Secondary Reading Strategiesin the Content Areas

Leslie Ballard, DirectorAdvancED Indiana

lballard@advanc-ed.org

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• Informational literacy is so crucial to success in American higher education, citizenship, and work that our current era is widely known as the "information age.“

• Nearly 44 million American adults cannot extract even a single piece of information from a written text if any inference or background knowledge is required (Levy, 1993).

Nell Duke 2005

Reading is an essential component of college and workplace readiness. Low literacy levels often prevent high school students from mastering other subjects. Poor readers struggle to learn in text-heavy courses and are frequently blocked from taking academically more challenging courses.

Reading Between the Lines (ACT)

Challenge for studentsSecondary texts• are significantly longer and more complex at the

word, sentence, and structural levels,• present greater conceptual challenges and obstacles

to reading fluency,• contain more detailed graphic representations (as

well as tables, charts and equations linked to text) • demand a much greater ability to synthesize information.

Time to Act 2010

Challenge for teachers

• It is critical that secondary teachers better understand and teach specific literacy strategies to help student read and extract meaning from the written material used to teach the course content.

NASSP 2005

The Big Why

Why should all content area teachers share the responsibility of teaching literacy skills?

Literacy is far more than basic reading

Literacy requires being able to read, critique,produce and learn from increasingly complex print and electronic texts that juxtaposegraphics, media and sound to createmultifaceted messages about all aspects ofour world. The new basic literacy skills include being able to read, analyze andproduce graphs, charts, pictures, maps, images and works in fiction and nonfictiontexts.

Meltzer and Jackson, 2010

Our agenda

• Building Background Knowledge• Text Previewing• Questioning • Predicting• Summarizing

400+ Page text

“Somites are blocks of dorsal mesodermal cells adjacent to the notochord during vertebrate organogensis.”

“Improved vascular definition in radiographs of the arterial phase or of the venous phase can be procured by a process of subtraction whereby positive and negative images of the overlying skull are superimposed on one another.”

Besides Some Neuroanatomy, What Doug Learned

• You can’t learn from books you can’t read (but you can learn)• Reading widely builds background and vocabulary• Interacting with others keeps me motivated, clarifies information and extends understanding• I have choices

Why Bother with Building Background

Knowledge?

“…the research literature supports one compelling fact: what students already know about the content is one of the strongest indicators of how well they learn new information relative to the content.”

Robert MarzanoBuilding Background KnowledgeASCD, 2004

Background Knowledge

• Direct– Field Trips– Virtual Experiences

• Indirect– Reading– Vocabulary Instruction

Why Content Area Vocabulary?

• Research reveals that vocabulary knowledge is the single most important factor contributing to reading comprehension.

• Content area vocabulary instruction is critical because – it consists of major content concepts– often no prior knowledge of specialized vocabulary exists– content area terms are often semantically related.

Billmeyer & Barton, McRel

Vocabulary Resources

• Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement: Research on What Works in Schools– Robert J. Marzano– ASCD 2004

• Word Wise & Content Rich: Five Essential Steps to Teaching Academic Vocabulary– Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey– Heinemann 2008

Vocabulary Web Resources

• www.– vocabulary.co.il– myvocabulary.com– vocabulary.com

www.vocabularycartoons.com

(c) Frey & Fisher, 2008

TEACHER RESPONSIBILITY

STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY

Focus Lesson

Guided Instruction

“I do it”

“We do it”

“You do it together”

Collaborative

Independent “You do it alone”

A Structure for Instruction that Works

“Life-long readers are made, not born.”

Basic Questions

• Who?• What?• Where? • When?• Why?• How?

Helpful sentence starters

• I wonder…• I was confused when…• I enjoyed…• I am curious about…• I was surprised to learn that…• This information confirms what I knew about…• This information contradicts what I knew about…• I agree/disagree because….

Prediction

• Predictions build curiosity and vesting.• Greater vesting and more public vesting will invited

greater attention to the learning.• Prediction can be on the process, outcome or value

(impact of something).• Students convey their predictions with journals,

hand signals, public charts, graphs or verbally.

• Students share their predictions with a partner, a team, or the class.

© 2010 AdvancED

Activity

Complete the Before Reading portion of the Anticipation Guide for “Problems Are Our

Friends.” Read the excerpt and then complete the After Reading and Reflection portions of

the guide.

Questioning/Predicting

• Question/Answer• Sticky Notes• Double Entry Journals• KWL• Anticipation Guides• DR-TA• Quick Writes• Read-Write-Pair-Share • Reciprocal Teaching

Summarizing Summary

• Retain original order if appropriate

• Rewrite completely, using your own words and style

• Length is about ¼ to 1/3 the original

• Deal with only the “big picture” or the overview

Paraphrase

• Retain original order if appropriate

• Rewrite completely, using your own words and style

• Length is about the same as the original

• Include all or most of the details

Let’s Try It

• Read the paragraph and– Paraphrase it– Summarize it

SQ3R

• SURVEY– the title, headings, subheadings– captions under pictures, charts, graphs, maps– review questions or study guides– introductory and concluding paragraphs– summary

SQ3R

• QUESTION– Turn the title, headings, subheadings into questions.– Make questions about bold-faced words or phrases.– Ask yourself, “What did my teacher say about this chapter or subject

when it was assigned?”– Ask yourself, “What do I already know about this subject?”– Ask Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?

SQ3R

• READ– Look for answers to the questions you raised.– Answer questions at the beginning or end of

chapters or study guides.– Reread captions under pictures, graphs, etc.– Study graphic aids.

SQ3R

• READ, cont.– Note all the underlined, italicized, bold printed

words or phrases– Reduce your speed for difficult passages– Stop and reread parts which are not clear– Read only a section at a time and recite after each

section

SQ3R• RECITE

– Close your book and write down what you remember.

– Orally ask yourself questions about what you have just read and/or summarize, in your own words, what you read.

– Take notes from the textbooks but write the information in your own words.

– Underline/highlight important points you’ve just read.

– Hint: The more senses you use, the more likely you are to remember what you read.

• Triple Strength– Seeing – Saying– Hearing

• Quadruple Strength– Seeing– Saying – Hearing– Writing

SQ3R

• REVIEW– Look over your Recite notes.– Reread any section that you still don’t understand.

Reciprocol Teaching

Summarizing

Questioning

Clarifying

Predicting

DR-TAIntroduce Background Knowledge

Make Predictions

Read a section and stop to check and revise predictions.

•What do you know so far from this reading?•How do you know it?•What do you expect to read next?

After reading, use student predictions as the discussion tool.

“When teachers focus on a cross-curricular approach to reading, students’

reading skills are immeasurably strengthened.”

Rebecca RozmiarekImproving Reading Skills Across the Content Areas: Ready to Use Activities and

Assessments for Grades 6-12

K – W – LLLLLLLLLLLLL!

Consider today’s session and jot down in the third column the information or activities which could help you increase your students’ literacy in your subject. Be prepared to report out.

Resources

• Indiana Literacy Frameworks http://www.doe.in.gov/achievement/curriculum/reading-and-literacy-frameworks

• Learning Connection – Literacy Liaisons – Adolescent Literacy www.doe.in.gov

• www.doe.in.gov/readingsummit

Resources

• http://programs.ccsso.org/projects/adolescent_literacy_toolkit/

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you

learn, the more places you'll go.”

Dr. Suess