Welcome!

1. Welcome! As you find a seat, please… …find a place at a table with materials. ….make sure there are a wide range of field placement grade levels represented at your table. …there are a maximum of five people at your table.

2. Goals • Discuss the components of an effective language arts program, as explained in two of our resources • Examine how and why to explicitly teach comprehension strategies • Think about some ways to teach inferring and visualizing as comprehension strategies • Share lesson ideas

3. A Balanced Reading Program • Read Aloud • Shared Reading • Guided Reading • Independent Reading

4. Read Aloud • Text difficulty • Control of text • Model reading strategies • Variety of genres • Oral language development • Text structure

5. Reading is thinking? • What do these authors mean? • Central to their instructional approach: thinking aloud • Readers have an inner conversation as they read and teachers should make that conversation explicit • Readers take the written word and construct meaning based on their own thoughts, knowledge and experiences • Reading shapes and changes thinking • Reading is not the “natural result of decoding plus oral language; comprehension is now viewed as a much more complex process involving knowledge, experience, thinking and teaching” (Fielding and Pearson, 1994)

6. Comprehension Strategies: Which?“Comprehension strategies are no more than the tools readers employ in the service of constructing meaning from text” (Block and Pressley, 2002) • Which ones have you heard of and read about?

7. Research informs us that effective readers… • are active. • have clear goals in mind for their reading. • typically look over the text before they read. • frequently make predictions about what is to come. • read selectively. • construct, revise and question the meanings they make as they read • determine the meaning of unfamiliar wordsand concepts.

8. • draw from, compare, and integrate their prior knowledge. • think about the authors of the text. • monitor their understanding of the text. • evaluate the text’s quality and value, and react to the text in a range of ways. • read different kinds of texts differently. • find that comprehension is consuming, continuous, and complex, but is satisfying and productive. Pressley, M. & Afflerbach, P. (1995). Verbal protocols of reading: the nature of constructivelyresponsive reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Block, C. & Pressley, M. (2002) Comprehension instruction: research-based best practices. New York: Guildford Press.

9. How: Gradual Release of Responsibility(Pearson and Gallagher. 1996, adapted by Routman)

10. The Process • Show them what you want them to do • Provided guided practice • Move toward independent practice • Allow for reflection

11. There are, in the end, only two main ways human beings learn: by observing others (directly or vicariously) and by trying things out for themselves. Novices learn from experts and from experience. That’s all there is to it. Everything else is in the details. --Deborah Meier

12. Introduction to the Lesson: Tapping Prior Knowledge about Concepts and Content • What do you know about rabbits? • What do you know about visualizing while you read? • What do you know about inferring? • Why would effective readers do these things?

13. Predicting and Inferring: At the Word Level • What words do you predict are in the book?

14. The Tale of Peter Rabbit

15. Recording Pictures • Fold your paper into fourths. • “Remember as a class when we…” (elicit mental pictures from a shared experience). • We will stop from time to time to draw a mental picture of what you see as you listen. • After you hear the story, we will listen to it again. You will think about how the pictures helped you understand the text.

16. Predicting at the Word Level • What words fit in these sentences? • But Pete, who was very _______ , ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden and squeezed under the garden gate! • First he ate some lettuces and French beans, and then he ate some _________. • Mr. McGretor came up with a sieve, which he ________ to pop upon the top of Peter… • …his sobs were overheard by some sparrows, who flew to him in great excitement and _________ for him to exert himself.

17. Inferring at the Word Level • What do you infer about these word meanings? • But Pete, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden and squeezed under the garden gate! • First he ate some lettuces and French beans, and then he ate some radishes. • Mr. McGregor came up with a sieve, which he intended to pop upon the top of Peter… • …his sobs were overheard by some sparrows, who flew to him in great excitement and implored for him to exert himself.

18. Four Corners: Visual Imaging and Vocabulary example opposite naughty personal connection meaning

19. Four Corners • Draw lines to divide a paper into fourths. • In the center, write the vocabulary word. • Top left: draw a picture that represents the opposite meaning. X it out. • Top right: draw a picture that demonstrates an example (e.g., “What is the word ____ like? How does this picture remind you of that word?”) • Bottom left: draw/write a personal connection to the word (e.g., “What word goes with ____? Why?”) • Bottom right: draw, using the letters in the word, a picture that shows the meaning of the word. • Go back to the text; highlight the word(s) studied.

20. Sharing Text and Lesson Ideas

21. Lesson Planning…

22. Lesson Plan

24. Bibliography • Reflect, Revisit, Retell by Linda Hoyt • Creating Strategic Readers by Valerie Ellery • Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop by Keene & Zimmerman • Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller • The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter • Starting with Comprehension by Andie Cunningham& Ruth Shagoury • Teaching for Comprhension in Reading by Pinnell & Scharer • Fielding L.G., and P. David Pearson, 1994. “Reading comprehension: What works.” Educational Leadership, Feb. 1994.

25. Next time: Questioning and Determining importance Read: • Goudvis and Harvey, Ch. 8 and 10 • Fielding L.G.and P. David Pearson,(1994). Reading comprehension: What works, Educational Leadership, Feb. 1994 (will be sent to you) • Litearacy CAT (will be sent to you) Due: Language Arts Assignment 3 • Choose a piece of nonfiction that would be appropriate to use as a read aloud in teaching the comprehension strategy of determining importance for the grade level of your placement. Write a lesson plan that incorporates your grade level ELA standards. • Use one of the Questioning activities from the Goudvis and Harvey resource for reading the Fielding and Pearson article. Bring in your work to share. • Read through the Literacy CAT Project. Bring questions to next class.