1. Scaffolding Reading with Comprehension Outlines
Welcome audience. Set expectations for presentation:
Ideas I have experimented with.
Still evaluating results and techniques.
Presented at CoTESOL 2016, Denver, CO (November 4, 2016) by John Schillo INTO CSU, Colorado State University

2. Inspirational Questions:
How do you actually teach someone to read?
How do you teach someone to recognize main points in a reading?
How do you teach someone to distinguish main actors/actions vs. clauses with supporting or limiting conditions?
How do you get students to take notes they can use to paraphrase, summarize or study for tests?
Briefly review the driving questions behind my experimental technique.

3. Tell students to, “Take notes on your reading.”
Option 1:
Tell students to, “Take notes on your reading.”
How well has that worked in your experience?
Engage audience. Elicit brief anecdotal remarks. Students don’t even do it when you tell them they can use notes for a quiz/exam.

4. Ask students to identify specific content.
Option 2:
Ask students to identify specific content.
Fundamental English sentence:
Someone/something does something.
Who/what does what?
Approach from teaching colleague. Have students focus on the essential grammar of any English sentence: Subject and Verb of an Independent Clause.

5. Specifically:
Ask students to identify and underline the main subject and verb of each sentence in a paragraph.
Doesn’t capture everything, but...
Gives them a starting point
Keeps them from straying into the weeds
Students frequently pick subjects and verbs from relative clauses, time clauses, adjective clauses and noun clauses (that are not acting as subjects) and lose focus on the main actor and action.
The other information may be relevant or important, but if you start from the wrong point then comprehension (and summarizing) often gets muddled.

6. Procedure:
After underlining main subject and verb of each sentence in a paragraph.
List them in 2 separate columns on left side of paper.
3rd column on right will be for relevant & important details.

7. Procedure: Go back to original sentences
Identify objects of main action (if any)
Identify supporting clauses and their relationship to the main subject/verb
Make short notes in 3rd column in RED (reasons, examples, details)

8. Opportunities: Referent clarification for pronouns
Distinguishing noun & adjective clauses
Clarifying relationships
Time
Cause & effect
Contrast
Conditional

9. Opportunities: Note taking strategies: Ditto marks
Common abbreviations
Symbols
Eliminating function words (articles)
Eliminating present tense copula (is, are)
Outlining, indenting, arrows
Making decisions on worthwhile details

10. Outcome: Write a paragraph summary Give a test
Put away original reading
Use only their notes
Have students compare their choices
Give a test
Students can use their notes
Structure questions to distinguish between main subject/verb & supporting details

11. Examples:
Let’s look at some examples (see handout)

12. Confounding factors:
Tedium; hard to sustain over long readings; HOWEVER
Starting point for students who need help comprehending and summarizing key points
Back up strategy for students dealing with sections of complex text

13. Confounding factors:
Supporting information in subordinate clauses can be critical for comprehension
Grammar alone doesn’t tell whole story; background knowledge plays a role in determining importance
I’ve heard/seen this before…

14. Confounding factors: Common lexical bundles that begin sentences
The Latino population in the United States is composed of people whose roots are from Mexico and Central and South America. It is important to understand that even though these peoples have a similar history in that they were colonized mainly by European countries of Latin background, Spain and Portugal, they differ in languages, accents, ethnicities and local cultures. It is also important to recognize that even people coming from the same country may differ in terms of socioeconomic status, education, ethnicity and geographical origin.
Adapted from

15. Cute Closing (optional):
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.