Teaching Comprehension and Vocabulary Development in the early grades Leecy Wise

Phonemic Awareness Phonics Fluency Comprehension Successful Readers Vocabulary

National Reading Panel Report Comprehension Monitoring: Where students learn how to be aware of their understanding of the materials. Cooperative Learning: Where students learn reading strategies together. Use of graphic and semantic organizers: Where readers make graphic representations of the material to assist comprehension. (National Reading Panel Summary 2000, 15)

National Reading Panel Report (National Reading Panel Summary 2000, 15) Question answering: Where readers answer questions posed by the teacher and receive immediate feedback. Question generation: Where readers ask themselves about various aspects of the text. Story structure: Where students are taught to use the structure of the story as a means of helping them recall story content.

Comprehension Review NRP  No one method  7 Recommended Methods

Comprehension Monitoring  Track their thinking.  Notice when they lose focus.  Stop and go back.  Reread to enhance understanding.  Identify what's confusing.  Consciously select the best strategy.

Cooperative Learning  Students work together to learn comprehension strategies. This leads to an increase in the learning of the strategies, promotes intellectual discussion, and increases reading comprehension including on standardized test performance.

Graphic Organizers  Students write or draw meanings and relationships of underlying ideas. Main effect appears to be in the improvement of the readers’ memory for the content that has been read. Improvement is also found in social studies and science content areas.

Analyze Story Structure  Students are taught to use the structure of the story as a means of helping them recall story content in order to answer questions about what they have read  Examine characters, setting, author view, the past and future, compare, present and speak (See Website handout: storystructure.doc)

Question/Answer with Immediate Feedback  Readers answer questions posed by the teacher and receive immediate feedback

Question Generation  Readers ask themselves questions about various aspects of the story;

Summarization  Readers are taught to integrate ideas and generalize from the text information.

7 Methods  Comprehension Monitoring  Cooperative Learning  Graphic Organizers  Questioning  Answering  Story Structure  Summarizing (Develop and present a Mnemonic device)

Vocabulary  Vocabulary is critically important in oral reading instruction. There are two types of vocabulary—oral and print.

Phonemic Awareness Phonics Fluency Comprehension Successful Readers Vocabulary

Vocabulary Development: Computer Resources  The use of computers in vocabulary instruction was found to be more effective than some traditional methods in a few studies. It is clearly emerging as a potentially valuable aid to classroom teachers in the area of vocabulary instruction.

Vocabulary Development: Computers  vast content-area resources  many independent multi-level activities  games, puzzles  handouts and lesson plans  scavenger hunts and webquests  Excel, Word and other applications

 Vocabulary also can be learned incidentally in the context of storybook reading or in listening to others. However, learning words before reading a text is helpful. Vocabulary Development: Context

 Discuss before the passage  Discuss in groups  Extend usage  Repeat usage  Review usage  Substitute words Vocabulary Development: Context

First, vocabulary should be taught both directly and indirectly. Repetition and multiple exposures to vocabulary items are important. Learning in rich contexts, incidental learning, and use of computer technology all enhance the acquisition of vocabulary. Vocabulary Instruction: Summary

Lesson Plans What is included?

 "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin

Next time:  Comprehension: So now you can decode, but do you understand?