Part 1: The Foundation of Meaning

Chapter 1: Reading Is Thinking

This chapter explains how readers make meaning when they read and why it's important to teach comprehension.

Chapter 2: Reading Is Strategic

The chapter summarizes strategies that proficient readers use and suggests that if we want readers to use them independently, teachers need to show students how we think when we read. Chapter 2 goes into greater detail about what it means to read strategically.

To Consider:

• Start a collection of intriguing articles, short stories, excerpts, poems, or other short pieces. Copy and share these pieces with colleagues and decide on one to read together, with each participant keeping track of their inner conversation with the text. Margin notes and coding the text help you record your thinking to later share those strategies you used to make sense of the piece. Consider:

• What strategies proved useful for understanding this text? What did you do as a proficient reader to understand new information, ideas, or insights? Notice your questions, ideas, opinions, or interpretations and share these. What does paying attention to your own thinking during reading teach you about supporting students as they learn to use comprehension strategies?

        Save one of these pieces to share with your students as a model of your ongoing writing/thinking in response to reading.

• Try a similar activity with your students. Choose an interesting or provocative piece of short text. Provide each student with a copy, read it together, and ask students to record their inner conversation on the text or on sticky notes. Then ask students to share their thoughts with a partner. The greatest way to enhance understanding is to talk about the text after reading it.

• Observe a colleague as he or she launches comprehension strategy instruction. Record the language used to model and explain the strategy. Based on the students’ responses to the lesson, discuss the effectiveness of the language and overall lesson.

• Think about two or three students you work with and try to categorize their level of metacognitive knowledge and awareness. Observe and keep track of how each student monitors his or her thinking during reading. Consider the ways you support students to move through this continuum to become more strategic and reflective readers.

• Collect student work – sticky notes, response journal entries, texts with margin notes – and discuss it. What evidence is there that students are keeping track of meaning as they read? Can you observe their evolving thinking? Brainstorm some additional ways that students might keep track of their thinking.

• Explore each of the strategies defined on pages 16-19 in greater depth. Work with colleagues to add to these definitions. Consider a common language for reading comprehension instruction across ages and grade levels.

Chapter 3: Effective Comprehension Instruction: Teaching, Tone, and Assessment

The chapter describes some of the factors in building effective comprehension instruction, including the gradual release of responsibility model, creating an atmosphere for inquiry, collaboration, and authentic responses to reading, the role strategy instruction plays in a workshop classroom, and teaching comprehension with the end in mind by using authentic, meaningful assessment.

To Consider:

• Consider how the gradual release of responsibility approach may help you differentiate instruction. How might you provide additional support to small groups who need further explanation and practice? How would you provide opportunities for independent work for students who have a clear understanding of a strategy?
• Document the assessments you use to find out if readers are understanding what they read. Do you listen to kids? Confer? Observe behaviors and expressions? What do you do with the information you glean from these assessments? Share your thoughts on these assessments with others in your study group. How could you better use the assessments to improve instruction?
• Discuss ways that you set the tone for a literate community in your classroom. Set a goal of focusing on one of the following and then discuss how you worked toward the goal: foster passion and creativity; place value on collaborative learning and thinking; provide extended reading and writing time; use language in respectful ways; give opportunities for authentic responses by students; arrange your room to facilitate a literate community; keep resources accessible.

Chapter 4: Tools for Active Literacy: The Nuts and Bolts of Comprehension Instruction

Chapter 4 focuses on teaching the reading strategies, explicit comprehension instruction, and supporting active literacy by asking students to be participants in the instruction and to respond to what they’ve read in a variety of ways.

To Consider:

• Consider the balance of teacher work to student work in your classroom. How much time do your students spend being actively, independently engaged in investigations, research, discussions, writing, and reading compared with the amount of time you spend instructing?
• Consider your own instructional practices. Which of these do you use on a regular basis with your students?
  •     Thinking aloud and coding the text
  •     Reading aloud
  •     Interactively guiding discussions
  •     Lifting text
  •     Reasoning through the text
  •     Providing anchor experiences
  •     Rereading for deeper meaning
  •     Sharing your own literacy by modeling with adult text
• What other instructional practices do you find particularly effective in engaging and highlighting kids’ thinking?
• Kids differ. Some kids are able to grasp how to use a strategy quickly, others need more time for practice. How do you differentiate strategy instruction to accommodate a wide variety of learners? Describe how you meet individual needs through whole-group instruction, flexible small groups, and conferring with individuals.
• With colleagues, read the same piece of text and experiment with a variety of response options (pages 52-58). Talk about your inner conversation and discuss the different strategies that come into play with these different options. How does sharing your thinking about your responses enhance your understanding of the text?

Chapter 5: Text Matters: Choice Makes a Difference

Chapter 5 describes the importance of selecting compelling and relevant text in a variety of genres to support students in understanding content and to encourage enthusiasm for reading in general. Chapter 5 suggests criteria for choosing text, including picture books, magazines, newspapers, and Web reading.

To Consider:

• Choose several compelling pieces of short text (one page max) that you think would interest your kids. You can select a poem, a story, a feature article, and so on. Introduce each piece and sell the kids on the text to fire them up to start reading. Students can choose the piece that most interests them, read it, grab a partner who’s read the same text, and start talking. Ask each of them to share their inner conversations. Wander around the room and listen in on their discussion, taking notes of what they say. Once in a while, ask them to share their thoughts with the whole class. Bring your notes when you meet with colleagues and talk about their comprehension process. What impact did the students’ choice of text – or the fact that they had a choice – have on their engagement with reading and discussions?
• Start a collection of picture books for teaching different comprehension strategies. See Appendix A for lots of book recommendations. Think about children’s literature you already have in your classroom that would be helpful in teaching particular strategies. Share these ideas with colleagues.
• As you read the picture books, jot down your responses on sticky notes or in a response journal, focusing especially on how a given strategy or strategies helped to enhance your understanding of the book. With a partner, brainstorm how you might use one of the instructional approaches described in Chapter 4 with one of the books (thinking aloud and coding the text, lifting the text, reasoning through the text, and so on). Some schools keep lists of selected books for strategy instruction in the library so teachers can quickly access them. (One school attaches short lesson suggestions to each book in a “strategy text set” located on a shelf just for teachers and the librarian to use in mini-lessons.) The study group might design some lessons for specific books they’ve chosen.
• Discuss the idea that particular titles should not be pegged to teaching a particular reading strategy. What are the advantages and drawbacks and identifying certain texts as “good for teaching questioning,” “good for inferring,” and so on?
• To begin the text set, think about a topic you or your students are passionate or curious about. Or think about how you might breathe new life into a time worn (but well-loved) topic by searching for poems, essays, or new pictures books related to it. Begin with text you know and love. Remember to include student contributions – picture books, short stories, articles, poems, newspaper excerpts, essays, and so on. Don’t forget to think about audience, purpose, and quality of writing as you make your selections.

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