Contemporary Pedagogical Approaches In Developing Reading Comprehension

(A lecture delivered by Prof. Rodolfo C. de Vera during the seminar on Pedagogical Approaches in Developing Reading
Comprehension at President Elpidio Quirino National High School on October 4, 2012.)

Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning
(reading comprehension). It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of
sharing information and ideas. Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which
is shaped by the reader’s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and
socially situated. The reading process requires continuous practice, development, and refinement.
Readers use a variety of reading strategies to assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or
visual representations of speech) and comprehension. Readers may use morpheme, semantics, syntax and context
clues to identify the meaning of unknown words. Readers integrate the words they have read into their existing
framework of knowledge or schema (schemata theory).
Comprehension is a consuming, continuous, and complex activity, but one that, for good readers, is both
satisfying and productive. Given knowledge about what good readers do when they read, researchers and
educators have addressed the following question: Can we teach students to engage in these productive behaviors?
The answer is a resounding yes.

What Some Reading Specialists Say About Developing Reading Comprehension

How to Teach Reading Comprehension in Middle School

By Melody Hughes, eHow Contributor

Instructions
1 Choose high-interest reading materials. Students should be able to relate to those texts being read in the
language arts classroom. A good place to start is with books that have won the Newberry Award, given to the
author of outstanding children's literature. Also, it is helpful to give the students in the classroom a survey to
determine what they might enjoy reading about.
2 Teach reading comprehension skills explicitly. Basic reading comprehension skills include: using prior
knowledge, asking questions while reading, creating mental images, making predictions and inferences,
summarizing what has been read, and using phonological and contextual clues when encountering unknown
words. Teachers should explain why these strategies are helpful and exactly how to use each strategy. Then, the
teacher should provide guided practice using each strategy. Finally, the student should be allowed to
independently use the strategies.
3 Model reading comprehension skills. Teachers should read aloud to students and stop to comment on
their mental processes related to comprehension during the reading. Even middle school students enjoy being read
to.
4 Teach vocabulary routinely and thoroughly. One of the greatest barriers to reading comprehension is a
limited vocabulary. Expanding the students' vocabulary will have a positive impact on reading comprehension.
5 Allow students to discuss texts with you and with their classmates. One way to facilitate literature
discussions is through the use of literature circles. Literature circles allow students to work collaboratively on a
variety of tasks related to the texts being explored.
6 Use graphic organizers to help students organize their thoughts. Some examples of effective graphic
organizers are the story pyramid, story map, KWL chart and a Venn diagram.
How to Help High School Students Struggling With Reading Comprehension
By Gavin Price, eHow Contributor

Instructions
1. Choose relevant practice reading materials. Try to choose a passage with content that students will find
compelling.
2. Assign students pre-reading exercises before revealing the text of the passage. This will prime students to read
more carefully by investing them in the subject of the text.
3. Provide students with note-taking strategies to employ while reading the passage. Popular note-taking strategies
include highlighting, paragraph summarizing, and marginal commentary. Strategies like these encourage students
to engage with the text as active readers.
4. Assign students a post-reading exercise. For instance, refer students back to the subject-specific free-write they
completed before reading the passage. Challenge them to use the notes they took while reading the passage to
expand on their initial knowledge of the subject. Post-reading exercises encourage students to understand reading
comprehension as a circular process involving both reading and reflection as opposed to a linear, read-it-and-
forget-it activity.
5. Revisit the passage through a comprehension quiz. Pose questions that test more than memorization skills (i.e.:
Pose questions that encourage students to think critically about the structure and argument of the passage.).
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 Reading Comprehension Activities for High School
By Kyra Sheahan, eHow Contributor

First Line Prediction

In this exercise, students receive a worksheet that contains the first lines of high school-level stories,
poems or plays. Students are instructed to read the sentences and extract meaning from them by applying their
knowledge of vocabulary, drawing on their experiences with particular writers and poets and applying what they
know about sentence structure and context. Students should also be required to describe how they came to their
predictions by identifying the key information that led them to comprehend the text a particular way.

Pictures Tell the Story

Visual graphics help stimulate high schoolers' comprehension of stories by allowing students to apply
their knowledge of media techniques, genre and language conventions to the literary text and images. As an
activity, pass out graphic short stories and instruct students to answer questions based on the meaning they extract
from the pictures and text. Each student must be able to explain to the teacher how the combination of visual
elements with the text helped him comprehend the story a particular way.
Vocabulary Crossword Puzzles
Poor word knowledge means a student's reading comprehension skills are suffering because he is unable
to understand what he's reading. For this activity, the teacher starts by identifying challenging words from within
the students' reading materials and uses them to create the crossword puzzle. As the students complete the puzzle,
they are developing their word knowledge.
Improvisation Scenes
Improvisation is the process of acting something out without a script, in which you make up the scene as
you go along. After students have an adequate amount of time to read the passage, the teams are called on to act
out their passages to the rest of the class. This exercise teaches students what types of information to look for
when reading to strengthen reading comprehension.

Developing Readers' Comprehension Strategies

Students need to develop a repertoire of strategies that they can select from purposefully and
independently to build and enhance their understanding of text and to extend their critical awareness.

We need to explicitly teach individual comprehension strategies within the context of purposeful reading
but also develop students’ awareness of how these strategies are used in increasingly complex combinations as
they read more complex texts.

Comprehension Strategies:

o making connections
o forming and testing hypotheses about texts
o asking questions about texts
o creating mental images or visualising
o inferring meanings from texts
o identifying the author’s purpose and point of view
o identifying and summarising main ideas
o analysing and synthesising ideas
o evaluating ideas and information

There is much that we can say about both the nature of reading comprehension as a process and about
effective reading comprehension instruction. As it should be, much work on the process of reading
comprehension has been grounded in studies of good readers.

What do good readers do when they read:

• Good readers are active readers. From the outset they have clear goals in mind for their reading. They
constantly

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 evaluate whether the text, and their reading of it, is meeting their goals.
• Good readers typically look over the text before they read, noting such things as the structure of the text
and text sections that might be most relevant to their reading goals.
• As they read, good readers frequently make predictions about what is to come.
• They read selectively, continually making decisions about their reading—what to read carefully, what to
read quickly, what not to read, what to reread, and so on.
• Good readers construct, revise, and question the meanings they make as they read.
• Good readers try to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words and concepts in the text, and they deal
with inconsistencies or gaps as needed.
• They draw from, compare, and integrate their prior knowledge with material in the text.
• They think about the authors of the text, their style, beliefs, intentions, historical milieu, and so on.
• They monitor their understanding of the text, making adjustments in their reading as necessary.
• They evaluate the text’s quality and value, and react to the text in a range of ways, both intellectually and
emotionally.
• Good readers read different kinds of text differently.
• When reading narrative, good readers attend closely to the setting and characters.
• When reading expository text, these readers frequently construct and revise summaries of what they
have read.
• For good readers, text processing occurs not only during “reading” as we have traditionally defined it, but also
during short breaks taken during reading, even after the “reading” itself has commenced, even after the “reading”
has ceased.

The following are some proven instructional techniques for helping students acquire productive
comprehension skills and strategies. Teaching what we call collections or packages of comprehension strategies
can help students become truly solid comprehenders of many kinds of text.

Balanced Comprehension Instruction

This means that good comprehension instruction includes both explicit instruction in specific
comprehension strategies and a great deal of time and opportunity for actual reading, writing, and discussion of
text. The components in this approach to balanced comprehension instruction are a supportive classroom context
and a model of comprehension instruction.

A Supportive Classroom Context

It is not enough just to offer good instruction. Several important features of good reading instruction also
need to be present. Otherwise, the comprehension instruction will not take hold and flourish. These features
include the following:

 A great deal of time spent actually reading. As with decoding, all the explicit instruction in the world will
not make students strong readers unless it is accompanied by lots of experience applying their knowledge,
skills, and strategies during actual reading.

Experience reading real texts for real reasons.

To become strong, flexible, and devoted comprehenders of text, students need experience reading texts
beyond those designed solely for reading instruction, as well as experience reading text with a clear and
compelling purpose in mind. Experience reading the range of text genres that we wish students to comprehend.
Students will not learn to become excellent comprehenders of any given type of text without substantial
experience reading and writing it. For example, experience reading storybooks will not, by itself, enable a student
to read, understand, and critique procedural forms of text of the sort found in how-to books, instruction manuals,
and the like.

An environment rich in vocabulary and concept development through reading, experience, and, above all,
discussion of words and their meanings greatly enhances comprehension. Any text comprehension depends on
some relevant prior knowledge.

Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension

Substantial facility in the accurate and automatic decoding of words. Skilled decoding is necessary,
although by no means sufficient, for skilled comprehension. Again, students should experience writing the range
of genres we wish them to be able to comprehend. Their instruction should emphasize connections between
reading and writing, developing students’ abilities to write like a reader and read like a writer.

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 An environment rich in high-quality talk about text. This should involve both teacher-to-student and
student-to-student talk. It should include discussions of text processing at a number of levels, from clarifying
basic material stated in the text to drawing interpretations of text material to relating the text to other texts,
experiences, and reading goals.

A Model of Comprehension Instruction

The model of comprehension instruction we believe is best supported by research does more than simply
include instruction in specific comprehension strategies and opportunities to read, write, and discuss texts—it
connects and integrates these different learning opportunities.

Five components of an instructional model:

1. An explicit description of the strategy and when and how it should be used. “Predicting is making guesses
about what will come next in the text you are reading. You should make predictions a lot when you read. For
now, you should stop every two pages that you read and make some predictions.”

2. Teacher and/or student modelling of the strategy (predicting) in action.

3. Collaborative use of the strategy in action. “I have made some good predictions so far in the book. From this
part on I want you to make predictions with me. Each of us should stop and think about what might happen
next….Okay, now let’s hear what you think and why….”

4. Guided practice using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility from the teacher to the student.

5. Independent use of the strategy (making predictions while doing silent reading).

Throughout these five phases, it is important that neither the teacher nor the students lose sight of the
need to coordinate or orchestrate comprehension strategies. Strategies are not to be used singly—good readers do
not read a book and only make predictions. Rather, good readers use multiple strategies constantly. Although the
above model foregrounds a particular strategy at a particular time, other strategies should also be referenced,
modelled, and encouraged throughout the process.

Other Teaching Considerations

Choosing well-suited texts. The texts used during these different phases of comprehension instruction
should be chosen to be particularly well suited to application of the specific strategy being learned. For example, a
good text for learning about the prediction strategy would be one that students have not read before, that has a
sequence of events, and that provides sufficient clues about upcoming events for the reader to make informed
predictions about them. When students are first learning a comprehension strategy, they should encounter texts
that do not make heavy demands in other respects, such as background knowledge, vocabulary load, or decoding.

Concern with student motivation.

The level of motivation students bring to a task impacts whether and how they will use comprehension
strategies Therefore, in particular the independent practice portion, should be made as motivating to students as
possible.

Ongoing assessment.

Comprehension instruction should be accompanied by ongoing assessment. Teachers should monitor

students’ use of comprehension strategies and their success at understanding what they read. Results of this
monitoring should, in turn, inform the teacher’s instruction. When a particular strategy continues to be used
ineffectively, or not at all, the teacher should respond with additional instruction or a modified instructional
approach.

Building a Comprehension Curriculum

With this overall model for comprehension instruction as a background to be used in teaching any useful
strategy, we now turn to specific comprehension strategies that research has shown to be effective in improving
students’ comprehension of text.

Effective Individual Comprehension Strategies

1. Prediction. This encourages students to use their existing knowledge (schema) to facilitate their
understanding of new ideas encountered in text. Two activities dominate the work: making predictions and
activating prior knowledge about story theme, content, or structure. Students are encouraged to generate
expectations about what characters might do based on their own experiences in similar situations.

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 2. Think-aloud. Another proven instructional technique for improving comprehension is think-aloud. As
its name implies, think-aloud involves making one’s thoughts audible and, usually, public—saying what you are
thinking while you are performing a task, in this case, reading.

Teacher think-aloud. Teacher think-aloud is typically conceived of as a form of teacher

modelling. By thinking aloud, teachers demonstrate effective comprehension strategies and, at least as
importantly, when and when not to apply them. Teacher modelling is most effective when it is explicit,
leaving the student to infer little about the strategy and its application, and flexible, adjusting strategy use
to the text rather than presenting it as governed by rigid rules. Teacher think-aloud with these attributes is
most likely to improve students’ comprehension of text.

Student think-aloud. Students thinking aloud themselves also has proven effective at improving
comprehension. Students who are prompted to think aloud as part of their comprehension training are
better at summarizing information in a text than students whose training did not include think-aloud.

3. Text structure. Beginning in the late 1970s and extending throughout the 1980s into the early 1990s,
there was an explosion of research about the efficacy of teaching children to use the structure of texts, both
narrative and expository, to organize their understanding and recall of important ideas. Text improves both
comprehension and recall of key text information. One plausible explanation is that systematic attention to the
underlying organization, whether intended by the authors of texts or not, helps students relate ideas to one another
in ways that make them more understandable and more memorable.

Story structure. The research on story structure uses a few consistent heuristics (problem-
solving by trial and error) to help students organize their story understanding and recall. Usually, these are
organized into a story grammar or story map, which includes categories such as setting, problem, goal,
action, outcome, resolution, and theme. Instruction typically consists of modelling, guided practice, and
independent practice in recognizing parts of the stories under discussion that instantiate, or “fill,” each
category.
Story Grammar

All stories have certain key elements. They are characters, setting, plot, and conclusion. As you read, try to
complete the story grammar chart. You can also use it to outline a story you are planning to write.

Name ___________________________
Title ______________________________
Setting: Where does the story take place? Use all of your senses to describe the setting: what it looks likes,
sounds like, smells like, tastes like, feels like... In historical fiction, you also need to talk about the time the story
takes place - were there knights in shinning armor or cowboys and pioneers?
Characters: Who is in your story? Are there real people from the past, such as George Washington or are they
made up people? Stories often have main characters - those who are very involved in the story, and other
characters who are minor characters, or not so involved. They also have dynamic characters - characters who
change over the course of the book and static characters - characters who stay the same.
Use this chart to help you identify the characters.

Real Characters Real Characters Dynamic Characters Static Characters

Main Characters
Minor Characters

Character Sketch: Write a description about one of the characters. What does he/she look like, wear, eat, like to
do, favorite saying, best friends, dislike most, etc.
Plot: The plot is the action in the story, it usually has a problem or a conflict. Use this chart to help you write
about the plot.
Beginning
Middle
End

Conclusion: The conclusion tells about how the problems or conflict is solved. It tells us what happened.

Informational text structure. This focuses the significance of attention to text structure,
pointing out that students—for whatever reasons, including the fact that they are simply better readers—
who are more knowledgeable about text structure recall more textual information than those who are less
knowledgeable. Students must actually follow the text’s structure in building their recall for the effect to
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 be realized. The approaches to teaching text structure have exhibited substantial variability, beginning
with general attempts to sensitize students to structural elements and extending to hierarchical summaries
of key ideas and to visual representations of key ideas, such as conceptual maps, semantic networks,
charts, and graphs.

From a classroom teacher’s perspective, there is some comfort in knowing that content knowledge and
text structure are naturally intertwined; after all, either or both represent legitimate curricular goals.

4. Visual representations of text (graphic organizers). This could be a graphic summary of an article.
There is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to comprehension, this saying
might be paraphrased, “a visual display helps readers understand, organize, and remember some of those
thousand words.” The text is verbal, abstract, and eminently forgettable; by contrast, the flowchart is visual,
concrete, and arguably more memorable.

What may be central in this sort of instruction, besides consistent and persistent guidance in how and why
to use the visual displays, is direct involvement in constructing the visual display along with compelling feedback
to the students in the form of evidence that the arduous effort involved in representing information pays off in
terms of learning and, in the case of older students, better grades.

5. Summarization. Teaching students to summarize what they read is another way to improve their
overall comprehension of text. Often confused with determining importance, summarizing is a broader, more
synthetic activity for which determining importance is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. Research
suggests that instruction and practice in summarizing not only improves students’ ability to summarize text, but
also their overall comprehension of text content. Thus, instruction in summarization can be considered to meet
dual purposes: to improve students’ ability to summarize text and to improve their ability to comprehend text and
recall.

Two Major Approaches to the Tteaching of Summarization.

Rule 1: Delete unnecessary material.

Rule 2: Delete redundant material.
Rule 3: Compose a word to replace a list of items.
Rule 4: Compose a word to replace individual parts of an action.
Rule 5: Select a topic sentence.
Rule 6: Invent a topic sentence if one is not available.

The GIST procedure. The GIST Procedure (Generating Interactions Between Schemata and
Text) is a strategy that can be used to improve students’ abilities to comprehend the gist or main ideas of
paragraphs by providing a prescription for reading from group sentence-to-sentence production to
individual or partner entire paragraph gist production. It incorporates both reading and writing, important
for the adult student. You can either use a paragraph or short passage version.

Paragraph Version
1. Choose the appropriate paragraphs. Choose several paragraphs containing three to five sentences each
of which has a gist or main idea.
2. Students read the first sentence. Have the students read the first sentence of the paragraph so that they
can retell it in their own words. The sentence can be written on the board with blank lines underneath
it. The students then write their summaries on the blank lines.
3. Students generate their summaries. The students retell in a statement of 15 or fewer words what they
read in the sentences.
4. Reading the first two sentences. The students read the first and second sentences and retell them in
the same
number of words used for the first sentence alone.
5. Generate a summary of sentences one and two. The students then generate a single sentence of no
more than 15 words that summarizes both sentences one and two.
6. Continue with the procedure for the rest of the paragraph. The procedure is continued until the
students have
produced a single statement of 15 words or fewer that best summarizes the paragraph.
7. Move beyond a sentence-by-sentence approach to a paragraph approach. Students should be
encouraged to
produce their own gist statements on an individual basis across a variety of different types of
paragraphs. Move to paragraphs and then short passages. A 20-word rule should be in effect for a full
paragraph.

6. Questions/questioning. No comprehension activity has a longer or more pervasive tradition than

asking students questions about their reading whether before, during, or after the reading. The types of questions
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on students’ understanding and recall of text shape the types of questions to which they become accustomed.
When students often experience questions that require them to connect information in the text to their knowledge
base, they will tend to focus on this more integrative behavior in the future.

Although the impact of questions on comprehension is important the more interesting questions are (a)
whether students can learn to generate their own questions about text and (b) what impact this more generative
behavior might have on subsequent comprehension.

The QARs (Question-Answer-Relationships). The three types of questions: (1) Right There
QARs are those in which the question and the answer are explicitly stated in the text, (2) Think and
Search QARs have questions and answers in the text, but some searching and inferential text connections
are required to make the link, and (3) On My Own QARs are those in which the questions are motivated
by some text element or item of information, but the answers have to be generated from the students’
prior knowledge.

The three routines—reciprocal teaching, transactional strategies instruction, and Questioning the
Author—are all research-based approaches to teaching comprehension that, as a part of their overall approach,
teach students how to ask questions about text. That the question-generation strategy works so well as part of a
larger and more comprehensive routine suggests that when it is implemented in classrooms, it is probably better to
use it not as a steady routine repeated for every text encountered, but as an activity that is regularly but
intermittently scheduled into guided or shared reading.

Effective Comprehension Routines. The term means to capture the idea of an integrated set of practices that
could be applied regularly to one text after another, and in the process, provide students with two benefits: (1)
better understanding of the texts to which the routines are applied, and (2) the development of an infrastructure of
processes that will benefit encounters with future text, especially texts that students must negotiate on their own.
One of these routines, transactional strategies instruction, borders on being a complete comprehension curriculum.

1. Reciprocal Teaching. Four comprehension strategies—predicting, questioning, seeking

clarification, and summarizing—are the foci of the reciprocal teaching approach. Reciprocal teaching
involves a gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student for carrying out each part of the routine. In
the early stages of the reciprocal teaching, the teacher does much modelling of the target comprehension
strategies. In some versions of reciprocal teaching, this includes direct teaching of each individual strategy
and the use of worksheets for practice strategies.

A typical reciprocal teaching session begins with a review of the main points from the previous session’s
reading, or if the reading is new, predictions about the text based on the title and perhaps other information.
Following this, all students read the first paragraph of the text silently to themselves. A student assigned to act
as teacher then (a) asks a question about the paragraph, (b) summarizes the paragraph, (c) asks for
clarification if needed, and (d) predicts what might be in the next paragraph. During the process, the teacher
prompts the student/teacher as needed, and at the end provides feedback about the student/teacher’s work.

Transactional Strategies Instruction

Basic Components
 Interpretive Strategies
 Character development
 Imagining how a character might feel
 Identifying with a character
 Creating themes
 Reading for multiple meanings
 Creating literal/figurative distinctions
 Looking for a consistent point of view
 Relating text to personal experience
 Relating one text to another
 Responding to certain text features such as point of view, tone, or mood
 Cognitive Strategies
 Thinking aloud
 Constructing images
 Summarizing
 Predicting (prior knowledge activation)
 Questioning
 Clarifying
 Story grammar analysis
 Text structure analysis
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 Questioning the Author (QtA). The essential approach is to query a text collaboratively, section by
section. The expectation is that students who receive this sort of approach to text inquiry will develop
improved understanding of the texts to which the routine is applied, improved understanding of texts they
meet on their own at a later time, and most important, a critical disposition toward texts in general. Students
become much more successful at higher order comprehension and monitoring their comprehension as a result
of participating in.

Questions to guide the discussion in Questioning the Author

Candidate Questions

• What is the author trying to say?

• What is the author's message?
• What is the author talking about?
• That is what the author says, but what does it mean?
• How does that connect with what the author already told us?
• What information has the author added here that connects to or fits with…?
• Does that make sense?
• Is that said in a clear way?
• Did the author explain that clearly? Why/why not? What's missing? What do we need to figure out or
find out?
• Did the author tell us that?
• Did the author give us the answer to that?

Goal

 Initiate the discussion

 Help students focus on the author's message
 Help students link information
 Identify difficulties with the way the author has presented information or ideas
 Encourage students to refer to the text either because they've misinterpreted a text statement or to help
them recognize that they've made an inference

About the overall reading program

• How much time do students spend actually reading?

• How much reading do students routinely do in texts other than those written solely for reading or content area
instruction?
• Do students have clear and compelling purposes in mind when reading?
• How many different genres are available to students within your classroom? How many students read across
genres?
• Do students have multiple opportunities to develop vocabulary and concept knowledge through texts?
Through discussion of new ideas?
Through direct instruction in vocabulary and concepts?
• Are students given substantial instruction in the accurate and automatic decoding of words?
• How much time do students spend writing texts for others to comprehend? With reading-writing connections
emphasized?
• Are students afforded an environment rich in high-quality talk about text?

About comprehension strategy instruction

• Are students taught to…

– identify their purpose for reading?
– preview texts before reading?
– make predictions before and during reading?
– activate relevant background knowledge for reading?
– think aloud while reading?
– use text structure to support comprehension?
– create visual representations to aid comprehension and recall?
– determine the important ideas in what they read?
– summarize what they read?
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 – generate questions for text?
– handle unfamiliar words during reading?
– monitor their comprehension during reading?

• Does instruction about these strategies include

– an explicit description of the strategy and when it should be used?
– modelling of the strategy in action?
– collaborative use of the strategy in action?
– guided practice using the strategy, with gradual release of responsibility?
– independent practice using the strategy?

About other teaching considerations

• Are students helped to orchestrate multiple strategies, rather than using only one at a time?
• Are the texts used for instruction carefully chosen to match the strategy and students being taught?
• Is there concern with student motivation to engage in literacy activities and apply strategies learned?
• Are students' comprehension skills assessed on an ongoing basis?

Other Reading Strategies/Techniques To Improve Comprehension

A. DRTA-Directed Reading Thinking Activity

Purpose: This strategy is used to help students:

1. Determine the purpose for reading
2. Use prediction when reading text
3. Make decisions based on readings.
Rationale: As students develop more strategies for reading, the more independent readers they will become.
Procedure:
1. Direct students to read the title and brainstorm what the story might be about. Record the answers on the board.
2. Read first section. Ask the students if their prediction was confirmed, rejected or modified. Only the
student that made the prediction may change their answers.
3. Repeat step 2 until the class has finished with the reading.
4. Have the students justify their predictions by having them think aloud.
Strengths:
1. This helps develop critical reading skills.
2. Also helps students develop reading comprehension.
Weaknesses:
1. Only useful if students have not read or heard the text being used.
2. Classroom management may become a problem.

B. K-W-L (What we Know, What we want to know, What we learned)

Purpose: To help the teacher tailor the lessons to the students’ knowledge level and to facilitate what the
students want to know. It can also be used as an assessment tool.
Rationale: By using KWL, the teacher will be able to find the level of knowledge in his class.
Procedure:
1. Hang up a long piece of paper. (Bulletin board paper would work great!)
2. Divide chart into 3 sections. Label each section:
* what we know
* what we want to know
* what we learned
3. Ask class to answer what they know about the new topic.
4. Write all the responses down in the first column.
5. Ask the class what they would like to know about the topic.
6. Write all those responses down in the second column.
7. At the end of the unit, ask students what they have learned, writing all responses down on the chart in the 3rd
column.
8. Compare the want to know and learned to see if they met their goals.
Strengths:
1. Students can express their own ideas and knowledge.
2. Early assessment tool for the teacher.
3. Find out what students know so you don't repeat the lesson!
Weaknesses:
1. Takes a lot of space to hang up chart.
2. Possible to misinterpret the early assessment.

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C. SQ3R
Purpose: To help students develop a study strategy to help read and remember content area reading
assignments.
Rationale: When students apply strategies to reading, they retain more information.
Procedure:
1. SURVEY-- Students preview the reading assignments, noting heading and skimming introduction and the
summary.
2. QUESTION-- Turn in heading into a question before reading the section.
3. READ-- The students then read each section so they many learn the answer to the question they are
asking.
4. RECITE-- After reading each section, the students should answer the question posed from memory.
5. REVIEW-- After finishing the entire assignment, review each question from memory.
Strengths: Effective when applied correctly.
Weaknesses: Time consuming.

D. CLOZE PROCEDURE
Purpose: A strategy to help determine if the reading level is suitable or not. Also can be used as a test of
comprehension of the text being studied.
Rationale: When the students are able to fill in the blanks, the book is suitable for the age level.
Procedure:
1. Select the passage from a textbook or tradebook.
2. Retype the passage. The first sentence is typed as it appears in original text. Replace every fifth word with a
blank.
3. Students read passage first. Then guess what belongs in each blank.
4. Score the work, 1 point for each correct answer.
5. Compare the percentage of correct word replacement with this scale:
61% correct independent
41-60% correct instructional
below 40% frustration!
Strengths: An alternate way of assessing needs.
Weaknesses: Lots of typing.
E. READERS THEATER
Purpose:
1. To involve students in the text.
2. To aid in the interpretation of the text, while the students internalize the information.
Rationale: The more engaged the students are in the text, the more they comprehend.
Procedure:
1. Select a story for script. Have students volunteer for parts.
2. Rehearse production. Students decide on how to use their voice, gestures and facial expressions to
portray the character they are reading.
3. Stage the production. May be informal. Act the story in class or in front of an audience.
Strengths:
1. Helps understanding of the characters and their situations.
2. FUN!
Weaknesses:
1. Time and behavioral management may become a problem.

F. CHORAL READING
Purpose: To make students active participants in the poetry experience. Also helps develop fluency in reading.
Rationale: Better readers and fluency makes for better comprehension of the text being read.
Arrangements:
1. Echo reading: The leader reads each line, the group then repeats the line just read.
2. Leader and chorus reading: The leader reads the main part of the poem, and the group reads the
refrain or chorus in unison.
3. Small group reading: The class divides into two or more groups and each group reads one part of the poem.
4. Cumulative reading: One student or group reads the first line or stanza and then another
student/group joins in as each line is read.
Procedure:

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 1. Select poem to use and copy to a chart or make individual copies.
2. Work with students to decide how to decide how to arrange the poem for reading.
3. Read with students several times. Emphasize that students should pronounce words clearly and read with
expression.
Strengths: Helps students develop rhythm by example.
Weaknesses: ???
G. PReP (Prereading Plan)
Purpose: To diagnose students prior knowledge and provide necessary background knowledge so
students will be prepared to understand what they will be reading
Rationale: A diagnostic and instructional procedure used when students read informational books and
content area textbooks.
Procedure:
1. Introduce key concept to students using a word, phrase, or picture to initiate a discussion.
2. Have students brainstorm words about the topic, and record their ideas on a chart. Help make
connections among brainstormed ideas.
3. Present additional vocabulary and clarify any misconceptions.
4. Have students draw pictures and/or write a quickwrite about topic using words from the brainstormed list.
5. Have students share quickwrites and ask questions to help clarify and elaborate quickwrites.
Strengths: To help the students learn about a subject before starting a lesson.
Weaknesses: Classroom management.

H. STORY BOARDS
Purpose: to work with story structure for comprehension.
Rationale; As students see organization and relationships between story parts, they then have more
comprehension and are able to make inferences.
Procedure:
1. Using paper, have students fold the paper into three sections.
2. In each section of the paper, have the students draw pictures of the beginning, middle, and end.
3. The students then write sentences about each picture they have drawn, describing what it is about.
4. The students then share their story boards.
Strengths: Students get more practice at identifying the beginning, middle, and end of a story.
Weaknesses: ???

I. READING CONFERENCES
Purpose: To engage children in meaningful dialogue about books.
Rationale: The more effective reader, the more comprehension and better writers.
Procedure:
1. Group the students for the year.
2. Explain to the students that they will meet about the books they are reading.
3. Have a question for the week that the students write about.
4. Have students bring their literature logs to the conferences.
Strengths: Sense of accomplishments.
Weaknesses: ???

J. DEAR Time (Drop Everything and Read)

Purpose: Provides time for students to read a selection of their choice.
Procedure:
a. EVERYONE reads, including teacher.
b. NO INTERRUPTIONS!
Weakness: Need to find a time to pick a book before DEAR time.

K. PAIRED READING
Purpose: To help less fluent reader by having a better reader assist.
Procedure: *read together aloud at the same time OR *switch off, 1 reader reads a passage, other picks up
where other left off.
Strengths: Socialization.
Weaknesses: Better reader may take over.

L. ANALYTIC PHONICS
Analytic phonics is an approach to teaching decoding based on drawing phonic relationships among
words that have the same letter patterns. Using words the child already recognizes “at sight”, the student
identifies the sounds of letter groups by making analogies to known words. In other words, the child says, “I
already know a word that looks like this new word. I will match the sounds in the new word.”

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 Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Word attack
2. Decoding by analogy
Targeted Reading Levels: 1-2
Text: Known sight words and new words that have the same sound pattern

M. DIRECT EXPERIENCE APPROACH

Direct experience is an approach where actual situations are used to develop word meanings.
Actual objects are manipulated or the events are enacted in order to develop an understanding of the concept.
During the activity, the teacher and students use the new word (label) as they actually experience the concept.
This associates the word label with the word concept.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Word meanings
2. Reading comprehension
Targeted Reading Levels: All levels. Necessary for young children.
Text: The object or event in a situational context

N. Directed Reading Activity (DRA)

A directed reading activity is an instructional format for teaching reading where the teacher
assumes the major instructional role. He develops background knowledge, introduces new words, and gives
the students a purpose for reading. Then he directs the discussion with questions to develop reading
comprehension (Dimensional approach). Finally, he reinforces and extends the skills and knowledge
developed in the story.
Major Reading Tasks It develops
1. Comprehension
2. Word meanings
3. Word identification
Targeted Reading Levels: All levels
Text: Graded stories in basal readers

O. ECHO READING
Echo reading is a form of modeling oral reading where the teacher reads a line of a story and the
student echoes his model by reading the same line, imitating his intonation and phrasing.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Oral reading fluency
2. Intonation and phrasing
3. Chunking the text into meaningful thought units
Targeted Reading Levels: 1-4
Text: Any text that is well written.

P. LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE APPROACH

The language experience approach is a technique that is used for beginning reading instruction
where the child dictates a story to the teacher. The story becomes the text for instruction and a collection of
the stories becomes the child’s first reader.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Understanding that printed words are thoughts written down
2. A sight word vocabulary
3. Fluency of oral reading
Targeted Reading Levels: K-3
Text: The child’s own language

Q. LINGUISTIC METHOD
The linguistic method is an approach for instructing a beginning reader that is based on word
patterns. The word families have a minimal contrast in the word patterns. Therefore, this approach
emphasizes decoding by visual analogy.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Word recognition
2. Decoding by analogy
3. Analysis of distinctive visual features
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 Targeted reading Levels: K-2
Text: Isolated words that have the same word patterns and designated text that introduces the word patterns.

R. LISTENING- THINKING ACTIVITY (LTA)

A listening-thinking activity is an instructional format for teaching children how to listen to stories.
It involves predicting what will happen, talking about what happened, and talking about how you know what
is happening. As the teacher reads aloud, he communicates the message by adding intonation and gestures to
facilitate understanding.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Listening comprehension
2. Comprehension monitoring
3. Making prediction
Targeted reading Levels: All levels
Text: An interesting, well-written text. Picture storybooks are excellent.
S. Question-Answer relationships (QAR) (Dimensional Approach)
It is a technique used to identify the type of response necessary to answer a question. Questions are
the most prevalent means of evaluating reading comprehension; therefore, knowledge about sources of
information required to answer questions facilitates comprehension and increases a student’s ability to
participate in teacher-directed discussion and answer questions in textbooks exercises.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Reading comprehension
2. Study skills
Targeted Reading Levels: 1-8
Text: Any text with accompanying questions

T. QUESTION-GENERATION STRATEGY
Writing post- reading questions uses student- generated questions to develop an understanding of
the important information in the text. By deciding what to ask in their questions, students think about what are
important in the text.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Study skills
2. Comprehension
Targeted Reading Levels: 4-12
Text: Narrative or expository

U. RECIPROCAL TEACHING
Reciprocal teaching is a technique to develop comprehension of expository text by modeling and
practicing how to read and understand the text. The teacher and students take turns leading a discussion about
sections of the text. The teacher provides the initial model by thinking aloud about how he constructs a
summary, makes up questions, clarifies what is difficult, and predicts what else the text will discuss.
Major Reading Task it develops
1. Reading comprehension
2. Summarizing
3. Predicting
Targeted Reading Levels: 5-12
Text: Expository text is preferred more

V. REQUEST (Reciprocal Questioning) Technique

The Request technique develops comprehension by having the teacher and the student take turns
asking and answering questions. At turning points in the text, the teacher models effective question- asking
strategies. The student, in turn, asks appropriate questions by following the model. The goal is to develop
self-questioning strategies for the student.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Comprehension
2. Self-questioning
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 Targeted Reading Levels: 4-12
Text: Particularly suited for narrative text but can be used with expository text

W. SIGHT WORD APPROACH

The sight word approach for beginning reading instruction that uses what word mean to develop
what the words look like. By using pictures and oral context, meaning is associated with isolated sight words.
After a sight vocabulary is learned, decoding by analogy is taught to expand reading acquisition.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Word recognition
2. Decoding by analogy
Targeted reading levels: K-2
Text:: The basic pre-primers and primers of published reading series that contain a regular and controlled
introduction of sight words in simple text. Decoding by analogy is taught through known sight words.

X. STORY MAPS
Story maps are visual representations of the logical sequence of events in a narrative text. The elements of
setting, problem, goal, events, and resolution are recorded visually on a sheet of paper ( Beck & McKcown, 1981;
Person, 1982).
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Reading comprehension
2. Visual diagram of story events and their relationships
3. Sensitivity to story structures and sequences
Targeted Reading Levels: 1-8
Text: Any narrative text with a fairly coherent story line.

Y. SUSTAINED SILENT READING

Sustained silent reading (SSR) is the designation of an uninterrupted time where both the students and the
teacher read self-selected reading materials for their own purposes. The teacher models his own enjoyment of
reading. In turn, the students begin to define their interests and read for their own enjoyment.
Major Reading Tasks It Develops
1. Reading for individual purposes
2. Self-selection of appropriate text
3. Identification of reading interest
4. Practicing the whole act of reading
Targeted Reading Levels: All Levels
Text: Self-selected

References:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4883431_teach-reading-comprehension-middle-school.html#ixzz27N6iNrUv

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngextremeexplorer/pdf/effectivepractices.pdf Professional Article:

Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension
© Scholastic Red 2002 red_c7_l6r_pa_duke.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)

Walker, Barbara. Diagnostic Teaching of Reading. (Ohio: Merrill Publishing Company, 1988).

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 DOLCH’S BASIC SIGHT VOCABULARY OF 220 WORDS
a come has much see up
about could have must seven upon
after cut he my shall us
again did help myself she use
all do her never show very
always foes here new sing walk
am done him no sit want
an don’t his not six warm
and down hold now sleep was
any draw hot of small wash
are drink how off so we
around eat hurt old some well
as eight I on soon went
ask every if once start were
at fall in one stop what
ate far into only take when
away fast is open tell where
be find it or ten which
because first its our thank white
been five jump out that who
before fly just over the why
best for keep own their will
better found kind pick them wish
big four know play then with
black from laugh please there work
blue full let pretty these would
both funny light pull they write
bring gave like put think yellow
brown get little ran this yet
but give live read those you
buy go long rice three your
by goes look ride to
call going red right today
came good made round together
can got make run too
carry green many said try
clean grow may saw two
cold had me say under
cgm 2012

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An approach is a set of assumptions ( Why ) , a method is how to carry out these assumptions and theories ( how ) ,
techniques are steps to achieve certain goals.

Read more: What is the difference among method, technique, and approach |
Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1054221#ixzz28FNpS74s

Assessment - a judgment about something based on an understanding of the situation

Diagnosis - the identifying of the nature or cause of something, especially a problem or fault

Microsoft® Encarta® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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