Western Governors University
TRAINING MODULE FOR PARENT VOLUNTEERS
“Comprehension
is a constructive, interactive process involving three factors - the
reader, the text, and the context in which the text is read (Gunning, 2010).”
- Readers vary - their background knowledge, their reading strategies, their attitude and demeanor when approaching reading, and their work habits.
- Text vary - “genre, theme or topic, style, difficult level, and appeal (Gunning, 2010).
- Context vary - Where, when, and why is the text being read? Are they instructions for building a model car or putting together a grill? Is it a newspaper being read to catch up on the daily news? Or a card from a family member one has not seen in years?
Since the readers, texts, and context all vary, it is
safe to assume that reading comprehension strategies will also vary.
This training module will look at three strategies and how to utilize
them in the classroom.
Teaching Preparational Strategy - Activating Prior Knowledge
It is crucial for students to understand what they know about a
subject, since comprehension involves taking something that is not known
and relating it to what is known. When beginning a reading assignment
or activity, the teacher should prepare the students by asking them
questions related to the topic. The teacher can also share what he or
she knows about the topic. Ask the students what they know about the
topic and also what would they like to learn about the topic.
The teacher ask questions of the student to activate their prior
knowledge. The teacher should attempt to activate both school-type
knowledge and personal knowledge. Asking the student for factual
information about a particular animal - it’s habitat, diet,
characteristics, as well as if they have ever seen one, how did it make
them feel, were they afraid of it.
Studies have shown that
students who were able to active both subject knowledge and personal
knowledge had a better approach to overall reading (Gunning, 2010). This is
most helpful to students as they learn to become independent readers,
they will not have the added benefit of teacher guidance.
Teaching Organizational Strategy - Classifying
To help teach 1st graders the concept of main idea, use the skill of
classification. “The best way to convey the concept of a main idea and
to provide instruction in its underlying cognitive process is to have
students classify a series of objects or words (Gunning, 2010).”
First teach students to classify objects. Place several similar-type
objects in a box. For example, fill a box with various types of fruit.
Tell the students you want to put a label on the box and ask them what
would be the best word to describe everything in the box. Ask them for
their reasoning why they chose, in this example, the word fruit.
The next step is to have the student classify words. Comprise a list
of words that are all similar. For example, provide the students with a
list which reads, football, basketball, baseball. The students should
identify that they are all balls. To create an additional challenge for
the students, insert a word into the list that almost looks like it
could belong but doesn’t. Adding bat to this list, while it is a piece
of sports equipment, is not a ball. This gets students to start
thinking what is relevant information and what is not.
Finally, develop a list of sentences, one of which is the main idea, and
the others are all supporting sentences. Have the students choose
which sentence is the one that all the others are referring to. A good
way to teach the students this is model the behavior you are looking for
- reading each sentence and thinking aloud so that students can hear
the thought process.
An example:
Our dog was resting in the shade.
Children ran to the ice cream truck.
It was the hottest day anyone could remember.
The temperature was close to 100 degrees.
The pool was full of families looking to cool off.
Explain to the students how the main idea in a paragraph is like a roof, and that the other sentences are the walls that hold this roof up (Gunning, 2010). Teach the students that the detail sentences all point to the main idea. Another good technique to use is to read passages from a classroom book, and ask the student which sentence is the main idea, and which are the supporting details.
Teaching the Reciprocal Teaching Strategy
Teaching the Reciprocal Teaching Strategy to students is a fun way for them to step into your shoes, and in doing so, helps them to better understand the text. Students participate in student-led, but teacher-prompted discussion which leads the students to “check their understanding of what they are reading and to take steps to improve their comprehension if necessary (Gunning, 2010).”
In Reciprocal Teaching, the class reads a story or a passage and then discusses it. Students take turns leading the discussion with these four steps;
- Predicting - Students guess to predict what they think will happen next in a particular passage. If it is the beginning of the passage, have the students utilize clues from the title, introduction, and accompanying illustrations.
- Question generating - Have students search for clues in the text which will prompt them to ask specific questions. Generally, if students can’t generate questions based on the text, it shows that they most likely have failed to comprehend what was written, and should re-read the text and discuss it further.
- Clarifying - The student should be able to identify words, phrases, or concepts that they do not understand, and ask the teacher or group for further explanations.
- Summarizing - Students take turns leading the group and retelling what they have read. Being unable to effectively retell the story shows a lack of reading comprehension. Summarizing also leads into students being able to make predictions about the next portion of the reading.
The way to introduce this to the class is to ask the student if they ever wanted to trade places with the teacher. Tell them that to help them understand their reading better, they will participate in a new learning method in which they will take turns leading the discussion.
Outline the four steps for them and explain each one. Depending on the students skill level, the teacher will want to decide if they should introduce the skills all in one day or over the course of several days or even a week. With some classes you may want to introduce the skills one per week.
As the teacher you will want to guide and prompt the students when needed, and continually model the four strategies. For example, when prompting students to get them to ask questions, remind them of asking “who, what, where, why, when, how” questions.
In the book "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak, I read the following passage to the students:
"And when he came to the place where the wild things are
they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claw."I stopped and ask the students, with a dramatic voice, "What do you think will happen next?" The replies varied from "Max will run away" to "They will eat Max" and also "He will fight them."
And we read on, "till Max said "BE STILL"! and tamed them with a magic trick. The wild things were frightened and made him king of all the wild things."
Reference:
Gunning, T. (2010). Creating literacy instruction for all students. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
