Reading Comprehension Professional Development
Alison Davis
27 April 2018
Alison's Building Comprehension Strategies book breaks down the reading approaches in the Effective Literacy Practice book.
Text structure is what helps you to understand the genre of the writing and comprehend the text. The text structure helps you to gather meaning. As we will be reading many factual texts during inquiry, the students need to understand the text structure to help them comprehend.
Ministry is focussing on rapid cycles of inquiry - trying new things within acceleration to see what works and doesn't work for priority learners.
NAGs - Range of evidence vs range of tools? NAGs say high quality range of evidence.
Formative assessment practices are important but it needs to be owned by the learners.
- It's not about us knowing strategies, but getting the learners to know and use them
- What do they need to know a strategy? - lots of practise, maintenance of this strategy.
- Students need to be able to say it, explain it and teach it back.
High frequency words should be done 3-4 times a day. Not knowing enough of these prevents children from comprehending as they are still spending so much time figuring out these HFW.
- E.g. children put a counter on each HFW on a page.
Shared reading is about giving access to texts higher than their current levels and ideas that they wouldn't have access to otherwise. Support the children to gain ideas and strategies from the text.
Balanced reading programme - Selecting and combining approaches that meet and extend student's learning.
- How boring is it for a child to show up to school and know exactly what their day is going to look like? Vary the day, the learning, the experiences, the motivation, the focus, the ideas, the texts.
Think about how we get inside the children's head and what they think / know.
Ways to explain what a strategy is:
- This is when
- This is like
- Use the right tool for the right problem - use the analogy of a garden or fixing a bike (tools)
- Need to know the name of the strategy, that it exists, what it looks like (rules of that strategy), how to use it, does this problem need more than one strategy (in which order will you use the strategies)?
Paragraph - getting children to understand not only what ideas are within the paragraphs but also how the link to the next paragraph (making connections through the text).
Non continuous texts - words and pictures together or just pictures. Diagrams, graphic organisers, tables. Often clarify what is in the print. Sometimes they introduce new ideas and information in the visuals too.
- E.g. activity could be to have children come up with 3 facts based on a picture. Read and confirm these facts otherwise.
Continuous texts - sentence level, within and across paragraphs, whole text, across a range of texts.
Decoding strategies - syllables, first sound, prefix and suffix. Middles and seniors should be using questions like do you see a base word or root word as opposed to do you see a small word in this word.
The students will transfer knowledge and strategies that they can explain.
Key questions about reading strategies are included in Alison's book.
Shared reading - Listen when I read to find out. Higher levelled texts. Access to skills and ideas they otherwise wouldn't have access to.
Guided reading - Read to find out. Right level - learning about independent reading skills.
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE - chn should be doing a prior knowledge building check before they come to you for guided reading.
- Decode - word knowledge
- Vocab - building
- Fluency - accurately with comprehension. (repeated reading is a big part of building this)
- Comprehension - new content, practice of past strategies
Definitions - kid friendly (created in group)
Prior knowledge - what we already know about something
Making connections - using what we know to help us understand the story
Prior knowledge - what we already know about something
Making connections - using what we know to help us understand the story
Vocab building - Traffic light
green light - I know
orange light - slow down, look around, prepare to stop (they may know a part of the word but not the whole)
red light - stop
Before, during and after grid (like KWL chart)
What did I know about the word before?
What do I know now?
Word sketch
Word - sketch one (initial) and sketch two (after reading)
Word investigation
Chn have to research a word and present back to the group or class
KV grid
K - what do I know about the topic?
V - What vocab do I know about the topic?
Preview of a text
Features of a text - What I discovered? - What we predict we will read. - What I actually did learn? Features - e.g. heading, intro paragraph, diagram
Picture guide
In this picture I can see...
I already know...
A question I have about this...
Equipment and actions
What is this picture showing (what equipment is this)?
What do we use it for (what is the action)?
GUIDED READING
Challenges - things that you notice prior, during and sometimes after reading. Could include vocab, and the layout of the text.
First reading may be around decoding but the second reading is about what we have found out. What did you learn on that page? What vocab helped you learn about that?
Chn are often able to answer our questions but asking their own questions is more difficult.
Retell is critical at junior level.
Visualisation - chn might say what they see in the picture. Ask them what word shows them that. Ideally they will say page numbers, words, sentences, pictures, headings.
Summarising - main idea (what have we learned?)
Read a section of the text. Discussion and conversation. Talk to your partner (focus on one comprehension strategy) and ask them a question.
Celebrate how clever we are with the children every day
- what strategies did we use?
-what have we learned?
SHARED READING
Day one: Predictions - based on the genre. Created predictions based around setting, character and problem for a narrative text.
Day two: Vocabulary focus - how does thinking about the story help me understand the words?
Day 3: Retell - beginning, middle, end.
