The Magnificent Seven Reading Comprehension Strategies Richard Staton Language Arts Instructional Specialist & Tiffany Johnson Title I Reading- Instructional Specialist

Effective Reading Program Five Components of Reading Phonemic awareness Phonics* Fluency* Vocabulary* Comprehension* Are the four components that are starred included in each reading/English lesson in your school?

Strategy vs. Skill vs. Activity What is the difference? Strategy: actions readers do to solve a problem while reading Skill: what readers need to understand to follow the plot Activity

Strategy vs. Skill Skills are used with specific texts. Strategies are used daily & can be applied to all texts.

Strategies All content areas All day Math Language Arts Social Science Tell your students to use these strategies all day in all content areas. Social Studies Science

Magnificent Seven Make connections Ask questions Visualize Infer Determine important information Synthesize Monitor comprehension Why these strategies? Researchers have discovered that proficient readers do these things when the read.

Making connections Pay more attention Need a hook Growth when there is a connection Other reading material, movies, TV, events, other people Good readers make connections when they read to what they know, their experiences or experiences they have heard about Students pay more attention when they can relate to what they are reading Students need something to make them interested in what they are reading Growth occurs when there is a bit of information to hook new material to, more work in involved when there isn’t any prior knowledge Can also make connections to . . .

Making connections We ask our students to make connections to their experience, reading material or to the world or we call this text to the self, text to text or text to world.

Making connections * Students say to themselves That reminds me of . . . It made me think of . . . I read another book where . . . This is different from . . . I remember when . . . *

Ask Questions Reading is thinking Ask questions before, during and after reading Clarify and gain understanding Of author and of themselves Good readers ask questions when they read

Students ask themselves . . . What is the author saying here? I wonder what I would have done in this situation? What is the author’s message? What is the author talking about? What does the author mean here? Does the author explain this clearly? The point is for students to formulate questions when they read. They probably do this at other times in their life. Good to relate to something the students are familiar, a tv show or a movie, in The Prestige, one character I kept asking why is he in the movie? What is his purpose?

Bloom’s Taxonomy * Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge Make sure that your teachers are asking questions for each of the underlined levels as well as the more common recall questions. I used the question cards to help me remember to ask those questions. Teachers can also highlight (not literally) in some way the questions from the teachers edition that ask higher order thinking questions. These can be found on the reference cards provided by William and Mary as well as on the RPS Instructional CD for secondary. *

Visualize Create a picture in your head What are you doing? do you see? do you smell? do you feel? Good readers create a picture in their heads Haven’t you ever been disappointed in a movie you saw after you read the book? Imagine you are on vacation, answer these questions and share with a partner.

Visualize Visualizing not only includes making a mental picture in your head, it also includes using drawings, graphs and tables to visually make sense of the text. *

Drawing inferences What is known + clues from the text = judgment Reading Must find proof Because reading is thinking good readers are always trying to figures things out and come up with their own conclusions

Drawing inferences QAR- Question Answer Relationships What might you infer about this man from the picture? In the Book Questions Right There Search and Locate In My Head Author and Me On My Own

Drawing Inferences Drawing Conclusions vs. * Text MUST + Background Knowledge + Text FIND PROOF *

Determining Important Ideas Weed out unimportant details Including but not limited to Main idea Theme Major events Facts the author wants the reader to know Good readers are able to eliminate minor details and pick out the most important ones

Determining Important Ideas Fiction & Nonfiction Determining Important Ideas The students will ask themselves . . . The big idea is . . . The most important ideas are . . . So far I have learned that . . . This is important because . . . I can use this information to help me . . . This idea is similar to . . . This idea changed my mind because . . .

Determining Important Ideas Nonfiction Determining Important Ideas Text features Titles & headings Bold print Pictures & captions Graphs & charts Chapter objectives & questions Post-it notes * = interesting or important L = learned something new SM = summary R = research Can also create other codes *

Synthesize Information New information + existing knowledge = new ideas Summarizing and predicting Employers want this Good readers are making predictions, coming up with what if When asked what traits employers wanted in employees, they stated that they wanted employees who could come up with new ideas The person who first did a slam dunk combined the old concept of scoring a point in a new and fancy way The person who created an ipod, took the concept of a walkman or portable CD player and added new technology

Synthesize Information Students will ask themselves Do I compare and contrast what I’m reading with what I already know? Do I think of new ways to use this information? Do the connections I make across text help me to create new generalizations or new perspectives? *

Monitor Comprehension That doesn’t make sense. Student fix up process I am confused by or because . . . I will try . . . Good readers realize when they don’t understand and they stop to figure out what they don’t understand

Fix-it List Make connections Make predictions Stop and think Ask and answer questions Reflect in writing

Fix-it List Use text clues Retell Reread Look for text patterns Adjust reading speed

model the tell the strategy strategy guided practice Instructional flowchart model the strategy tell the strategy guided practice independent practice Flowchart for explicitly teaching students what to do Students write down how they applied the strategy

AUTOMATICITY conscious unconscious Students should . . . Students should use reading strategies unconsciously. If they don’t we have to make them consciously aware of the strategies and give them enough practice so that they use the strategies unconsciously. We want these strategies to be automatic.

Instructional Specialists Richard Staton Language Arts Instructional Specialist 780-7776 rstaton@richmond. k12.va.us Tiffany Johnson Title I Reading Instructional Specialist 780-7797 tjohnson5@richmond.k12.va.us

The Magnificent Seven Reading Comprehension Strategies Richard Staton Language Arts Instructional Specialist & Tiffany Johnson Title I Reading- Instructional Specialist