The goals and activities for this hour: Understand research base of the need for explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies. Discuss strategies teachers use in classrooms currently. Explore examples of texts from different content areas. Put a face to the problem. Identify a student who struggles. How would that student react to the texts? Discuss vocabulary instruction, understanding text structures, and recognizing and analyzing discourse features.

Why are comprehension strategies important? Langer (1999) study looked for differences between high performing and typical/ low performing schools. The Issue:Schools and Teachers who are high performing Typical or low- performing schools and teachers Enabling strategiesOvert teaching of strategies for planning, organizing, completing, and reflecting on content and activities. Teaching of content or skills without overt attention to strategies for thinking and doing. Modified from Langer, J.A. (1999). Beating the Odds: Teaching middle and high school students to read and write well (Research Rep. No ). Albany, NY: National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA), State University of New York at Albany.

Group Discussion Task 1 Teachers will break into small randomly assigned groups to discuss the vocabulary instruction, text structures instruction, and recognizing and analyzing discourse features instruction they already use in their classrooms. Groups will post responses on master list posted at the front of the room.

Think/ Pair/ Share Task Individually, teachers will explore different types of text from different subjects and will evaluate how their methods of comprehending each text were different. What strategies did the teachers use to understand each text? After some time for reflection, teachers will discuss their thoughts with a partner before returning to group for discussion.

Individual Task Individually, teachers will think of a student who struggles with reading comprehension in their class. How would that student react if faced with the same readings teachers reviewed? Teachers will write describing that student and the student’s needs and how the student might struggle with the texts.

First Focus: Vocabulary Development Explicit vocabulary instruction has a positive effect on reading comprehension (Allen, 1999; Baker & Brown, 1984; Baker, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995; Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000; Curtis & Longo, 2001; Graves, 2000; Kamil, 2003, 2004; National Reading Panel, 2000; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986; Smith, 1997).

Some sources to get you started: Websites: Litsite.org (formerly Litsite Alaska)- This link is to four vocabulary strategies to use in high school. School&viewpost=2&ContentId= School&viewpost=2&ContentId=1180 Vocabulary games and activities may be found at- Don’t just stop at the quiz. This site has lots of interesting articles about word histories and other information. Visual thesaurus- another great site. 14 day free trial. There are lists for subject areas and specific lessons. This site is a pdf of an introduction to a Houghton Mifflin math text. It has some general information about vocabulary in the math classroom. This is a great article with several vocabulary strategies described in the article. A great site from the San Diego County Office of Education. Links to vocabulary strategies. This is a learning module much like the Batelle For Kids modules with which some of us are familiar. Nice interactive program that gives some general idea klurthkuyxSDcvs about vocabulary in the content area and also provides information about strategies. This is a readwritethink lesson on content area vocabulary intended for 6-8 grades, but it could be used with struggling high school learners. This site provides some general information from scholastic about vocabulary instruction. This is a short document that has a couple of vocabulary instruction ideas for math and science. This is another site that lists a few effective strategies. Wow… this article sums it all up really nicely. If you lose your motivation to teach vocabulary in the content area, read this!

Second Focus: Understanding Text Structures “According to Dickson et al. (1995), students from non-mainstream backgrounds often lag behind their peers in reading comprehension and demonstrate difficulty recognizing patterns in text, discerning relevant information, and recalling information. As a result, they require instruction that enables them to independently access text for comprehension.” (knowledgeloom.org)

Understanding Text Structures Resources Teachers will independently research text features on the web. Sources will be provided for support, but teachers will be encouraged to explore and find their own resources. Some suggestions: This is a site that gives the basics of analyzing text structures. If you follow the links all the way through, you will find lesson plans for a variety of subjects and grade levels. (On the pages that show graphic organizers, click on the links). This is a lesson from scholastic about text structures and non-fiction text. Remember that this same idea can be effectively taught in writing! This document includes a nice text features chart with ideas on how to use the chart in lessons. This is a fabulous resource. Lots of high quality information about text structures. This is a slideshow available from slideshare where a very experienced teacher describes how she teaches text structure. Lots of great ideas and resources are provided here.

Third Focus: Recognizing and Analyzing Discourse Features Content area discourses are defined by unique disciplinary-specific patterns for thinking, reading, writing, and speaking (Brown, 1992; Wineburg, 1991, 2001).

An example from An American History Text By 1929, American factories were turning out nearly half of the world’s industrial goods. The rising productivity led to enormous profits. However, this new wealth was not evenly distributed. Okay, so what are the vocabulary challenges?

But, beyond the vocabulary challenges… By 1929, American factories were turning out nearly half of the world’s industrial goods. The rising productivity led to enormous profits. However, this new wealth was not evenly distributed. “Students also need to recognize the way the authors have packaged the information to build from sentence to sentence.”

Fang, Z. & Schleppegrell, M.J. (2008). Reading in secondary content areas: A language based pedagogy. University of Michigan Press. More discussion on this topic can be found in the following article and other works by these authors:

An Investigation of Discourse Features: Teachers will break up into pairs to explore the example text they have been given and to discuss together the language patterns present in the example text. Teachers will also explore the texts from the other content areas in order to determine the differences and similarities between texts of different content areas.

Discourse Analysis Resources: Use these sites as a jumping off point for your exploration of functional language analysis, or discourse analysis of textbooks. History: Appropriate for all disciplines: Science: Math: