Showing posts with label comprehension strategies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comprehension strategies. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2011

Into the book - comprehension strategies

I posted about this website last year - a useful resource when talking to students (primary) about ways to get more from reading - but have just recommended the downloadable pdf posters with each strategy simply defined to a librarian asking for just this thing for display in the library, so thought I would mention it again...
Into the book - http://reading.ecb.org/index.html

From the website :
Into the Book is a reading comprehension resource for K-4 students and teachers. We focus on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. Try the online interactive activities, or click below to find out how to get our engaging 15-minute video programs.

Behind the Lesson provides information and teaching resources for each strategy. Watch our 10-minute professional development videos and explore the Web site for lesson plans, video and audio clips, downloads, and more.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

What good readers do...

Have a look at these classroom activities to help children learn to think about their thinking and the strategies they use to solve problems :

making animal creations from playdoh
http://www.wested.org/stratlit/ideas/animalcreations.shtml

and identifying what good readers do...
http://www.wested.org/stratlit/ideas/readingprocess.shtml

Friday, April 16, 2010

Writing can improve reading skills - Carnegie reports

We often hear how being a good reader influences writing ability, but here is a blog post about a new report which describes how specific writing skills can improve reading comprehension .

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2010/04/writing_can_improve_reading_sk.html

Here are the introductions and download links for the key reports mentioned (the focus is on adolescent literacy) :

Writing to Read
(2010) is a Carnegie Corporation report published by the Alliance for Excellent Education which finds that while reading and writing are closely connected, writing is an often-overlooked tool for improving reading skills and content learning. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading identifies three core instructional practices that have been shown to be effective in improving student reading. download >

Reading Next (2004) is a cutting-edge report that combines the best research currently available with well-crafted strategies for turning that research into practice. Informed by five of the nation's leading researchers, Reading Next charts an immediate route to improving adolescent literacy. The authors outline 15 key elements of an effective literacy intervention, and call on public and private stakeholders to invest in the literacy of middle and high school students today, while simultaneously building the knowledge base. download >

Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools (2007), commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York and published by the Alliance for Excellent Education, discusses eleven specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help improve the writing abilities of the country’s 4th- to 12th-grade students. Along with reading comprehension, writing skill is a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic life and in the global economy. download >


Friday, March 5, 2010

Into the book

Here is a link http://reading.ecb.org/teacher/index.html to a wealth of resources for teachers and also activities for students - "developed by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and a team of experienced educators".

From the website :
Into the Book is a reading comprehension resource for K-4 students and teachers. We focus on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing. Try the online interactive activities, or click below to find out how to get our engaging 15-minute video programs.
Behind the Lesson provides information and teaching resources for each strategy. Watch our 10-minute professional development videos and explore the Web site for lesson plans, video and audio clips, downloads, and more.

I found some of the video clips rather too staged and scripted to feel like natural interactions with children, but there are many other resources to view, adapt, download...

I enjoyed having a look around the print rich environment of Gale Chartier's first-grade classroom http://reading.ecb.org/teacher/makingconnections/mc_slideshow.html
You can click on the pictures to enlarge them so that you can read the charts, examples etc.

Friday, February 26, 2010

NEMP Reading and speaking results 2008

National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP), University of Otago Reading and Speaking assessment results 2008 are now available.

Both year 4 and year 8 students showed greater skill in reading words accurately (decoding) than in interpreting and acting on the messages they were reading (comprehension). Performance was quite weak in scanning for information...

…Reading has become a less popular activity outside of school, especially for year 8 students. Reading books (both fiction and non-fiction) has declined markedly in popularity compared to reading magazines and comics.

Read more at: http://nemp.otago.ac.nz/read_speak/2008/index.htm

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Reading and comprehension strategies

Here is a link to an interesting book Independent Reading Inside the Box by Lisa Donohue aimed at primary school teachers about strategies to enhance students' comprehension, language and thinking skills while they are reading.

The box refers to a one page template with 8 boxes in a table, each with a useful strategy to "dig deeper" into reading.

You can read the whole book online for free, or download each chapter and the templates as PDFs. Preview the entire book

These sort of activities do not take the place of pure reading for pleasure, the FVR (Free Voluntary Reading) which Stephen Krashen talks about, and there is a risk when a book is too analysed that it loses all spontaneity, but we know that the key to becoming a life-long reader is beyond decoding to make meaning, and with comprehension come the rewards of reading...

Independent reading inside the box by Lisa Donohue, Pembroke 2008 ISBN: 978-155138-225-8