Module 5- Case Study

In a sixth grade class of twenty-eight students, composed mostly of English speakers at various levels of ability and skills, the teacher needs to devise strategies which deal with comprehension. Most students do not have a lot of difficulty with word attack, but their reading comprehension scores on a standardize test range from the 22nd percentile to the 65th percentage. In the Oklahoma PASS objective tests, you note that they read the passages but they seemed to miss key points in comprehension. You also know that the students like to discuss the topic but don’t always understand the text and have a hard time supporting their answers from the text.

What are the strengths?

·      The students are good at word attack.

·      Most of the students speak English which allows for discussions to happen and peer teaching.

·      The students have a variety of ability and skills, opening opportunity for peer teaching and class discussions on strategies.

What are the needs?

·      The students need to comprehend what they are reading, as they are reading the text.

·      Standardized test scores need to increase. 

·      Students need to be familiar with before, during, and after reading strategies to increase their comprehensions.

·      They need to be taught to actively read- using background knowledge, questioning the text, using inferences and applying the text to their lives and other texts as they are analyzing the information.

What types of activities and extensions could the teacher do in the classroom?

Activate Prior Knowledge (APK)

·      Make connections between new and known information.  The teacher could divide instruction into three categories of connection as defined by Colleen Buddy - text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world.

Cornell Note taking system diagram during reading

·      A great way for the teacher to model the importance of note-taking while reading

 

 

KWL or “KWL plus” chart for pre, during, & post reading

·      Children could to this as a whole group, adding their own thoughts on stickies to a class chart.

 

Determine Importance

·      Students need to continually sort through and prioritize information they read. The teacher could assist readers in analyzing everything from text features in nonfiction text like bullets and headings, to verbal cues in novels like strong verbs. The teacher brings attention to the student that looking for these clues can help them sift through the relative value of different bits of information in texts.

What strategies/things could the teacher encourage the students to do?

The teacher could teach and have the students use some of the following strategies to help them comprehend the text they read:

Question the Text

Proficient readers are always asking questions while they read. The teacher could have the students use sticky notes (post-its) so that students can stop, mark text, and note questions as they read.

Draw Inferences

Proficient readers use their prior knowledge about a topic and the information they have gleaned in the text thus far to make predictions about what might happen next. When teachers demonstrate or model their reading processes for students through think-alouds, they often stop and predict what will happen next to show how inferring is essential for comprehending text.

Create  Mental Images

Students should constantly create mind pictures as they read, visualizing action, characters, or themes.

Repair Understanding When Meaning Breaks Down

Proficient readers don't just plow ahead through text when it doesn't make sense - they stop and use "fix-up" strategies to restore their understanding. One of the most important fix-up tools is rereading, with teachers demonstrating to students a variety of ways to reread text in order to repair meaning.

Synthesis Information

Synthesis is the most sophisticated of the comprehension strategies, combining elements of connecting, questioning, and inferring. With this strategy, students move from making meaning of the text, to integrating their new understanding into their lives and world view.

Monitor Comprehension

Comprehension monitoring instruction will teach the students to:

• Be aware of what they do understand
• Identify what they do not understand
• Use appropriate strategies to resolve problems in comprehension

Metacognition

Metacognition can be defined as "thinking about thinking." Good readers use metacognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Before reading, they might clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text. During reading, they might monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and "fixing" any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding of what they read.

Graphic and semantic organizer

 

·      Venn Diagrams

·      Storyboard/Chain of Events

·      Story Map

·      Cause/Effect

·      Creating own dictionary for pre-reading strategy of unknown vocabulary, this could also be a picture dictionary to enhance retention of the meaning of a word.

Answer questions

Questions can be effective because they:

• Give students a purpose for reading
• Focus students' attention on what they are to learn
• Help students to think actively as they read
• Encourage students to monitor their comprehension
• Help students to review content and relate what they have learned to what they already know

Generate questions

By generating questions, students become aware of whether they can answer the questions and if they understand what they are reading. Students learn to ask themselves questions that require them to combine information from different segments of text. For example, students can be taught to ask main idea questions that relate to important information in a text.

Recognize story structure

In story structure instruction, students learn to identify the categories of content (characters, setting, events, problem, resolution). Often, students learn to recognize story structure through the use of story maps. Instruction in story structure improves students' comprehension.

 

Summarize

Summarizing requires students to determine what is important in what they are reading and to put it into their own words. Instruction in summarizing helps students:

• Identify or generate main ideas
• Connect the main or central ideas
• Eliminate unnecessary information
• Remember what they read
• Use this time to incorporate a writing extension to the assignment, to summarize the important details of the text.

QAR

As they answer each question about the text, they identify the Question – Answer Relationship.

·      As students answer the questions they should decide what the relationship between the text and answer to the question is –

o   Right There (RT):  You will find the answer in one sentence.

o   Think & Search (TS):  You will find the answer in the text, but, in more than one place – find the parts to the answer and put them together. 

o   Writer & Me (WM):  You will use the author’s CLUES from the text and your PRIOR KNOWLEDGE to answer the question.                                   

o   On My Own (OMO):  You will find the answer using only your PRIOR KNOWLEDGE.