Laurens-Marathon

1. Laurens-Marathon 4 Powerful Strategies Jan 25, 2012

2. KEY TERMINOLOGY • READING STRATEGIES- goal-directed cognitive operations over and above the processes that are a natural consequence of carrying out a task. • READING SKILLS- smaller operations or actions that are embedded in strategies and , when appropriately applied, they “allow” the strategies to deepen comprehension. • TEXT- any language even, oral, written, or visual, in any format.

3. Summarizing • Requires the reader to identify, paraphrase, and integrated important text information. • May occur across different lengths of text. • The reader is constantly synthesizing the important ideas in text- the big ideas • Reader must identify what is important (main idea), eliminate what is redundant and what is supporting details. • Allows the reader to keep track of the ideas or opinions of the author without having to hand onto all the details.

4. Creating Meaningful Connections • This important strategy is often overdone or misused in the classroom • If the connections readers create are only at a surface level or focus on a minor detail from the text, the result is a shallow connection that does little or nothing to enhance the reader’s comprehension.

5. Self-Regulating • Self-regulating is one of the Four Powerful Comprehension Strategies because it is embedded in the other three. • Self-regulating is a systematic plan that a reader consciously adapts to improve individual performance.

6. Inferring • Inferring not only facilitates comprehension, but it enhances the reader’s enjoyment of text as new perspectives are discovered. • Readers infer differently depending on their purpose for reading. • Strong connections between creating meaningful connections and inferring

7. What is the teacher’s role in teaching?

8. The teacher’s role in instructing students is to maximize the likelihood that students will transfer their learning to new contexts independently. • How do we scaffold the effective teaching of strategies in order to maximize the transfer of learning?

9. Gradual Release of Responsibility • An explicit description of the strategy and how, when, where, and why to use it. • Teacher and/or student modeling of the strategy in action. • Collaborative use of the strategy in action. • Guided practice using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility. • Independent use of the strategy.

10. Scaffolding features include: • Teacher support that helps students relate new information to their prior knowledge • Transfer of responsibility from the teacher to the students • Dialogue that breaks from the traditional classroom discourse to more student-initiated talk • Nonevaluative collaboration that focuses on the student’s potential for new learning rather than evaluating the student’s current competencies

11. Scaffolding features include: • Appropriateness of the instructional level defined as what a student can do with assistance within his/her zone of proximal development. • Coparticipation that creates opportunities for students to participate actively and cooperate in directing instruction.

12. Teachers help students learn to comprehend by: • Explaining fully when the strategy and skill is that they are teaching and why, how, and when proficient readers use the strategy and skill while comprehending • Modeling their own thinking processes • Encouraging students to ask questions and discuss possible answers among themselves • Keeping students engaged in their reading via providing tasks that demand active involvement

13. Questions for discussion: • What are some of the ways your instruction currently supports the transfer of learning? How might you redesign your lessons for your struggling readers to ensure there is a gradual release of responsibility? • Which instructional activities closely “bridge” and/or “hug” the teaching points of your lesson? • How can you make sure that step 5 of the GRLD does not get dropped? • How can you encourage more student-to-student discourse in your small group lessons? How is that an example of gradual release of responsibility?

14. SUMMARIZATION

15. Complex strategy that involves the orchestration of a variety of skills. • The distilling down of longer length text to the points that are work noting improves memory of what was read and strengthens comprehension. • Synthesizing and determining importance are smaller skills that students need to summarize. • Summarizing is an especially important strategy to be explicitly taught to readers with weak comprehension.

16. Why Does A Reader Summarize • When the text becomes longer or contains multiple ideas • When they need to sort out what is important from the nonessential, redundant, and supporting information. • When they are asked to write a summary of a piece of text • When they need to understand both literal and implied meaning of a text • To raise a reader’s understanding beyond item level knowledge and moves it to a conceptual level.

17. Review of the 5 Steps: • Explicit description of the strategy----when the strategy should be used • Teacher and/or student modeling of the strategy in action • Collaborative use of the strategy in action • Guided practice using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility • Independent use of the strategy

18. Lesson Examples of Summarizing • 5th Grade Small Group • 5th Grade Small Group (continued) • 8th Grade Whole Group Social Studies

19. Creating Meaningful Connections • Readers are actively engaged with text using their schemata to compare, interpret, and comprehend what they are reading. • Schemata are the mental representations of concepts, events, and experiences, we hold in our memories. • Capable readers activate and use their schemata by creating meaningful connections.

20. KEY TERMINOLOGY • Imaging: This skill is the process of forming sensory images (visual, tactile, auditory, etc.) while reading or listening. • Being aware of text language: Authors use sensory language and other writer’s craft techniques to help readers visualize ideas and make connections. • Activating prior knowledge/experience: Schema is the background knowledge/information and experience readers activate and bring to the text. • Previewing: • Making text connections • Questioning: Questioning about connections • Synthesizing various types of connections and text: This skill call for putting together and making sense of information from texts and one’s own connections with text to create new meaning.

21. Why do readers create meaningful connections? • Catalyst for memory recall • Engaging a reader with the text • Making reading a deeply meaningful experience

22. Lesson Examples of Creating Meaningful Connections • 3rd Grade Small Group Reading Lesson • 5th Grade Small Group Reading Lesson • 6th Grade Language Arts Whole Group Lesson

23. Self-Regulating • Self-regulating skills become imperceptible unless you need them • Metacognitive skill used to scrutinize, regulate, and direct themselves to a desired goal before, during and after reading. • Students demonstrate self-regulation by articulating the strategies and skills used to read and understand text and by fixing problems that interfere with comprehension.

24. KEY TERMINOLOGY • Self-regulating • Knowing self as a learner, the reading task, and reading strategies • Knowing the purpose for reading • Looking back, rereading, and reading ahead • Predicting, confirming, clarifying, and revising • Problem solving words, phrases, or paragraphs • Cross-checking multiple sources of information • Adjusting reading rate • Questioning • Synthesizing text with background knowledge

25. Lesson Examples of Self-Regulating • 3rd Grade Small Group Reading Lesson • 6th Grade Small Group Reading Lesson • 7th Grade Whole Group Science Lesson

26. Inferring • Attempts to explain or catalog or speculate the information we read or observe • Helps to unlock or personalize what the author has not made explicit • Educated guesses about the meaning of a text • Figuring out why characters act and say certain things

27. KEY TERMINOLOGY • Using background knowledge • Determining author’s purpose • Being aware of text language • Recognizing author’s biases/views • Making predictions • Determining themes • Drawing conclusions • Questioning • Synthesizing text clues and various types of connections

28. Lesson Examples of Inferring • 4th Grade Small Group Reading Lesson • 6th Grade Small Group Reading Lesson • 7th Grade Social Studies Whole Group Lesson

29. Develop one lesson • Peer Observation with feedback • 20 minute conference after observation • Turn in completed forms