get It.

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7 Strategies of Successful Readers

1. They use existing knowledge to make sense of new
   information
2. They ask questions about the text before, during
   and after reading
3. They draw inferences from the text
4. They monitor their comprehension
5. They use fix-up strategies when meaning breaks
   down
6. They determine what is important
7. They synthesize information to create new thinking

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Strategies for Before, During and After Reading

• Need to consider what students need to do and
  teach strategies to help them succeed. Consider
• Before reading strategies set them up to read
  for understanding
• During reading strategies to sustain and extend
  meaning and monitor understanding
• After reading strategies to reflect on and
  consolidate understanding

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Learning and Teaching a Strategy

• Modeling and demonstration
• Practice
• Independent application

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Strategy 1 Setting the Purpose

• Silently read The House and underline the
  important information.
• A Second Look circle the important information
  as if you were a robber
• A Third Look put a square around the important
  information as if you were a real estate agent

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Reflection

• What did you do the first time you read The
  House?
• What happened the second time?
• Was it easier to read and find the important
  information when you had a purpose?
• What was your comfort level? What did you find
  frustrating?

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Setting the Purpose

• As readers, we need to know the purpose for what
  we are reading
• Sometimes we take it for granted that students
  understand what they are looking for when they
  are faced with text.
• Students need to know why they are reading.
• The purpose changes your entire reading
  experience

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Strategy 2- Activating Prior Knowledge

• In your group use the back of one of your
  handouts to make a semantic web for the word
  chair
• Group Share

CHAIR
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• Making the semantic web required you to activate
  your schema for the chair all the meanings
  and associations related to that word.
• Sharing your prior knowledge can provide multiple
  perspectives, additional knowledge about a
  concept.
• Helps students read the text- predicting what
  words might be in the text.

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KWL Strategy

• What do you Know about solutions?
• What do you Want to know or wonder about
  solutions
• What did you Learn after the lesson

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KWL Strategy
Know Want to Know (Wonder About) Learned
Stuff mixed in water Used in labs Filter it Salt in water Solute Solvent Stir to mix faster Sand in water Sugar in water -How can a solid dissolve in a solid Is dissolving a chemical reaction What is an alloy What is hard water How strong are the chemicals we use in the labs? Types of solutions How to mix solutions faster Solutions concentrations Why water is special Electrolytes Solutions vs suspensions 12kt vs 18kt gold Water softeners
Possible Categories for Information Possible Categories for Information Possible Categories for Information
Summary/Response/Still Need to Know Summary/Response/Still Need to Know Summary/Response/Still Need to Know
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Activating Prior Knowledge

• We draw on our prior knowledge as we make
  predictions to make sense of what we hear, see
  and read.
• Students need to learn how to use their prior
  knowledge in order to understand and respond to
  what they read.

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Strategy 3 - Making Connections Predictions

• Stephanie Harvey describes making connections as
  forming a bridge from the New to the Known. When
  readers make connections, they use their personal
  and collective experience to enhance their
  understanding.
• When we say, This reminds me of, we are making
  a connection. We make 3 kinds of connections when
  we read and we need to teach students how to make
  these connections.
• One way of teaching for making connections is to
  teach kids to code their text as they read.

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Making Connections Predictions

• Connections can be
• Text to Self (T-S) - relating reading to their
  own life
• Text to Text (T-T) - connections made between
  different texts
• Text to World (T-W) - connections made between
  the text and bigger world issues

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Strategy 3- Making Connections/Predictions

• Make a prediction for the story The Only
  Wheelchair in Town

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Strategy 3- Making Connections Predictions

• The Only Wheelchair in Town
• Read page 35 silently
• During reading, think about
• text/text (T-T), text/self (T-S), and
• text/world (T-W) connections you may make

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Making Connections Predictions

• We continue to predict as we read and we read to
  confirm or revise those predictions
• Accessing prior knowledge and making connections
  is critical to students predicting and
  constructing meaning from text.

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Strategy 4- Focused Reading

• Students can use codes (v ! ?) to focus and
  monitor their reading (pg 19)
• Provides reading for a purpose
• Reinforces the idea that reading involves
  thinking
• A useful study strategy

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ReadingAsThinking
vv Got . I know and/or understand this. ! This
is really important or interesting. ? I dont
understand this or this does not make sense.
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Small Group Reflection

• Share/Discuss with partner or small group
• Any questions you have
• What you are already doing to support reading
  across the curriculum

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Any Questions or concerns?(end part 3)