Teaching Comprehension: Activating Word Meanings

I'm reading: Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension: A Handbook, bu Jane Oakhill, Kate Cain, and Carsten Elbro. Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/R16Book/ and see the reading guide for the book here.

There are many ways that we know words. Consider this sentence: 

The air was ripe with the pleasant, dewy petrichor of the post-rain afternoon.

You probably don't know the word petrichor, but your GENERAL knowledge about rain, you can think about what the air is like after a rain and have a good idea that it references the smell or feel you get after a rain. Even though, it's technically about the smell, your general knowledge helps you make a pretty good mental model of what the text describes, even though your linguistic repertoire may not include that word. 

And that's the neat thing too, we actually develop new vocabulary as we read. The act of figuring out how the words we don't know fit into the sentence is the trigger for learning the words. (That's one reason comic books are such great vocab enrichers.) 

Furthermore, I think we might be focusing too much in our instruction about "basic (definitional) meanings of words" (p.13) as we teach comprehension. As Oakhill, et. al point out, it is our depth of vocabulary knowledge that triggers associations. It's something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of storage and retrieval of information. A classroom strategy that focuses only on the definitional side of vocabulary would be synonymous with the taxon memory. That's why I always say people who give 20 SAT words per week are not really helping their kids with SAT. It would be better to use approaches that reference the locale memory types described at this link.

Those locale memory strategies will be the type of vocabulary instruction that lead to better mental models for comprehension because of the connotations and associations about how those words are used. 

Teaching Comprehension: Stopping too Short

I'm reading: Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension: A Handbook, bu Jane Oakhill, Kate Cain, and Carsten Elbro. Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/R16Book/ and see the reading guide for the book here.

The authors speak of an experiment done by Sachs in 1967. In Cognitive Sciences: An Introduction, we can read more about the experiment. They list the actual sentences subjects were given. 

 

I may or may not try to replicate this during a dinner party. LOL 

 

The nonlinguistic "gist" is the overall meaning the reader/listener takes from the text. That's their mental model of the text. Since that goes beyond the literal meaning of the text, that's why readers can get mixed up in their minds about whet the text says. Most readers monitor this unconsciously. As teachers, we need to teach kids how to do this work. On page 12, the authors recommend these approaches: 

• Narrative: 
• Identify the main characters
• Examine their MOTIVES
• Track the motives through the plot structure
• Compare to schema/background
• ID what areas of the text are in conflict or new to existing schema
• Question, Search/Research, and Adjust Schema
• Expository
• Identify the topic
• Follow the argument structure
• Extract main ideas
• Compare to schema/background
• ID what areas of the text are in conflict or new to existing schema
• Question, Search/Research, and Adjust Schema

I think we are doing the first parts of this. But I don't think we are going far enough with the last two bullets. Comprehension Monitoring, y'all. Kylene Beers and Bob Probst pinpoint this concept in their big Questions: What surprised you? What challenged, changed, or confirmed what I already knew? What did the author think I already knew? The problem comes when we STOP there. Answering the three big questions isn't enough. We must do something about those answers. 

I guess what I'm saying is that we are still stopping too soon. Our instruction has to go beyond identification and into action. What would happen if our lessons were about those last bullets: Question, Search/Research, and Adjust Schema?

Rethinking the Writing Procees Wheel Continued

Well. I had the ipad and the computer open at the same time and ended up deleting this post. Now I really have to rethink it. It started out like this:

My friend L*** texted me through Facebook and asked, "How do I make writing a passion for my students?"

Now to find my notes...

Well. Found my notes. Been meaning to get back to this for several months.

Y'all. It's not a wheel. And there are parts of each component that we may have been ignoring. Noting the distinctions between each and how they move in and out of themselves has important implications that will change our instruction.

But I'm still thinking about that greenhouse idea from the last post. I always think about Frosty the Snowman in the Poinsettia greenhouse. Hothouses are supposed to be wonderful places to nurture plants. Unfortunately, I think our classrooms are places like this deleted scene from when Frosty melts:

Our kids are wilting instead of thriving. (They are melting in horrible ways, too, but not sure that fits my greenhouse analogy.) Now, if we get the started right with the seed ideas and seed drafts, that's a start.

But: you can't leave the plants in the greenhouse forever. They'll outgrow their little peat pots and die.

But: before you transfer delicate plants outside, there's usually a hardening process that helps you get the plants ready for being outside.

And: you do this gradually. That way, the little new plants (ideas, drafts) get used to being out in the direct sunlight (where others can see their thoughts and read their stuff), cool nights (when it's hard and when others critique the products), and less frequent watering (less help from the teacher).  And then there's the wind. Since I live in the windiest city in the world, I'm gonna use that to stand in the analogy as standardized assessment. Yeah.

In the Lead4Ward Academy, Gayla Wiggins taught us about Collaborative Drafts. Using a series of what she calls think-writes, students work in small groups to compose a draft together. She recommends doing 2-3 of these to get started.

Now here's the neat part that blew my mind. Let's say you teach a revision skill like Depth Charge. You model it in your writing. Now kids go try to do the same thing in a collaborative draft with their groups. Bing! Now you can check for understanding and share the results. Next, kids are ready to try the strategy in one of their seed drafts. Bang! Now you can see if they can do it by themselves. Finally, kids go into their current compositions for the unit you are in and apply that skill independently. Boom!

SItes that Have Stuff to Read

People are always asking me where they can get stuff for their kids to read. Free stuff.

What should I add?

Moving Writers Mentor Text Dropbox

New York Times Mentor Texts

Smithsonian Tween Tribune

Common Lit

Newsela

Wonderopolis

East of the Web (It will probably be blocked at school, but it's got compelling and engaging stories.) 

Readworks

Read Write Think

Florida Center for Reading Research

Mystery Doug

Dogo News

Curiosity (App)

Hoopla (App and site for digital books from libraries) 

Unbound - Careful with this...

Lesson for Launching Reading Workshop and other Goodies

I'm finally getting some time to write about some of the things we created last semester.

Here's how one teacher and I decided to launch Reading Workshop. 
Here's what we created for Word Study. 
And this is the lesson we created to launch Writing Workshop. 
An Annotated Plot Diagram Strategy
Extending Beers' Probable Passage to Multiple Genres
A Backwards Design Descriptive Writing Idea from my dear friend Jeannie Istre
A "Closing" Routine
5R Revision System
6 Square Editing for Transfer
Clocking Strategy for Editing 
Rethinking the Writing Process Wheel: Collaborative Drafts 
Revise by Reading 
Explicit Thinking Instruction 
And a video about the multiple genres in the new ELAR standards.

What a fun day! 

Vocabulary Study Needs to have MULTIPLE parts. Most of the time, I see one or more missing in the academic program or scope and sequence. What's your plan for each of these?

Systematic: Systematic Vocabulary Instruction is just that. You plan for it. You make a specific time for it. You plan a specific place for it to “live” in student resources and notebooks. You plan a specific scope and sequence for students to learn throughout the year. Consider roots, affixes word origins significant to your content or grade level. Be sure to use the sight words and phrases. 

Systematic Vocabulary Instruction also includes specific instruction that’s not about the words themselves. It’s about the processes we use during reading to diffuse and develop new vocabulary. Context clues, of course. But it’s also about the stuff we do like skipping words we don’t know and coming back to them. It’s about building our strategic repertoire for figuring out what people are trying to say.It’s also about the resources we create or consider that help use learn the words. Think visual thesaurus. Don’t just think dictionary. 

Incidental: This stuff is just that. Incidental. It’s about words you encounter in specific contexts and texts. You’ll need a plan for this too. Consider word collections: What brings beauty and power to the text? What words are used well for the situation and help the reader visualize, feel, or hear the author’s message/scene. Sometimes, these are the words you frontload before a text because they are central to comprehension and don’t have enough contextual references to be understood without direct teaching or exposure.  

TEKS/STAAR: Yes. There are words on the STAAR that kids need to know. That helps them know what the questions are asking. First, you mine your TEKS for the verbs and nouns kids need to know to understand the concept.s Second, you go to www.lead4ward.com resources tab and download the academic vocabulary lists that have been mined from the assessments. 

Specifically, you probably also need to look at character traits and emotional vocabulary terms for this section. Kids don’t know these words and feelings. Sure, there’s questions on them on the STAAR test, but they need to be able to define this stuff for living life, too. 

Academic Vocabulary: You need four kinds of word groups here: classic academic terms,  thinking/cognition words, literary language words, and disciplinary literacy words. 

• Classic Academic Words: Avril Coxhead has a wonderful list of word families. I’d get ahold of that thing asap. 
• Thinking/Cognition Words: Blooms, DOK...basically any of the Taxonomies
• Literary Language Words for Naming, Craft, and Analysis and Rhetoric
• Disciplinary Literacy Terms specific to your domain

Workshop Misconceptions...A Draft Response...

You need to be proud of yourself, girl. You are seeing a problem with “workshop” misapplied. I see this a lot – you are wise for feeling like something was wrong.

You HAVE to have a focus on grade level instruction or your kids will fall far behind. If you are only “teaching” and giving minilessons in small groups, that’s not really what workshop is about.

When kids come to small groups the purpose is to show you how they are working through the tasks and processes so you can intervene and offer corrective support. Most of the time, small group time is not teaching time. Surprised? It’s where the kids practice what they are learning with you there to help them. You give feedback and reteach when you see them struggling. They don’t come there for a lesson, per se. They come there to practice so you can watch and see what they need. Instead, your minilesson is to the WHOLE group on GRADE level material.

Workshop is a “container of time.” You divide the time by what is important. Sometimes that shifts, depending on what kids need. It doesn’t look the same every day. Sometimes, your minilesson will take the whole period. Especially when the text may be dense or long or the process is complex.

Here’s a picture from my notebook. It was from a session I attended with Amy Rasmussen. She's a genius. 

Here’s what I recommend: Revisit what you learned from Tricia Evans: https://www.bulbapp.com/u/systems-for-the-reading-block

Then think about your classroom routines and procedures:

1. Kids come in and read. 10 Minutes. They are reading stuff they want to read, not the stuff you tell them to read. You confer. Here’s a conferring guide: https://www.bulbapp.com/u/field-guide-for-reading-conferences
2. You pull the whole class together and teach the mini-lesson about comprehension or genre. 10-15 Minutes. Use grade level, sophisticated texts.
1. Pull lessons from your textbook.
2. I’d start with Notice and Note lessons https://www.heinemann.com/products/e04693.aspx
3. or Disrupting Thinking lessons: https://www.amazon.com/Disrupting-Thinking-Why-Read-Matters/dp/1338132903
4. In this minilesson, you model how to do the comprehension work or response to literature with a text. This is where you teach your TEKS for the grade level and unit.
3. Small Group Work: 15-30 minutes. Here are some options:
1. (Most newbee workshop folks miss this part.)Then the  whole class works in collaborative, small groups to apply the work you just modeled in another text or another section of the text you modeled. You are supporting the groups and monitoring. This is where the grade level work gets done. I’d give participation/mastery type grades here.
2. Sometimes, you will need kids to be working independently to show mastery of grade level TEKS. This happens after they have had a chance to work in small groups. This is when you can take a grade.
3. Small group work is where remediation happens. In little people school, this is guided reading. In big people school, most of us favor strategy groups. You pull groups to work through a strategy that will help them with a particular need.
4. You may also choose to work with small groups on targeted skills you know they are weak on because of their data analysis. (Ask your testing coordinator for their item analysis and essays from last year’s STAAR test. You won’t really know what to teach in small groups or how to compose the small groups until you know what they need.) I would give progress/mastery grades here.
5. Students may also work in Literature Circle Groups/Clubs. You can meet with those groups too. Some of this stuff is gradable. Some of it isn’t.
6. Or you can conduct Socratic Seminars or Philosophical Chairs.
7. And/Or you can have stations that waste time and drive you nuts. Do the ones you have to for typing and Study Island. The rest of the kids need to be reading to themselves, to others, responding to text in writing, or listening to books. You can take a grade on this stuff. This is a time where they are independently applying the skills you have modeled.
4. Debrief: Last 5-7 minutes. Pull the class back together to debrief about the lesson and kids show evidence of their learning from their collaborative, small, or independent tasks. (You can take a grade here too.) This is where you decide where you need to reteach or plan deeper instruction for next steps.