READING IN ALL CONTENT AREAS—K. Fisher-Bishop

In order for our students to show drastic improvement in their reading levels, students need to spend more time reading daily in all classes. The English teachers teach primarily fiction and literature, but our students also need practice and support with reading non-fiction texts.

As you plan for instruction, keep in mind how you could incorporate more reading into your lessons. Students could read sections or paragraphs from textbooks, newspapers, magazine articles, poems, or novels. It doesn’t need to be an ENTIRE chapter or article, but even an excerpt could help students increase their time spent reading. Our goal should be to get kids reading more frequently all day, not just during Literature class. You are not reading teachers, but reading should be a tool in your classroom to enrich students’ learning.

In this packet, I have put together some of the basics of literacy instruction in all content areas. When students read in your class, you need to provide them support before, during, and after reading. Included in this packet are many specific and practical ideas for what this could look like in your classes.

What is reading??

Reading comprehension is a process that involves the orchestrations of the reader’s prior experience and knowledge about the world and about language. It involves such interrelated strategies as predicting, questioning, summarizing, determining meanings of vocabulary in context, monitoring one’s own comprehension, and reflecting. The process also involves such affective factors as motivation, ownership, purpose, and self-esteem. It takes place in and is governed by a specific context, and it is dependent on social interaction. It is the integration of all these processes that accounts for comprehension. They are not isolable, measurable subfactors. They are wholistic processes for constructing meaning. (Bartoli and Botel 1988)

What this means…Many complex factors come into play when one reads difficult text. If students are to have any chance of becoming better readers, teachers must do more than simply assign questions at the end of each chapter or pull worksheets from a cabinet. There is a big difference between assigning students reading and teaching them how to read deeply. Even though you aren’t a reading teacher, you have an obligation to teach reading.

Nonnegotiable Expectations of Daily Practice to Improve Our Students’ Reading Levels in the Building:

  • Teachers create print and literacy rich classrooms
  • Teachers read grade-level texts to andwith students K-12, both fiction and nonfiction
  • Teachers teach, model, and practice strategies of expert readers before, during, and after reading.
  • Students should have accountable, independent reading for a minimum of 20 minutes per day.

Five Reading Elements

Element / Definition / example
Phonemic Awareness / The ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words. It is part of phonological awareness / A child can speak, repeat, and use different words and sounds. He or she learns patterns in speech and repeat those, although sometimes grammatically incorrect, like think, thunk.
Phonics / Understanding the relationship between the letters and the spoken sounds / A child understands that letters and combinations of letters make specific sounds
Fluency / Orally reading with appropriate rate, expression, and phrasing / A child picks up a book and reads it as if in a conversation, with automaticity.
Vocabulary / Words for effective communication when listening, speaking, reading and writing / A child knows the words in a passage and the words’ meanings without having to struggle
Comprehension / Understanding the meaning of print / A child is a fluent reader, knows the vocabulary, and can put in his or her own words what the passage is about.

Model for Teaching Challenging Texts (from Kelly Gallagher’s Deeper Reading—which you can find in MSB’s library)

Before reading support:

  • K-W-L-R charts
  • Anticipation guides
  • Vocabulary preview
  • Prediction activities
  • Read a thematically-related poem/story, listen to a thematically-related song, or watch a clip from a related film, video, or DVD.
  • Role play some of the issues to be found in the reading
  • Share a current event that touches on the same central idea
  • Bring in an authentic artifact to class
  • Line up guest speakers who have related experience
  • Focus question (to revisit yesterday’s reading or to prepare students for the big idea in passages they are about to read.)

During reading support: (Be sure students have a reading focus and a purpose for reading.)

  • The Word Game: Write one word on the board & students must explain the significance of that word to the chapter they read that day.
  • One Question & One comment: Students create them, based on the reading. After the reading, students will share with the class and respond to one another.
  • Connections: Students must create connections to the text they read: text to text, text to self, or text to world. Provide students a graphic organizer.
  • Turn Headings or Titles into Questions prior to reading: As they read, students will write the answers to the questions they created.
  • Focus Groups: Place students into groups and provide each group with a specific focus as they read.
  • Graphic Organizers to organize information from the text and to take notes
  • Give students “fix-it strategies” for when their comprehension falters.
  • Color-Coding: Give each student two highlighters, one yellow and one pink. Students should highlight every word: yellow for phrases, sentences, and words they understand and pink for everything they do not understand. You could also extend this activity for another task or purpose the students have for their reading:similarities/differences, agree/disagree, direct/indirect characterization…
  • Trouble Slips: Cut scrap paper into bookmark-size strips. As they read, have them make notes on their bookmarks, flagging those words and passages that are giving them the hardest time.
  • Sentence Starters: Provide sentence starters for students to complete, while they read. (“I noticed…”, “I wonder…”, “I think…”, “I’m surprised that…”, “If I were…”, “The central issue is…”, “I’m not sure…”, “If ______, then….”)
  • Vocabulary: Students use context clues to decipher word meaning while they read.
  • Say/Mean Chart: A T-chart with two columns. On the left, students are asked to write what the passage says (literal comprehension.) On the right, students record what they think the passage means (inferential comprehension.)
  • Multi-layered Time Lines: Students develop a time-line of events of what happened in a text. Then they go back and add layers with questions and predictions. They could add “why” under the “what.”
  • Paragraph Plug-Ins:Provide students with a paragraph in your own words, rewording the text with blanks in the paragraph. The questions should require students to consider both surface and deeper reading. It will help students by providing a partial outline to direct them through the text and will prompt students to reread and think at different levels. “In this chapter, we are introduced to ______. We find out that ______because ______. This process can be described as ______.....”
  • Reflection log: make predictions, make connections, summarize, make judgments, challenge the author…. Give students clear expectations of what their focus or task should be while they read. After reading, students will exchange reading logs and respond in writing to one another about the text.
  • Double entry journal: on the left are exact words from the text, and on the right students put their reactions and questions in response to the quote they chose.

After reading support:

  • Group work, wrap-up, or extension activities
  • Mystery envelopes: Hand each group a “mystery envelope.” Inside is an index card with a question for the group to answer. Each group shares their answers with all students taking notes as a group shares.
  • Group “exams”—multiple choice questions, a jeopardy-style review game, an essay question
  • Open minds: Students draw metaphorical representations to illustrate what is going on in the text or their feelings/thoughts/opinions about the text.
  • Conversation Log Exchanges
  • Connect the text to what they know and help students understand why it matters to them.
  • Activities to elicit meaningful student discussions about the text
  • The most valuable idea: After reading, ask students “What is the most valuable idea that can be taken from this text?” Have students write it in a complete sentence. Have students find evidence from the text to support their answer and then think of examples in the real world to illustrate the idea.
  • Reflection questions for deeper reading
  • Create a chart, graph, or visual to present the information from the text
  • Formative Assessment to see if students “got it.”
  • Identify the Similarities and Differences between two concepts or topics.

IF THIS HAPPENS WHILE YOU ARE READING :

  • The inner voice inside the reader’s head stops its conversation with the text, and the reader only hears his voice pronouncing the words.
  • The camera inside the reader’s head shuts off, and the reader can no longer visualize what is happening as she reads.
  • The reader’s mind begins to wander, and he catches himself thinking about something far removed from the text.
  • The reader cannot remember or retell what she has read.
  • The reader is not getting his clarifying questions answered.
  • Characters are reappearing in the text and the reader doesn’t recall who they are

THEN STOP & TRY THESE FIX-UP STRATEGIES:

  • Make a connection between the text and:

Your life.

Your knowledge of the world.

Another text.

  • Make a prediction,
  • Stop and think about what you have already read.
  • Ask yourself a question and try to answer it.
  • Reflect in writing on what you have read.
  • Visualize.
  • Use print conventions.
  • Retell what you’ve read.
  • Reread.
  • Notice the patterns in text structure (how is it organized?)
  • Adjust your reading rate; slow down or speed up.

TO FIGURE OUT THE MEANING OF AN UNKNOWN WORD:

  • Look at the structure of the word. Is there a familiar prefix, root, or suffix?
  • Use the glossary or a dictionary if there is one.
  • Read the words around the unknown word. Can another word be substituted? Take a guess. What word would make sense there?
  • Write the word down on a sticky note. The next day in class, ask the teacher.

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From Cris Tovani’s I Read It, But I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers

6 skills students need to be successful readers:

  1. know their purpose of reading
  2. recognize when they are confused
  3. learn ways to repair confusion
  4. make connections between what they read and what they already know
  5. ask questions before, during, and after reading
  6. make inferences

Some strategies to help students learn these skills:

  1. thinking aloud
  2. select a short piece of text & make copies for students to follow along
  3. foresee difficulty: consider what about the text may cause students problems
  4. read the text out loud and stop often to share your thinking
  5. point out the words in the text that trigger your thinking
  6. marking the text
  • assign codes to the types of thinking in which you would like students to engage. Then as they read, they are to mark the codes next to the passages in the text that trigger these kinds of thinking and explain the connection.
  • Model the coding process for your students by thinking it through out loud. Mark the codes next to passages on a projected transparency and verbalize the mental process.
  • Give students accessible pieces to mark on their own—something within reach. If it’s too hard, then students won’t be able to practice.
  • If students can’t write in their books, they can use sticky notes.
  • Use highlighters when they don’t understand something and then write the fix-up strategy they used to clear up confusion.
  1. double entry diaries
  • students divide a piece of notebook paper in half, lengthwise
  • in the left-hand column, students copy sentences directly from the text or summarize
  • in the right-hand column, students write down their inferential and critical thinking about the word, sentences, or summary they wrote on the left of the page.

(Thinking options: “This reminds me of….” ”I wonder….” ”I infer….” ”This is important because….” ”I am confused because…” ”I will help myself by….” ”The picture in my head looks like….” ”I think this means..,, ”)

  1. comprehension constructors
  • requires students to use two or more thinking strategies
  • introduced after students know how to mark text and use a double-entry diary
  • worksheet to guide students through difficult text, using a particular comprehension strategy
  • graded on both effort and completeness

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From Cris Tovani’s I Read It, But I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers