1. Teaching Comprehension with Narrative/Hybrid Texts
EDC 423

2. Objectives: You will be able to:
Reflect on your homework assignments
Determine when inferences need to be made and identify the two specific pieces needed to make an inference
Describe a technique for supporting students’ inferences about main characters in a story
Use the QAR model to identify categories of questions, respond to questions, and generate your own questions from narrative text
Describe one technique to help students differentiate between fiction, non-fiction and fantasy

3. What did you think? The Video: Explicit Teaching of QAR
The Read, Write, Think website
Questions you have?

4. Inferring Character Traits
ANNIE
Words
Actions
Thoughts
JACK

5. Anchor Chart for Inferencing

6. Question-Answer Relationships (QAR)
IN THE BOOK
Right There: LITERAL
Think and Search: INFERENTIAL (read between the lines and think how info fit together)
Author and You: INFERENTIAL (think about author clues and formulate own opinion)
On My Own: EVALUATIVE (what do you think?)
IN MY HEAD

7. Question-Answer Relationships (QAR)
Albert was afraid that Susan would beat him in the tennis match. The night before the match, Albert broke both of Susan’s racquets.
RIGHT THERE: When did Albert break both of Susan’s racquets?
THINK & SEARCH: Why did Albert break both of Susan’s racquets?
AUTHOR & YOU: What does the author seem to imply about Albert in this passage?
ON YOUR OWN: Why was Albert afraid that Susan would beat him?

8. Making Inferences
Albert was afraid that Susan would beat him in the tennis match. The night before the match, Albert broke both of Susan’s racquets.
AUTHOR & YOU: What does the author seem to imply about Albert in this passage?
Inference that needs to be made
TEXT information (clues) needed to make the inference
BACKGROUND information needed
Albert doesn’t like to lose
Albert was afraid…
Albert broke both racquets
People who don’t like to lose are competitive; in the past, I’ve noticed this can make them do mean things
Let’s take a closer look with The Magic Treehouse text

9. Designing Questions That Require Inferential Thinking
Review the text to consider key inferences that readers should be making to comprehend the important ideas in the story – where are the “in-between the lines” logic connections needed?
Design questions that engage students in activating their prior knowledge and then bring students back to the text for the text-based clues needed to make a logical inference (rather than a good guess based on prior knowledge alone)
PK & TEXT CLUES => INFERENCE
Text-based evidence to back up reasoning =
Common Core Standards

10. Designing Questions for QAR
Work with a partner to generate one question for each category
Right There
Think and Search
Author and You
On My Own
How are Question-Answer Relationships useful for students?
How are Question-Answer Relationships useful for teachers?

11. What’s the difference? Fiction Non-Fiction Fantasy
What’s a good a definition of each – for elementary aged children?

12. Non-Fiction, Fiction, and Fantasy… in 4th grade language
Non-Fiction: (TRUE) a story based on real things that really happened
Fiction: (PRETEND) a story that is pretend
Realistic Fiction: a story based on things that could happen in real life, but didn’t
Fantasy: a story based on things that could never happen in real life (magic, time travel)

13. Objectives: Can you…
Determine when inferences need to be made and identify the two specific pieces needed to make an inference
Describe a technique for supporting students’ inferences about main characters in a story
Use the QAR model to identify categories of questions, respond to questions, and generate your own questions from narrative text
Describe a technique to help students differentiate between fiction, non-fiction and fantasy

14. Homework
Finish the QAR worksheet if not completed using your Magic Treehouse text (return next Tuesday)
Student Strategy Interview and Reflection due next Tuesday
Read Ch. 5 (p ) – Review of narrative and expository text structures and the challenges of reading web-based texts
OPTIONAL: Coiro (2005) Making sense of online text(on the wikispace)
Graduate Course: Digital Literacy and Learning