Activate, Explore and Build Background Knowledge

Read to Gather Information and Develop Questions

Wonder out loud, showing kids how to ask thoughtful and searching questions.	Articulate questions and connections that stem from their interests and experiences.
Demonstrate ways to read and respond to information, code the text, jot notes in margins, and paraphrase information	Read, write, talk and think about the information.
Demonstrate how to ask and search for answers in questions	Develop questions and read to answer them.
Demonstrate how to read and determine what's important.	Use evidence to distinguish between their thinking and the author's.
Show kids how to distinguish the reader's ideas from the author's.	Use text features to gain information
	Target key ideas and information

Delving Deeper Into Content
Page 217 in book offers websites for individual disciplines.

Discussion Questions/Topics:

Seventh grade science teacher uses columns one and three for contrasting (Different), while column two is for Comparing (Alike). Explain that this is similar to a Venn diagram, with similarities in the middle.

5. Summarizing the Content and Adding Personal Response

• Purpose: Summarizing the content of a piece of text and responding personally
• Resources: Young adult magazines, including Kids Discover, National Geographic Explorer and Time for Kids
• Responses: A page of notebook paper divided horizontally with the top half marked Summary and the bottom half marked Response

Brevity is a virtue when summarizing. Synthesizing is more than summarizing. Synthesizing is integrating your thinking with the content and getting the reader's personal take on a piece of text. It is also a scaffold for a later kind of writing that we have come to call Summary Response which merges the summary with the response into one complete piece.

Summary Responses are higher level thkinking thatn "just plain" summaries because the reader's thinking is integrated with the information. However, people who score standardized tests are interested only in the standard summary, not in the reader's personal responses.

6. Reading for the Gist

• Purpose: Taking notes and using a variety of strategies to synthesize
• Resources: The picture book An Angel for Solomon Singer by Cynthia Rylant
• Responses: Lists of notes and strategies; one page written response

Having students (4th and 5th graders) list comprehension strategies already studied, reitering these can help the reader make sense of the text. Ask students to also write down their thinking as well as story events as they story is being read aloud. Questions, predictions, important ideas, and visual images along with more than content notes help students to synthesize the material.

7. Writing a Short Summary

• Purpose: Distinguishing between a summary of the text and the reader's thinking
• Resources: The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq by Jeannette Winter
• Responses: Two column think sheet headed "What the Piece is About/What It Makes Me Think About

After doing a read aloud, the teacher handed think sheets that were folded to "What It Makes Me Think About" to students. She then asked students to write what they story made them think about. Always emphasize that thinking is the most important part and should always be first. Share with a partner when finished. Share with class. When finished, ask students to open up their papers and focus on the first column "What the Piece is About". She explains that this is the summary part. Three things to consider when retelling orally. 1. Pick out the most important ideas, 2. Keep it brief, 3. Say it in your own words in a way that makes sense.

Students then turn and talk about what they thought were some of the most important ideas in the story. They then share in class. The teacher may chart student ideas. Discuss and find one ideas that was important enough to include in the summary, keeping it brief. Summaries can be two or three sentences.

8. Writing as Synthesis: Personalities from the Past

• Purpose: Writing from a first person perspective to better understand the contributions of historical figures
• Resources: Picture book biographies
• Responses: Note taking forms that support writing

The goal was for each child to read about and reserach a person of their own choosing using their responses and notes to eventually write a thoughtful "first person" sketch. Planning a series of lessons, modeling, respones, taking notes on important ideas rather than trivial details, and organizing notes to support writing.

9. Synthesizing to Access Content

• Purpose: Noticing the thinking we do to access content and acquire knowledge
• Resources: "Moonstruck Scientists Count 63 and Rising" articles from Denver Post
• Respsonses: Two column note form headed Content(Facts)/Process(Thinking); class discussion

As the article was displayed overhead and read, students were required to keep track of their evolving thinking, commenting on their process of synthesizing information by noting information on the content side of the form and noticing what they did to access that information on the process side of the form. Coding the processing Q for question, I for inference etc., while noting facts on the opposite side of the page. As reading and reasoning with the text, kids' conversations helped them build answers to questions, clear up misconceptions, and immerse themselves in the content.

10. Reading Like a Writer

• Purpose: Noticing the craft of a piece as well as the content and the reading process.
• Resources: "Moonstruck Scientists Count 63 and Rising" and "Rhino Dehorned by Rangers: articles from Denver Post
• Responses: Three column note headed: Content/Process/Craft

Improving upon the two column form Content/Process, a response column was addded for writing. Noticing language, syntax, and use of synonyms transforms the reading from the use of writer's craft to draw in the reader.

The three column for is the ultimate synthesizing response form. It covers the major bases. If readers can record factual content, explain their thinking process while reading, and reflect on writing, they are on their way to becoming literate thinkers.

11. Trying to Understand: Seeking Answers to Questions That Have None

• Purpose: Synthesizing information by attemtping to answer difficult questions.
• Resources: The Triumphant Spirit, Portraits and Stories of Holocaust Survivors, Their Messages of Hope and Compassion by Nick Del Calzo
• Responses: Sticky notes with questions

The genre of narrative nonfiction personalizes the human experience for readers in ways other genres can't. Personal tales of triumph and tragedy become indelibly etched in our brains when we read it. Not to deal with these tragic events is to prevent children from learning about the strength of the human spirit and the triump of survival.

As students shared their disbeliefs, most were overwhelmed with questions. The discussion spawned by these questions constructed meaning. Their questions led them to synthesize their thoughts and feelings. These questions nudged their thinking and gave them insight into personal feelings that they had not explored before. The more the students shared their questions and talked about these portraits, the more they knew about the Holocaust, and the more they came to realize that some things can't be explained and some questions can't be answered.


1. Students summarize information by retelling. 2. Students become aware of when they add to their knowledge base and revise their thinking as they read. 3. Students synthesize information through writing. 4. Students use a variety of ways to synthesize information and share their learning. Suggestions for Differentiation Giving choices about how to organize and prseent their new learning to others insures that they are interested and engaged in the process. Kids love to create a variety of posters, projects, books, models, mobiles, murals and so on to demonstrate learning and understanding.











Discussion Questions/Topics:

Chapter 10: Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection

Determining what is important is the challenge. For years, teachers have told students to highlight essential ideas, important information, supporting details, or specific information. We can't possibly remember, nor should we try to do so. When we link what we know with new information, then we are more apt to remember facts and details. We need to separate what's important from what's interesting...then we can arrive at a main idea.

The strategies in this lesson are designed to help the reader shift and sort information while making sense of the barrage of information that crosses our radar screens everyday.


The Link Between the Strategy of Determining Importance and the Genre of Nonfiction
The purpose of nonfiction is to learn.

Determining importance and nonfiction go together...Simply put, readers of nonfiction have to decide and remember what is important in the texts they read if they are going to learn from them.
Nonfiction is full of text features: text cues, structures, scaffolding for understanding; specific to nonfiction. Text features need to be taught to students so they know where to find essential information.
Interesting, authentic nonfiction fuels kids' curiosity, enticing them to read more, dig deeper and search for answers to compelling questions. The ability to identify essential ideas, and salient information is a prerequisite to developing insight. Determining importance in fiction and other narrative genre often means inferring the big ideas and themes in the story. About 80% of the reading we do outside of school is nonfiction.
Research actually shows that the amount of nonfiction adults read is 98%. Young people out of school have to read for information. Most either don't read for enjoyment due to time constraints, lack of ability, non-interest...others have to read because of their jobs.

Distilling the Essence of Nonfiction Text
Overview/aka/Skimming and Scanning
*Activate prior knowledge
*Noting characteristics of text length and structure
*Determining what to read and in what order
*Determining what to pay careful attention to
*Determining what to ignore
*Deciding to quit because the text contains no relevant information
*Deciding if the text is worth a close reading or just a skimming

The ability to overview eliminates the need for students to read everything when searching for specific information.
This represents an early entry in the effort to determine importance. Teachers need to model all aspects of overviewing in their own reading and research process.

Highlighting
Teachers need to provide explicit instruction in each of these points
*Look carefully at the first and last line of each paragraph.
*Highlight only necessary words and phrases not the entire sentence.
*Jot notes in the margin or on a sticky note to paraphrase the information...merge your thinking with it...and better remember it.
*Don't get thrown off due to the interesting information
*Note signal words:surprisingly, importantly, on the other hand, before, after, next, finally, then, but, however, as opposed to, likewise, consequently, in conclusion, and in sum.
*Pay attention to the vast array of nonfiction features that signal importance.
*Pay attention to information that surprises you. It can be a signal that you are learning something new.
*Watch nonfiction features and be sure to read them
*One third of a paragraph is a good measure for highlighting
I don't remember any teacher that I ever had teaching me how to highlight. I do remember my friends in college highlighting every single sentence in the chapter and ending up with the sea of yellow that Steph spoke of. I wondered how highlighting every single sentence in the chapter was going to help them remember the information at midterm and final time. Their highlighting of the text seemed to be more of a way to help them stay focused while reading the text rather than a tool to remember what they had read. Maybe if they had stopped, thought about what they had read, and made notes in the margin, midterm and final time would have resulted in less cramming time needed for the test. This should be a focus lesson for all content area teachers to teach at the beginning of the school year.

Features that Signal Importance This should be an anchor chart used throughout the year for each classroom, second grade up. (Barb) Remind me to do this at the beginning of the year next year! I think I will make an anchor chart like this over the summer and have it ready to go at the beginning of the year. Donna)
*When a word is italicized, text begins with "Most important", or a paragraph begins with a boldface heading...take notice.
*A photograph or caption sometimes synthesizes the most important information on the page, rendering a complete reading of the text unnecessary. Titles, headings, framed text, and captions help readers sort important information from less important details. Nonfiction text structure helps to scaffold the reader's understanding.
*Fonts and effects should be viewed as "red flags"...Important....Read carefully! Make a chart for your classroom of examples of different fonts and effects in titles, headings, boldface print, color print, italics, bullets, captions, and labels for students to see every day. Then when they see it on a standardized test, they will be able to make the connection that what they are reading in the text with these special fonts and effects is important and they should read it carefully.
*Signal words need to be taught, i.e., , for example, for instance, in fact, in conclusion, most important, but, therefore, on the other hand, and such as. Make a chart titled Signal Word/Purpose. Standardized tests are full of these signal words and students need to be aware of their significance. Familiarity may boost scores.
*Illustrations and photographs play a prominent role in nonfiction to enhance reading comprehension. They carry students into a deeper meaning.
Graphics inform readers of important information.
*Text organizers are crucial for further research. Concepts such as index, preface, table of contents, glossary and appendix are new experiences for many students. How can students begin to learn until they know text features? Again, this needs to be exposed to students beginning in first grade and up...with information mastered no later than third grade. (Barb) Do you remember when we taught this this year, Barb, and then we revisited it later? I was surprised at how much difficulty they had with this. (Donna)
*Text structures include cause and effect, problem and solution, question and answer, comparison and contrast and description and sequence. If students know what to look for in terms of text structure, meaning comes more easily. I would have liked to have seen more information on how to teach these nonfiction features in her text.


Strategy Lessons: Determining Importance

• Purpose: Real world nonfiction is to convey factual information, important ideas, and key concepts.

1. Building Background Knowledge of Nonfiction Features

• Purpose: Building background information of nonfiction features by creating books that illustrate these.

Resources: Hungry, Hungry Sharks by Joanne Cole, photographs from home or school, 8"X11" booklets containing six blank pages folded in half and stapled.

• Responses: A different nonfiction feature on each page such as captions; comparisons; a two column class chart headed Features/Purposes, which serves as a record for all of the kids.

I really can use this in my 1st grade room. We can definately make some of these comparison features part of our daily work when doing some of the a-z nonfiction books. We have been studying plants and water lately. We could even start the comparisons when doing big books and use a big chart to record them earlier in the year. I think we could also have the kids make up captions for student of the day or week as an introduction to this feature earlier in the year and then carry it over into our nonfictionbooks. I think we could use a chart and allow everyone to add some of the same characteristics to it when we study presidents, early settlers, etc. In otherwords, do it as a larger group and than work to individual basis.
2. Becoming Familiar with the Characteristics of Nonfiction Trade Books

• Purpose: Acquiring information; asking questions and designing pages based on authentic pages of nonfiction trade books.

Choose a topic. Record what you already know about the topic. Record what questions you have about your topic. Do your inquiry. List 5 new facts you have learned.

• Resources: Nonfiction trade books, students' own nonfiction features books, paper and markers
• Responses: Prior knowledge form; question form; 11"x17" paper for page design

3. Determining What's Important When Writing Information

• Purpose: Becoming a specialist on a favorite topic, choosing what is important to include in a piece of writing, and writing informational teaching books.
• Resources: Nonfiction trade books, magazines and former students' work; 8"x11" construction paper booklets containing about twelve pages folded and stapled.
• Responses: Teaching books that replicate authentic nonfiction trade books, features and all.

Have students select three topics in which they are specialists...they care a lot about the topic; is passionate about it; knows a lot about the topic and wants to teach someone about the topic.

Select what you want the reader to know...what information will best help the reader understand the topic? Have students use the top half of their page for illustrations and the lower half for writing. By penciling in the topic for each page, this served as a preamble to later paragraphing and text. Other text features such as captions, insets, etc. help with labeling of explicit information that needs to be shared or repeated for emphasis. Sharing afterwards allows bonding for community building, as well as exposure to many different backgrounds. Because students shared information they believed important, their classmates learned essential content in a variety of areas.

4. Making Students Aware of Primary Sources

• Purpose: To notice and learn from primary sources
• Resources: The Journey That Saved Curious George, The True Wartime Escape of Margaret and H.A. Rey by Louise Borden
• Response: Sticky Notes

Illustrations, photos and letters to editors, photographs, diary entries, original manuscript pages, telegrams, passports and identity cards...all of these help the reader with a sense of history, that period of time comes alive and informs the reader of the content. This is what primary sources can do for your students. Students can examine these documents, make interpretations and share them with each other.

5. Coding Important Information on Unfamiliar as Well as Familiar Topics.

• Purpose: Noticing and selecting new information
• Resources: The picture book, The Unhuggables, published buy the National Wildlife Federation and a variety of animal books for independent practice
• Responses: Sticky notes coded with L for learned something new about a familiar topic or * for important information about an unfamiliar topic

When kids are reading about topics they know a great deal about, we encourage them to notice when they've learned something new and code the text with L for learned. When kids read about an unfamiliar topic, coding the text with L is useless because the text would likely disappear under a sea of Ls. We instead encourage readers to use an asterisk (*) as a universal code of importance. We suggest that they use the same criterion for coding with (*) as they use to highlight important text.

6. Finding Important Information Rather than Just One Main Idea

• Purpose: Understanding that there are often several important ideas in a piece of text rather than a single main idea.
• Responses: Three sticky notes, each one coded (*) to mark three important ideas in the text

Ask students to place a sticky note at three different points in the text that t deem important. We model this too and when we come back together to discuss the reading, each child and teacher shares what he or she has determined to be important in the text. Naturally, not all are in agreement and that is the point. We ask kids to defend their stance, cite evidence, and explain their thinking behind their decision. This contributes to our students' capacity to speak out about what they think, and it reminds them that text includes many important concepts and issues, not just a single main idea.

7. Important to Whom?

• Purpose: To understand that there may be a difference between what the reader thinks is the most important and what the writer's big idea is thought to be
• Responses: Response Notebooks

After reading, ask students to write down something they learned that they think is important to remember. Then drawing a line, ask them to write down what they think the author most wanted them to learn. We have found that this is the most effective way of getting students to think about what the author most wanted them to learn from the article. We want kids to know that nothing matters more than their thinking when they read, and giving them an opportunity to consider what they think is most important serves that goal. This was an "Ah, ha!" for me. What a wonderful way to teach students to pick out the main idea. Teach them first and foremost your thinking is the most important. Then teach them to look for what the author was trying to say. It's also important to have the reader know that the author's purpose in writing is the reader's responsibility and readers need to pick up on that. When testing students must know on standardized tests, it's the author's main idea that is important. We have found that once our kids know and realize this, they do even better on tests because they can distinguish between their notion of what's most important and the writer's big ideas.

8. Sifting the Topic from the Details

• Purpose: Discriminating between key topics and supporting details.
• Responses: Two column note form headed Topic/Details; three column note form headed Topic/Details/Response

Using nonfiction works great due to the text features, such as subheadings which represents differing topics. Usually the topics are in the first two sentences of a paragraph. Details normally follow. After modeling, students then work independently on this. Gradually releasing responsibility, the third column can be added for responses. Teacher's note: The more space allowed for responses, the deeper and longer students will write. In the student's writing notebooks, make a 2 column chart called Topic and Details. Leave the opposite page entirely for a response. This encourages students to write more about their thinking and feelings. When I first begin teaching this, I will give the students the topics. Then after I have modeled it a few times, work with them helping them to come up with the topics, and then finally letting them come up with the topics on their own. Coming up with the topics is not an easy task for students to do. Without the modeling, many students will list a detail they find interesting as the topic rather than the "big idea."

9. Reading Opposing Perspectives to Form an Opinion

• Purpose: Reading persuasive material carefully to make an informed judgment
• Responses: Group discussion, three column note form headed: Evidence For/Evidence Against/Personal Opinion

Much text adults encounter is written with a slant. Readers must be trained to recognize persuasive writing and exercise judgment as they read it. Elementary school is not too soon to start.

10. NEW: Using FQR Think Sheets to Understand Information

• Purpose: Determining importance, asking questions, and responding to historical fiction
• Resources: picture books related to Civil War Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky by Beth Ringgold; Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter; Nettie's Trip South by Ann Turner; Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson
• Responses: Three column note for headed Facts/Questions/Response

These books provoke thinking about historical issues and ideas. Students need to think more carefully about the information and record significant facts and ideas. Using a two column note form, would elicit important information, and provide opportunities for questions, However, the third column would encourage students to write their reactions, opinions and feelings about the books. Modeling for students how to think and record their data, teachers then allowed students to pair up and read while recording after their reading. The degree of in depth thinking proved to be fantastic, relevant, thought provoking and committed to memory. The form further allowed students to investigate and find answers to their lingering questions.
Barb and I actually did this lesson at the beginning of March with Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky. Our third graders had some of the same questions as the fifth grader in the text.

11. Reasoning Through a Piece of Historical Fiction to Determine Importance

• Purpose: Using a guided discussion to understand important information
• Resources: Bull Run by Paul Fleischman
• Responses: A guided discussion between the teacher and five members of a book club

Historical fiction creates a clear context for different times, places and people. There is no better way to learn about other times and places than carefully researched, well written historical fiction. Portraying human experiences from the past in realistic, engaging narratives enables students to understand perspectives and ideas that would be difficult if they were first encountered in summary form in history textbooks. Nothing helps kids think through information more than talking about it. When students read and discuss historical fiction, they construct interpretations based on the words and ideas in the text. More challenging historical fiction requires students to proceed slowly and carefully, taking time to reason through new ideas and information to build their knowledge about a particular period of time. All I can think of to say is , "Amen."


Determining Importance
Look for evidence that:
1. Students gain important information from text and visual features.
2. Students sift and sort the important information from the details and merge their thinking with it. Asking questions and responding allows more time for deeper thinking.
3. Students learn to make a distinction between what they think is most important and what the author most wants them to take away from the reading.
4. Students use text evidence to form opinions and understand big ideas and issues.

Suggestions for Differentiation/Summary (for remembering)
Text coding allow kids to leave tracks of their thinking that will remind them of what they want to remember.
Use of "?. !. *. and stars" can all be indications of what's important and what kids think about it.
Highlighting and underlining alone are not enough.
Jot a note, sketch a picture next to important information to better learn, understand and remember .
Bracket paragraphs and sections then paraphrase what students learned.
For English learners, put what you've learned into your language using your words...you're more likely to understand.




















STRATEGIES THAT WORK, 2nd Edition
by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis
Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement
Stenhouse Publishers, Portland, Maine
Part I
THE FOUNDATION OF MEANING, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

I. Chapter 1: Reading is Thinking


Please add your comments and put your name in parentheses after your comments. All information is taken from the text, Strategies that Work, 2nd ed. Information is that of the authors unless otherwise noted.
I thought about using Blueberries for Sal and my experiences in the east picking berries in the summer with my family. I thought this would be a good text to self example that I could use with the children. We used to pick berries in the woods and then put them in large miracle whip sized jars. Next these went in our little red wagons and off we went to the neighbors to sell our blackberries and raspberries. Money we earned went into family vacation money. Now I can talk to the kids about connections I have with the characters in Blueberries for Sal. Have you thought of other books you could use? (Janice)


I thought it was interesting that earlier research on children and comprehension was mainly done on struggling readers. Then they switched to studying the higher achievers and how they comprehended. Really surprising it took us that long to switch to studying the higher achievers and sure great it finaly happened. (Janice)



According to Durkin, when teachers used basals and gave students worksheets to answer it was suggested that they were assessing comprehension and not teaching it. I had already come to this conclusion on my own before reading this book. Comprehension must be more than literal story understanding. (Donna)
Another thought: Additional/different prompts allow students to enrich, or delve deeper into their own thinking/reflecting to share perspectives that perhaps I hadn't considered. (Barb)
A basal is so limiting in its contents. You can not expect the selection to meet the interests of all students. This leads to lack of comprehension due to lack of interest. (Will Rules)
Basals are prescribed word by word (scripts) so the teacher who is leading the lesson doesn't have to think...only read what the publishing company wants the teacher to say. Students must find this extremely boring...just think...no connections, questions, predicting.... (Barb)
I remember when it became "best practice" to teach process and not worry so much about the content. The author of this book suggests that this is a smokescreen and I agree. How can you teach only process? You can't think about nothing. Shouldn't we focus on both? What are your thoughts? (Donna)
Wouldn't process simply be opinions and not research based? You can teach people to imitate your style of processing...but not processing with insightfulness...personalized thinking....reflective, thoughtful, provocative heart and soul. Any way why would we not want to teach content? Isn't that what we are trying to do...educate students...this goes hand in hand...not isolated disjointed parts of learning.(Barb)


Proficient readers

• make connections
• ask questions
• draw inferences
• distinguish important from less-important ideas in the text
• synthesize information
• monitor their understanding and repair faulty comprehension
• visualize

Barb, what did you say you called good readers the other day at one of our meetings? (Donna)
I like the term "strong" readers...those readers who know when something is broken and can fix it. "Good" seems such a complacent, generic term anymore. (Barb)


P21: "Mentioning" and explicit instruction. I sometimes wonder if this approach still happens in teaching of communication arts. We talk about a concept, then have the mis-belief that the skill, concept or strategy has been taught. This is where processing, taking the time, modeling, modeling, modeling comes in. Practicing with students, as a whole and individually, then reflecting upon their practice before having students use independent rehearsals for assessment. We simply can't assume something is being taught anymore. If students can't explain or demonstrate it...I wont' take it for granted that they know or have the basis from which to proceed. (Barb)


There's so much more about comprehension than simply being able to recall or retelling the information and paraphrasing it. Synthesizing happens when we merge the information that we are reading with our thinking and shape it into our own thought. This leads the reader to form a new opinion or gain new insight into a topic. Would anyone like to offer discussion on how we can tell a student has gained new insight into a topic? (Donna)
Isn't that when others bring new ideas that even we had not considered? Using inferences, background, experiential times and deriving new? (Barb) I know Donna has one student in particular who is very attuned to this already at his young age...he's awesome. Surprises me. (Barb)

Comprehension Strategies (Donna)

• Activating and connecting to background knowledge
• Asking questions
• Making inferences
• Visualizing
• Determining importance in text
• Summarizing and synthesizing information

Gradual Release of Responsibility (Donna)

• Model the strategy
• Guide practice in using the strategy in large/small groups or pairs
• Provide time to practice these strategies while reading independently

Items for mini-lessons: (Donna)

• Good readers write about things they know and care about. Good readers make connections between the text that they are reading and their own lives. Model how to make a connection. Put T-S on a sticky note to signify text-to-self and say out loud what you are thinking. Jot that thinking down on the sticky note and put it on the page. Let it stick out of the book. When we connect our past experiences to new information, we are more apt to engage in the reading as well as understand it.
• Ask your students to define reading. Keep a chart in your room for all to see. Watch the nature of their answers evolve as the year progresses.
• Make sure readers have a general understanding of the different genres of text to help them comprehend more completely.
• Give readers additional background information before reading a text with information that they have had no experiences with to improve comprehension.
• Make sure students ask questions before, during, and after reading the text. Celebrate their questions and help facilitate their answers.
• Have students share the movies going on in their heads as they read fiction to improve comprehension.
• Interesting...I've had several professors and associates who are extremely intelligent...but don't visualize while reading. Makes me wonder how many people don't hear the word as they read. (Barb)
• Teach readers how to determine what is important in nonfiction text because that is what they need to remember.
• Let your students know all readers "space out." That does not mean they are a poor reader. Instruct your students to go back and reread when they do that.

II. Chapter 2: Reading is Strategic

Strategic reading refers to thinking about reading in ways that enhance learning and understanding. Readers have to learn that reading is an interactive process involving decoding words and constructing meaning. We need to teach readers to be strategic readers as well as proficient decoders. (Donna)

What the research says: (Donna)

• Explicit comprehension instruction improves students' understanding of the texts they read in school.
• The instruction not only teaches them how to use these strategies, but improves their general comprehension as well.
• Transactional strategy instruction is recommended. Teach students a repertoire of strategies that they may use when they read.

Four Kinds Of Learners/Readers by Perkins and Swartz: (Donna)

• Tacit-lack awareness of they think when they read.
• Aware-realize when meaning has broken down or confusion has set in, but may not have sufficient strategies to fix the problem.
• Strategic-use thinking and comprehension strategies as tools to enhance understanding and acquire knowledge. They are able to monitor and repair meaning when it is disrupted.
• Reflective-strategic readers who reflect on their thinking and ponder and revise their use of strategies.

All teachers in a building should decide as a group what language they are going to use when they teach comprehension strategies. Are you going to say background knowledge, prior knowledge or schema? I prefer background knowledge because I agree with the author that we want students to use language that is understandable outside of school. (Donna)

Items for mini-lessons: (Donna)

• For readers who lose meaning because they are struggling to decode a word on a page, tell the reader to stop when they get to the end of the page and think about the meaning. I often tell my readers, "Now that you have decoded that word, let's go back and reread the sentence fluently with that word in it that you have decoded." This helps to teach the reader that getting meaning from print is always the key.
• Teach students a repertoire of strategies to use. Use a transactional strategy approach. I'd like to comment on that. When my daughter was in elementary school, she just happened to have a first year teacher who only happened to know one good reading strategy. She had my daughter's class use that strategy every day of the year. No other strategies were taught. I can't even begin to tell you what a chore this became for my daughter to do the same thing every time she read a book for class. By the end of year, it was close to agony for both of us as I watched her ignore all the other ways to gain meaning from print and only be allowed to use this one strategy in class. The moral of the story-teach a repertoire of strategies. The reason for this comment is to let teachers see from the point of view of the student what teaching only one reading strategy does to a student's love of reading. I've had parents and a few teachers still promote "sounding out" as their priority strategy...I must say I'm quick to ask them to not do that. Research shows us that this is the least proven successful strategy one can use. English is not such a regular language that we can depend on one strategy to fix it all. (Barb) When I taught students with learning disabilities "sounding out" was continually the only strategy that they used. It caused them to be word-by-word readers. The word-by-word reading lead to a loss in comprehension. This loss in comprehension led to a loss of understanding and meaning as to what was going on in the story. (Donna)
• Block, et.al, suggest "process-based" comprehension instruction where students are taught to articulate the processes they used to make meaning. This is a metacognitive approach to strategy instruction.
• Have students read as much as possible every day. Readers get better at reading by reading. Build in an independent reading block into your schedule every day.
• It is not enough to just teach comprehension strategies. Readers must also learn when, why and how to use them.
• Teach readers to become aware of their thinking as they read; monitor their understanding; listen to their inner voice to make sense of the text; notice when their thinking strays from the text; notice when meaning breaks down; and know when, why and how to apply comprehensions strategies to maintain and further understanding.
• Teach readers to monitor their comprehension by leaving tracks of their thinking through sticky notes, notes in the margin or notes in their journals.

I wish we could get kids to become more metacognitive about their reading so that when they're not engaged, they know it and how to fix it. My early second graders, those who aren't moving and accelerating as fast as I believe they can are in the tacit range and then my higher achieving second graders seem to fit into the 'aware' learners...but not all of them. I gave a Rigby benchmark today to a second grader for Level 28 and she miscued I abandoned the assessment and talked to her about how she couldn't possibly be understanding the story because of the miscues. As a reader, she is slow, methodical, and tries to be precise, but this time she really blew it by only looking at the first few letters of the word...she didn't seem developmentally ready to know when her mistakes impacted the meaning, even though I believed she was ready. I guess it's possible she could have retold and answered questions, but I can't see how she could have done well. Isn't it possible to go from one kind of learner to another and regress due to the content and background? I suspect it is. I've had it happen when I read subject matter I am not interested in, and don't have any background in, such as electricity. (Barb)
I believe that is especially true when reading nonfiction content material. I noticed this on the DRA when students could read the fictional pieces easily, but not the nonfiction pieces because they had no prior knowledge of the content being discussed in the story. (Donna)

III. Chapter 3
Effective Comprehension Instruction: Teaching, Tone and Assessment

A very important comment the author makes on p31 is. . . "Strategy instruction is all about teaching the reader not merely the reading." Basal instruction would seem to me to be an approach that merely teaches reading and not the reader. (Donna) Any comments?
I like the basals for the structure (controlled vocabulary) for some of my kids. As long as we are also using big books and some of the smaller levelled books.I think a combination of many types of litterature works too. I think the big books, levelled books and little mini type books have lots more excitement in them and we need this too.

Modeling, modeling, modeling...once, twice, most times, three times is not enough. Due to lack of explicit instruction and time to practice, modeling is the one thing we fail to do enough times to make a significant difference in the learning for students. We all do it, we begin, and find time constraints...we continue the next day and again the time creeps into our schedule and we cut corners. As teachers, we get frustrated when students continue to make the same mistakes, and then we do the same thing during instruction time. (Steph, p31)
This would also seem to be an important teaching strategy for math teachers. So many math teachers model once and never model again expecting students to catch on. I do believe this is why so many students have trouble with college algebra even though they have had 4 years of math in high school. I don't think teachers realize the impact modeling has for many students. We must encourage all of our teachers in all subject areas to do more modeling. (Donna)
This is something I have been trying to improve on this year. I am often surprised that my students do not know how to do something after I explain it to them. I believe that the root of my problem lies in thinking about students from the year before, and thinking that: "Hey they knew how to do it, why don't you?" (Will)
I've noticed that the more modeling I do of games in math or buddy reading during our Guided Reading time, the better off the students are in doing what I want done. There seems to be less arguing over whose holding the books, taking turns in the math games and so on. Each year I seem to add more and more on certain directions. Live and learn, huh?.
I think half of our issues deal with focus and having students' attention and listening. Also, they have to be willing to accept our words as instruction and not criticism. Students have to be open minded and ready to hear what we have to share. So much of the time teachers talk without saying why it's important. I guess we consider anything we say to be of importance to the kids. People have a difficult time making the distinction at many ages. (Barb)
Sometimes we refer to our "good listening" poster in the room during lessons and go through each prompt on it. It helps refocus kids during lessons and I think some kids have never been taught what a good listener looks like. You know, the eyes on speaker, hands still, etc.
Effective Comprehension Instruction
means...showing students HOW to construct meaning...not merely reading
My lack of understanding of how I read makes the HOW part a difficult process. In reading this book and discussing it here I hope to gain better understanding of the process of comprehension. (Will)
To do a think aloud, you have to be very honest about yourself...you disclose personal experiences, connections, how you make those connections and all this evolves as you S-L-O-W down your thinking and put in perspective with the age group you are trying to help. You have to be able to speak their language and simplify your understanding of processing.
Someone once compared teaching reading to rocket science...perhaps.(Barb)
Necessary tools:
*Teach with the end in mind.
*Plan instruction that is responsive to individual needs of students.
*Model your own comprehension strategies over time.
*Remind students the purpose for using a strategy is to construction meaning and engage in text.
*Articulate HOW thinking helps readers better understand what they read.
*View strategies as a means to an end with a goal of building a repertoire of thinking strategies.
*Model their oral, written and artistic responses to the text.
*Gradually release responsibility for using strategies to students, always moving them toward independent reading and thinking.
*Provide opportunities for gudied and independent practice.
*Show students how comprehension strategies apply in a variety of texts, genres and contexts.
*Help students recognize how strategies intersect and work in conjunction with one another.
*Build in large amounts of time for actual reading by students.
*Allow students to talk to each other about their reading.
I use the cooperative learning strategy called "think, pair, share." I've found this to be very helpful in allowing students to think about their reading and gain meaning from what they have read. (Donna)
It's nice to see how students talk and evolve through this method. Sharing different perspectives enlightens students and exposes others to possibilities.
*Conference and observe student responses through drawing and writing.
I wish there was more modeling of how to do this in college classes for pre-service teachers. (Donna)
Don't you know that some professors have been removed from 'today's classrooms' so long ago, that all the know is what they experienced so many years ago. We all know that times have changed...even in the 16 year I've been doing this.
*Keep records of observations and conferences to assess and inform instruction.
*Use student work and talk about instruction assessment, guide future instruction and evaluate student performance.


GRADUAL RELEASE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Showing them HOW and Giving Them Time To Practice

• Teacher Modeling - explain the strategy, model it, and think aloud when reading to show thinking and strategy use. Think aloud: Often difficult to do because you have to realize what you are thinking. Being aware of your own thinking process is something you have to practice. For so long you have just read for entertainment or for understanding that you have not concentrated on what tools you are using to comprehend what you are reading. (Will) This is the quality of a good teacher I believe...but it takes times, and much training, practice and modeling...I think of it being intuitive also. (Barb)
• Guided Practice - practice the strategy together in a shared-reading context and construct meaning through discussion. Teacher offers lots of support to students at this level.
• Collaborative Practice - students share thinking during paired reading or small group conversation time. Teacher moves from group to group providing assistance.
• Independent Practice - students practice strategy on their own and receive regular feedback from teacher and other students.
• Application of the Strategy in Authentic Reading Situations (Donna)

Strategy Instruction: A Means to an End
Introduce the strategies one at a time, but quickly move on to introduce additional strategies so students build a repertoire of strategies. When you first model a new strategy, make sure you explain and demonstrate how you use it to better understand what you read. Then give students time to practice it with other students and then on their own. Try to introduce all of the comprehension strategies within a reasonably short time period and then revisit them throughout the school year. There is no one sequence for teaching the strategies. Take your cue for teaching them based on your students' needs. If students come to your grade level proficient in using a strategy, focus on teaching the ones they are not familiar with. (Donna)
In third grade we have a yearly plan for teaching the strategies. We teach one a month. Based on this section of the book we may need to rethink that. What about those 'teachable' moments that arise? Don't you believe that although you teach one strategy per month, you need to continue reteaching/modeling/expecting those same strategies so that they become skills and occur automatically, without having think about doing it.(Barb)
I think our plan was that if we hadn't taught that particular strategy by that month to make sure we taught it that month to insure that all strategies would be taught in one year. I pretty much let the literature I use for Guided Reading dictate the comprehension strategy to be taught. Certain books just lend themselves very well to certain comprehension strategies. (Donna)

Setting the Tone: Building a Literate Community

• Foster passion and curiosity.
• Value collaborative learning and thinking.
• Provide large blocks of time for reading and writing. A student's reading volume is a strong indicator of his reading achievement. Barb, at the conference you went to, how much reading did you say a student had to do in order to catch up if he was behind? I think we are on track with setting reading counts goals and encouraging students to read as much as they can during the day. (Donna)
• Explicit Instruction - share your thinking and model the process you went through to use the strategy.
• Language matters - use respectful language.
• Authentic response - give students an opportunity to talk, write, and draw in response to their reading.
• Responsive teaching and Differentiated Instruction
• Text matters - include texts of every conceivable genre, style, form and topic.
• Room arrangement matters - use tables or desks in clusters to encourage collaboration I am quite fond of this concept. I recently rearranged my room to foster a better learning environment. (Will) Yes, your room looks great now. I miss the clusters of 4 desks that I used to have. (Donna)
  
• Accessible resources This has always been a problem in my room. Displaying books is very difficult. I have been investigating ways to better display them so students can see what the books are. One of my solutions was string with metal clips to hold books tied into it. Then hang the string from the ceiling. I have also constructed some shelves out of cardboard (well almost done) that help to display these larger books. (Will)
• I once saw guttering (residential) used beneath the chalktray and this worked to display many books, while not interferring with the ability to use the dry erase or chalkboard. (Could be expensive though...I'm not sure).
  

Teaching Comprehension in the Reading Workshop
Teacher models a whole-group reading strategy lesson. Students are given time to read and practice strategy in pairs, small groups, or independently. Teacher moves about the room providing instruction as necessary. Ends with whole group coming together to share their learning. The reading workshop emphasizes choice in book selection. "Managed choice" is where teachers offer several books from which students can choose from. (Donna)
Books, books books.....The never ending conundrum. At least in an eMINTS classroom we are able to access many more resources than a traditional classroom. I have many links to online magazines, I need to add some for newspapers for kids though. Do you have author's websites and blogs? (Barb)

Assessing Comprehension: Teaching with the End in Mind
(Donna)
1. Tells us about our student's learning and progress.
2. Tells us about our past instruction.
3. Tells us about what future instruction is needed.

Finding out What Students are Thinking
Have students respond to text rather than answer literal questions at the end of a chapter. Our goal is to have students internalize the comprehension strategies to promote understanding. Listen to your students, read their work, confer with them, listen in on their conversations, observe their behavior and expressions, chart their responses, keep anecdotal records, record their comments and questions, and conduct an assessment interview to determine if your students are understanding what they are reading. See Appendix D for an example. (Donna)
My weakest aspect! Having discussions with students about their reading is not my strong suit. I often find it difficult to decipher what they are having problems with and how to fix it. I have found that once I build rapport with students, they can tell me what their weaknesses are and I can recommend ways to help. Sometimes I have to question them and dig deeper to know exactly what they need. But usually the kids are pretty honest about it. (Barb)

What about Grades? Moving from Assessment to Evaluation
(Donna) Use constructed and open-ended responses, sticky notes, two- and three-column think sheets, short and longer summary responses, notes from discussions, thoughtful illustrations, journal and notebook entries.

IV. Chapter 4
Tools for Active Literacy: The Nuts and Bolts of Comprehension Instruction

Active literacy means the students are doing the work. They are reading extensively, talking about their learning, writing about their learning, doing research, conducting investigations, and sharing their thinking with others. Sounds a lot like the inquiry-based learning students do in an eMINTS classroom. Go eMINTS!!!!!! (Donna)
I especially liked the part that said, "And learners learn more by doing the work." I know that applies in my case. When I scribble alongside what I'm reading, I make connections and think about 'special' students who could use the strategy, or apply to what I'm reading. I also think students see a personal, or real us when we share stories about our learning and our lives.
"And learners learn more by doing the work." Something I support extensively in my classroom. I think there is a fine line here, sometimes I believe my students are too independent. This was one of my goals that I set for myself last year. Give them enough instruction so that they can do the work. (Will)
I think using moodle (thanks to your help, Will) will help me accomplish this goal in my classroom. (Donna)

The Importance of Language
In order to stimulate thinking, teachers should ask these kinds of open-ended questions:

• Why do you think that?
• What makes you say that?
• How did you come up with that?
• Can you tell me more?

Research has shown that the most effective instruction is conversational rather than didactic in nature. (Allington and Johnston, 2002) (Donna)

Options for Explicit Instruction - Showing Kids How

• Think aloud as you read a picture book and ask students to notice what you are doing as a reader. I like this too. Tell them what you're going to do; ask them to watch and note and do it; then ask them what they saw you do. (Leaving tracks of our thinking. Done visually! With student verbal feedback. Great! Steph is quoted as saying, "our role is to teach them to listen to what everyone has to say and build on each other's thinking." (Both my personal and professional opinion: Art of conversation needs to be taught more and more.) We call it character ed...Is it working? Our character ed does not teach this. I think the way we are doing character ed is explaining what character is, but leaves out the process of having students practice good character. (Amen! Thus, the Pay It Forward practice) Barb
• We need to definitely teach active listening skills. Students seem to be getting worse at listening in the classroom. (Donna)
• Ask your students to watch carefully as you model your thinking and notice what you do as a reader. Then ask your students to share what they noticed you doing.
• Share not only your thoughts about the text you are reading, but how you get yourself back when your attention to the text falters.
• Jot down your thoughts on sticky notes to leave tracks of your thinking.
• Share how you connect to your background knowledge and merge it with new information.
• Demonstrate how to ask a question while reading and how it can lead to other questions or another line of thinking.
• Share how we infer the meaning of unfamiliar words and concepts using context.
• Show how we infer themes in fiction. Barb, I'd like to try this in class. Instead of asking what the theme is, let's model how we came to decide what the theme was in the book. Let's model our thinking for the class this week. What do you think? (Donna) I enjoy listening to the kids evolve by using an open forum, where language takes over and it's up close and personal...it's possibly a long and drawn out affair, but eventually, they lead themselves. I don't know that they honestly get it...perhaps one or two do, but we need to get every kid in there on the band wagon, so they can rationalize their thinking to get to this point. I'm up to trying this...let's see if they can blurt out what we're doing. Did we come close last Friday??? THAT WAS FABULOUS! They honestly have it... Magnificent!
• Show how you use illustrations, photos, and features to draw conclusions in nonfiction text.
• Verbalize confusing points and model fix-up strategies such as rereading and reading on to clarify confusing points in the text.
• Model how you pick out the information that you need to remember when confronted with a lot of details in the text.
• Read aloud to your students every day for the sheer joy of it in all genres and content areas. Jim Trelease says, "brings us closest to the human heart.". Besides entertaining, or informing, it reassures, explains, arouses, and inspires kids. Isn't that what we are here for?

Steps for Interactive Reading Aloud Activate Background Knowledge - Ask students to turn and talk to their
partner about what they already know about the topic. Share what you
learned with the class.
Modeling - Read through the text and model your thinking. Stop and record
your thinking on sticky notes, a chart, a think sheet, or a journal. Stop and
ask students to share what they saw you do as a reader. Record what they
say on a chart.
Guided Practice - After modeling, read a bit more and encourage
students to turn to their partner and share their thinking and jot down a note
or two. Stop frequently to give them practice doing this.
Sharing Thinking - Bring group back together and discuss how using this
strategy helped you understand the text.
Is this something done for every read aloud? Or is this for introduction of a new text for guided reading? I really like this idea. I often loose students when I am doing a read aloud, this feels like it would keep them more engaged.(Will)
I don't think I would use it for every read aloud. I would just use it when beginning to teach think aloud strategies. (Donna)

• Lifting Text - Lift a piece of text and make a transparency of it, distribute it to the class, and place it on the overhead projector. Have students sit on floor around projector. Stop to show how to use the strategy and invite students to do the same on their paper. Reason through the text together. When using a Big Book, use sticky notes on the page. This is something I could incorporate in my class. With my website I can place the lifted text and get the responses right there. This doesn't allow for the gathering around the projector though.
• It could...all you need to do is call them back together, refocus and ask what was learned and what would benefit others.
  
• Guided Discussion: Developing a Line of Thinking - Begin discussion by sharing some information from a text or a question a student has. Ask students to turn and talk to each other for a minute or two about the topic. Share responses. Teach students to listen to each other and build on each other's thinking. Explicitly teach them to listen and speak to previous comments.
• Anchor Lessons and Anchor Charts - Identify and choose your most effective mini-lessons as anchors for students to remember what they have learned. Co-construct anchor charts with your students so you can refer back to it to remember the process of using that comprehension strategy.

1. Strategy Charts - Chart that records the students' comments as well as the points you wanted to teach.
2. Content Charts - Records the important information readers learned while reading.
3. Genre Charts - Co-construct a chart for all to see about the particular aspects of a genre as you are reading it.

• Rereading for Deeper Meaning - Rereading a text allows students to focus on the bigger ideas in the story and ask deeper questions. I've done questioning strategy lessons on the second day of reading the text rather than the first so students can ask deeper questions. I'm always telling my students to go deeper into the meaning of the text to ask better questions and understand the text better. (Donna)
• Sharing our Own Literacy - Teachers should model their own reading processes with the adult texts they read with their class. They should model how they ask questions, reread for meaning, and how they stay focused on a topic that is not particularly interesting to them.

Beyond Dioramas: Responding to Reading
The two most common forms of response are oral and written, but don't neglect the other types of responses such as artistic and musical. It is amazing how much you can learn about a student's understanding of a text through his/her drawing of the text. (Donna) Accessing multiple intelligences...so we can reach all kids.
My students often use paint to draw some of their responses to a writing prompt. This could apply here also. There are so many possibilities for this. One is http://www.mindomo.com/ This is an online mind mapping tool. There is also Inspiration for this kind of activity. It would be nice to brainstorm some of these ideas and then make them into a list for students to choose from.

Talking About Reading
Purposeful talk - conversations that involve discussions about what you are reading and learning. There is no better way to understand what we read than simply to talk about it. (Hence the reason for this book study group. Donna)
Lucy Calkin believes this is the best way to see if our kids are tuned in...or bored Also, according to Allington and Johnston, high achieving classrooms spent signficant amounts of time with 'purposeful talk" through engaged disucssions about their reading and learning. They continue with student to student talking the most underrepresented teaching and learning practice. As long as kids know what we expect of them as they talk and listen, then we can accomplish this. I even liked the small informal pairs, or groups of no more than 4 for 'pair and share'.
Structures that Encourage Purposeful Talk

• Turn and Talk - During whole group instruction, stop every so often and ask students to turn and talk to the peer sitting next to them to help them process the information they are learning, enhance learning, and maximize engagement. What a great strategy this is for students who never raise their hand in class. This gives them the opportunity to rehearse their answers with a peer and hopefully gain more confidence to share it with the class. (Donna)
• Paired Reading - This should not be about pairing more and less developed readers together. Partners should be changed frequently so that all students get to know each other as readers. Teach the listener has the most important job. He/she needs to pay attention, think about, and respond to what their partner is reading.
• Jigsaw Discussions - Choose sections of the text that can stand alone without benefit of the previous sections. Students assume responsibility for reading a small amount of text and teaching it to the rest of the class.
• Book Clubs and Literature Circles - Students read the same text and meet together to respond to and discuss the text. Encourage participants to express their opinions, raise questions and issues, and connect the text to their own lives.
• Study Groups - Students work together to build knowledge about a common topic of interest. A teacher's job would be help his/her students find the books at their reading level.
• Small Group Shares - Pair Shares - Students get in pairs and are encouraged to go back through the text, talk about it, and respond to it with their partner. Small Informal Discussion Groups - 3 to 5 students discuss and reason through a text together. Compass-Group Four-Way Shares - Four students sit on the floor or at a table at the points of a compass. Teacher announces it is north's turn to share. After a few minutes, the teacher tells north to conclude and east to share. Talk continues this way around the compass. Each student will have a chance to share and respond for a few minutes. I like the way the teacher gets to control the amount of talk time. It allows for all students to share. (Donna)

A Word About Sharing
Teach students how to respectfully invite each other to share by looking their fellow classmate in the eye, using their name, and speaking in polite language. If a student does not want to share, he/she would respond with a polite, "No, thank you."
Writing about Reading
Highlighting text can actually lull you into dangerous passivity. Mark up the margins of your text with the ideas that occur to you and how it connects to what you are learning in class. Develop your own symbol system. Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions. These were the tips given to students their first year at Harvard. To view the entire paper click here.
Text Coding
Create an anchor chart in your classroom where you and your students co-construct an anchor chart of the codes you will use while reading. Suggestions include:

• R - reminds me of
• T-T - Text-to-text connections
• L - New Learning
• ? - question
• * - Key idea
• represents a new idea
• ! - surprising information
• I - inference

I often ask my students to first sticky note the page they want to code and then go back and record their thoughts after reading the text so the coding doesn't interrupt the enjoyment of reading the text and interfere with their getting meaning from the text. Once they have coded the text, then they write on the sticky note what their connection to the text was. (Donna)
Think Sheets - any form that encourages students to construct meaning, write down their thinking, and merge it witih new information. They include: graphic organizers, double and triple-column forms, response starters, webs, mind maps, etc.
Response Journals
Give students a lot of latitude for creating their own responses.
Other responses
Artistic, dramatic, musical, numerical, scientific, historical, economic, etc.
Aesthetic Reading and Efferent Reading
Efferent Reading - reading to learn
Aesthetic Reading - what a reader is living through during his relationship with a particular text.
Were you impressed with Harvard's mandate about reading...using marginal 'triggers'? We do that too...VIPs...very important points...sticky notes. One thing not mentioned in the book is Janet Allen's "Text Formatting". I use this with fifth graders and it's a God send when having to know what to study, refining relevant versus irrelevant, and focusing on content information. (Efferent reading) It too, gives students the best shot at learning, understanding and remembering what they read.





Chapter 5
Text matters: Choice Makes a Difference

This chapter shares the author's thoughts about the need for using a variety of short text forms for literacy teaching and learning, such as picture books, trade books, magazines, and newspaper articles. It also describes ways to support teachers in choosing the best possible text for instruction. It also shows teachers how to show children how to select books they can and want to read. When kids read text at their level and of interest to them they are more likely to further their understanding and have a great read. (I see this daily in the success of our Title 1 program at Hallsville.) Barb

A Case for Short Text
School reading should reflect the reading done outside of school....80% of adult reading is short text, purposeful text that is accomplished in a short period of time for entertainment, information, persuasion.
Short text is:
*easily read aloud, allowing a common experience and builds community
*well crafted with vivid language, striking illustrations, and photographs
*provides an intense focus on issues of critical importance to readers of all ages
*authentic and prepares children for out of school reading
*self contained, providing complete ideas, thoughts, opinions, information to mull over
*is easily reread for clarifying
*accessible to all readers of all learning stages, and ages
*offers opportunities for modeling and thinking aloud
*allows anchor experiences for usage later in the use of longer, more difficult text
*picture books cover extraordinary range of topics, ideas, and issues
I feel the need to point out the distinction between short text and what basals used to do and that was take a part of a story to put in a basal so that the students had shorter text to read that could be read in an hour. The basal type short text stories, I feel, is not what the author is talking about. She is talking about text that is self-contained and provides a complete set of thoughts, ideas, and information to mull over like picture books provide or magazine articles or poems. It is not taking what once was a complete story and taking a part of it out for students to read thus providing students with an incomplete set of thoughts, ideas, or information to mull over. Short text still provides students with a complete book, poem or article to read. (Donna)

Collecting Short Text
Purpose
Audience
Genre
Let nonfiction trade books replace our textbooks as staples in the classroom.
I so want to see this happen in EVERY classroom. (Donna)
Topic
In science and social studies, not all have to read the same textbook, nor should they. This lends itself to inquiry-based learning very well which is the philosophy of the eMINTS classroom. Students can read a variety of texts and resources on the Internet and let you know what they have learned through PowerPoint and other multimedia presentations. Go eMINTS! (Donna)
Writing quality
Text structure and features
Choosing writing that is well-crafted for students to read in Guided Reading Block also helps with Writing Block. You can use the carefully selected text you read in Guided Reading for discussion in Writing Block. I use this all the time. We will discuss the author's crafting techniques along with our comprehension strategy in Guided Reading and go right into Writing Block using those techniques. This allows the students more time to write in Writing Block since it is only 30 minutes. (Donna)

Choosing Short Text for Comprehension Instruction
Certain genres and short forms lend themselves to teaching certain strategies. Realistic fiction and memoirs often spur connections and questioning, while poetry stimulates visualizing, and inferential thinking. Nonfiction pieces teach importance and synthesizing information.


Magazines, Newspapers, and Web Reading
When we use just a little bit of text for a demonstration, students can get the point, teacher can stick to the point, and everyone can get on with what's most important: students reading and practicing on their own.
We should consider adding some of these sources to our reading selection: Kids Discover, Time for Kids, WR News, Ranger Rick, National Geographic Explorer, Click, Ask, Cobblestone: The History Magazine for Young People, Faces: People, Places, and Cultures, and Appleseeds. These texts are strong models for writing as well as nonfiction sources of information. (Donna)

Possibilities of Picture Books
Picture books top the list for reading comprehension strategies instruction. Engagement leads to remembering what is read, acquiring knowledge, and enhancing understanding. There is a picture book for every reader and a reader for every picture book. Picture books spread their tenacles to grasp onto different learning styles, ages, reading levels or prior experiences.
Choosing a well-crafted, wonderfully illustrated picture book for your students to read during Guided Reading Block should be of the utmost concern for educators. "The power of a well-written picture book cannot be overestimated." (Donna)

Picture books with Young Children
Comprehension can be taught to young children even when they can't read...through pictures, illustrations and listening...this is the beginning of reading...thinking.
Teaching reading comprehension is mostly about teaching thinking. (Donna)

Picture books with Reluctant Readers
When teachers share picture books through read alouds, the passion for reading becomes contagious. In classrooms where proficient readers and their teachers choose picture books, reluctant readers climb aboard.
Teaching nonfiction text structure helps to support reluctant readers in their quest to gain meaning from the text they are reading. Teach them how to use the table of contents, index, glossary, text features such as captions, headings, charts, graphs, maps, inserts, and how to determine importance in text. (Donna)

Picture Books with Linguistically Diverse Learners
Any material that makes reading more concrete enhances learning.
Classrooms where children's personal histories are valued serve as learning communities that respect differences. Sharing books that kids connect with sparks their interest in reading and builds community. (Donna)

Picture Books to Build Background Knowledge and Teach Content
Use picture books to focus on one issue or topic at a time. Teach students to read the text strategically. The teacher's job is to discuss the issues, problems, and concerns being discussed in the text. Help your students determine what is important in the text so they are not deluged with facts and information. (Donna)

Choosing Picture books because we love them
Children pick up on our emotional attachment to books, and it becomes contagious. Sharing our thoughts about why love a book so much allows students to get to know us better, and it shows them how discerning we are about what we love to read. When asking students to voice their opinion, the opportunity allows students to share, become engaged and be honest.
Remember to share the books you love with your students. I love to share Auntie Claus and Jubal's Wish with my students. (Donna)


CHILDREN'S CHOICES: HELPING STUDENTS CHOOSE TEXT
Children must be reading text they want and can read if they are to successfully read, think and learn...to get something meaningful from text.

Considering Books for Readability: Easy, Just Right, and Challenge Books
Often kids don't realize that adults can't read everything. They seem to believe that grown-ups have already learned all there is to know about reading. We are here to fill them in on that closely guarded secret. Adults continue to learn to read throughout their lives, and even sophisticated adult readers encounter text that challenges them.

Teachers should model to their students how to choose books for readability by bring in three books. (Donna)
Easy books allow the reader to read all the words, and understand all of the ideas. Challenging books, may hold an interest for you, but you don't understand the ideas, much less you can't understand most of the words...all due to a lack of background knowledge and prior experiences. The just right book fits like a glove. You can easily understand most of the ideas, but not every one of them necessarily. It challenges us to think, but doesn't frustrate us when we read it.

Comparing reading to ice cream, the easy books wouldn't be healthy if that's all we ate, while the challenging books won't allow us to stay healthy. Yet, everyone needs a little ice cream now and them. If we choose books that are too hard, most readers will abandon them out of boredom or frustration. Like a healthy diet, choose a variety of books to keep like balanced...so we get better at reading.

Choosing Books for Purpose and Interest
Teachers should explicitly model for their studens how to choose a book based on these three criteria. (Donna)
Three criteria:
purpose
interest
readability

Nothing compels readers more than something we read out of personal interest. I wondering how many teachers take an interest inventory at the beginning of the year and use this to base reading materials for the kids during SSR, or take home reading, or to use when grouping for reading?
Interest is central to readers of every age. A text that promotes interest engages students, Why not allow that to take a place when selecting text for reading in class?

Helping Kids Select Books to Read
Mini-lesson idea - Ask your students how they choose a book. Then make a list of the ways they choose their books on a chart and post in your classroom in the hopes that some of these suggestions will become contagious. (Donna)
*Read the back
*read the flap
*Read the first page for an interesting lead
*Read for the first few pages
*Check out the Table of Contents
*The title
*Length
*Level
*Flip through the pages
*Reading the last page
*Pictures
*Cover
*Author
*Subject
*Series
*Genre
*Recommendation


PART II STRATEGY LESSONS
CHAPTERS 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 AND 11

Chapter 6
Monitoring Comprehension: The Inner Conversation

We want kids to merge their thinking with the text information building knowledge as they go. And, we want them to stay engaged in their reading and be stimulated by their thinking. Explicit language follows that directly relates to monitoring comprehension.

Strategy Lessons: Monitoring Conversation
Following the Inner Conversation - New
Comprehension is an ongoing process of evolving thinking. When readers read and construct meaning, they carry on an inner conversation with the text.
*Interative Reading Loud
When readers pay attention and think about the words and ideas in the text, they carry on an inner conversation with the text. It is a quiet converation that happens in the reader's head.
Vary the prompts and allow time for students to discuss open ended to specific aspects of the text.
Model for your students that when you read and are really paying attention, you hear an inner voice in your head. That voice might say, "Huh, I don't get that. Oh, now I get it. I never knew that before." Model your questions, connections, and reactions to the text as you read it aloud to your students. Tell your students to notice their inner voice as well as you read the text. Jot down these tracks of your thinking on sticky notes for your students to see. Then engage your students in guided practice. Every once in a while, tell your students to turn to their partner to share their thinking. Then ask a more specific thinking prompt as, "Turn and talk about the mom in the story. What is her role in the story?" This helps students to focus on the theme in the story. Have them jot down their thinking on sticky notes. Then get into groups of 4 and use your sticky notes to fuel a discussion of the story. After their discussion, bring the groups back together to share what they had learned about monitoring their own comprehension and inner conversations about the text as well as their thoughts they jotted down on their sticky notes.(Donna)

*Noticing when we Stray from the Inner Conversation - New
Teacher should bring in a text that he/she has struggled with. Model how you notice yourself straying from an engaged read and what you do to get back on top of the meaning. Construct an anchor chart sharing why the meaning broke down for you. Share the reasons with the class and write on the anchor chart. Then have the class turn and talk to their partner about why they lose their focus while reading and what to do about it. (Donna)
Two column chart titled Why Meaning Breaks Down/What to Do About It
When we teach our kids to listen to the inner conversation and notice when they stray, they are more likely to catch their wandering minds sooner, stop and refocus before they become completely befuddled.
Example:
Why Meaning Breaks /Down What to Do About It
Fatigue / reread to construct meaning
Lack of background / Focus and read more carefully
Thirst / get up and get a drink
Stress / Talk to someone
Don't Like the Book / choose another
Too hard / Think about what you know and try to connect it to new
/ information
Boring / Choose another book or talk to someone who finds the / topic more interesting

*Knowing When You Know and Knowing When You Don't Know
Use a sticky note scribed 'Huh?' to indicate confusion with the word written on the top half of sticky note and bottom half blank for clarifying. When finding the text that answers the confusion, move the sticky note to that text and sketch a light bulb indicating the question is answered or confusion is clarified.
This coding technique support the students' effort to monitor text and stay on track of thinking.

*Noticing and Exploring Thinking - New
Students read text without interruption, and are then asked to write down their thinking after reading. Sharing with a partner follows with a conversation. Writing should reflect their thinking, thoughts, reactions and their inner conversation. An anchor chart serves to remind students that their thinking should encompass more than the story elements... their thinking.

*Read, Write and Talk - New
Teaching readers to stop, think and react to informational text.
While reading, use post-its to record their thoughts, and then stop to share with a partner. It is a good idea to stop while reading so that they can add to their store of knowledge, remember the information, and better learn and understand it. STR is short for: Stopping, Thinking, Reacting to the information. When doing so, students comprehend more completely and think beyond the text. When finished, the teacher asks students to flip over their paper, and write down three things:

1. Something they learned and thought was important,
2. how talking with a partner helped them understand
3. and any lingering questions they still had.

Bring the group back together to share their responses with the whole group. Talk about how stopping, thinking, and reacting helped you understand what you read and if talking to a partner added to the experience.

When readers interact with the text, they are more apt to stay on top of their reading and learn more.

Teaching With the End in Mind: Assessing What We Taught
1. Look for evidence of student thinking, reactions, questions, connections and inferences.
2. Look for understanding that the student knows what to do when meaning is lost.
3. Students stop, think and react to their reading.

Suggestions for Differentiation
For those less developed readers, drawing pictures or using a short code to represent their thinking is recommended. Also encourage kids to turn and talk to each other before writing to hone their ideas and rehearse what they are going to write down or share talking with someone about their thinking.

Assessment Commentary
I particularly like the monitoring sheet so students can refer back to it and see how they fixed their loss while reading.
Page number and problem followed by fix up strategy makes it pretty plan what can be done to get back onboard.
Isn't it wonderful that by using these techniques we can allow students with learning problems or second language learners the ability to think at the highest levels when they turn and talk to their partner about what they are reading and thinking? Interactive reading aloud levels the playing field for these students and gives everyone a chance to weigh in with their thinking. (Donna)


Chapter 7
Activating and Connecting to Background Knowledge: A Bridge from the New to the Known

The background knowledge we bring to our reading colors every aspect of our learning and understanding.
That's a pretty profound statement don't you think? If students come to school with a poor background of knowledge and we do nothing as educators to improve that background of knowledge, learning and understanding may be hindered because we have nothing to hook new knowledge to. (Donna) I agree.,.every aspect of our learning AND understanding. Think about how many students we may have ignored, left behind and totally lost because of this.

Readers naturally make connections between books and their own lives. The purpose of making connections is to enhance understanding, not to derail it. And I believe it is our responsibility to tell students this...to make them know WHY they are making connections.

Strategy Lessons: Activating and Connecting to Background Knowledge (Page 93)

• Beginning to Make Connections: It Reminds Me of...

Thinking aloud to introduce connection making.
Coding the text (R) for remind: listing connections on a large chart and two column form headed What the Story Is About/What It Reminds Me of
Use realistic fiction or a memoir. - Whenever we read parts that remind us of our own lives, thoughts or experiences, we stop. Think aloud, and code the text R for reminds me of. Then we write a few words on a sticky note that explain the incident, thought or feeling. Of all the connection making codes, this is the simplest.
The word remind makes sense to most kids, and the understand the notion of being reminded of something when they read. As children join in, we might list them on a large chart. We may model a simple two column form. What the Story is About/What it Reminds me Of. This encourages students to summarize the story in the first column and to respond to it in the second column.

• Making Connections Between Small Poems and Our Lives (Page 94)

Illustrating and writing connections to our lives.
Kids read, make connections and write short pieces about their lives and experiences.

After reading some short poems, create a short snippet and then have the kids talk about their connections and experiences. Showing them how we can draw and write down "just a piece of our experiences, we often read, talk about and write these experiences. It's a great way for students to get to know classmates and share a small part of their lives with others.

• Text-To-Self Connections: Relating the Characters to Ourselves (Page 94)

Coding T-S for text to self connections.When kids made meaningful connections to the characters, problems, and events, they seemed to gain some insight into the story as a whole. Text is any print written down-a book, newpaper, a poem, magazine article, etc.

• Distracting Connections (Page 95)

Purpose: Teaching readers to identify distracting connections and fix up meaning.
Response: Conversation

If we're going to teach our kids about connections, then we owe it to them to teach them about Distracting Connections... when our minds wander from the text and we disrupt meaning.

Model how it happens to you in the course of your reading...model so students can witness the easy way thoughts invade and lead us away from the text. Model how one connection can trigger another, and another so that while we continue to read, we are a million miles away. Model stopping amidst your daze of connections and being able to bring yourself back to the text...how you might have to reread, or have a conversation recalling what you've already read and where you are in the text...question yourself. Model how you can proceed to read, but get lost and have to clarify what you're reading by going back into the text. By modeling, students can learn to REPAIR their Distracting Connections and forge ahead. What does it mean when you get a distracting song in your head while your are reading and stray from the text? It means you aren't focused on the text...you've lost your way...or your thought was a reaction to what you were reading and that thought conjured up a memory...perhaps a song.

• Text-to-Text Connections: Finding Common Themes in Author Studies

Purpose: Connecting Big Ideas and Themes across Texts
Response: Coding T-to-T for Text to Text Connections
Kids generally start making text-to-text connections of more obvious elements, such as characters or problems. Some text-to-text connections might include in order of increasing sophistication:
*comparing characters, their personalities, and actions
*comparing story events and plot lines
*comparing lessons, themes or messages in the stories
*finding common themes, writing styles, or perspectives in the work of a single author
*comparing the treatment of common themes by different authors
*comparing different versions of familiar stories

• Noticing and Thinking About New Learning

Purpose: Merging thinking with new information
Response: Sticky Notes Code text with an L for new learning.
By modeling the voice we hear in our heads, when we see new information, the teacher can provide kids with insight, versus regurgitating facts...listen to the inner voice and merge your thinking with the text to learn, understand and remember the information. Steph explained to her kids that she uses an "L" for learn when she finds something new that she was unaware of before reading. Sticky notes placed at the location of the text that contained the new information allows the reader to more easily find the exact place they were reading when they discovered the new data.
After doing this together, students were sent back to their desks along with text at their level and a topic of their choice. When they had completed the reading, students gathered in a circle and shared. It's critical to allow time to sit, think and reflect...to react with the text and new information and form new thinking...interaction provides an opportunity to remember the information in long term memory versus just for the Friday test.

• Rethinking Misconceptions: New Information Changes Thinking

Purpose: Linking what we know to what we learn
Response: Chart titled Questions/What We Think We Know/New Learning (P98)
Teach kids to leave their misconceptions behind and be open to learning new information.
Before reading, write down what you believe you know to be factual about a concept. This will allow students to let go of their preconceived ideas...or prior misconceptions.

As you read aloud, think aloud..."Now I know" or "Now I get it" or "I just learned"
Then as students read, they are free to cross out their previous thinking. Then they found facts that invalidated their previous thinking and were well on their way to learning new-more accurate-information.

When misconceptions persist, then as a teacher you know you have more explaining and discussing that needs to be done when sophisticated information is learned.
I like this new strategy and will try it next time with nonfiction text. (Donna) As a learner, don't you do this anyway with yourself...even subsconsciously?

• Building Background Knowledge to Teach Specific Content

Purpose: Collecting information to build a store of knowledge about a content area
Response: Large chart and fact sheet

Kindergarten teacher Paige wanted her students to learn about the continent of Africa...her first chore was to explore what students already knew. With very little background knowledge, Paige and her school librarian found many books about Africa to build background. Pictures, photographs provided children with an opportunity to ask questions. The five year olds were amazed with the information they unearthed. Page wrote each on a sticky note and placed them on a chart for all to see. Afterwards students were asked to sort the questions into categories like food, homes, wildlife, games and customs. This is a nice higher order thinking strategy too! (Donna)

After much discussion, students were asked to write what they knew. Using invented spelling, letter sound relationships, and the fact sheet of sticky notes, students wrote...a sense of curiosity and willingness to investigate was seen like an explosion. Paige and her students continue to soak up through wonder out louds, especially culture that is different than their own. Once students heard a fact, the seldom forgot it. Not often are we asked to start from scratch and build background...but when we do...sharing information and encouraging student questions is the simplest route to teaching content.

• Building Background Knowledge Based on Personal and Text-to-World Connections

Purpose: Sharing connections to build historical understanding
Response: Coding the text T-W for text-to-world connections; listing student connections on a large chart
When coding text-to-world, many students may not have a connection. So, for those students who do have a connection, have them share their connections with the class and list them on a chart for the other students in the class to see to help them build their background knowledge. Their connections can help other students in the classroom build their background knowledge.

Building Background Knowledge for Literary Elements
LIterary elements - poetry has its white space, fiction its characters, and nonfiction its bold print. Every literary genre or form has certain features that define it. When we explore fiction, we teach our students about character, setting, problem, and solution. When we investigate nonfiction, we share expository text structures such as "compare and contrast" and "cause and effect." We teach specific visual and text features so that students will have the background knowledge to better comprehend a specific genre or form when they read and write. T-S, T-T, and T-W are content-based connections. Readers also make connections to the nature of the text and its literary features. I think it is very important for all teachers to teach this. I learned about most of these text structures when learning how to teach the craft of writing particularly from that author, Katie Wood Ray. (Donna) Once readers become aware of these elements, they know what to expect when they pick up that novel or newspaper article to read. I discovered this when I taught 8/9th grade Spec. Ed reading in Columbia...students didn't know what they were looking at so I taught text features for about a month until they could identify and regurgitate what font, caption, headings, insets, etc. are.

Genre - Each genre has its own special characteristics and conventions.
Format - When readers learn the differences in format between picture books, novels, nonfiction text, and so on, they rely on these differences to better understand what they read.
Form - Readers learn to distinguish between among essays, editorials, manuals, feature articles, and so on.
Author - Readers learn that certain authors carry similar themes, issues, and topics throughout their writing. Readers come to expect these.
Text Structure - Readers recognize the difference between narrative and expository text and other structures. They learn the characteristics of each to better comprehend.
Signal Words - Readers learn to identify certain words that signal them about what's to come. For example, but suggests a coming change, in other words is followed by a definition, and most important means remember this.
Writing Style - Readers notice the various writing styles of different authors, develop an appreciation of them, and begin to make connections between them.
Literary Features - Readers learn to search for themes, identify problems, and recognize settings when they read. They develop background knowlege for these features of text. When readers think about the connections they make to the features or nature of the text, they might code them LC for literary connection. For example, when they recognize white space in poetry, they might code it LC to help them think about the purpose of white space in poetry. When they see boldface print or italics in nonfiction, they might code it LC. The more they understand about the nature of text, the better they will comprehend it. Having your students code their text with LC can also help the teacher better understand what literary features the students know and do not know. Instruction can then be better planned based on knowing which literary features your students understand and which literary features need to be retaught. (Donna)

Tangential Connections: Pitfalls to Understanding
Tangential connections are pitfalls students fall into that do not enhance learning such as "distracting connections" that were discussed earlier. Other obstacles we have to overcome when teaching students to make connections are as follows:

• Connections in Common - When a reader makes a connection to a text that shows the reader shares

something in common with the character in the story, i.e, name, birthplace, or a relative, these connections may be important to the reader because they add to the reader's engagement with the text, but they do not add to the reader's understanding of the text. We call these connections in common, such as the character is a boy in the story and so I am. These kinds of connections do not add to the understanding of the text. We want our readers to make more meaningful connections than this to aid in their understanding of the text. We want to tell our readers that their thinking matters a great deal, but it is their responsibility to decide about the relative importance of their connection. To help the reader decide, you can use a three-column form headed My Connection/Important to Me/Important to Understanding the Text. Students record their connection in the first column and then decide if that connection is important to them or to the understanding of the text. Seems like a pretty hefty job for a student to decide if their connection is important to them or to the understanding of the text. I wonder how many students can make this distinction? (Donna) I think most of the time, the connection will be relevant to the student and not necessarily the text.

Will any Connection Do?
Watch carefully for authentic connections that support understanding. Students may think that any connection is better than no connection at all such as, "It reminds me of when I went down on a sinking ship."

Which Connection is is Anyway?
Don't get hung up on which code belongs where. One student coded a text for T-S because she had been to Ellis Island. She reread the text and recoded the passage T-W when she thought that immigrants today sometimes have a hard entry into America as immigrants in the past did. Connecting immigration today with immigration in the past at Ellis Island shows a deeper, more meaningful connection, but we don't want to get hung up on which code belongs where because the purpose of making connections is to monitor comprehension and enhance understanding and this student was certainly doing both.

How Does that Connection Help you Understand?
After students make a connection, ask them, "How does that connection help you understand the story?" If the student cannot tell you, explain that your connection might help you understand the character in the story better because you both feel the same way and how the character in the story might react. Help students refine and limit their connections to those that deepen their understanding of the text. I think this is the next step in making connections that we need to take. We need to make sure that our students understand how making that connection helps them understand the story and if they cannot articulate the reason, help students learn how to refine and limit their connections to only those that help them understand the text better. Making conections just for the sake of making connections is not the purpose of coding text. (Donna) Exactly. I've seen this done to such an extreme that the student loses their thoughts altogether.

Teaching with the End in Mind: Assessing What We've Taught
Activating and Connecting to Background Knowledge - Look for evidence that:

1. Students make connections to their own lives to further their understanding of events, characters, problems, and ideas in realistic fiction. Look for insight into the character's problems, actions, and motives or evidence that demonstrates that students have understood ways to meaningfully connect to books.
2. Students make connections to stories, short pieces, or poems. They demonstrate these connnections through responses including their personal narratives, poems, and illustrations. Look for responses that SHOW rather than tell. Check to see that illustrations and writing complementary.
3. Students record "what we think we know" about a topic, add to their learning, and share it on sticky notes and two-column forms as they read informational text. Look for evidence of T-T and T-W connections, as well as evidence that students have merged their thinking with new information.

Watch for students who copy directly out to the text. Form a small group with anyone who copied directly from the text and model how to merge your own thinking with the new information, using starters such as, "I never knew, I didn't know, I learned." Watch for students who only write, "Wow!" and don't explain their thinking. Meet with students who merely write down what happens in the text. Meet with these students and model how to make connections to the story by connecting their own thinking to the text. Watch for students who only make surface connections such as, "Chrysanthemum really likes her name and Lilly really likes her purse." Meet with this student and have them explain their thinking and how this connection helps them understand the story, or model how to do this if they are unable to explain their thinking.

Look for students who clear up misconceptions when they read informational text. Look for students who merge their thinking with the new information that they have learned from the informational text.

Suggestions for Differentiation
Reading picture books with clear illustrations that complement the vocabulary and language of the text builds students' background knowledge and scaffolds their understanding as they learn about new topics. When introducing a new topic, make sure your students link the text's language and vocabulary with the illustrations to build background knowledge. Having students write down and illustrate what they already know about a topic and posting it in the room for all to see helps to build background knowledge for those not having that knowledge. Having students turn and talk to their neighbors about what they know improves background knowledge as well. The teacher can also post pictures with the vocabulary words underneath to improve background knowledge.



Chapter 8: Questioning: The Strategy that Propels Readers Forward

Questions clarify confusion, stimulate research and take us further into deeper thinking as readers. Good questions are like springboards that come from background knowledge. We know that when we question before, during and after we read, that we are monitoring our comprehension and interacting with the text to construct meaning.

Good readers ask questions. Kids don't know that good readers ask questions. Schools often appear to only be interested in the answers. So, let your students know that we are interested in the questions too. Teach your students to think about their questions before, during, and after their reading of the text. Let them know that if they have lingering questions after they have finished reading the text, THOSE ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES. These are the questions that dig toward the deeper themes in the text and bigger ideas. Let your students see you asking questions when you read and let them see your search for the answers. (Donna)

STRATEGY LESSONS: QUESTIONING

• Share Your Questions About Your Own Reading

Purpose: Using adult text to show the questions we have when we read
Responses: Sticky notes coded with ?
Model to students how you question before you read, during your reading and after you read. Use sticky notes to post /?/ at a point of confusion or question. As you read, if you discover the answer, put your inquiry post it at the location of the answer. Code that response with an A for answered. When meaning breaks down completely, code those questions with "Huh?" (Donna) For many questions you are pondering you won't find a response in the reading...those are referred to as "thick" questions...you need to research further and investigate to find the answer. When possible, I write in the margins of the books. I like that better than having to jot notes on post-its.

• The More We Learn, the More We Wonder...the more we GROW!

Purpose: Wondering as we learn new information
Responses: Gather information, record it, and wonder about it
Students can use a folded sheet of paper and write down headings of: Questions/Learned. As students read, they are to write their question, or I wonder down on the left hand side of the paper...then continue reading and when they read and discover the answer, write it down adjacent to the question. Posting or charting for future reference in the room will allow all students visibility to draw upon others' background and learning. Learning can also lead to more questions being asked. You can also make a 2-column chart that says, "I Learned/I Wonder." (Donna) The chart also holds you responsible for finishing or completing it, which could also provoke more questions, and wonderings.

• Some Questions are Answered, Others Are Not...as in LIFE.

Purpose: Beginning questioning; listing and categorizing questions to promote understanding
Recommended Book: Charlie Anderson
Responses: Chart list with kids' questions; codes for categories of questions, Including A for answered, BK for background knowledge, I for inferred, D for discussion, RS for research, C or Huh? for confused
As readers write down inquiries or thinking, writing them separately on post its will make it easier to categorize, or sort the questions into domains that can be itemized for further thinking. Sorting questions can be divided into: facts, inferences, research, discussion, background or /?/ for question, and C or Huh? for confusion. Beginning questioning in primary grades will help as students spiral their learning and thinking, which will provoke higher level thinking as students mature and develop cognitively. "Unanswered questions often spark the most lively discussions." In my classroom, not only are these the most lively discussions, but the ones that involve more higher level thinking skills. It is when my class has these discussions, that I feel, as an educator, these discussions are what teaching is all about. I've also found that during these discussions, students who usually sit silent make amazing, thoughtful contributions. The mini-lesson for your classroom would be to have your students make a list of the questions they have before, during, and after reading the text. Then going back and coding the questions with A - the question was answered in the text, Bk - the question was answered from someone's background knowledge, I - the question was answered because it could be inferred from the text, D - the question was answered from further discussion by the class, RS - the question requires further research in order to be answered, or C or Huh? for meaning has broken down and the reader is totally confused. (Donna)
This too holds students accountable. It prompts us as teachers to empirically witness their thinking as the progress throughout the reading.

• Gaining Information Through Questioning

Purpose: Writing in Wonder Books (nonfiction notebooks that support inquiry)
Responses: Written question lists; two-column note form headed Questions/Facts
Wonder books (nonfiction notebooks that support inquiry) explore student thinking. Since questions are contagious, modeling this in class from a students' wonder book will serve multiple purposes: shows peer thinking, challenges peers, models using language similar to peers, stimulates and fosters others' thinking, and exposes students to a wide range of original thinking. Students often learn more or better from their peers. When students are doing research and have trouble narrowing the topic down, have them make a list of questions. Then pick one question to answer and do their report on. (Donna)

• Thick and Thin Questions

Purpose: Differentiating between large global questions and small clarification questions in a content area.
Response: Thick questions on the front of 3" X 3" sticky notes, thin questions on the front of sticky flags; attempted answers on the reverse sides fo the sticky notes and flags
Differentiating between large, global questions and smaller clarification questions in content areas.
The "thick" questions being those that require further research and investigationi, while the "thin" questions are those that are answered in the text or by inference from text and background. Thick questions address large global concepts. These questions often begin with Why? How come? I wonder? These questions would involve thinking at the application level of knowledge or higher. Thin questions can often be answered with a single word or number. These questions would involve thinking at the knowledge or comprehension level of thinking. (Donna)

• Reading To Answer a Question

Purpose: Reading to answer specific questions
Responses: Writing a short summary
When reading has left unanswered thoughts, you can turn to media outside the realm of the classroom, or through the internet, using keywords often found in tables of content, or indexes to provide areas where you can search for clarifying information. Be warned that the more reading and research might bring up further questions. Modeling to students how to do this is highly suggested.
I guess my question is, "Wouldn't you need to group all of the students' questions together that are on the same topic, do the research, and then write a summary that would help to explain the answers to all of these questions? Otherwise, wouldn't a question/fact sheet be easier if you were just answering your own question? (Donna)

• Reading with a Question in Mind

Purpose: Taking notes on information to EXPAND thinking and answer questions
Responses: Two column think sheet headed with "Notes/Thinking"
Zeroing in on the dense text of this information age is overwhelming to most people, children and adults alike. With a question in mind, students can narrow down the scope of their search for answers. Taking notes from the reading that relates to the question referenced was the only thing written down in the Thinking column. If confusion exists, the students write down the page and or column number to see if the question is answered in the upcoming reading. The primary purpose of the "Thinking" column is to work through thinking for clarifying and resolving issues, while perhaps creating a higher level question. Teacher modeling is imperative multiple times, just not once.
Using sticky notes, students can write their questions on one side and then use the back for answers/responses.
If you were using this strategy to help students get through informational text, it would seem to me that the question they were to have in mind would need to be "on target" with the teacher's purpose for having them read the information in the first place. I would want to have a discussion with my class before they started reading about what the question is that they should have in mind. If they have a different question in mind, their purpose for reading and your purpose for having them read the information would be different and might likely result in different information being found and, hence, different learning being acquried from what the curriculum objective is that you are teaching. (Donna)

• Questions that Lead to Inferential Thinking

Purpose: Making meaning through asking questions
Response: Chart of questions students ask about the poem
Use of poetry provides opportunities to exercise powers of interpretation. Never underestimate kids' potential. Allow them the opportunities to show you their thinking. Using Langston Hughes' Dreams, third graders listened as the teacher questioned students the meaning of phrases, metaphors, and images. She charted these queries and then asked the children specific questions concerning the language and terms used. From questions regarding the meaning of vocabulary, to inferences made about the poet's feelings, students shared and contributed to the author's broken dream in prose. Rather than stopping and answering each question, students continued to read and interpret and infer about its meaning. Although all questions were not answered, that's a model of how the world is...many unanswered questions. Questions open minds.
I think the students also learned that not all questions need to be answered. The author's purpose could be to make you ask questions that can't be answered. (Donna)

• Responding to "Beyond the Line" Questions in Literature

Purpose: Extending and deepening thinking in response to inferential questions
Response: Written responses demonstrating inferential thinking
Beyond the Line questions are those questions than cannot be answered in one or two word responses or by referring to one or two lines of text for a simple, straightforward answer. Readers often need to read between the lines to gain a fuller understanding, the need to pull evidence and ideas from several parts of the text to answer these beyond the line questions. When the text is ambiguous, when characters, events, and issues in the story prompt a variety of interpretations, when the reader needs to read between the lines to gain a fuller understanding, that is when the teacher should ask these "beyond the line" questions. (Donna)

Teacher modeling, posing a question that is open ended can lead to higher level thinking and draws contributions from differing student perspectives. Sharing your responses and demonstrating how you work out your thinking fits the pieces of the puzzle together towards the end of the story and then may ignite more feelings of interpretation which leaves no clear path to closure.

• Using Question Webs to Expand Thinking

Purpose: Organizing content knowledge to answer a specific question
Response: Question web
One way to form a question and have students research it is the question web. Similar in form to other semantic webs, a question web differs in that it has a question in the center. The lines that emanate are used to add information that relates in some way to the question at the center of the web. With the ultimate goal of building an answer from all the bits of information. These webs are also valuable when students in small groups are studying content areas. By amassing a quantity of information, students can glean the underlying causes for situations or events and answer the question.

Researchable Questions
Unfocused questions arise when students don't have enough background information about the topic being questioned to make sense of it. Focused information questions are posed to fill in specific information about a particular topic. These initial questions may lead to bigger questions that ask how or why.

The ultimate goal of questioning is to encourage students to think more deeply about their learning.

Lingering Questions
Lingering questions occur when a story may have an ambiguous ending. The reader may be required to draw upon their own conclusions as to what happened in the story or consider varying interpretations about the character's actions in the story and the unfolding events. Students are asked to consider many possibilities when there is an ambiguous ending. It is these kinds of questions that prompt great debate and keep us up late at night. (These are the kinds of great debates I like to see in my classroom.) When students ask these kinds of questions in science, social studies and history, they often become researchable questions for the students to look into later on. Lingering questions in history may move into the realm of speculation-what if questions that consider how things might have turned out differently. They can extend a child's understanding of a topic or issue as they grapple with new ideas or begin to understand viewpoints from different perspectives. Constantly model and encourage your students to ask these lingering questions.

Authentic Questions or Assessment Questions
Authentic questions whether asked by the student or the teacher:

• Prompt thinking
• Don't always have one right answer
• May have many answers
• Cause us to ponder and wonder
• Dispel or clarify confusion
• Challenge us to rethink our opinions
• Lead us to seek out further information
• Are subject to discussion, debate, and conversation
• May require further research

Assessment questions are the questions we teachers know the answers to and use to check our students' knowledge of a subject. We need to ask these questions to monitor our students' knowledge, but do we need to ask so many of them? (With younger students you might call these checking questions. Say, " I know the answer to this question and I am checking to see if you do too.") Try asking or allowing more authentic questions in your classroom and allowing time to find out the answers to these questions as well.

Peter Johnston lists a number of ways teachers can ask authentic questions that are open-ended and encourage divergent thinking. Teachers might ask:

• What makes you say that?
• Why do you say that?
• Can you elaborate on that?
• Can you tell more about your thinking?
• How did you come up with that?

Authentic questions are more likely than assessment questions to prompt new thinking and new insight. "It's the next best thing to sliced bread."

Teaching with the End in Mind: Assessing What We've Taught (Questioning Strategy)
Look for evidence that:

1. Students stop, ask questions, and wonder about their reading. Look for evidence that they are recording their questions.
2. Students ask questions to clarify confusion.
3. Students read to gain information and answer questions.
4. Students consider lingering questions to expand thinking.

Suggestions for Differentiation

• Post anchor charts in your classroom for ESL learners and BR readers.
• Post anchor charts of your students' questions and refer back to them.
• Encourage students to illustrate their questions with a visual image to help them keep it in their mind.
• Encourage students to write or illustrate their answers when they find them.
• Make an anchor chart together that explains how questioning helps us understand when we read and ways your students can use this when they read. Begin your anchor chart with, "We ask questions to. . . " and finish with, "make sense of what we read," "find information," or "answer our wonders." Have students draw pictures of themselves doing these things and place this picture in an appropriate place on the chart.
• Drawing is one of the best ways to make students' thinking visible and to support those who need additional help with reading.

I like the interaction within Donna's room when we team teach and pursue further "curiosity-driven questions" that provoke more thinking...that is synthesis, analytical...reaching beyond the confines of the box. It's at times like this that the proverbial lightbulb goes off and students realize that there's more to it than the actual words written within the text. I also appreciate the support that I give students when I ask them to tell me how they arrived at their thinking...and the big "Why?". It's questioning and discussion times like these that are authentic learning times...encouraging new thinking, prompting new insight and taking what we thought we knew and merging it with the new learning and developing new ideas. WOW! Lightbulb moments!

Chapter 9: Visualizing and Inferring: Making What's Implicit Explicit

Visualizing strengthens our inferential thinking. When we visualize, we are inferring with mental images rather than words and thoughts. Inferring involves merging background knowledge with text clues to come up with an idea that is not explicitly stated in the text. Inferring is reading between the lines. Teaching students to infer means you teach them to:

• draw conclusions
• make predictions
• use context to figure out the meaning of a word
• notice a character's actions to surface a theme

Visualizing: Movies in the Mind
Visualizing personalizes reading and keeps us engaged. To make the strategy concrete, facilitate a discussion about books and movie adaptations. Students can quickly relate and add their own opinions.

Strategy Lessons: Visualizing

• Visualizing with Wordless PIcture Books

Purpose: Visualizing to fill in missing information
Resource: Good Dog Carl by Alexandra Day
Response: Drawing what you visualize

What is the teacher's role after the students' draw their pictures? To clear up any misconceptions in the student's drawing that interferes with the author's intended meaning from the text. For example, in Good Dog Carl, one picture shows a baby at the top of a laundry chute and the next picture shows the dog racing down the stairs to the laundry chute. The intended meaning is that the baby fell down the laundry chute. If a student's drawing does not reflect this intended meaning, the teacher should conference with the student to clear up any misconceptions. This book might need some background clarification before reading because a laundry chute will probably be a new concept for many. I think they could do some inferring about laundry chutes themselves.

• Visualizing from a Vivid Piece of Text

Purpose: Merging prior experience and the text to create visual images
Resource: The lead to Chapter 3: "Escape," in Charlotte's Web
Response: Drawing visual images with small groups

Visualizing is taking the author's words and mixing them with the reader's background knowledge to create pictures in the mind. The more background knowledge the student has about what he is reading, the more detailed the visual images will be in his/her mind. Creating these mental images bring life to reading. Unfortunately, I find more and more students who don't have the essential background. It's like they have not been exposed to such things as eating in a dine-in, full service restaurant. This leads to them lacking in expectations of manners, different situations, menu choices, reading of unfamiliar social graces, and so much more. Even kids who have not visited a community library, courthouse, or other public buildings where behaviors are not so casual like the school classroom. Visiting through visualization might be a valuable lesson learned before venturing on a field trip with students. Anticipating actions, speech, body language and expectations for your students are critical if you don't want to be embarrassed for or from them. I'm always amazed at how many kids haven't been to a zoo yet by seven years of age when there are two zoos within a two hour drive. One of them is even free admission. The children have such a rich background of knowledge after visiting one of these zoos.

• Visualizing in Nonfiction Text: Making Comparisons

Purpose: Visualizing to better understand the dimensions of size, space, and time
Response: Drawing a comparsion between one object and another

Nonfiction expository text will often rely on the concepts of size, weight, length, distance, and time to explain important information. Illustrations, graphs, charts, time lines, and diagrams provide visual support to students as they try to understand and acquire information from nonfiction text. Search for examples of nonfiction comparisons, both written and drawn. Have your students draw these comparisons to better understand the text. I definitely need to use this strategy more with nonfiction text. (Donna)
I have seen this done using a line similar to a timeline, and vocabulary to show comparison and relativity for size, weight, distance and time. We might try this with Balto...traveling distance, times to and from distances, weight of load being carried.

• Visualizing in Reading, Showing not Telling in Writing

Purpose: Creating images with compelling nonfiction
Resources: Shadow Ball and Who Invented the Game?
Response: Class discussion; charting of responses

Ask your students to close their eyes, visualize the scene, and comment on what makes the scene come alive for them. Write their comments on a large chart. Label the nouns and verbs from the lifted text and ask how these parts of speech bring such striking visual imagery to the piece. Encourage students to think about this piece of text the next time they try to recount a true event in writing.
Again, we could use Balto and the trials and tribulations of making the trip for medicine in the blinding blizzard conditions.

• Creating Mental Images That Go Beyond Visualizing

Purpose: Using all the senses to comprehend text
Resource: National Geographic article, Sea Turtles in a Race for Survival
Response: I see. . . I hear. . . I can feel. . . I smell. . . I can taste. . .

Well-written text allows us to taste, touch, hear, and smell images as well as see them when we read. Proficient readers create images from all of their senses when they read. This could be a mini-lesson in writing block as well. (Donna)

• Inferring the Meaning of Unfamiliar Words

Purpose: Using context clues to crack open vocabulary
Resource: Fly High: The Story of Bessie Coleman
Response: A four-column think sheet titled Word/Inferred Meaning/Clues/ Sentence and a chart with the same titles
I really like this and will use it with the fifth graders that I see. They experience difficulty with meaning and this approach would get them to focus on the context more closely.
To figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words, readers need to take what they know and gather clues in the text to crack the meaning of the word. They need to consider the context to understand what they read. Model first how to use this strategy. Have students identify the unknown word in the story and write it in the column under Word. Then model different reading strategies to try to figure out the meaning of the unknown word such as reading on, rereading, and using picture cues. Share your thinking of how you inferred the meaning of the unknown word with your class while modeling the reading strategy of reading on, rereading, or using picture cues. Then fill in the chart with your inferred meaning and the clue that helped you figure out the meaning of the word. Then model writing a sentence using the word to demonstrate understanding for the newly learned word. Make an anchor chart of this after you model it and give students their own think sheets to practice this in their reading. I think I've just learned a new way to teach vocabulary words besides Rivet and Who, What, Where :-) What an excellent thinking strategy this is for students as well as an excellent use of modeling reading strategies for figuring out the meaning of unknown words. (Donna) I too think this is great. Let's try it with perhaps chapter 3 of 4 in Balto...surely they will have vocabulary they aren't familiar with by this time.

Donna and I started this with Chapter 2 of Balto. It was amazing that students did not have the motivation to use the context clues, form ideas, then prove their theory by searching the internet dictionary, or the traditional dictionary...and especially with words that have multiple meanings. Students were given a sheet with six vocabulary words...Donna and I modeled this on the Smartboard first...showing our thinking...writing down our thinking...having students follow along visually, mentally and physically. We did two words to model, then led students into the third word with guided practice. Then we asked them to complete words four through six pairs. Students also had constructed response questions to answer after they had completed the reading of Chapter 2. It turned out to be more work than they could complete in one block of time. The definitions and actually using the word in a newly created sentence was complex for most of them. However, it was exciting enough that I completed reading the text and found more vocabulary for students to unravel as they completed reading the book. This experience has been enlightening in that it proves that although students can decode, they haven't been fully understanding the text if they don't have the ability to use context and unravel the meaning.

As time has allowed, we found that too many new vocabulary words restricted our teaching of the book, so we divided the word list, split the class in half, and each taught half of the vocabulary as we read...teaching within the context...using textual evidence to draw an inference as to the meaning. We then had student access their online dictionary, find the applicable meaning, write it down on the grid, and finally create a sentence using the word to help them commit it to memory. This is working better for us as the time constraints before were just taking too long.

• Inferring from the Cover and Illustrations as well as the Text

Purpose: Using all aspects of a book to infer meaning
Resource: Tight Times by Hazen
Response: Two-column note form headed Quote or Picture from Text/Inference

Show a cover of a book. Ask your class what they can infer from the cover and title of the book. When students come to a quote or picture from the text they don't know, write that in the first column. Read on and then write what you can infer that quote or picture means in the text.

Discuss the relationship with your students between prediction and inference. We predict outcomes, events or actions that are confirmed or contradicted by the end of the story. Prediction is one aspect of inferential thinking. To help students understand the difference, encourage them to consider the outcome of an event or action each time they make a prediction and notice whether there has been a resolution. Those left unresolved will be an inference. Those that are confirmed or contradicted are predictions.

• Inferring with Text Clues

Purpose: Teaching the Inferring Equation BK + TC = I (Background knowledge + text clues = inference)
Response: Three-column chart titled Background Knowledge/Text Clues/Inference

Use this formula to help students think about what they know, merge it with text clues to draw a conclusion, and make an inference. This helps students make an inference that is reasonable.

I've used this formula for a long time and it seems to just make sense to me. What I already know about the subject at hand, plus evidence from the text as clues, and then churning the information into another perspective, or being able to read between the lines.

• Recognizing Plot and Inferring Themes

Purpose: Differentiating between plot and theme, and inferring the big ideas or themes
Resource: Teammates by Golenbock
Response: Class discussion; chart of themes, theme boards; two-column chart Evidence from the Text/Themes

The plot is what happens in the narrative. Themes represent the bigger ideas in the story. The plot carries those ideas along. Themes are the underlying ideas, morals, and lessons that give the story its texture, depth, and meaning. Since themes are rarely explicitly stated in a story, we must infer themes. Create a two-column chart titled Evidence from the Text/Themes. Under Evidence from the Text write Words, Actions, and Pictures. Students are more likely to remember important themes when they derive the ideas themselves. Our role as teacher is to engage students in a discussion to draw out these bigger ideas. It is our responsibility to help our students label these ideas, articulate the themes, and cite text evidence to surface a theme. Reread the text a second time to see if additional themes surface after the second reading.

Theme Boards - Each time your class reads a book, record the theme(s) discussed in the story. Eventually your class will begin to notice overlapping and recurrent themes in stories.

With the upper elementary grades (level 3 and above), I strongly believe we need to do this more and more. With the pace of education today, I don't know that students get to find the ultimate lesson, or bigger picture in reading. By challenging them, pushing them, leading them forward, and then recording it, we are reminded that the big picture counts for something...future life lessons?

• Visualizing and Inferring to Understand Information

Purpose: Using reading comprehension strategies to better understand content area reading
Response: Two-column note form titled Facts/Inferences; ongoing discussion about how comprehension strategies help readers understand content reading.

Advantages of using textbooks: material is organized for the reader usually under sections, headings, and subheadings, the reader's understanding is scaffolded, and the text is somewhat predictable.
Disadvantages: boring, few nonfiction trade books are written with the same writing style, and doesn't prepare student for the authentic nonfiction trade books they will be reading outside of school.

Content area specialists need to be aware that they must be reading specialists too and teach their students how to read nonfiction trade books to gain information. Teaching your students several reading comprehension strategies will help them learn how to read unfamiliar terms and concepts in textbooks and get through the dry reading. Activating background knowledge, visualizing, and inferring can bring the information in textbooks to life for students.

• Inferring and Questioning to Understand Historical Concepts

Purpose: Inferring and questioning go hand in hand to build understanding
Resource: Encounter by Jane Yolen
Response: Discussion and sticky notes for questioning and inferring

Construct a two-column chart titled Questions (I Wonder) and Inferences (I Think). Read the first few pages aloud modeling what questions you have as you read the text and what you are thinking. Record your thoughts on the two-column chart. Don't forget to include the illustrations in the text as well.

Rereading to Clear up Misconceptions

Rereading is one of the best ways to check for meaning. It makes so much more sense the second time through. When students find information in a text that surprises them, have them go back and reread the text to see if they can spot the clues they missed when reading the text the first time.
Most students will not reread for clarification. Even when recommended, unless they are self motivated, and higher achieving students, most young people will not re-read to find answers. Sad and discouraging as it may be, it might be a maturation issue that ties to not having an inate reason to be self directed.

I have one particular fourth grade student and when I ask her to find her answers with evidence from the text, she brushes her head from side to side and refuses...she shuts down...even though the answer is in front of her. She doesn't like to be questioned or have her answers subjected to proof. Unfortunately, she isn't a person who is rewarded intrinsically and thus her level of performance is low and her motivation for improving even lower.


Teaching with the End in Mind: Assessing What We've Taught

Inferring and Visualizing
Look for evidence that:

1. Students visualize and create mental images to make sense of what they read.
2. Students infer the meaning of unfamiliar words.
3. Students use text evidence to infer themes and bigger ideas.
4. Students infer and draw conclusions from informational text using features and text structures.

Suggestions for Differentiation
Don't underestimate the importance of drawing as a means to understanding. When students draw, they construct meaning. Many students can express through drawing what they cannot articulate with oral or written words. Other ideas include: playing charades, role playing, drama, and sharing unfamiliar objects to use for inferential thinking.

Age is no barrier when it comes to charades. This is one of the easiest ways for students to learn about inferencing.