Reading Strategically at the High School Level

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Reading Strategicallyat the High School Level

• Louisiana CEC
• 25th Annual Super Conference
• April 24, 2006
• Gerlinde Beckers
• Paul Mooney
• Jamie Breaux
• Louisiana State University

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Overview

• Rationale
• Skilled reading
• Definition of strategy
• Collaborative Strategic Reading
• Intervention
• Implications for teachers

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Rationale

• Reading is essential to success in our society
  (National Research Council, 1998, p. 1).
• 1 in 5 U.S. schoolchildren about 10 million
  encounter severe reading problems before the 3rd
  grade.

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Rationale cont.

• 40 of U.S. 4th-graders read below a basic level
  (i.e., have little or no mastery of the knowledge
  or skills necessary to perform work at grade
  level) (National Center for Educational
  Statistics, 1999).
• 28 of 8th-graders and 34 of 12th-graders
  achieve proficient reading standards (National
  Education Goals Panel (1995).
• U.S. public schools have not been very successful
  in remediating reading skill deficits.

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Skilled Reading

• Adults who read well actively interact with the
  text on a number of levels as they read,
  articulating a variety of processes as they go
  (Pressley Wharton-McDonald, 1997).
• Model of skilled reading broken down into
  processes before, during, and after reading (p.
  450).

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Skilled Reading cont.

• Processing before reading
• Good readers have clear reading goals
• Good readers overview text with the following
  goals before reading
• To determine whether the text is worth reading
• To identify goal-relevant sections and
• To develop a reading plan.

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Skilled Reading cont.

• Processing during reading
• Reading generally progresses from beginning to
  end
• There is differential attention paid to
  information relevant to the readers goal
• Good readers sometimes jump forward and backward
  to find particular information and to clarify
  confusions that arise during reading

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Skilled Reading cont.

• During cont.
• Good readers anticipate what might be said,
  updating their predictions and hypotheses as
  reading proceeds
• Good readers relate their prior knowledge to the
  ideas in text and relate ideas in the text to one
  another. Sometimes old knowledge is revised in
  light of information in the text. Many inferences
  are made during reading

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Skilled Reading cont.

• During cont.
• Good readers sometimes use strategies as they
  read, for example, to determine the meanings of
  unknown words or to remember particular ideas
• Good readers demonstrate passion for certain
  ideas presented in the text
• Good readers construct interpretations and
  conclusions as reading proceeds.

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Skilled Reading cont.

• Processing after reading
• Sometimes there is re-reading or re-skimming of
  text just read
• Good readers sometimes attempt to restate
  important ideas from the text. If notes might
  help later recall, they make them
• Good readers continue to reflect on the text
  after they have finished reading.

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Research Syntheses

• Critical instructional elements associated with
  positive outcomes for poor readers
• Making instruction visible and explicit
• Implementing procedural facilitators or
  strategies to facilitate learning
• Using interactive groups or partners
• Providing opportunities for interactive dialogue
• Ensuring a comprehensive approach to
  intervention.
• Vaughn, Gersten, Chard (2000)

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Targeting Comprehension

• Text structures
• Fluency
• Prior knowledge activation
• Metacognition
• Classroom discourse
• Strategy development

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Strategies

• Defined as cognitive operations over and above
  the processes that are a natural consequence of
  carrying out a task . Strategies achieve
  cognitive purposes (e.g., memorizing) and are
  potentially conscious and controllable
  activities (Pressley, Forrest-Pressley,
  Elliott-Faust, Miller, 1985, p. 4).

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Reality

• Research indicates that direct explanation of
  strategies results in achievement gains for
  struggling readers (Duffy et al., 1987).
• Research indicates that direct explanation of
  strategies is seldom part of reading instruction
  in our schools (Duffy, 2002 Durkin, 1978-1979
  Pressley Wharton-McDonald, 1997).

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Collaborative Strategic Reading

• Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR Klingner,
  Vaughn, Dimino, Schumm, Bryant, 2001)
• CSR combines reading comprehension strategy
  instruction with cooperative learning activities.
  It allows educators to teach students specific
  strategies that have been proven effective in
  improving reading comprehension.

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CSR

• Compelling reason why students with reading
  disabilities should learn comprehension
  strategies for expository text
• Demands placed on them and others by the mandate
  to have access to and make progress in the
  general education curriculum
• For example, science and social studies classes.

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CSR cont.

• Designed to address the following educational
  problems
• 1. how to adequately include students with
  disabilities and English Language Learners in
  text-related learning
• 2. how to teach text comprehension strategies
  that facilitate students learning from
  expository text
• 3. how to provide struggling students
  opportunities to interact effectively with
  achieving peers.

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CSR cont.

• Includes 4 strategies
• 1. Preview
• 2. Click and Clunk
• 3. Get the Gist
• 4. Wrap Up

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Preview

• Implemented before reading a passage
• When you preview, you look at the title,
  subheadings, pictures, and skim the text to look
  for key words
• Purposes are to (1) activate background
  knowledge, and (2) generate informed predictions

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Preview cont.

• Involves 2 steps
• 1. Brainstorming think of all you know and
  write that down
• 2. Predicting think about what you might learn
  (i.e., finding clues in titles, pictures,
  headings and text) and write that down
• 5-minute activity

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Click and Clunk

• Implemented during reading as a self-monitoring
  strategy
• Purposes are to learn/practice (1)
  self-monitoring skills, and (2) methods of
  figuring out the meanings of challenging words
• Clicks are sections of material you understand
  well clunks are words, phrases, or sections you
  dont understand

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Click and Clunk cont.

• Fix-up strategies
• Reread the sentence with the clunk and look for
  key ideas to help figure out the word. Think
  about what makes sense.
• Read the sentences before and after the clunks to
  look for clues.
• Look for a prefix or suffix that might help.
• Break the word apart into smaller units.

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Get the Gist

• Implemented during reading as a main
  idea-monitoring strategy
• Purpose is to identify the most critical
  information in the paragraph or section of text
  read.
• Done 3 to 5 times during a reading session.

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Get the Gist cont.

• Involves 3 steps
• 1. Name the most important who or what in the
  section of text.
• 2. ID the most important information about that
  who or what.
• 3. Rephrase the main idea in own words (e.g., in
  10 words or less)

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Wrap Up

• Implemented after reading as a summarization
  strategy
• Purposes are to (1) ID the most significant ideas
  in the entire passage read, and (2) assist with
  understanding and remembering what read.

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Wrap Up cont.

• Involves 2 steps
• 1. Generating and answering questions. Write them
  down.
• 2. Reviewing what was learned.
• Think about important information thats been
  learned from the reading. Write that down.
• Note something important you have learned. Write
  that down.

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Intervention Study

• Purpose
• To determine if there would be meaningful
  differences in comprehension and metacognitive
  awareness scores of high school students who
  received CSR when using expository text.

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Participants

• 8 students identified with learning disabilities
• 15-17 years old
• 5 9th 3 10th graders
• 75 free lunch
• 3 African American, 5
  Caucasian

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Methodology

• Experimental design
• Random assignment to treatment or control group
• Pre-Post tests
• Woodcock Johnson III
• Qualitative Reading Inventory
• Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale Second
  Edition
• Survey of Reading Strategies

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Methodology cont.

• Treatment group received 17 scripted CSR lessons
  using expository test.
• Control group received tutoring with regular
  study skill assignments.
• Fidelity

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Results

• Improvements of at least 2 grades on
  instructional level on IRI for experimental group
  vs. no improvement for controls.
• No differences in WJ-III scores between two
  groups.

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Results cont.

• Positive differences in student perceived
  metacognitive skill scores in favor of
  experimental group.
• Positive differences in student perceived
  emotional competencies in favor of experimental
  group.

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Implications for Teachers

• Strategies are conscious and controllable
  actions.
• Strategies, when used, can improve understanding
  and memory of materials.
• CSR is one tool that involves conscious action
  before, during, and after text reading.
• Its our choice to read strategically.

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• Any Questions?
• www.validatedpractices.com