Read-alouds that develop vocabulary and comprehension

Read-alouds that develop vocabulary and comprehension

Keys to increasing explicitnessSharon Walpole

University of Delaware

ExplicitnessEmphasis on explaining the cognitive procedures

necessary to complete a task.

ModelingScaffolding

Assessment

Read Alouds Can Build Knowledge

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Conceptual Model:Gradual Release of Responsibility*

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*Pearson, P.D., & Gallagher, M.C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 317-344.

Smolkin & Donovan, 2002

“[R]esearch has almost universally supported the idea that reading aloud to children leads to improved reading comprehension.” (p. 144)

These children are ready to acquire comprehension strategies, but they tend not to be proficient decoders.

So, what’s a teacher to do?

The Domino Theory

Teach children to decode first, and put off vocabulary and comprehension

instruction until later.

Smolkin & Donovan, 2002.

“If we want children to reason their ways through texts during a time when they cannot yet read, then the social context for comprehension acquisition must be a read-aloud of text.” (p. 144)

What kind of read-alouds shall we have?

Two Types of Read-Alouds

1. Teacher Directed Planned with carefully placed questions IRE model employed

2. Fully Interactive Model Planned questions may be modified Teacher embeds commentary Flexible scaffolding provided Students collaboratively support one

another

“The Five-to-Seven Shift”

During this age range, children become able to think “multi-dimensionally,” a requirement of comprehension, and to reason with others in group settings.

This argues for fully interactive read-alouds!

Interactive read-alouds tend to work best with information books.

– Smolkin & Donovan, 2002

In a nonfiction interactive read-aloud, a teacher can . . . Link a word to its context

Help children infer causal relationships

Tell about how texts are structured

Model the use of fix-up strategies


T: “In 1612, French explorers saw some Iroquois people popping corn in clay pots. They would fill the pots with hot sand, throw in some popcorn and stir it with a stick. When the corn popped, it came to the top of the sand and made it easy to get.”

C: Look at the bowl!T: Okay, now it’s hot enough to add a few kernels.C: What’s a kernel?C: Like when you pop.T: It’s a seed.C: What if you, like, would you think … a popcorn seed.

Like a popcorn seed. Could you grow popcorn?


T: Oh, excellent, excellent question! Let’s read and we’ll see if this book answers that question, and if not, we’ll talk about it at the end.


T: Alright, it hit the reef. Why did it hit the reef? Because it got . . . (no response from children). What did it say? It said there was

C: A storm.

T: Storm, right.

C: They couldn’t see.

T: Right, it did say that. Because they couldn’t see, and if they were out . . .

C: Were the people surprised?

C: The storm blew it into the rocks.

T: Exactly.

T: “And 100-year-old popcorn kernels were found in Peru that could still be popped.” Now. This guy is doing different . . . It’s kind of like two stories are going on. What is this part giving us?

Cs: (together) Information

T: It is. And what is this doing?

C: It is telling you.

T: It’s giving us, right, steps of how to make the popcorn.

C: And he has a big old speech bubble.

T: Yes, because he’s reading about this, remember? And so his speech bubble is him reading this book about this (pointing to pictures of native peoples).

T: “Insects live on the tree, too. This big cicada just crawled out of its brown, shell-like skin. For several years . . . (teacher pauses. The next word in the text is ‘it’)” Let’s start back here. “Insects live on the tree, too. This big cicada just crawled out of its brown, shell-like skin.”

C: (interrupting) We already read this.

T: I know, but see, sometimes if you stop, it helps [to go back] It didn’t make sense just reading [further in the text]

To what extent are you seeing fully interactive read alouds?What barriers are you facing?

The Vocabulary Catch-22

Children need to learn more words to read well, but they need to read well to

learn more words.

McKenna, M.C. (2004). Teaching vocabulary to struggling older readers. Perspectives, 30(1), 13-16.

Why Wide Reading Why Wide Reading Is Enough Is Not EnoughVocabulary size andthe amount a child reads are correlated.

Direct instruction cannot possibly account for the number of word meanings children acquire.

Context is generally unreliable as a means of inferring word meanings.

Most words occur too infrequently to provide the number of exposures needed to learn them.

Marzano, R.J. (2004). The developing vision of vocabulary instruction. In J.F. Baumann & E.J. Kame’enui (Eds.), Vocabulary instruction: Research to practice (pp. 100-117). New York: Guilford.

“There is no obvious reason why direct vocabulary instruction and wide reading cannot work in tandem.”

– Marzano (2004, p. 112)

Perhaps one of the most important reasons why teachers need to pay attention to vocabulary is that vocabulary knowledge is cumulative. The more words you know, the easier it is to learn yet more words.

– Stahl & Nagy (2005)

How do I know which words to teach?

Two characteristics that make a word inappropriate for teaching:

1. We can’t define it in terms that the students know.

2. The students are not likely to find the word useful or interesting.

– Beck & McKeown (2004)

Beck and McKeown’s Three TiersTier 3 • Rare words

• 73,500 word families K-12• Often content-area related• Examples: isotope, estuary

Tier 2 • Important to academic success• 7,000 word families• Not limited to one content area• Examples: fortunate, ridiculous

Tier 1 • The most familiar words• 8,000 word families• Known by average 3rd grader• Examples: happy, go

Beck and McKeown’s Three TiersTier 3 • Rare words

• 73,500 word families K-12• Often content-area related• Examples: isotope, estuary

Tier 2 • Important to academic success• 7,000 word families• Not limited to one content area• Examples: fortunate, ridiculous

Tier 1 • The most familiar words• 8,000 word families• Known by average 3rd grader• Examples: happy, go

“Goldilocks” Words– Stahl & Stahl, 2004

Once I find them, how do I teach them?

After Reading . . .

1. Tell how the word was used in the context of the story

2. Give a student-friendly explanation of the word’s meaning

3. Have children say the word4. Give two additional contexts in which the

word could be used correctly5. Give the children a frame sentence to

generate their own context

What does this sound like?• In the story, Bibot was a very fussy man. Fussy

means you focus on details, even if it hurts someone’s feelings. Say the word with me.

• Someone might be fussy about the way her hair looks, and not like to play sports, or an adult might be fussy about eating, and not like to eat at someone else’s house.

• Tell me something you might be fussy about. Try to use the word fussy when you tell about it. You could start by saying something like “I am fussy about ________.”

And how can I integrate vocabulary and comprehension

instruction?

www.guilford.com

Classroom Model: Direct Explanation

Organize lessons to include introduction, modeling, interaction, and closure

Before reading, provide • Declarative Knowledge: What strategy is to be

learned and used?• Procedural Knowledge: How is that strategy

actually employed?• Conditional Knowledge: When and why should

that strategy should be used?

What does this sound like?

“Today we are going to learn to find the main idea in a science article. When you find the main idea, you do three things: you review the whole article, you think about what the author thought was most important, and you put that into a brief statement. Readers find the main idea after reading, and it helps them to understand and to remember.

Research on Direct Explanation

Initial training included:– Presentations on DE– Lesson plan design by teachers– Observation and feedback

Effects on students1. They developed declarative, procedural, and

conditional knowledge2. The did not have better standardized

comprehension scores

More DESecond study of DE included

1. Presentations on DE2. Lesson plan design by teachers3. Observation and feedback4. One on one coaching5. Collaborative discussions6. Videotaped model lessons

Effects on students1. Students again learned about strategies2. Students did use more of the basal skills3. Students used and described reasoning during reading4. Standardized test scores improved

Specifying procedural knowledge for teachers and children is a barrier to full implementation of direct explanation. The slides which follow provide the procedural knowledge that Duffy has shared in Explaining Reading.

Predicting

1. Look for clues in the text2. Think about what you already know

about the topic3. On the basis of prior knowledge and the

clues, predict what you think will happen

Monitoring, Questioning and Repredicting

1. Keep your original prediction in mind2. Keep asking whether that prediction

continues to make sense in light of new information from the text

3. Use new information in the text and prior knowledge about that information to make new predictions

Imaging

1. Identify words the author is using that are descriptive

2. Use prior knowledge about those words and about your senses to create an image in your mind

Inferring

1. Note the clues embedded in the text2. Access your own experience regarding

the clues3. Make predictions about the implied

meaning based on experience with the clues the author provides

Looks-Backs as Fix-It Strategies

1. Stop when the text stops making sense2. Identify what is blocking meaning3. Think about what strategy you know that

could be used to fix the problem4. Apply the strategy 5. Test to see if the problem is fixed

Main Idea

• Put yourself in the author’s place• Examine words and phrases for clues to what is

important• Ask questions about what, in your experience,

the clues combined seem to say about what is valued

• Decide what the main idea is by saying, “If I had written this and said things this way, what would that say about what I thought was important?”

Summarizing

1. Understand the concepts of beginning, middle and end

2. Know the parts of a story3. Review the book to identify the

information provided at the beginning, in the middle and at the end

Drawing Conclusions

1. Think about the topic being discussed and ask what the author wants readers to think

2. Use experience about clue words3. Ask yourself, “Why would I say about

what is being said here if I were the author?”

Evaluating

1. Read what the text says2. Note if there are gaps or inconsistencies

or flaws in the logic3. Use prior knowledge to answer the

questions, “What do I think about this? Do I agree? Do I have a different view?”

Synthesizing

1. Think about the content of each story2. Decide how the stories are alike and

different3. Identify common elements4. Use experience about the common

elements to create a synthesis

To what extent are these skills and strategies consistent with the ones in your core program?

How could you help your teachers to integrate strategy instruction by using the core strategy and language and applying it in a new text?

How could you make that simpler for teachers?

Planning a Strategic Read-Aloud

• Choose well.– Consider students’ interests and needs.– Consider vocabulary: are there words that at

least half your students don’t know?– Consider text structure: how does this text

expand children’s text structure knowledge?– Consider the rest of your curriculum: are there

ways to connect the theme of this text to other things children are learning?


• Analyze the material– Identify tier 2 words– Decide what background information to

provide– Decide what strategy could be useful for

understanding the text– Find places to stop and model – Consider whether a graphic organizer would

be useful


• Make a plan for building prior knowledge– How can you relate content to students’ past

experiences? (“Have you ever …?”)– Jot down information you want to provide

before reading.– Plan a brief overview (“This story is about …”)

• Make a plan for introducing the strategy, with declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge

Conducting a Strategic Read-Aloud

• Read the book interactively– Stop to model– Stop to ask questions– Stop to allow children to ask questions

• Show pictures after reading the text and interacting with it

Conducting a Strategic Read-Aloud

• Use the graphic organizer to help children generate a summary

• Review the strategy you’ve chosen• Teach the Tier 2 words

So let’s try it . . . How can we plan fully interactive read alouds that include both comprehension strategy instruction and direct instruction in word meanings?

How can we make a simple lesson plan frame to guide teachers in planning and to guide ourselves in observing and coaching?

Read-alouds that develop vocabulary and comprehension

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