Developing Reading Comprehension: Teacher's Writing PD Series, Study notes of Construction

Download Developing Reading Comprehension: Teacher's Writing PD Series and more Study notes Construction in PDF only on Docsity! Session 7: Building Reading Comprehension through Writing MS/HS Literacy Teacher Professional Development Series 2 Recap In our last session, we spent time… • applying the process of writing summaries in the classroom to support reading comprehension. LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE (facts, concepts, etc.) VOCABULARY (breadth, precision, links, etc.) LANGUAGE STRUCTURE (syntax, semantics, etc.) VERBAL REASONING (inference, metaphor, ete) LITERACY KNOWLEDGE (print concepts, genres, etc.) STRANDS WOVEN INTO SKILLED WORD RECOGNITION READING PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS: (syllables, phonemes, etc.) DECODING {alphabetic principle, spelling-sound correspondences) SIGHT RECOGNITION (of familiar words) SCARBOROUGH’S READING ROPE (2001) SKILLED READING 6 Building Strong Comprehenders • Summarizing what has been read • Generating questions to monitor comprehension (done by students) • Using context clues to make inferences • Combination of lexical inference and question generation • Offering several opportunities to communicate to build background knowledge or oral comprehension • There is no one “magical” strategy SOURCE: Cain, 2009 7 Impact of Writing on Reading Comprehension • Students who have additional opportunities to write “evidence a 14 percentile-point jump on measures of reading comprehension.” • “...when elementary-grade students are directed to write about material they are reading (versus students who mainly read and reread or study this material), their comprehension of the text read jumps by 24 percentile points, whereas writing about content material presented in class results in a 9 percentile-point jump on measures of learning.” • “Its permanence (writing) makes it possible for children to review, reexamine, critique, and even construct new understandings of these ideas. When students put these ideas into their own written words, it can help them think more carefully about what the ideas mean.” SOURCE: Graham and Harris, 2016 10 Writing to Read • When students write about what they read, they are improving their comprehension in the areas of Science, Social Studies and Language Arts. Specific ideas for writing to improve comprehension include: • respond to a text in writing (writing personal reactions, analyzing and interpreting the text) • write summaries of a text • write notes about a text • answer questions about a text in writing SOURCE: Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading 11 Teaching Students Writing Skills and Processes • When students understand the process of writing and structure of texts, they can anticipate what comes next or the flow of the text and create meaning from that. Specific ideas include: • the process of writing • text structures for writing • paragraph construction • sentence construction skills SOURCE: Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading 12 Increasing Opportunities to Write • Research shows there is a 14 percentile jump in reading comprehension for students who had more opportunities to write • Consult the curriculum to determine what opportunities there are to write. • Consult rubrics for your content area that can help you pinpoint certain areas to focus on. • Writing should always be purposeful. • Develop certain skills of writing. • Demonstrate mastery of the material read. • Direct and explicit instruction should always be a part of instruction when first introducing a part of writing or when working in small groups. 15 Next Steps if Not Progressing • If students are still not progressing with the small group instruction for reading comprehension, then they may need to be referred to the school’s administration or SBLC team for next steps. • Very little or no progress could indicate that student needs help with word recognition skills such as: • decoding and/or phonics skills. • phonemic awareness skills. 16 Final Thoughts • Writing is a great way for students to build their reading comprehension. • Writing about what they have read allows students to determine what was most important in the text, as well as make connections to the content or in the world. 17 Engage • Consider what ideas or topics are important in an upcoming unit. • What text will be used in the curriculum to help students develop their understanding of that topic? • What opportunities can you highlight in the curriculum for them to write? • What opportunities to write can you add to what is already existing? • What scaffolds may be needed for students who need more support?