0006 Reading Comprehension

Literal Comprehension

*Can be easily found "right there" in the text. *Explicitly Stated in the text *Tells who, what, when, where, why. Bloom's Taxonomy of Questioning for Higher-Order Thinking: *Remember, *Understand

Punctuation Cues

An approach to using Context Clues. Exclamation point, commas, question mark

Graphic Organizers for Narrative Texts

Can help students keep track of: The sequence of events, evidence about various characters and character traits, how characters change over time, problems and how problems get solved, changes in setting/passage of time, problems and how they get solved, Development of important themes, Tracking evidence that can be used for future writing

Story Maps

Graphic Organizer for Narrative Texts. Track sequence of events, major events/turning points in a story

Word Splash

Graphic Organizer that aids metacognition. Collection of words or phrases that are all connected and then "splashed" on a page, can be done digitally or by hand.

Brainstorming Web

Graphic Organizer that aids metacognition. Provides a structure to thinking about a topic: main idea and supporting details, helps in the initial writing stages.

KWL Chart

Graphic Organizer that aids metacognition. Used to generate thinking about a topic: what students know already, want to know about the topic, and learned about the topic at the end of the lesson.

Concept Map

Graphic Organizer that aids metacognition. Used to organize and represent information about a subject.

KWL

Know/Want to Know/Learned Can be used at the beginning of reading a text to have students generate what they already know about a story/topic, questions they want to answer as they read, and what they learned at the end.

Vocabulary Knowledge <-> Reading Comprehension

Vocabulary Knowledge is the key to reading comprehension. (Especially for ELLs and struggling readers).

Inferring

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Helps students "read between the lines" and see beyond the literal meaning and make connections.

Information/Expository Texts

Purpose is to inform. Standard: Read and write informative/expository texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. Non-Fiction Genres: Scientific Texts, textbooks, historic texts, primary source documents, newspaper articles, evidence based sources, lab report, bibliographies, autobiographies, reference books

Inferential Comprehension

*Implied in a text, not directly stated *Reader must search and find clues in a text *Put together background knowledge and text clues *"Read between the lines" Bloom's Taxonomy of Questioning for Higher-Order Thinking: *Apply *Analyze

Evaluative Comprehension

*Text-to-text connections *Text-to-world connections *Based on reader's opinion Bloom's Taxonomy of Questioning for Higher-Order Thinking: *Evaluate *Create/Synthesize

Comprehension Definition

A process of understanding and constructing meaning as you read.

Semantic Cues-Meaning Cues

An approach to using Context Clues. *As you read, stop, and ask yourself: does it make sense? *Use background knowledge and context clues. *Look for keywords or familiar words in the current sentence, sentence before, and the sentence after for clues. *Go back, re-read, and ask: What was this chunk of text mostly about? *Try to determine meaning by the description: "ball of fire in the sky" (sun)

Syntactic Cues-Structure Cues

An approach to using Context Clues. *Syntax is the order/structure of words in a sentence, phrase, paragraph. *As you read, stop and ask yourself: does it sound right? *Use your knowledge of inflectional cues such as -ed ending. * Pay attention to the part of speech: "The rainforest is located in warm REGIONS of the world. I know warm is an adjective and adjective describes nouns so "regions" must be a noun. A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea, so maybe a region is a place..."

Definitions/Appositives

An approach to using Context Clues. EX. Entomologists, scientists who study insects, are very concerned about colony-collapse disorder.

Synonyms within the same sentence

An approach to using Context Clues. EX. It was a dark, gloomy, eerie day.

Antonyms within the same sentence or across sentences.

An approach to using Context Clues. EX. It was a gloomy but peaceful day.

Text Features.

An approach to using Context Clues. Visuals, diagrams, graphs, bold print, etc.

Sequence Chart

Graphic Organizer for Narrative Texts. Can be used for various purposes but another visual way to represent what happens at the beginning, middle, and end of a story.

Character Analysis Map

Graphic Organizer for Narrative Texts. Can be used to track character traits and evidence to support these traits, what characters say, think/feel, look like, and do. Also can be used to track evidence of how characters change over time.

Anticipation Guide

Helpful before reading a text to get students thinking deeply about a topic or theme that will come up in the text, can be a set of open-ended questions, true/false, agree/disagree etc. that will generate discussion and debate, helpful to revisit again after reading. Ex. Agree or Disagree: Good Triumphs evil. Agree or disagree: Beauty is more important than kindness. Agree or Disagree: We can learn life lessons from fairy tales.

Vygotsky's Theory of Scaffolding New Learning

I Do (Teacher Modeling)-> We Do (Practice with Support, Co-Construction) ->You do (independent practice)

Literary Allusion

Indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea of historical, cultural, literary, or political significance in literature.

3 Levels of Comprehension

Literal, Inferential, Evaluative

Questioning

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Before, during, and after to stop and wonder about the text.

Synthesizing

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Helps identify deeper meanings and connect the text to other sources.

Predicting

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Helps readers anticipate what will come next, build theories about characters/story plot.

Summarizing

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Helps students determine the most important central ideas within a text.

Re-telling

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Helps the reader remember key parts of the story by paraphrasing the main events of a story.

Visualizing

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Make a movie in your mind to "see" the story and/or connect to a visual that is familiar.

Set a Purpose Prior to Reading

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Makes the text more meaningful, helps prepare the brain for what to look for while reading.

Clarifying

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Use context clues to infer meaning of unfamiliar words or phrases.

Teacher Think Aloud

Metacognitive Reading Strategy. Use of strategies and internal dialogue for students to learn how to independently "think as they read."

3 Major Text Types According to Common Core

Narrative: Fiction, Informational/Expository: Non-Fiction, Argument: Non-Fiction. All students should be exposed to all 3 major text types and engage in genre study reading and writing at all grade levels throughout the school year in order to better understand and be able to COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE VARIETY OF STRUCTURES AND FEATURES ACROSS TEXTS.

Narrative Texts

Purpose is to Entertain. Standard: Read and write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. Literary Genres: Story Books, short stories, plays, poetry, novels, fairy tales, myths, legends, tall tales, realistic fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, comics

Argumentative Texts

Purpose is to Persuade. Read and write arguments to support claims in an analysis substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant, sufficient evidence. Argument based genres: persuasive essays, argument based writing, open-response, opinion piece, editorial, thesis statement, research findings, self-help/advice texts

Schema

The Cognitive process that organizes and categorizes information in our brains. When introducing new ideas/concepts/topics it's extremely important to build schema around the new information by making connections to students' background knowledge/prior knowledge.

Zone of Proximal Development

The difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. When building students' comprehension, it's important to SCAFFOLD new information by teaching within their ZPD and provide rich meaningful interactions with peers to talk about what they're learning/reading.

Tone

The perspective of the writer and how they communicate to the audience. EX. Formal vs Informal. Aggressive vs Peaceful

Metacognition

Thinking about your own thinking. Process of self-monitoring that enhances understanding of a text. It is the foundation for all other reading strategies.

Metaphor

Type of figurative language that compares two un-alike things by saying something IS something else. "Hope is a thing with feathers."

Simile

Type of figurative language that compares two un-alike things using "like or "as." EX "The students worked as busy as bees."

Mood

Type of figurative language that establishes the emotional feeling the reader gets while reading something. EX. Somber, joyful

Metacognition and ELLs

Very helpful to explicitly teach strategies to ELLs so that they can connect their conceptual knowledge from what they already know in their first language (schema) to what they are now reading and learning about in English.

Figurative Language

Words or meanings that are different from the literal interpretation. It requires readers to "read between the lines" by using context clues and making inferences to determine meaning.