1. Igniting Understanding through Reading Comprehension Strategies Instructions
DO NOW:
Please take a sheet and complete the first two columns of the K-W-L chart
If you would like this PowerPoint now, please me and I will forward it to you before we begin.

2. POP QUIZ Skimming Making Connections Scanning
Igniting Understanding through Reading Comprehension Strategies Instructions
POP QUIZ
Skimming
Scanning
Asking Questions
Clarifying Vocabulary
Visualising
Making Inferences/ Inferring
Making Connections
Determining Important Ideas
Synthesising
Repairing Comprehension
What is reading comprehension?

3. MOVING FROM DECODING TO COMPREHENDING
Alverro
But proficient reading comprehension is a “complex process involving knowledge, experience, thinking, and teaching”
(Durkin, 1994, cited in Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 14)
Simple View of Reading
Reading Comprehension =
Decoding +
Language Comprehension (aural)
When a baby giraffe is born it is already six feet tall.
What are reading disabilities?

4. SPECIFIC COMPREHENSION
Types of Reading Disability
DYSLEXIA
PROFICIENT READER
MIXED RD
SPECIFIC COMPREHENSION
DEFICIT
How do reading disabilities develop?

5. Roads to reading disability (Spear-Swerling & Sternberg, 1996)
Spear-Swerling, L., & Sternberg, R. L. (1996). Roads to reading disability. In Off track: When poor readers become "learning disabled" (pp ). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

6. Reading is not just ACTIVE but INTERACTIVE
A book “…is a printed circuit for your own life to flow through”.
“You’re imagining the words, the sounds of the words, and you are thinking of the various characters in terms of people you’ve known – not in terms of the writer’s experience, but your own”.
(E. L. Doctorow, in Plimpton, 1998, cited in Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 13)
Reading is “an act of composition”
“stimulate their own thinking”
“Readers construct and maintain understanding by merging their thinking with the text.
“ongoing inner conversation with the author… a dialogue of sorts”
(Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p.21)
Am I not already teaching reading comprehension?

7. AIMS of teaching reading comprehension strategies
“Comprehension strategies are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Teaching strategies for strategies sake is simply not the point.”
(Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 14, emphasis added)c
Common problem with RC “instruction” in schools Assessing vs. Teaching
To get readers to:
think when they read
develop an awareness of their thinking
use actively the knowledge they glean
What are reading comprehension strategies?

8. Reading Comprehension Strategies
A repertoire of strategies that “active, thoughtful readers use when constructing meaning from text” (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p. 17).
Pearson, Dole, Duffy & Roehler (1992):
Searching for Connections (e.g. using schema - Dr Moira Sweetnam Evans)
Asking Questions
Drawing Inferences
Determining Important Ideas
Synthesising
Monitoring & Repairing Comprehension
Presley (1976) & Keene & Zimmerman (1997) added:
Sensory imaging/ Visualising
Other important skills:
Skimming
Scanning
Clarifying Vocabulary
How should I teach RCS?

9. Gradual Release of Responsibility
Introduce the strategies explicitly
Model their use
Guide students to use the strategies
Allow students to use them on their own and provide opportunities to practice! (repeated reading)
BEST PRACTICE
Metacognitive Approach:
teaching students to be conscious of their inner conversation

10. Activities to help students become aware of reading strategies
LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Skimming
Scanning
Asking Questions
Clarifying Vocabulary
Visualising
Making Inferences/ Inferring
Making Connections
Determining Important Ideas
Synthesising
Repairing Comprehension
Memory party game
Quick-fire quiz (beep)
Sticky-notes
Dictionary races
Drawing pictures
Matching meanings or single-statement competitions
T-S T-T T-W Y-chart
Acetate sheets (OHTs) & w/b pens
Character-limit summaries (420characters.net)
Repeated reading
Skimming – makes them aware eyes are moving
Scanning. Quick for an ‘ item’ give strategies to help e.g. verb may have ‘ to’ in front. Name has CL.
Sticky notes idea. Write q about text and put on board. Using reading strategies to help from answers. Works v well for Tomorrow When War Began. Not all answers are in that chapter so q put on paper and then answered as text is read.
Making Connections – that Y chart text to self etc.
Sythesise. See website. Challenge so for Tomorrow. Shakes scene. Brainstorm main ideas, then develop into paragraph.
Activities to help students become aware of reading strategies

11. Inference The woman swore as the piece of lego punctured her heel.
He slammed his fist on the table.
Her face flushed red and she hurriedly looked away.
He tiptoed down the passage stifling the need to laugh.
Inference

12. Final thoughts What can you do in your class in the next term/month?
Repeated reading
School Journals
Don’t shy away from challenging your students and use real texts (e.g. ; Reading of nuclear testing article)
What can you do in your class in the next term/month?
Final thoughts

13. Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement – Harvey & Goudvis, (book) Teaching Reading Comprehension – Alison Davis (book) CSI: Comprehension Strategies Instruction (box)
RESOURCES