Part 2: Strategy Lessons

 

Chapter 6 through 11 are the nuts and bolts of Strategies That Work. These chapters include lessons organized by comprehension strategy. The lessons move from less to more sophisticated – the initial lessons are introductory, those that follow build on the foundation of the earlier lessons. There are twenty new lessons in the second edition of Strategies That Work.

 

 

 

Chapter 6:  Monitoring Comprehension: The Inner Conversation

This chapter brings focus to the importance of becoming aware of thinking as one reads. Students need to tune in to their inner conversations as they read in order to build understanding. It’s important that students become comfortable monitoring their comprehension so they can learn how and when to apply specific strategies to aid their understanding and learning from reading.

 

To Consider:

• Bring some challenging text to share with colleagues. Read it individually and monitor how you deal with difficulties while reading. Discuss the fix-up strategies that each of you uses. Are there certain kinds of fix-ups that work best for you for certain kinds of challenging text? Discuss what you learn about your own reading process.
• Practice a read, write, and talk session in the study group. Observe and discuss what you glean about the value of talking about your reading through this experience.

 

 

 

Chapter 7: Activating and Connecting Background Knowledge: A Bridge from the New to the Known

Readers naturally bring their prior knowledge and experience to reading, but they comprehend better when they think about the connections they make between the text, their lives, and the world at large. Readers also make other kinds of connections: to literary elements and features, to different genres, to different authors, and so on.

 

To Consider:

• Experiment with different ways of asking kids to keep track of their own connections: a class chart, sticky notes, a response journal, and so on. Keeping track of your thinking allows you, as well as your students, to look back and examine your thought process over time. You might ask: Are students’ connections becoming more meaningful over time? That is, are the connections furthering their understanding of the text, issue, or topic? Do students make a variety of content connections (text to self, text to text, text to world)? Do students connect to literary elements and features as well as to the content? Do students’ responses illustrate new and original ways of thinking about their reading?
• Gather samples of students’ reading responses. Examine the samples with colleagues, assessing if and how students’ connections are leading to a greater understanding of what they read. Consider ways to nudge children further during conferences, just as Steph did in her conference with Allison on page 104.
• Teachers often ask about connections kids make that just don’t seem to enhance textual understanding, those “connections in common” and tangential connections discussed on pages 102 to 104 that come fast and frequently. It is your responsibility to check with kids about how their connections help them better understand the text. A form that is helpful is the two-column form headed My Connection/How It Helps Me Understand. Bring a piece of text to share with colleagues and try this form with your own reading. This form is also helpful for questioning and inferring.

 

 

 

Chapter 8: Questioning: The Strategy That Propels Readers Forward

Questioning is the strategy that keeps readers engaged. When readers ask questions, they clarify understanding and forge ahead to make meaning.

 

 

 

To Consider:

 

• Once your students have had practice asking questions with lots of different kinds of texts, try brainstorming questions with them about a puzzling piece of text, as Anne did with Langston Hughes’ poem “Dreams” on page 119. After you have charted the kids’ questions, encourage their independence by asking each student to respond in writing to a question of their own choosing. As a class, come back together to share these responses, discussing how each person’s thinking contributes to an understanding of the text. Share these responses with colleagues.
• Keep track of the questions you ask for a day or two and bring a list of these when you meet with colleagues. Track the kinds of questions you found yourself asking, sorting these into authentic question vs. assessment question categories. Discuss situations and circumstances that encourage each of these kinds of questions.
• As students begin a new topic of study in social studies or science, keep a large chart with their questions. Periodically review this chart to sort through answers to the questions and to assess if the kinds of questions children ask are changing. Next to the questions, you might keep a list of “Ways our schema is changing as we learn more about _____.”

 

 

 

Chapter 9: Visualizing and Inferring: Making What’s Implicit Explicit

Inferring is at the intersection of taking what is known by garnering clues from the text and thinking ahead to make a judgment to discern a theme or speculate about what is to come. Visualizing strengthens our inferential thinking. When we visualize, we are in fact inferring, but with mental images rather than words and thoughts.

 

 

 

To Consider:

• The bravest among you can invite a small group of students from your class to share their thinking with your colleagues. Model your thinking on either visualizing or inferring and then involve the students in guided practice on that strategy. Script the various conversations between yourself and students and the students with each other. After the demonstration is complete, colleagues can question the kids about their thinking and learning. Allow time to debrief this lesson after the kids depart. Discuss how this observation can help you plan you own instruction. Don’t hesitate to try this technique with any of the strategies discussed in the book.
• When readers ask a question, an inference is never far behind. Human beings are driven to answer questions and most often do so with an inference. A powerful scaffold to link questioning and inferring is the two-column I Wonder/I Think form. Try this in the study group with a piece of text that lends itself to a wide range of interpretations, such as a contemporary poem, and then talk about how your questions and inferences help you understand it.
• Visualizing expands the possibilities for response beyond talking and writing. The artist in every kid needs opportunities to respond through drawing as well. Choose a piece of text that spurs strong images and try to sketch a response that you visualize. If you are feeling particularly adventurous, you could dramatize a response or sing a song!

 

Chapter 10: Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection

Thoughtful readers grasp essential ideas and important information when reading. Readers must differentiate between less important information and key ideas that are central to the meaning of text.

 

 

 

To Consider:

• Using nonfiction texts and excerpts, begin your own class chart of features that help your students navigate dense text. Bring these charts to your colleagues and examine ways to develop a common language across grade levels for teaching these conventions and features. Consider ways that different features help students determine important information.

• Using the suggestions described in Chapter 10 lessons, try several of the two- and three-column notes forms with students. Share student work samples and examine how these forms scaffold student learning. For instance, do some forms lead to further questioning and research topics?

• As your students become more adept at strategic reading and thinking, encourage them to apply the strategy for determining importance to their use of other strategies. For instance, as kids learn about connections and questions, they may make lots of tangential ones. Encourage them to look at which connections and/or questions are the most important and help them better understand what they read. A connection that the reader makes may be important to him or her but less important to a deeper understanding of the text. A good response form for this might be titled Connections, with columns below headed: Important to Me, Important to Understanding the Text, and Both. In this way you honor all of the readers’ connections but help them decide which ones are truly important to understanding. A similar form for questioning has also proved useful. You want to teach your students to evaluate the importance of their questions and connections in relation to understanding the text. Try this in your own reading.

 

 

 

Chapter 11: Summarizing and Synthesizing Information: The Evolution of Thought

Summarizing something we read involves pulling out the important information and putting it into our own words so we can remember it. Synthesizing involves combining new information with existing knowledge to form an original idea or interpretation. Synthesizing lies on a continuum. Rudimentary synthesizing involves merely stopping and thinking about what we are reading. Taking stock of meaning and reading for the gist is a step further down that line. Sometimes read¬ers have a true synthesis, an “Aha” of sorts where they achieve new insight and change their thinking. This is the ultimate form of synthesis.

 

To Consider:

 

• Bring the texts kids are reading to your monthly meeting. Look at their sticky notes together and notice their evolving thinking. Do they seem to be getting the gist? Does their thinking change as they read? Their sticky notes provide you with a wealth of information and warrant close examination. Take a look at the assessment commentaries at the end of each strategy chapter in the sec¬ond edition of Strategies That Work as models for the kinds of assessment you can do simply by examining your kids’ notes.
• How does summarizing differ from synthesizing? Summarizing is one aspect of synthesizing. Summarizing is recording events, information, and ideas in a few sentences. Synthesizing is a more sophisticated process that involves original thinking. Ask students to summarize their thinking and jot down new thoughts or ideas that occur to them as they read. For instance, a two-column form headed Getting the Gist/My New Thinking can prove useful.
• Synthesizing is the strategy that allows readers to change their thinking if they are willing. Because of their age, young readers are actually better at revising their thinking than adults. It is difficult for adults to read editorials they don’t agree with. Sometimes we notice that an op-ed writer with whom we rarely agree says something that actually hits the mark. The tendency, however, is to skip right over it rather than take it seriously and revise our thinking. Kids are far less set in their ways and more willing to allow reading to change thinking. Bring in some articles or editorials. Read a variety in the study group and see if you can break through your existing paradigm and use reading to change your thinking. Talk about this process with your colleagues and then share this experience with your students.

 

 

 

 

All of the lessons, discussions, and responses in Strategies That Work have one purpose: to move kids toward independence as readers. We confer with our students to assess which strategies our students actively use to help make meaning and which strategies lag behind. Here’s a list of things you could apply with any of the strategies in Part II. These actions and considerations deal with assessment, and your group discussions around them would be enhanced by further examining the assessment commentaries, new to the second edition of Strategies That Work, at the end of each strategy chapter.

 

 

• With your students, brainstorm a list of strategies they might use to make sense of a piece of short text. These might include the following:
  • stopping and thinking when the text doesn’t make sense
  • rereading 
  • asking questions to clarify confusion
  • making an inference when more information is needed
  • thinking about the two or three big ideas in a piece
  • paying special attention to charts, picture captions, or tables

        Ask students to tally which of these strategies they used and discuss when and why students used each strategy.

 

• Keep ongoing anecdotal notes of your reading conferences with your stu¬dents. Bring the conference notes of at least three different students to the study group. Using the conference notes as evidence, discuss if and how these students are using strategies to better understand what they read. Discuss which evidence is most helpful in determining how effectively students are using the strategies.
• When teaching a particular strategy and asking students to use that strategy in their own reading, review your conference notes for that strategy. Note those children who are using the strategy independently in their own reading and those who seem to need more support and scaffolding to use the strategy effectively. How might you plan additional instruction for those who need it while also accommodating students who are ready to use the strategy inde¬pendently with more challenging text? Share ideas for differentiated instruc¬tion with your study group, considering small flexible groups as well as indi¬vidual instruction.
• When books are bursting with sticky notes, kids can remove them and place them on a strategy chart to share their thinking. The chart might be titled Our Questions about _______ (a topic, a book, an article, and so on). This chart can reflect ongoing learning about any strategy.
• We know students truly understand how to use comprehension strategies in their reading when they can articulate why a strategy enhanced their under¬standing. Share the double-entry form, Strategy I Used as I Read/How This Strategy Helped Me Understand the Text and model your own thinking about a piece of text before turning them loose with it.

 

 

 

                                                            Study Guide for Strategies That Work, Second Edition  Copyright @2007 by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis