Content Area Reading

1. Content Area Reading Chapter 10 The ability to read well in a basal does not guarantee comprehension in content areas.

2. Why? • Content area reading has more specific and more difficult vocabulary. • Narrative reading (stories) are easier to read that expository text. • Students may lack background knowledge. • Teachers should supply a number of books on different levels dealing with a topic.

3. Summary writing of content material is helpful. • Writing everything you know about the topic and any questions you have about the topic helps to “establish set.” • Turn each heading into a question. Then read to find the answer to that question and write it also. • Write about inferences to be drawn from the text and creative reactions to the text.

4. Teaching reading during social studies, science, or math: • Reading comprehension, studying strategies and specific reading study skills also must be taught. • Graphic aids such as timelines, maps, flowcharts, graphs, and Venn diagrams help build and review difficult concepts.

5. Teaching content reading in primary grades: • Use concrete manipulatives, require retellings, develop summaries, use visual imagery. • Reflect the stages of reading defined by Jeanne Chall

6. Readability • Approximate reading difficulty of material. • Should match child with text readability. • Sentence structure, organizational pattern, interest level, background knowledge of the students all determines readability. • It is measured based on number of words in a sentence and number of syllables in a word.

7. Informal readability checklist: • Teachers should use the formula, personal knowledge of the child, and informal check of the text: • understandability • learnability • reinforcement • motivation

8. More about predicting text difficulty. • Collect outside the head information: word difficulty, sentence length, chapter headings and questions. • Collect in the head information: word recognition ability and background knowledge.

9. Goal: Make students more independent readers • Content reading is one skill needed to become an independent learner. • Specific skills and strategies • study skill instruction • knowing how to collect, organize and criticize facts

10. 5 Components to content reading: • Vocabulary development • studying strategies • reading and study skills • location skills • critical reading skills

11. Vocabulary • Crucial for comprehension (usually unfamiliar) • Content area words are interrelated. If you don’t understand the primary words, the secondary words are impossible. • Idiomatic and figurative expressions increase the difficulty. • Understanding requires planned systematic instruction.

12. Making vocabulary stick: • 1. Must be connected to known words. • 2. Must be repeated. 6xs • 3. Meaningful use. • Visual aids: diagrams, flowcharts, outlines, maps and timelines. • Examples of familiar words used in more difficult connotation: “A belt of irrigated land stretches almost all the way around the coast.”

13. Studying strategies • Metacognition: knowing when it doesn’t make sense and making adjustments. • Poor readers do not skim, scan, reread, plan ahead, take notes, or make inferences. • Pre-reading strategies: review prior knowledge, relate it to the last chapter, discuss key vocabulary, predict what the chapter is about, see the patterns, set a purpose.

14. Know. . .Want to Know . . . Learned • (Ogle, 1986) Keep in reading journal. Have students write individual responses and compare. • Turn bold face heading into questions, read and answer these questions. • If you can’t remember, reread that part. • Find the author’s pattern

15. After reading: • Check comprehension with questions at chapter’s end. • Summarize key points. • Study guides with key points. • DRA After silent reading, answer the purpose questions. • Semantic mapping • Reciprocal teaching.

16. Reciprocal teaching • Students focus on • summarizing • use different levels of thinking • clarify answers to questions • predict what comes next. • KWL: write what you learned and still need to know. • Cooperative groups. End of the chapter activities together.

17. Writing to learn: • Writing helps the student to understand ideas better and enlarge schemata. (Holbrook, 1984) (Anderson, 1987) • Model this activity with student dictated ideas that the teacher writes on the board. • Use compare and contrast assignments for student to do independently.

18. Smith and Bean 1980 • 1. Students write 2 paragraphs after pre-reading discussion. • 2. After silent reading, make revisions. • Have student interview historical figures in social studies.

19. How to reach the extremes in reading ability: • Use multi-level text. Provide taped oral reading of text. Use videos, audio tapes, and computer programs with content information, assign different level library books, incorporate the arts in instruction.

20. SQ3R • Read the introduction • Survey all visual aids • Read the summary • Study the questions • Return to the beginning and read the text.

21. New basal readers: • Include content area reading with • strategies • skills • content knowledge • Practice materials with both narrative and expository writing.

22. Meaningful practice • Teachers must provide practice time to promote transfer of a particular skill. • Interesting, varied practice is need for transfer of a skill to content materials. • Location skills: Index, contents, glossary, and appendix. Use a book mining exercise to quickly get information.

23. Library • Research techniques are taught here. • Reference materials: • Encyclopedia: ABC order, cross listings and key words. • Map reading skills are necessary.

24. Critical reading skills: • Analyzing and evaluating information is necessary after you have found the information. • Interpreting and evaluating requires systematic practice.

25. Critical reading involves: • 1. Knowing what the author said. • 2. Knowing when and how to verify the information. • 3. Deciding facts from opinions. • 4. Identifying Inferences • 5. Detect author bias; satire, humor, irony. • 6. Understanding your own bias. • 7. Criteria for judging author’s competence.

26. Instructional activities: • Identifying propaganda techniques • Analyzing editorials, political cartoons, • Distinguishing between fact and opinion.