This is the reading instruction show. Again,
we are looking at the National Reading Panel,
the big five, and this last one is on comprehension.
Comprehension, research -based strategies to
address comprehension. First of all, it's the
understanding that we read for two purposes,
and two purposes only. to enjoy good stories
and to understand text. There are two parts to
comprehension. Part one is developing cognitive
processes related to narrative text. Comprehension
involves thinking. Cognition, to improve comprehension,
you improve thinking. We teach the process to
develop the skill, and here are some of the cognitive
processes related to effective comprehension.
Let me demonstrate, if you will. The goal is
to develop automaticity of these cognitive processes
so that you do them automatically. These are
thinking processes, and thinking processes are
cognitive operations with steps. High -level
thinking is not automatic, but with teaching
with direct and explicit instruction, we can
develop automaticity. Now the first thing to
know is that efficient readers approach narrative
and expository texts different, stories versus
information texts, and we must teach our students
that, starting in grades four or three or earlier.
Boys and girls, we do not read a textbook the
same way as we read a Harry Potter book. So,
effective teachers design different types of
activities and lessons for narrative and expository
texts. Now, comprehension worksheets do relatively
little to help students comprehend texts. They're
often Remembering worksheets. You read a story,
you give them a comprehension worksheet, and
they fill in the blanks. It's usually a remembering
worksheet or a go look it up worksheet. However,
good comprehension instruction is a pre -post
or pre -during post. Comprehension worksheets
can be effective if you go through the questions
as a pre -reading activity on the sheet. They
read, so then they're reading with purposeful
intent, and they fill them out as they are reading.
And with any types of thinking instruction, we
want to use graphic organizers to organize and
teach the steps. For example, to teach children
how to predict. A prediction is based on information
clues. So you go through this prediction, you
give them a story preview, and you say, what
do you think will happen when, and you have a
specific prediction question here. What do you
think will happen when the Martians abduct Billy
Bean? So they have the question, so they're reading
with purposeful intent. They gather clues and
put the page number as their reading, and they
make their prediction there. That's a graphic
organizer. You do that many times. Now, the purpose
isn't to be able to do a graphic organizer. The
purpose is to make automatically these processes
where you are making predictions and looking
for clues. Same thing with an inference. Students
read with purposeful intent again. You provide
an inference question. inference question is
something that can be answered, but not the clues.
The answer is not in the text. So you give the
inference question, what kind of person was Billy
Bean, or I think Billy Bean was, is going to
be abducted by aliens, I think, and clues there,
and then their inference. Cause and effect. Again,
a read with purposeful intent. Cause is what
happened, effect is what happens next. Cause
is what makes it happen, effect is what makes
it happen next. You do just the causes, and they
read to find the effects. Just the effects, what
made it happen, cause makes it happen, effects
is what happened next. The effects, and eventually
they can do both cause and effect. And again,
teach these steps explicitly. Study skill strategies,
these are related to expository text or information
text. These are skills consciously applied by
students. Starting in grades four, keep it simple,
a basic five -step note -taking process. Some
of these study skill strategies like Cornell
note -taking and some of them are too complicated.
Simple, write the title on the top of the page,
write the name of the heading, underline it,
select only the most important ideas from each
paragraph, record the idea, short abbreviated
sentences, record supporting ideas below, all
right? And then you give examples. Read a dot
and note, read a paragraph, put a dot next to
important ideas, finish the chapter, take notes
using outlines and headings. pencil dots so that
they can do this in textbooks. These are seven
of them that I've developed. They're in my book,
and I would recommend putting a poster up there
with some of these study skill strategies.