IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH STRATEGY INSTRUCTION

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IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSIONTHROUGH STRATEGY
INSTRUCTION

• Dr. Melinda Rice

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Report of the National Reading Panel

• Balanced Reading Instruction
• Phonemic Awareness
• Phonics
• Fluency
• Vocabulary
• Text Comprehension

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GUIDING QUESTIONS

• What does it mean to comprehend a text?
• Why invest time in comprehension instruction?
• Which students need particular help with
  vocabulary acquisition and comprehension?
• What characterizes effective comprehension
  strategy instruction?
• What are some classroom factors that affect
  comprehension instruction?
• What are some approaches to comprehension
  strategy instruction?

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What is comprehension?

• Comprehension is probably best regarded as a
  process (rather than a particular outcome or
  product) through which a reader interacts with a
  text to construct meaning.
• This view emphasizes the deliberate, strategic,
  problem-solving efforts of the reader as he or
  she engages with a text.
• This meaning-making process is the essence of
  reading (Durkin, 1993).
• Successful readers of all ages are highly
  strategic readers.

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• National Assessment of Educational Progress
• The new scores, based on tests given in 2005,
  show that only about 35 percent of 12th graders
  are proficient in reading. Simply put, this means
  that a majority of the countrys 12th graders
  have trouble understanding what they read fully
  enough to make inferences, draw conclusions and
  see connections between what they read and their
  own experiences.
• New York Times editorial, Feb. 27, 2007

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Preschool family practices influence childrens
vocabulary (Hart Risley, 2000)
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VOCABULARY MATTERS!

• Vocabulary knowledge is significantly related to
  reading comprehension, decoding, spelling, and
  school achievement in general.
• Children come to school with vastly different
  funds of knowledge about words from school entry
  on, fostering word learning should be a
  high-priority goal to help some children catch
  up.
• Helping children learn about words helps build
  linguistic awareness, inferential reasoning
  ability, and comprehension skills.

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• The National Reading Panel (2000) reviewed
  hundreds of studies and found solid support for
• Direct and indirect vocabulary instruction
• Monitoring comprehension
• Summarizing
• Generating and answering questions
• Explicit teaching of story structure
• Graphic organizers
• Cooperative learning
• Integrating multiple strategies

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What about students with LD?

• Based on several large-scale literature reviews
  and meta-analyses, we know
• (1) that there is strong research support for
  comprehension strategy instruction, especially
  self-monitoring and self-questioning
• (2) that reading comprehension instruction is one
  of the most effective techniques for students
  with LD

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Which students need particular help with
comprehension?

• Students with language-learning disabilities
• Students with reading disabilities
• English language learners
• Students who begin school with limited vocabulary
  and literacy experiences, relative to their peers
• (Even with good instruction, catch-up is
  difficult)

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A simple comparison of two types of reading
difficulties/disabilities

• Problems with word reading only
• Listening comprehension is not affected
• May be good at learning words from spoken
  language and comprehending oral input
• Word reading is significantly poor
• Automaticity and fluency are central problems,
  leaving few cognitive resources to devote to
  reading comprehension

• Problems with comprehension only or
  comprehension and word reading
• Listening comprehension is below average
• Word reading may be significantly poor
• Automaticity and fluency may be affected
• Limited vocabulary and grammatical knowledge
• Memory may be a significant issue

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Difficulties Affecting Vocabulary Acquisition and
Comprehension

• Deficits in metacognition (monitoring
  comprehension, selecting applying strategies)
• Limited motivation
• Passivity may be an effect, not a cause
• Reasoning (particularly the ability to make
  inferences)
• Lack of awareness of sentence/text structures
• Deficits in general knowledge vocabulary that
  result from years of struggles with reading and
  limited reading experience Matthew effects are
  likely to pertain here.)

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General Characteristics of Effective Strategy
Instruction

• EXPLICIT (Duffy, 2002 Palinscar Brown, 1984)
• SCAFFOLDED (Palinscar Brown, 1984 Duke
  Pearson, 2002)
• SUSTAINED (Klingner et al., 2004 Pressley et
  al., 1997)
• DIFFERENTIATED (Mosenthal, 1984 Spiro, 2001)

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EXPLICIT

• The teacher makes covert thought processes
  obvious to the student through modeling,
  demonstrations, and guidance.
• Students are encouraged to talk openly about
  their strategy use and problem-solving processes.
• There is emphasis on metacognition (thinking
  about ones own thinking).

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SCAFFOLDED

• The teacher provides temporary support, or
  scaffolding, to help the student move toward
• Independent application of strategies
• Maintenance of strategy use over time
• Generalization to related reading situations
• A systematic procedure for introducing and
  practicing strategies yields the best results

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SUSTAINED

• Effective strategy instruction cannot be regarded
  as a quick fix!
• Rather, it needs to be an integral part of
  reading instruction on an on-going basis.
• Ideally, a problem-solving approach to reading
  should be emphasized throughout the school day
  and across disciplines.

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DIFFERENTIATED

• Strategy instruction should be tailored to the
  needs of individual learners. (Vary rate at which
  new strategies are introduced, degree of
  explicitness, difficulty of reading material,
  etc.)
• Students should be exposed to a variety of
  reading experiences to foster their ability to
  use strategic approaches flexibly.

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Interplay of aspects of the classroom context in
reading and learning activities
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Classroom Factors Affecting Reading Instruction

• Time limitations
• Very diverse ability levels
• Pressure to prepare students for tests
• Textbooks that are too difficult or poorly
  written
• Expectations that teachers will use a particular
  program adopted by the school or district

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Excerpt from 6th grade SS text

• Today, most Middle Eastern countries are
  republics. In republics, citizens are supposed to
  govern themselves. Yet many republics in the
  Middle East, as elsewhere, limit citizen
  participation. Military dictators rule some
  Middle Eastern republics. Iraqs Saddam Hussein
  and Syrias Hafez el Assad control all political
  activity. Saddam has been particularly effective
  in silencing those who oppose him.
• Jordan is a constitutional monarchy. Its king
  shares some power with an elected legislature.
  Only Israel is a democracy. It has many political
  parties and holds regular elections.

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• National Reading Panel (2000) reviewed hundreds
  of studies and found solid support for
• Direct and indirect vocabulary instruction
• Monitoring comprehension
• Summarizing
• Generating and answering questions
• Explicit teaching of story structure
• Graphic organizers
• Cooperative learning
• Integrating multiple strategies

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• Children learn about 3,000 words a year but only
  about 300 from organized instruction (Beck
  McKeown, 1999)
• Because the bulk of childrens vocabulary growth
  occurs incidentally. . . the single most
  important goal of vocabulary instruction should
  be to increase the amount of incidental word
  learning by students. (Nagy Herman, 1987)
• For every new word a child learns, there are 1-3
  related words that should be understandable to
  him/her, depending on ability to use content and
  morphology to infer meanings (Nagy Anderson,
  1984).

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Developmental changes in types of words known in
1st, 3rd, and 5th gr. (Anglin, 1993)
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Teaching Options

• Relying on incidental word learning alone
• Teacher-supported word learning in everyday
  activities
• Talking about words encountered in books word
  games modeling curiosity about words discussing
  events experiences collaborative activities.
• Teaching word-learning strategies
• Inferring meanings from context
• Using knowledge of prefixes, suffixes roots
• Emphasizing intentional word learning
• Studying selected words from texts or vocabulary
  lists
• Memorizing content-area terms

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Before Reading

• Spark students interest and curiosity.
• Focus attention on the purpose for reading.
• Help students think about what they already know
  about a topic and provide a framework for
  organizing this information.
• Expose students to key concepts and vocabulary
  that are vital to comprehending the text.

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IDEAS

• Collaborative Strategic Reading (Klingner
  Vaughn, 1999) Before reading, students are asked
  to preview the text, make note of what they
  already know, and predict what they might find
  out from reading.
• Possible Sentences (Stahl Kapinus, 1991)
  Teacher provides brief definition, students
  construct possible sentences with words. After
  reading, decide whether sentences are true or
  not.

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Learning Log
Adapted from Klingner et al.
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During Reading

• Emphasize strategic reading behavior (e.g.,
  self-questioning, self-monitoring, identifying
  words/phrases that pose difficulty and trying to
  determine their meaning summarizing,
  note-taking, etc.)
• Teach ways of representing text structure and key
  ideas graphically.
• Emphasize big ideas, key concepts, and
  relationships among concepts.
• Train students to apply reading strategies in
  small, interactive groups (or pairs).

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IDEAS

• Collaborative Strategic Reading
• Identify clicks vs. clunks apply fix up
  strategies to try to figure out clunks
• State the gist of each section (1-2 paragraphs)
  in 10 words or fewer (Also a feature of PALS)
• Elaborative Interrogation (Pressley et al., 1992)
• Formulate and try to answer why questions about
  information in text
• Identifying sentence/text structure (recognizing
  signal words, etc.) Making Connections
  (Dewsbury Kovales, 2006)
• Visual Imagery

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Roles in the Collaborative Group(Collaborative
Strategic Reading and other systems)

• Leader Helps the group implement the assignment
  by focusing on the four strategies and ensuring
  that each member has opportunities to
  participate.
• Clunk Expert Reminds the students of the steps
  to follow for figuring out a word.
• Gist Expert Reminds the students of the steps to
  follow to figure out the main idea.
• Announcer Calls on members to read or share an
  idea and represents the group when the teacher
  calls the groups back for reporting to the class
  as a whole.
• Vocabulary Expert selects words to teach,
  identifies meanings, asks students to derive
  meaning from context, confirms or gives more
  precise meaning (Fisher et al., 1991)

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Learning Log
Adapted from Klingner et al.
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After Reading

• Review newly acquired knowledge, concepts, and
  vocabulary.
• Help students extend what they have learned to
  their personal world.
• Help students draw conclusions, think critically
  about what they have read, and compare one text
  to another.
• Help students apply what they have learned in
  meaningful ways.

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Learning Log
Adapted from Klingner et al.
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Question Stems(Collaborative Strategic Reading)

• What do you think would happen if _____?
• Why do you think _____?
• How are ______and _____ alike?
• How are ______ and _____ different?
• What do you think caused _____to happen?
• What other solution can you think of for the
  problem?
• How do you think _____ could have been prevented?
  
• How would you interpret _____?
• What could have made a difference in the ending?
• What are the strengths (or weaknesses) of ______?

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Question GameAdapted from Collaborative
Strategic Reading

• 10.00 questions are ones where the answer is
  right in the text and can be provided in one or
  two words.
• 20.00 questions are ones where the answer is
  right in the text but requires more than a couple
  of words to give.
• 30.00 questions are ones where the answer is in
  the text but you have to have read the text and
  to compose the answer yourself based on what
  you've read.
• 40.00 questions are ones where the individual
  has to use his or her own previous experiences
  and integrate them with what they have learned
  from the text.
• 50.00 questions are ones that connect the
  present text to other texts the students have
  read.

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Semantic Feature Analysis (adapted from Nagy,
1988)
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Concept Hierarchy
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Democracy IS A Form of Government
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Conclusions

• It is becoming increasingly clear that children
  in classrooms in which strategy instruction is a
  sustained, on-going aspect of reading instruction
  outperform those who experience more traditional
  approaches on measures of reading comprehension.
• Strategy instruction provides students with
  their cultures best secrets about how to obtain
  academic success (Harris Pressley, 1991).