Education Teaching comprehension: collaborative, interactive approaches to support students’ construction of meaning Janet Scull

 Reading and comprehension  Comprehension skills and strategies  Collaborative interactive processes to teaching  Guided reading Session overview

Reading is defined by PISA as: “understanding, using and reflecting on written texts, in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society” (ACER Improved Learning, 2004, p2.)

Clay Meaning - the “given” in all reading – the source of anticipation, the guide to being on track and the outcome and reward of the effort (Clay, 2001).

Comprehension skills and strategies  Literal reading  Connecting ideas  Summarising  Inferential reading  Critical reading  Evaluative reading (References Fountas & Pinnell, 2001; Harvey & Goudvis, 2000; Duke & Pearson, 2002)

Progression of Reading Development

Broad based comprehension skills at all levels  Relative to text complexity.  “Higher order skills” at early reading levels.

Readers are made not born Learning literary strategies is not an automatic result of being immersed in books and children need a passionate, widely read, tolerant ‘enabling adult’:  to excite them about the world of books and its private pleasures.  to share their pleasure at joining the company of readers.  to guide them and model strategies that good readers use. (Chambers, 1993)

Meek  Young readers need to be initiated into the hermeneutics of reading, that reading is negotiation.  That texts are polysemic, and the variations in meanings are negotiable.  That the real meaning is behind the words.

“I cannot assume that children will construct the sources of knowledge about the arbitrary written code entirely alone but that co-construction occurs in interaction with more knowledgeable others” (Clay 2001, p.102). Opportunities “to explore and create and depth of meaning not always available to the individual thinker” (Raban 1999, p.105). Collaborative contexts

Talk about text: Where literacy is learned and taught For knowledge, a state of understanding to be achieved … requires the individual to engage with the relevant texts in a critical and creative manner in an attempt to bring about a correspondence between the meaning represented in the text and the meaning represented in the mind. It is through collaborative talk about text of varying kinds in the contexts of meaningful joint activity, undertaken with the assistance of a more skilled co-participant, that this learning can most effectively occur. (Wells, 1991)

Collaborative, interactive approaches  Guided reading  Reciprocal teaching  Literature circles  Questioning the author

In any literacy program, guided reading has a central role in leading students towards independence in reading. The focused group setting enables the teacher to provide strategic instruction in decoding, making meaning, and thinking critically. The teacher works with a small group of students who have similar instructional needs. Each student has a copy of the text. It should contain some challenges, which should be at a level that the students can manage as they individually read the text in the supportive situation. Guided reading

“Round Robin” reading, where each student takes a turn at reading aloud, is never appropriate in guided reading. It prevents each student from processing the text and constructing meaning independently, distracts and bores other children, and obscures meaning. Round Robin Reading

A guided reading lesson is where students talk, think, and read their way through the text. A framework for teaching

 Emergent readers (guided reading.mp4  Early readers (CSC402_2A)  Fluent readers (CSC402_12A)  Talk  Think  Read Provides a framework to teach comprehension

 Determining the focus  Selecting the text  Introducing the text  Reading the text - chunking the text - monitoring the students’ reading  Discussing the text Planning for teaching

Collaborative approaches to comprehension teaching In the short term, the instruction allows students to jointly construct interpretations of a text, supported by others as they apply reading strategies. The long-term goal is internalisation of the processes and students’ adaptive, deliberate use of strategic processing whenever they encounter a demanding text.

From acts to awareness Through activity students are enabled to become aware of the how and why of specific actions, moving from specific acts to awareness and then to talking about awareness (Clay, 1998:43).