Accelerating Expository Comprehension and Composition for Informational Literacy

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Accelerating Expository Comprehension and
Composition for Informational Literacy

• CAROL SUE ENGLERT
• Troy Mariage
• Cynthia Okolo
• Allison Billman
• Carrie Anna Courtad
• Nathan Jones
• Kathi Moxley
• Rebecca Shankland

Literacy Achievement Research Center Michigan
State University Office of Special Education
Programs
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Focus of Presentation

• Lines of Prior Intervention Research
• Organizing Framework
• Lessons Learned
• Current Program and Beginning Research

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Literacy Process
Culture
Plan
Cognitive Writing Tools
SocialAudience
Organize
Executive Functions Self-Regulation
Revise
Discourse
Text structures
Write
Edit
Motivation Beliefs
Singer Bashir
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Pedagogical Principles that Matter (Gersten
Baker, 2005 Wong 2003)

• Instruction that
• Makes visible the writing strategies
• Explicitly teaches the writing process
  strategies (modeling ? guided practice ?
  independent practice)
• Explicitly models the text structure conventions
  of the genre (questions, keywords)
• Engages students in interactive dialogues
  (teacher and student)
• Uses procedural facilitators to bypass memory
  limitations (semantic maps, cuecards,
  think-sheets)

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Why ACCEL?

• Informational literacy for struggling middle
  school readers is one of the most intractable and
  under studied areas

1. Much more expository reading 2. Expectations
for more reading 3. Less control of vocabulary
(concepts) 4. Assessments emphasize thinking 5.
Constructed responses 6. Challenging textbooks
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What Else Do We Know?
The majority of middle school and high school
teachers do not see themselves as reading
teachers even when they teach subjects with
high reading demands! Performance gains in
reading decline or slump at the same time that
content reading demands increase Partial Answer
Development of instructional and literacy
supports (teachers students) that can be
incorporated and adapted across content areas.
Roger Farr, Indiana University
Roger Farr, Indiana University
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What strategies do good readers use?

• Activate prior knowledge predict
• Distinguish main ideas from supporting details
• Summarize
• Use text structure to predict, summarize,
  comprehend, organize compose
• Reflect on the text ask questions
• Monitor reading, clarify repair comprehension
        
• Anticipate difficulties
•   Draw inferences read between the lines
• Use a repertoire variety of learning tools
  (highlight, note, organize, record, transform)

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What strategies do Social Biological Scientists
Use?

• Engage in inquiry
• Collect data and information
• Make predictions
• Ask questions
• Verify predictions
• Participate in a scientific community present
  ideas, receive feedback, publish work

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Project Instructional Goals
LITERACY GOALS
Make visible reading writing strategies Implemen
t Instructional Dialogues - Teacher-mediated
Student-to-Student Teach active literacy and
self-regulatory strategies (metacognition) Model
and employ graphic organizers - explicit teaching
text structure conventions for different
genres Use procedural facilitators - cuecards and
scaffolds to support discourse, process,
strategies tools Use visual representations to
model reading processes and understanding Common
language, vocabulary, strategies and tools across
content areas and grades Offer tools of culture
(Almasi, 2003)
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Theoretical Principles
Situated Activity
Apprenticeship

• Internal and external sides of situated activity
  (thought, action knowing doing linked)
• Coordination of discipline tools, instruments,
  symbols, texts, laboratories
• Acquire practices of literacy and science in
  situated contexts

• Joint-mediated activity (side-by-side)
• Make visible the thoughts of experts in
  think-alouds
• Creating products (representations, artifacts)
  important in apprenticeship
• Transfer of control

Zone of Proximal Development

• Assisted performance - zone of joint action in
  challenging context
• Scaffolding on a contingent basis
• Prompts, questions, feedback
• Additional or withdrawal of supports in a
  developmentally responsive way
• Modeling, coaching, scaffolding, fading

Mediational Tools

• Symbols, discourse, language of process, text,
  text structures, content
• Speech genres text structures
• Artifacts and tools (notes, diagrams, maps)
  offload thought onto the tool
• Toolkit

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Strategy Assessment ACCEL Measures

• 1. Battle of Trenton (Social studies)
• Highlighting Text
• Notetaking
• Retelling/Summarizing
• Answering questions
• Writing an Essay
• 2. Armadillo Report (Science)
• Planning Mapping Information
• Synthesizing Multiple Sources
• Writing a Report

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What have we found so far?

• Copying, abbreviating, and sentence combining of
  the original text.
• Maps without connections or relationships between
  ideas
• Lack of understanding of processing text to get
  meaning in a systematic way
• Lack of understanding of how to synthesize ideas
  from multiple sources
• An incomplete understanding of the why and
  how of strategy usage--Students may not be
  empowered to accomplish goals of informational
  literacy due to a lack of meta-cognitive
  understanding

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How do students highlight important information?
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How do students note key information? Search for
ideas from the beginning of the article

• Missing problems from the article
• Missing motivation of historical characters
• Missing actions and action sequence

• Missing motivation of historical characters
• Missing actions and action sequence

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Do students plan and organize their written
compositions when given multiple sources?
Random sequence of facts Highlighting doesnt
inform notes Representation of meaning
relationships poor
Displays ability to summarize identify
facts Representation of relationship among facts
concepts poor
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Are students able to synthesize information from
multiple sources to inform their writing?
Highlighting does not inform paper. Copies 1st
sentence of each paragraph Recorded ideas appear
randomly organized sequenced No synthesis of
the 3 texts
Strategy - copy and delete minor words. Focuses
on two paragraphs of the 9-paragraph text Adds 1
fact from 2nd text
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Instructional Response?
ACCEL Instructional Response

• Anchor scaffold the process
• Make a system of strategies apparent
• Offer tools to support a learning and inquiry
  process
• Teach reading and writing strategies in a process
  for comprehending and composing informational
  text
• Support teachers and students to engage in a
  complex process with awareness and metacognition

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Literacy Process
Learning Culture
Plan It
Tools
Cognitive Writing Tools
SocialAudience
Report It
Executive Functions Self-Regulation
Note It
Text structures
Discourse
Mark It Highlight It
Motivation Beliefs
Singer Bashir
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Scaffolds Learning Log
Teach Strategies
Pre-Reading Strategies

• Set a purpose for reading
• Look at text clues
• Look at headings - identify topics
• Predict and ask questions
• Activate Prior Knowledge
• Think of text organization

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Name __________________ Class __________________
Plan It Log
Michigan State University/ACCEL Project
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S Structure organize! What are the
Categories Details?
CHEETAH
What is the organization? What are the
categories? What are the details?
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Literacy Strategies in Project ACCEL Read It
During Reading Strategies
Pre-Reading Strategies

• Ask Questions
• Summarize the text
• Clarify unfamiliar vocabulary ideas
• Connect (self, text, world)
• Monitor understanding repair
• Organize
• Predict

• Set a purpose for reading
• Look at text clues
• Look at headings - identify topics
• Predict and ask questions
• Activate Prior Knowledge
• Think of text organization

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Strategy 1
Summarize Summarize the paragraph. Include the
category (main idea) and 2-3 details in your
summary.
Strategy 3

• Clarify
• Meaning Think what makes sense.
• Meaning Use context- Reread the sentence before
  and after for clues
• Word Look for a prefix or suffix
• Word Break the word into smaller parts

Strategy 2
Question 1. Ask questions about the main ideas
2. Ask text structure questions 3. Ask
questions about what doesnt make sense? 4. Ask
questions that make people think (e.g., Why.?
Whats the problem? What if..
Predict Predict what will be discussed next by
the author Think of the Text Structure
Strategy 4
Strategy 5

• Connect
• Connect to self
• Connect to texts (topics)
• Connect to world

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Representation in Multiple Ways
Explanation
Compare/Contrast
Cheetah Big Cat
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Conversation
Conversation

• Key to mobilizing understanding and learning
• Move from Becks awareness to acquaintanceship to
  ownership
• Overall goal Help reading process become more
  transparent and readers more metacognitive
• Move from basic to interpretative
• Students apply 5 strategies
• Collaborative Meaning-
• Making Process

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Writing in a Learning Log

• Writing helps readers become metacognitive about
  what how
• Writing provides explicit rehearsal of reading
  strategies
• Written texts make clear what we know dont
  understand crystallizes knowledge
• Written artifact archives structures
  understanding Bedrock of metacognitive talk
• Symbolic model of the text structure self

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ACCEL Literacy Strategies MAP-It
During Reading Strategies
Pre-Reading Strategies

• Ask Questions
• Summarize the text
• Clarify unfamiliar vocabulary ideas
• Connect (self, text, world)
• Monitor understanding repair
• Organize
• Predict
• Respond

• Set a purpose for reading
• Look at text clues
• Look at headings - identify topics
• Predict and ask questions
• Activate Prior Knowledge
• Think of text organization

Rehearsal Strategies

• Re-presentation and take notes through
• Graphic organizers
• Note cards
• Text Structure Maps
• Outlines
• Tables, Graphs, Collages
• Charts

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Read - What is this about?
Where it lives
What it Looks Like?
Cheetahs live in areas with vast expanses of land
where prey is abundant. In Namibia cheetahs have
been found in a variety of habitats, including
grasslands,savannahs, dense vegetation, and
mountainous terrain. Ninety-five percent live on
commercial farms. Range Once found throughout
Asia and Africa, the species is now only
scattered in Iran and various countries in
sub-Saharan Africa. Home ranges in Namibia for
males can be up to 1500 square km² and for
females, 1500-3000 square km².
The cheetah has a slender, long-legged body with
blunt semi-retractable claws. Its coat is tan
with small, round, black spots, and the fur is
coarse and short. The cheetah has a small head
with high-set eyes. Black "tear marks", which run
from the corner of its eyes down the sides of the
nose to its mouth, keep the sun out of its eyes
and aid in hunting.
Cheetah
Cheetahs have a unique, well-structured social
order. Females live alone except when they are
raising cubs. The first 18 months cubs learn many
lessons about how to hunt wild prey and avoid
other predators such as leopards, lions, hyenas,
and baboons. At 18 months, the mother leaves and
cubs form a sibling group, which will stay
together for another 6 months. At 2 years, the
female siblings leave the group, and the young
males remain together for life. Males live alone
or in coalitions made up of litter brothers. Some
coalitions maintain territories to find females
with which they will mate. Fierce fights between
male coalitions can result in serious injury or
death. In Namibia, cheetahs use play trees (trees
with sloping trunks and large horizontal limbs)
to observe their surroundings and mark the area.
Cheetahs make chirping sounds, and hiss or spit
when angered or threatened. They purr very loudly
when content. Cheetahs do not pose a threat to
human life
Small antelope, young of large antelope, warthog,
hare, and game birds. Cheetahs hunt in the late
morning and early evening. They capture their
prey by stalking until their prey is within 10-30
metres - before chasing. The prey is suffocated
when a cheetah bites the underside of throat.
Chases last about 20 seconds, and rarely longer
then 1 minute. About half of the chases are
successful.
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Map-It
Where it lives?
What it Looks Like? Appearance
Grasslands, savannahs Asia Africa now Iran
africa
Slender Long legged Wide nostrils semi-retractable
claws Small, round, black spots Black tear marks
CHEETAH
Mapping
What it does? Habits Raising Young
What does it eat?
Females live alone Female raises cubs 18
months Sibling Group remains Female cubs leave at
2 years Males live with litter mates Cheetahs
observe from trees Cheetahs hiss, spit, purr No
threat to humans
Small antelope warthog hare, birds
Notetaking
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Note It Strategy

• Topic
• Details
• Learning Logs
• Questions
• Responses
• Retellings

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Highlight It Mark It Strategy

• BK Background Knowledge
• Q?? Question
• CL Clarify
• P Predict
• S Summarize
• C Connect

S
What Types ?
S
Text Structures
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Explicit Informed Strategy Instruction

• Makes visible the reading and notetaking
  strategies by Modeling Thinking aloud (while
  reading or writing)
• Authentic texts
• Process Talk (Explains - what, how, when, why)
• Models language, inner thoughts, strategies,
  actions tools
• Guided Practice (whole class partners small
  groups) Student verbalization rehearsal
• Reduce processing demands bu using procedural
  facilitators (maps, cuecards, thinksheets)
• Teaching micro- and macro-level structures

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Strategies
Encompassing Strategies Tools

• Activating background knowledge
• Previewing predicting strategies
• Setting purpose
• Asking questions
• Summarizing main ideas and details
• Clarifying words and meanings
• Predicting
• Identifying text structure
• Notetaking, highlighting, mapping organizing,
  synthesizing

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ACCEL Literacy Strategies
During Reading Strategies
Pre-Reading Strategies

• Ask Questions
• Summarize the text
• Clarify unfamiliar vocabulary ideas
• Connect (self, text, world)
• Monitor understanding repair
• Organize
• Predict
• Respond

• Set a purpose for reading
• Look at text clues
• Look at headings - identify topics
• Predict and ask questions
• Activate Prior Knowledge
• Think of text organization

Rehearsal Strategies
After Reading Strategies

• Re-presentation and take notes through
• Graphic organizers
• Note cards
• Text Structure Maps
• Outlines
• Tables, Graphs, Collages
• Charts

• Students Represent and Make Public
• Their Understanding Using Multiple
• Form of Representations
• Search for information
• Review prereading questions
• Self-Testing
• Make ideas public

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Literacy Process
Learning Culture
Plan It
Tools
Cognitive Writing Tools
SocialAudience
Report It
Executive Functions Self-Regulation
Note It
Text structures
Discourse
Mark It Highlight It
Motivation Beliefs
Singer Bashir
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• Brainstorming/writing lists
• Writing in focus journal logs
• Re-reading whole group lists
• K-W-L
• Question generation for speakers
• Reading stories
• Web Quest on Internet
• Teacher Read Aloud

• Model highlighting details in text
• Use colored note cards for details
• Partner reading
• Provide fact sheets for recording
• Model summarizing main idea

• Model placing details on
• organization think-sheet
• Model putting details in
• categories
• Frequently revisiting and
• rereading organization map

Phase Two Researching Information
Phase One Activating and Building Background
Knowledge
Phase Three Organizing Information
Embedding Literacy in Inquiry-Based
Learning Cycles
Phase Four Continue Researching
Phase Six Making Public Findings
Phase Five Drafting, Editing, Revising and
Creating

• Rehearsing performance
• Re-reading and reworking
• Self-evaluation of writing
• Peer evaluation
• Performance assessment
• Critique
• Reading others projects
• Presenting to external audiences

• Model highlighting details in text
• Use colored note cards for details
• Partner reading
• Provide fact sheets for recording
• Model summarizing main idea

• Modeling introduction paragraph
• Modeling body paragraphs
• Modeling audience sensitivity
• Assembling parts into whole

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Publication

• Dioramas
• Powerpoint presentations
• Written Reports
• Portfolio learning logs
• Craft or artifacts
• Oral Presentation
• Movie
• Audience and authentic

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• Introduction
• Begin with a topic sentence that catches the
  readers attention use an attention-getter
• Use series of questions, statements, funny story,
  interesting detail
• Name your topic
• Introduce your text structure and purpose
• Overview or prepare readers for the subtopics in
  the paper
• Add a conclusion sentence

W r i t e - I t C u e c a r d

• First Body Paragraph
• Begin with a topic sentence that introduces
  category
• Discuss first category
• Give rich details, examples, or evidence
• Use transition or keywords (First of all, The
  first example, One reason is .
• Add a conclusion sentence that restates the topic
  sentence

B O D Y

• Second Body Paragraph
• Begin with a topic sentence that introduces
  category
• Discuss second category
• Give rich details, examples, or evidence
• Use transition or keywords (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
• Add a conclusion sentence that restates the topic
  sentence

• Next Body Paragraphs
• Begin with a topic sentence that introduces
  category
• Discuss category
• Give rich details, examples, or evidence
• Use transition or keywords (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
• Add a conclusion sentence

• Conclusion Paragraph
• Use transition words to summarize ideas (In
  conclusion. To conclude. In summary)
• Summarize the main ideas and points (As a result,
  As one can see.)
• Conclude with a big idea, theme, or lesson

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Reports
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Results

• Significant improvement in Notetaking content
• Significant improvement in highlighting
  organization
• Significant improvement on comprehension
  retelling (details, chunks)
• Improvement in organization of writing and
  independence from original text

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Conclusion

• Attention must be paid to providing students with
  flexible strategies and tools for processing
  expository text
• Instruction must offer heuristics or a system of
  coordinated strategy use
• Strategies must have meaningful purposes and
  goals
• Students who struggle benefit from scaffolds that
  offer cognitive models, supports and structures
• Procedural facilitators
• Maps organizers
• Strategy or learning logs
• Teaching routines (model guided practice
  independent practice)
• Writing reading connection to enhance
  metacognition
• Time Strategies recursive throughout year
  Learning Logs accompany units in the chapter text
• Whats missing from this session?
• Community-building and social aspects of learning
• Discourse and interactions