Leading Students to Reading Strategies

1
Leading Students to Reading Strategies
2
The Soote Season

• The soote season, that bud and bloom forth
  brings,
• With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale
• The nightingale with feathers new she sings
• The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
• Summer is come, for every spray now springs
• The hart hath hung his old head on the pale
• The buck in brake his winter coat he flings,
• The fishes float with new repaired scale
• The adder all her slough away she slings,
• The swift swallow pursueth the flies small
• The busy bee her honey now she mings.
• Winter is worn, that was the flowers bale.
• And thus I see among these pleasant things,
• Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.
• Henry Howard, Earl
  of Surrey, 1557,
• The Norton Anthology of Poetry,
• 4th edition, Norton Company

3

• You the reader were assigned this poem.
• You were asked to read, understand, and interpret
  words written in 1557.
• --------------------------------------------------
  -------
• Why?
• Did you care?
• Was it easy?

4
Your process.

• In reading the poem,
• how did you go about it?

5

• Your reaction to this sonnet, if you didnt like
  it, or had trouble reading, may be similar to
  what a student experiences in looking at dense
  text.

6
Old World

• We learn from words.
• Words and sentences are shaped into paragraphs,
  each with a point.
• Major concepts can take 50 pages or more (read
  Moby Dick when do you figure out the whales
  role?)
• Pictures are there for entertainment value only.

7
New World

• Wordless instructions . . .

8
Where are we?

• Somewhere in the middle.
• What may be a challenge to students used to
  skimming internet sites, or reading quick data,
  are text-heavy, dense paragraphs.
• Traditional text requires sustained attention
  and analysis skills not typically used by those
  who have learned to skim content.

9
Our challenge thus is threefold -to
motivate students to assume value in reading
-to show them the need for context -to train
them how to find remember content
10
Motivation . . .
Source Cabral and Tavares, Practicing College
Reading Strategies, The Reading Matrix, Vol. 2,
No. 3, Sept. 2002.
11

• What does the previous slide mean?
• If a student doesnt use his/her reading to
  solve doubts or to exchange opinions with others
  or doesnt quote from the books that he/she
  reads, then students are not using their reading.
  (These items, 13 and 15, were the lowest
  scores in the 1-5 continuum.)
• This is troubling, given the need to address
  issues of motivation. The scores emphasize the
  work instructors must do to teach students that
  reading is a valuable activity.

12
Diagnosis of a reading problem

• This can be the hard part. Is it
• Motivation?
• Lack of cultural contextual knowledge? or
• Lack of vocabulary and organizational skills?

13

• Five reasons for lack of reading comprehension
• Failure to understand a word
• Failure to understand a sentence
• Failure to understand how sentences relate to one
  another
• Failure to understand how the information fits
  together in a meaningful way
• Lack of interest or concentration

http//www.muskingum.edu/cal/database/general/rea
ding.html
14
Solving the problem

• Strategies Related to Interest and Concentration
• Creating Interest
• Improving Concentration
• Improving Motivation

http//www.muskingum.edu/cal/database/general/rea
ding.html
15
Words . . .

• Strategies Related to Vocabulary
• General approach to unfamiliar vocabulary words
• Predictions based on Context
• Word Elements Affixes Roots
• Antonyms, Synonyms and Related Approaches
• LINCS Strategy
• DISSECT Strategy
• CSSD Strategy
• Vocabulary Game
• Graphic Organizers and Groups
• Patterned Language Approach
• Teaching Vocabulary Dos Donts

http//www.muskingum.edu/cal/database/general/rea
ding.html
16

• Strategies Related to Organization Comprehension
• Text book organization
• Text skimming
• Creative mapping for content reading
• Mediated instruction of text (MIT) for content
  reading
• SQ3R Strategy
• PQ4R Strategy
• RAP Strategy
• SNIPS Strategy
• PARTS A Text Perusal Strategy
• REAP Strategy
• Multi-pass Strategy
• PRSR Strategy
• PROR Strategy
• Text book reading guides
• Exercises in meaningful organization
• KWL Strategy
• Directed Reading Strategy (DRA)
• Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA

http//www.muskingum.edu/cal/database/general/rea
ding.html
17
such as SQ3R

• http//www.accd.edu/sac/history/keller/ACCDitg/SSS
  Q3R.htm
• Survey determine the organization
• Question - turn each heading and subheading into
  a question
• Read read selectively
• Recite - answer questions in your own words
• Review immediate delayed

18
To recap we need to convey to students

• Purpose Motivation!
• the importance and value of material, even if
  presented in a dry manner (such as your will)
• Ways to find context content!
• deliberate strategies for organizational
  approach, for finding purpose, and also the
  important language skills needed for
  understanding (vocabulary, syntax, spelling)

19
Final slide

• And, since each student is different, faculty
  need to diagnose
• Is the problem motivation or concentration?
• Is the problem language ability?
• Is the problem organizational ability?
• develop a strategy.