View the powerpoint for Chapter 4.

Assignment:  

Choose a reading comprehension strategy of your choice from Chapter 4.  Discuss how you will use this strategy in your teaching and how you will motivate students to use it.

1.  Be sure to provide visual aids (such as reading pieces….ex.books)

2.  Be creative 

Chapter 4
Comprehending Content Area Text
Content Area Reading:
Teaching and Learning
for College and Career Readiness
Second Edition
Maureen McLaughlin

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McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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What Do We Know about Reading Comprehension?
Comprehension as a social constructivist process
Constructivists believe that students construct knowledge by linking what they already know to new information.
Multiple literacies as comprehension
These literacies are distinctive in nature, yet similar in that one of the outcomes of each is comprehension.
Reading as a thinking process
Durkin defined reading as comprehension, indicating that the focus of instruction should be the strategies readers use in order to make sense of text.

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McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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What Do We Know about Reading Comprehension?
A quality context is an integral part of meaningful literacy instruction.
Context has been viewed as a broad concept that encompasses instructional settings, resources, approaches, and tasks.
The instructional settings include teacher beliefs, literacy environment, classroom organization, classroom interaction, and grouping patterns.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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What Do We Know about Reading Comprehension?
Duke suggests that we expand our understanding of context and view curriculum, activity, classroom environment, teaching, discussion, text and society as context.
Researchers and practitioners agree that both teaching and learning are greatly influenced by the contextual choices we make.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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What Do We Know about Reading Comprehension?
Influential teachers affect students’ learning.
Researchers and professional organizations report that teachers are the single most influential factor in students’ learning.
International Reading Association, 2000; Ruddell, 2004
Good readers are engaged, strategic learners.
They describe good readers as active participants in the reading process, who have clear goals and constantly monitor the relation between the goals they have set and the text they are reading.

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McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.1
Characteristics of Influential Reading Teachers

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.2
Characteristics of Good Readers

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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How Can We Teach Students to Think through the Comprehension of Text?
To help our students think through the
comprehension process, we can teach
them reading comprehension strategies.
We use multiple comprehension strategies when we read.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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How Can We Teach Students to Think through the Comprehension of Text?
We can teach students a repertoire of reading comprehension strategies to use, as needed, when thinking through text.

Reading comprehension thinking strategies include:
Previewing Visualizing
Making Connections Summarizing
Monitoring/Clarifying Evaluating
Self-Questioning

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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What Can We Do to Foster Students’ Comprehension of Content Area Text?
Motivate our students
Read aloud to the students, provide opportunities to view short videos, or share an array of related photos

Offer opportunities for self-selection of related readings or project topics

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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What Can We Do to Foster Students’ Comprehension of Content Area Text?
Encourage our students to:
continue to expand their prior knowledge.
deepen their understanding of how language works.
enhance their understanding of everyday and academic vocabularies.
read, write, and discuss.
develop and use a repertoire of comprehension strategies.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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How Can We Use Comprehension Strategies to Engage Thinking?
Previewing
Teach reading comprehension strategy applications that involve PREVIEWING and MAKING CONNECTIONS:
activating prior knowledge (What do I already know about this topic?)
setting purposes for reading (Why am I reading this text?)
predicting/inferring (Based on what I know and what I have read, what do I think will happen in this text?)

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Reading Comprehension Strategy Applications to Engage Students’ Thinking
Previewing:
Anticipation/Reaction Guide Prereading Plan (PreP)
Semantic Map Bio-Impression
Making Connections:
Connection Stems Coding the Text
Save the Last Word for Me Sketching Connections

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Anticipation/Reaction Guide
Students use Anticipation/Reaction Guides to preview text and to monitor thinking while reading.
The Anticipation/Reaction Guide consists of several statements related to the text.
Before reading, students indicate whether they agree or disagree with each statement and share their responses through class discussion.
After reading, students revisit the statements and decide whether their thinking has changed.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.3
Biology Anticipation/Reaction Guide

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Semantic Map
Students use the Semantic Map to activate prior knowledge, introduce content specific vocabulary, and organize information about a topic.
When teaching students how to use the Semantic Map, we choose a focus word, engage students in brainstorming, and create and complete a graphic organizer that features categories and subcategories.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.4
Semantic Map:
Geometry—Types of Triangles

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Prereading Plan (PreP)
Students use PreP to activate prior knowledge about a topic, learn new vocabulary, and make connections.
When teaching students how to use PreP, we provide a cue word or idea and invite the students to brainstorm related words or concepts.
We record all ideas and then ask the students why they suggested particular words.
Next, we read a text and revise the original list as necessary.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.5
Excerpt from PreP
about Climate Change

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Bio-Impressions
Students use Bio-Impressions before reading to predict what information the text will contain.
To create Bio-Impressions, we choose a person and structure a list of clues about his life connected by downward arrows.
Then we encourage pairs of students to use the clues in sequential order, as they write their Bio-Impressions—what they predict the content of the biography will be.
When students finish writing their Bio-Impressions, they share them with another pair of students.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.6
Bio-Impression about Lincoln (Part 1)

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.6
Bio-Impression about Lincoln (Part 2)

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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How Can We Use Comprehension Strategies to Engage Thinking?
Making Connections
A reading comprehension strategy in which students activate prior knowledge and make a variety of connections or associations to the text they are reading.
When reading, they make three different kinds of connections: text-self, text-text, and text-world (connections to others).
Connection Stems
Save the Last Word for Me
Coding the Text
Sketch and Label Connections

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Connection Stems
Students use Connection Stems to make connections or associations between the texts they are reading and themselves, other texts, and the world (others).
Connection Stems provide a structure to encourage students to make connections while reading and to encourage students to reflect on their reading.
Connection Stem samples:
That reminds me of … I remember when …
I have a connection … I felt like that person when…

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.7
Connection Stems Completed in History, Trigonometry, and Physical Education

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Save the Last Word for Me
Students use Save the Last Word for Me to make connections to the text, evaluate information in the text, and provide a structure for discussion of the text.

Students select a quote, fact, or idea from the text and record it and the page number on which it is located on the front side of an index card.
On the back of the card, they explain why they chose the information and what connections they can made.
After reading, each member of the group comments on the quote or idea. The student who wrote that card speaks last and shares the thoughts she has recorded on the back of the card.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.8
Save the Last Word for Me: DNA

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Coding the Text
Students use Coding the Text to actively engage in reading by making connections.
During reading, students use small Post-it notes to indicate the points in the text where they are able to make text-self, text-text, and text-world connections. They use a code for each type of connection: T-S, T-T, and T-W and include a few words to describe each connection.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.9
Coding the Text in Biology Class

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Sketch and Label Connections
Students use Sketch and Label Connections to activate their knowledge and make a variety of connections or associations to the text they are reading.
Students use simple lines and shapes to represent their connections. Then they label them and share them with a partner.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Figure 4.10
Sketching Connections:
“The Road Not Taken”

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Final Thoughts
When we engage students’ thinking, we motivate them to make connections between what they already know and what they are learning.
Activating background knowledge and setting purposes for reading are essential components of comprehension.
Making connections between background knowledge and what we are learning supports our belief that reading is a constructivist process.

McLaughlin, Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness, 2/e. © 2015, 2010 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Chapter Summary
Teaching students to comprehend text in the disciplines was the focus of this chapter. Particular emphasis was placed on:
Analyzing reading comprehension as a constructivist process
Engaging students to think through texts
Strategies for engaging students’ thinking, which includes activating background knowledge and setting purposes for reading