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JackieB : Thinking about what math students really need to know. How much do they need to be able to do by hand? - Plurk.com

the power of conversations

Tags: plurk, professionaldevelopment, reading, mathematics on 2008-07-04 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Reading Online - Articles: Comprehension Instruction 4.5

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There is increasing recognition that comprehension instruction needs to prepare readers to do more than respond to short-answer postreading questions or multiple-choice questions on a standardized test. Much hard thinking is occurring about what real-world comprehension demands are and how instruction can prepare young readers to meet them
Students often are asked to read a text in order to answer questions designed to do little more than test whether they have understood and remembered the text read. The problem with this task is that it is so little like the tasks readers carry out in the real world.
There is increasing concern that too much of the elementary reading curriculum has involved reading of narratives, with growing awareness that students need practice reading expository text. (Much of mature reading, of course, focuses on exposition.) In addition, there is emerging understanding that our text world is changing dramatically with the proliferation of electronic documents and multimedia. Little is known at this point about how Web-based and hypertext documents can be processed well; less is known about how to teach students to read such documents so as to maximize comprehension of the information encoded in them.
Automatic, fluid articulation of comprehension strategies develops slowly, when it develops at all. There is increasing awareness that teaching of comprehension strategies has to be conceived as a long-term developmental process. Although much is known about how to teach comprehension strategies when students are first learning them, very little is known about how teaching should occur as students are internalizing and automatizing strategies.
According to this perspective, comprehension will only be maximized when readers are fluent in all the processes of skilled reading, from letter recognition and sounding out of words to articulation of the diverse comprehension strategies used by good readers (e.g., prediction, questioning, seeking clarification, relating to background knowledge, constructing mental images, and summarizing).
the more automatic reading is, the less capacity it consumes.
he idea that teachers can become hooked on comprehension strategies themselves -- and come to understand the potency of strategies -- by learning them one at a time.
starting point for the development of many comprehension skills is teacher modeling of those skills.
nterventions beyond word-recognition instruction -- do, in fact, make an impact during the primary years.
Emerging Issues
- Teach decoding skills.
- Teach vocabulary.
- Encourage students to build world knowledge through reading and to relate what they know to what they read (e.g., by asking why questions about factual knowledge in text).
- Teach students to use a repertoire of active comprehension strategies, including prediction, analyzing stories with respect to story grammar elements, question asking, image construction, and summarizing.
- Encourage students to monitor their comprehension, noting explicitly whether decoded words make sense and whether the text itself makes sense. When problems are detected, students should know that they need to reprocess (e.g., by attempting to sound out problematic words again or rereading).
Such instruction must be long term, for there is much to teach and much for young readers to practice
seek clarification, often through rereading
Good readers are also aware of the occasions when they are confused, when text does not make sense
Good readers know when they need to exert more effort to make sense of a text.
transactional strategies instruction
and continuing through more flexible approaches that began with extensive teacher explanation and modeling of strategies, followed by teacher-scaffolded use of the strategies, and culminating in student self-regulated use of the strategies during regular reading
use the individual strategies together, articulating them in a self-regulated fashion (i.e., using them on their own, rather than only on cue from the teacher). In general, such packages proved teachable, beginning with reciprocal teaching, the first such intervention
improved memory and comprehension of text in children: generating questions about ideas in text while reading; constructing mental images representing ideas in text; summarizing; and analyzing stories read into story grammar components of setting, characters, problems encountered by characters, attempts at solution, successful solution, and ending
aware of why they are reading a text, gain an overview of the text before reading, make predictions about the upcoming text, read selectively based on their overview, associate ideas in text to what they already know, note whether their predictions and expectations about text content are being met, revise their prior knowledge when compelling new ideas conflicting with prior knowledge are encountered, figure out the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary based on context clues, underline and reread and make notes and paraphrase to remember important points, interpret the text, evaluate its quality, review important points as they conclude reading, and think about how ideas encountered in the text might be used in the future.
Good readers are extremely active as they read,
power of “Why?” questions, or “elaborative interrogation,” to encourage readers to orient to their prior knowledge as they read
eading comprehension can be enhanced by developing reader’s prior knowledge. One way to accomplish this is to encourage extensive reading of high-quality, information-rich texts by young readers
readers who possess rich prior knowledge about the topic of a reading often understand the reading better than classmates with low prior knowledge
vocabulary increases as a function of children’s reading of text rich in new words
comprehension improved as a function of vocabulary instruction.
teach them to decode well. Explicit instruction in sounding out words, which has been so well validated as helping many children to recognize words more certainly
he students who had learned to recognize the words to the point of automaticity answered more comprehension questions than did students who experienced instruction emphasizing individual word meanings.
critical for children to develop fluency in word recognition. Fluent (i.e., automatic) word recognition consumes little cognitive capacity, freeing up the child’s cognitive capacity for understanding what is read.
Skilled comprehension requires fluid articulation of all these processes, beginning with the sounding out and recognition of individual words to the understanding of sentences in paragraphs as part of much longer texts. There is instruction at all of these levels that can be carried out so as to increase student understanding of what is read.
saw little comprehension instruction but many teachers posing postreading comprehension questions
Given that there are some types of instruction that improve comprehension, it might just be sensible to do all of them. No one, however, has ever done an experiment to explore what happens when teaching is full of comprehension-enhancing approaches versus absent of them.

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The first two areas are three-pronged, involving (a) presentation and structure of
text, (b) students' awareness of text presentation and structure, and (c) students'
strategic use of text presentation and structure. Text presentation facilitates reading
comprehension if (a) main ideas are clearly stated and located at the beginnings of
paragraphs; and (b) the relations between important information are clearly indicated
by headings, subheadings, signal words, and sentences or paragraphs signaling text
organization placed at the beginning of the passage. Extra spacing between thought units
in sentences facilitates attention to ideas within sentences. Text structure facilitates
reading comprehension, with narrative text structure being generally easier for students to recall and monitor than expository text structures.

However, it may be that simply presenting text in a clear, well-organized manner is
not sufficient. Research suggests that students' awareness of that presentation and
strategic use of text are also needed to enable students to identify relevant and
nonrelevant information, main ideas, and relations between ideas. Normally achieving students
appear to strategically use text organization to identify main ideas and relations
between ideas. However, if main ideas are not clearly stated, even normally achieving students have demonstrated difficulty identifying important information, summarizing,
and integrating information.

Unlike normally achieving students, diverse learners appear less aware of text organization
and its use as a strategy. Many comprehension difficulties of diverse learners have
been attributed to their deficits in text structure awareness. For example, they have demonstrated difficulty identifying main ideas, and discriminating between relevant
and nonrelevant information. While demonstrating a knowledge of strategies, they
fail to demonstrate a use of strategies.

The first two convergent areas and the importance of students' awareness and strategic
use of text presentation lead to the third convergent area -- explicit instruction
in text organization facilitates comprehension. Research supports instruction in
the physical presentation of text, text structures, and strategic use of text organization
to benefit reading comprehension. Research evidence also supports explicit instruction
that follows a general pattern of (a) explaining the skill or component of text structure; (b) telling the importance; (c) modeling how, when, and where to use the skill,
and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the skill; (d) providing guided and independent
practice; (e) teaching for transfer; and (f) evaluating.

The effect on reading comprehension of the presentation and structure of text is more
global than local. Well-presented and structured text results in better comprehension
of main ideas and relations between ideas than poorly presented or structured text.
Likewise, students who are aware of or have had instruction in the physical presentation
of text or text structure demonstrate more global comprehension than students who
lack awareness or have not had instruction. Although students who are aware of text
structure recall more than students who are not aware of text structure, there is often
no difference between these students for local (i.e., details) comprehension.
Caveats for Instruction
followed a general pattern of (a) explaining the skill or component of text structure; (b) telling the importance;
(c) modeling how, when, and where to use the skill, and how to evaluate the effectiveness
of the skill; (d) providing guided and independent practice; (e) teaching for transfer; and (f) evaluating.
cited studies that used
either a model-lead-test or model-guided practice-independent practice format.
strong support
for explicit and direct instruction in text presentation and text structure.
Strategies to identify the main idea in text appear particularly important.
includes teaching students how to use (a) the physical presentation of text (e.g., location of topic
sentences, headings, subheadings, signal words) as a strategy to identify main ideas
and form interrelations between concepts, main ideas, and supporting details (Seidenberg, 1989); (b) a story grammar to identify the important ideas in narrative text (Gurney
et al., 1990; Newby et al., 1989); and (c)
expository text structures
> to identify
concepts and interrelations or to impose interrelations upon poorly written text.
Examples of imposing text structure include visual representations of text (Horton et al.,
1990; Pearson & Fielding, 1991) and note sheets organized around text structure (Englert
& Thomas, 1987). Strategy instruction holds particular promise for students with
LD as they seem to lack the ability to engage in strategic activities and do not spontaneously
access and use cognitive strategies when these are needed
major contribution of research has been to transform reading skills (e.g., summarize,
identify main ideas, identify relations between main ideas) into explicit strategies
that students can be taught directly
graphic organizers helped make mainstreaming a
valid instructional delivery system for all students.
Graphic organizer instruction consisted of reading and rereading for 15 minutes, and
completing and studying graphic organizers for 20 minutes.
teaching students to study or create visual representations of key ideas
in text (e.g., networking, flowcharting, Con Struct, mapping, conceptual frames,
graphic organizers, conceptual mapping) benefited reading comprehension.
suggested that teachers be concerned not only with increasing
students' awareness of different text structures, but also with informing students
of the impact text structures have on evaluation, regulation, and memory. They suggested generalizing metacognitive skills to more difficult expository passages after
training with narrative passages.
Expository text structures
Approaches to text structure instruction included both
systematic attention to clues that signal how authors relate ideas to one another
and systematic attempts to impose structure upon text.
teaching students
a summarizing strategy using the headings, subheadings, and paragraph topics of textbooks
resulted in more recalled text information than answering questions or studying.
two additional structural cues to teach students: the patterns that exemplify subordinate and superordinate relations; and signal words (e.g., "first," "finally").
xplicit, task-specific instruction on (a) how to
recognize the physical presentation of important information in text, including topic
sentences and where these usually occur in well-organized paragraphs; and (b) headings
and subheadings and their purposes.
What to Teach
Area of Convergence # 3: Explicit Instruction in Text Organization
Teachers should be aware of these variations and may want to attend more carefully
to text structure as students move to reading more expository text in the upper-elementary
school grades. Zabrucky and Ratner (1992) posed that teachers be concerned with increasing students' awareness of different text structures and informing students of
the impact of these structures on evaluation, regulation, and memory. Students should
be taught to adjust their reading and rereading skills and to assess their readiness
for recall when text information varies in difficulty. This instruction may be more
effective if it occurs for narrative before expository text.
The evidence is clear that text structure and students' awareness of text structure
are positively related to reading comprehension. Student sensitivity to text structure
may be developmental and varies according to text structure type. Generally, narrative is easier than expository text for students and some types of expository text are
easier than others (e.g., sequence was found to be easier than enumeration and description,
which in turn was found to be easier than compare/contrast)
Normally achieving students appear more facile with both narrative and expository
text structures than diverse learners. One indicator of facility with text is the
number of times readers look back at text to correct comprehension failures. Good
readers had significantly more look-backs than poor readers for difficult (i.e., expository)
text and significantly more look-backs for expository than narrative passages. Good
readers also had more look-backs for inconsistent text than poor readers, though
the differences were not significant. Good readers correctly reported significantly more
inconsistencies than poor readers
Third, narrative structure
is prevalent in oral language
Second,
this familiar content of narrative includes event sequences
(e.g., intentional acts in pursuit of goals; events that occur in the material world).
Event sequences are the core content of children and adults' experience in everyday
life.
First, narrative content is more familiar to students than expository
content.
and that students remember and comprehend narrative text structure
easier than they do expository text structure
strong research support that students have a greater
awareness of narrative than expository text structures
Student awareness of structural patterns in expository writing (e.g., sequence, causation,
comparison/contrast) facilitated recall of not only more text information, but more
theses or main ideas
learners "familiar" with text structure who read well-structured,
clearly cued text performed better on measures of global comprehension (e.g., main
topics) than students who did not demonstrate familiarity with test structure.
text type affected recall and comprehension monitoring.
Students recalled significantly more idea units from narrative than expository passages.
When comparing texts with inconsistencies to texts without inconsistencies, students looked back more frequently for inconsistent narrative than inconsistent expository
text, suggesting that inconsistencies were more apparent in narrative than in expository
text. Students were also better able to verbally report on passage consistency after reading narrative than expository passages. Students reread expository passages
more frequently than narrative passages when the passages did not contain inconsistent
information, indicating that students found expository text more problematic than narrative text. Additionally, students reread more frequently when inconsistent text
was adjacent to the correct sentence than when it was far from the correct sentence.
narrative appearing easier to comprehend and monitor than expository
text.
well-structured expository text facilitates comprehension
of main ideas or topics, rather than facts.
sequence, enumeration or collection,
problem-solution, and description
While narrative text structures has largely focused on story grammars, research
on expository text has spanned a much broader range of organizational patterns. Common
expository text structures include compare/contrast, classification, illustration,
procedural description
Textbooks, essays, and most magazine articles
are examples of expository text
While narrative text structure primarily entertains, expository text primarily communicates
information
generate predictions about patterns of passage recall, passage summarization, importance
ratings of statement, passage statement clusters, and reading time, but there has been controversy over whether story grammars or other representations of knowledge
(e.g., knowledge about planning, social action, motives) can explain these predictions
story grammar components and their
hierarchical relations represent frames or patterns that readers can use to store
information in long-term memory.
tory grammar refers to "abstract linguistic representation of the idea, events,
and personal motivations that comprise the flow of a story"
normally involve (a) animate beings as characters with goals and motives;
(b) temporal and spatial placements usually presented at the beginning of the story;
(c) a problem or goal faced by the main character that imitates a major goal; (d)
plots or a series of episodes that eventually resolve the complication; (e) impacts upon
the reader's emotions and arousal levels; and (f) points (e.g., justice, honesty,
loyalty), morals, or themes
narrative text depicts events, actions, emotions, or situations that people in a culture experience
common expository
texts include persuasion, explanation, comparison/contrast, enumeration or collection,
problem-solution, and description, designed primarily to inform the reader
two types of text: narrative and expository. Narrative
is more common than expository text and is usually a story written to entertain the
reader
ext structure
appears to play an important role in reading comprehension. Moreover, there is strong
empirical evidence that readers' awareness of text structure is highly related to
reading comprehension.
Area of Convergence # 2: Text Structure and Student Awareness of Text Structure are
Highly Related to Reading Comprehension
Text that clearly signals main ideas and relations between ideas facilitates comprehension.
Techniques for clearly presenting text include (a) ordering topics systematically;
(b) stating topic organization in the opening paragraph; (c) placing topic sentences at the beginning of paragraphs; (d) arranging supporting details in recognizable
patterns that exemplify superordinate/subordinate relations; (e) using precise language
to make clear the relations between concepts, ideas, and sentences; (f) using signal words such as "first," "second," and "finally;" and (g) using headings, subheadings,
and topic sentences to cue the interrelations between important ideas.
when students with LD have comprehension difficulties, teachers need to consider
whether the students are able to identify the important information in a reading
passage. Therefore, they may need explicit training to increase sensitivity to important text information.
Chunked text appears to neither benefit
nor hinder high-ability readers
However, when the main idea is implicit rather than clearly presented, normally
achieving students have demonstrated difficulty identifying main ideas and integrating
information
Summarizing, integrating information, and forming relations between important information
are important reading comprehension skills. Fluent readers use textual cues to identify
important information to include in summaries

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Metacognition and Reading to Learn

Metacognition

it involves boththe conscious awareness and the conscious control of one's learning

reading to learn

four variables: texts, tasks, strategies, and learnercharacteristics.

text

text

text, refers to the textual

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Thus, learner characteristics, like texts, tasks, and strategies, are

age and experience dependent. The development of metacognition appears

to be linked to proficiency in learning. A related conclusion about

metacognitive development is that knowledge precedes control. The

researchers suggest that learners must first become aware of

structures of text, as well as knowledge of the task and their own

characteristics as learners, before they can strategically control the

learning process to optimize the influence of these factors
A final category of metacognition in reading to learn is the awareness

of the learner of his or her own characteristics--such as background

knowledge, degree of interest, skills, and deficiencies--and of how

these affect learning. Again, the reader must be able to take that

awareness and translate it into a change in reading behavior.
Study strategies are important in reading to learn and can be applied

to enhance text processing. Common studying strategies include

underlining, outlining, notetaking, summarizing, and self-questioning.
Good readers

tend to use the most effective strategy that leads to a thorough

processing of the text. The research also supports that readers can be

taught to develop self-awareness and control of learning.
discuss several strategies for improving comprehension. These include

forming a mental image, rereading, adjusting the rate of reading,

searching the text to identify unknown words, and predicting meaning

that lies ahead.
knowing how to remedy comprehension failures. It is not enough to be

aware of one's understanding or failure to understand--a learner must

be able to self-regulate his or her reading process in order to read

for comprehension. The reader needs knowledge about metacognition

strategies.
with regard to the task

is the reader's ability to accurately predict his or her performance

on the task.
Fundamental to any task in reading is the derivation of meaning from

the text. In order for learning to occur, students must be aware that

the purpose of reading is to construct meaning. The reader must learn

how to adapt reading behavior to specific tasks.
Another variable of metacognition in reading to learn pertains to the

task that the reader is required to perform.
Ambiguous words or confusions within the text affect cognitive

processing.
recognition of inadequacies in prose
Teachers need to

instruct students to use text structure to enhance learning.
three

strategies designed to help students read and comprehend informational

texts. These include hierarchical summaries, conceptual maps, and

thematic organizers
By detecting the

organizational patterns or structures of texts, students can observe

how authors arrange ideas and determine which kinds of structures are

used to interrelate ideas
three basic points: (1) text structures influence learning

even if the learner is unaware of their effect; (2) knowledge of the

effect of text structures on learning is dependent on age and ability;

and (3) a reader can optimize learning by becoming aware of text

structures and the resultant effect they have on learning.
text, refers to the textual features of learning

materials which influence comprehension and memory
text
text
four variables: texts, tasks, strategies, and learner

characteristics.
reading to learn
it involves both

the conscious awareness and the conscious control of one's learning
Metacognition

By the time the native child reaches the age of seven Reading_4.2

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Common Questions About Fluency | Scholastic.com Reading_3.9

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Teach the connections between types of word knowledge. EXPLICITLY teach spelling, vocabulary, suffixes, grammar. Teach words, words, words. Teach accuracy, and then give opportunities to move to fluency, BUT don’t push too fast. Use partner reading. Read to them yourselves! Finally, use repeated reading techniques for stories, and have children graph them.
explicitly connecting your decoding, spelling and vocabulary work together? Are you trying to encourage children to read “am” words accurately and THEN ever more rapidly? Game formats are wonderful for steadily moving your students from accuracy to faster and faster speeds.
fluency is a developmental process and that many linguistic areas contribute to it. You can almost guess from my other remarks what these other linguistic areas are: phonology, orthography (knowledge of letter patterns), vocabulary, syntax (knowledge of grammatical functions), and finally an area called morphology, which simply means a knowledge of word roots and parts like affixes. What makes this view so interesting to us is that it means you can be developing fluency from the start and not waiting till you know it’s a problem. Further, we think fluency instruction begins with letters and word levels, not just later developing text.
Until now, most research viewed fluency as an outcome. And for years most people have used something called “repeated reading” techniques as the best way to increase fluency. It is a method where the child is given a passage at his/her level or just above (90-95% accuracy), and reads it repeatedly till their reading becomes smooth, accurate, and faster. This is a great method for the child who already has some skills, but you can tell it is aimed at an outcome view of fluency, not a whole developmental process perspective.
The child who knows that the same words can be used in multiple ways depending on the context is already bringing more knowledge to what they read that will translate into more speed and thus more fluency AND comprehension in reading.
children’s growth of fluency begins with word knowledge
three things: phoneme awareness, automatic decoding skills, and practice you probably already knew before you came to this course. But there are two or three areas that you might not know that can contribute mightily to the development of fluency. First, vocabulary development
three measures to every kindergarten teacher to predict fluency, it would be: 1) a phoneme awareness task; 2) a set of rapid automatized naming tests or naming speed tests (for letters, numbers, colors, objects); and 3) a vocabulary test.
For them, quite literally the areas in the brain that put together visual and verbal processes don’t work together as automatically. The good news is that we can predict who these children are as early as kindergarten,
And finally, a fourth reason why some children don’t become fluent readers is a very subtle one,
Third, there are other children whose decoding skills are accurate but halting, and who simply need a great deal of practice. Some of these children may be second language learners. For these children the best resource for a teacher or parent is to supply your child with every opportunity to practice -