Payge Rivord – EngEd 370
scaffolding instruction: Teachers model strategies step-by-step and explicitly demonstrated the processes of thinking before, during, and after one reads. Next, teachers provide the students with guided practice in the strategies, followed by independent practice and application. Scaffolding is considered a transactional strategies instruction.
literal questions: students answer by using information explicitly and directly stated in the text.
inferential questions: students answer by using their background knowledge along with information from the text.
evaluative questions: students answer by making judgements about what they read.
active comprehension: when students are engaged in a process of generating questions and making connections throughout the reading.
ReQuest (reciprocal questioning): this encourages students to ask their own questions about the material being read. Below is an example of question prompts for this strategy.
QAR (Question-answer relationships): these help learners know what information sources are available for seeking answers to different types of questions. Readers become more sensitive to the different mental operations and text demands required by different questions. Teachers and students become cognizant of the three-way relationships that exist among the question, the text to with your refers, in the background knowledge and information at the readers disposal.
QtA (questioning the author): this strategy models for students the importance of asking questions while reading. It demonstrates the kinds of questions students need to ask in order to think more deeply and construct meaning about segments of text as they read. It places value on the quality and depth of students responses to the authors intent.
reciprocal teaching: this is an approach to scaffolding reading comprehension in which teachers introduce for strategies, model the strategies, and gradually encourage independent use of the strategies in small groups as students take on the role of the teacher. These four strategies are:
- Predicting what the text is about
- Raising questions about the text
- Summarizing the text
- Clarifying difficult vocabulary and concepts
Think-alouds: A strategy where teachers and students share their thoughts, discuss what they wonder about and what confuses them, and make connections as they are reading. A common time to utilize a think- aloud is during a read aloud.
story map: A way of identifying major structural elements, both explicit and implicit, underlying a story to be taught in class. Below is an example of a story map.
general comprehension questions: questions that can be applied to any story. EX: “Where did the story take place?”
specific comprehension questions: questions created from a specific text. EX: “Why was CharacterA upset when they began the test?”
Schema: prior/background knowledge
building a schema for stories
There are many resources available to teachers for locating quality children’s literature for teaching comprehension. There are three activities and suggestions that will help students build a sense of story and reinforce their awareness of story structure.
- Read, tell, and perform stories in class: these types of experiences with stories are as paramount in the middle grades as they are in the beginning grades.
- Show relationships between story parts: flow charts reflect best practices for mapping relationships that exist between events in the story. flowcharts give children a visual image of how stories are organized.
- Reinforce story knowledge through instructional activities: children’s understanding of story structure can be extended through very instructional tasks. Two activities are suggested: macrocloze stories and scrambled stories.
macrocloze stories: A teacher constructs cloze material by deleting single words from a passage. Children are then given copies of the cloze passage and are required to supply the missing words.
scrambled stories: A story is separated into its parts and jumbled. Students must then read the scrambled story and re-order it.
story frames: A story frame provides the student with a skeletal paragraph: a sequence of space is tied together with transition words and connectors that signal a line of thought.
circular story map: hey circular story map uses pictures to depict the sequence of events leading to the problem in a story. This strategy is useful for students who strengths include visual representation.
DR-TA (directed reading-thinking activity): this activity builds critical awareness of the readers role and responsibility in interacting with the text. The strategy involves readers in the process of predicting, verifying, judging, and extending thinking about the text material.
KWL: this strategy helps students think about what they know or believe they know about a topic, what they need to find out by reading the text, what they learned by reading, and what they still need to and want to learn about the topic from other information sources.
discussion webs: these require students to explore both sides of an issue during discussions before drawing conclusions. The discussion web strategy uses a graphic aid to guide students thinking about the ideas that they want to contribute to the discussion. Below is an example of a discussion web.
story impressions: this strategy helps students anticipate what stories could be about. As a pre-reading activity, this strategy uses Clue words associated with the setting, characters, and events in the story to help readers write their own versions of the story prior to reading.
text connections
text to self: this is a text connection that asks the student to share what a piece of fiction or nonfiction text reminds them of personally.
text to text: this is a text connection that asks the student to recall another text that reminds them of the one they are reading.
text to world: this type of connection is more inferential in nature because it asks the student to make connections beyond the story. What world issues does the story bring to mind?
Classroom application
Before reading this chapter I had never heard of a discussion web. I thought this idea was very neat and I will definitely be utilizing it in my future classroom. I think discussions can sometimes be intimidating for students and I think this web does a really good job of breaking discussions down into a simple and fair format, and allows students to explore multiple perspectives.
Payge Rivord 