Reading Goals
HERE'S THE PROBLEM:
* Good reading skills are essential for our college-bound students.
* Good reading skills will be essential for the new subject tests which will be requisite for graduation in the state of New Jersey. This is not a language arts problem. A recent study indicates that 35% of errors made on math achievement tests occur because of reading problems. State graduation tests are not unique to New Jersey. New York is still reeling from the abysmal statistics released last spring in which nearly half of all students failed the state tests.
* Many Americans are poor readers. Eighty percent of the books in this country are read by ten percent of the population. Reading is currently a recreational activity among a very small minority.
* According to a Harvard researcher, our economy is rapidly changing from an industrial/manufacturing base to a technological base. Because of this CEOs of major corporations are calling for higher literacy standards to meet future demands. Much of the responsibility to do this will fall on America's teachers.
* The reality is that America's teachers are charged with improving reading skills in a population of disenfranchised students, many of whom hate reading. Jeffrey Wilhelm, a reading teacher and researcher recently complained that many of his students walk into class saying, "I'm Jeff and I hate reading!" In the classroom setting Wilhelm found that students wrote literary letters to one another stating, "Hi Trudy. My books [sic] stupid. See you after school."
HERE'S WHAT WE WANT OUR STUDENTS TO BE ABLE TO
DO:
* Our students will become active readers, seeing reading as a dynamic process in which they must work actively to construct meaning.
* While reading a passage our students will be able to "go beyond" the cognitive process, actually "seeing" their thinking process and being able to control it.
* Our students will constantly make predictions while reading, beginning with an initial prediction concerning of the title of the passage.
* Our students will visualize what they are reading, continually forming a mental image of what is presented in the text.
* Our students will be aware of a comprehension problem when it occurs and will be able to fix the problem by looking up a word, using context to determine a word's meaning, rereading a passage, reading ahead to solve a comprehension problem, or changing or readjusting an initial mental image.
* Our students will connect what they are reading with prior knowledge of a subject. According to one researcher, prior knowledge acts as "a mental Velcro to which the reader can attach new information."
* Our students will carry on a dialogue with the writer, asking questions and verbalizing any confusion.
* Our students will be able to recognize main ideas and will summarize the main points after reading a passage.
* Our students will be able to see the connections between the main points of a passage and its structure.
HERE'S HOW WE WILL ACCOMPLISH OUR GOALS BY
WORKING TOGETHER AS A TEAM:
BEFORE READING:
* Before we assign a reading we can activate prior knowledge by asking students to respond to five or more true-false questions related to the topic under study. Some of these questions should challenge our readers and ask them to examine their beliefs.
* Before we assign a reading we can ask students what they already know about the subject and what they think they will learn as a result of reading the passage.
* Before we assign a reading we can alert students to reader aids such as footnotes, maps, headings, graphics, bold-faced type, or vocabulary words that may present problems. Also, show students how they can attempt to determine a word's meaning from context clues before they resort to looking up a word in the dictionary. (On our metacognitive pretest students did not understand the word "oratory" although it was clearly defined through context synonyms as a speech. Also, students did not even look at a footnote which explained several historical references in the text.) This method, of suggesting what we would do as readers in attacking a passage, is called "heads-up homework."
* Before we assign a reading we could point out the structural organization of a passage. Is this a compare/contrast, problem/solution, chronological, or proposition/support pattern? (This indicates a high level of reading sophistication; very few of our freshmen were able to see the connection between meaning and structure on our metacognitive pretest.) Our hope is that after we model this activity students will be able to do this on their own.
DURING READING:
* Reading researcher Jeffrey Wilhelm has found that "those who cannot imagine cannot read." In working with poor readers he has found that "visual imaging encourages students to access and apply their prior knowledge as they read, increases comprehension, and improves the ability to predict, infer, and remember what has been read." He has found that response activities involving drama and art seem to bring "the invisible secrets of engaged readers out into the open." In a recent study weak readers were divided into three groups. Members of the first group were asked to pause after reading a few sentences and make a picture of what they had read. Students in the second group were told to pause after every few sentences and talk aloud to themselves about what they had just read. The members of the last group were simply told to read a passage carefully and remember as much as they could. Not surprisingly, the first two groups did significantly better on comprehension questions than the undirected group. Having students draw, explain, or act out what they see is highly effective in developing effective reading skills. Drama and art activities also seem to give students a sense of ownership over the material, something that all good readers seem to possess.
* In order to help readers to question as they read, to carry on a dialogue with the author, and to recognize and fix ongoing comprehension problems, we need to employ the metacognitive strategies of think aloud, text rendering, process piece, and textory.
* Think aloud involves teacher modeling of how he or she responds to a passage while reading. In this activity a teacher reads a difficult piece aloud, pausing every few sentences to question, link to past experience, describe a mental image, make a comment to the author, recognize and fix comprehension problems, make predictions, or recognize structural features of the text. This activity works most effectively if the teacher sits while reading the passage and stands up to make comments about the text.
* Text rendering is a logical extension of think aloud. In this activity the student is given two or three paragraphs of text to read for homework, with instructions to make marginal notations similar to those modeled by the teacher in think aloud. In class students can discuss their reactions, hopefully realizing that reader response is highly idiosyncratic, but also gaining insight into how good readers respond to text.
* Process piece goes beyond text rendering, as students in this case are asked to write a short narrative describing their reactions and struggles with a piece of assigned writing. As before, the purpose is to capture a student's thinking, to make his or her thoughts overt, to make the cognitive process "metacognitive" and therefore visible. Poor readers typically have no engagement with a text and are usually thunderstruck by such insight from fellow readers.
* Textory, a process that Jeffrey Wilhelm calls "two-column written protocols," is another useful activity, and it is also the method we will use for assessing student growth in reading. In this case a reading passage is provided on one side of a piece of paper, leaving the other half clear for student comments. After teacher modeling, students should discuss the various strategies good readers seem to employ, even using the district rubric to compare responses. (Please share the rubric and the list of skills with your students, so that they will clearly understand district expectations. Also, remind them that these skills go well beyond any district measurement; these are fundamental life skills.)
* Eventually, students might use the self-evaluation sheet which is reproduced on the next page in order to assess the breadth of their reactions to a reading passage. (This is based on a similar chart in a reading journal and may prove useful in order to target student strengths and weaknesses.)
SELF-EVALUATION OF TEXTORY
While I was reading how did I do?
(Put an X in the appropriate column.)
Not very much A little bit Much of the time All the time
Made predictions
Formed mental pictures
Related this to my experience and what I already know Recognized comprehension problems and fixed them Carried on a dialogue with writer, asking questions and summarizing Examined how the piece was structured to help me understand Reflection: What are my reading strengths and weaknesses?
AFTER READING:
* Reading research seems to indicate that students must feel that their reading relates to their own experiences and to the outside world. Jeffrey Wilhelm has stated that "without the bringing of personally lived experience" to reading the exercise may seem futile and "stupid." As teachers we must be constantly aware of this in order to develop engaged, active readers.
* Students must develop a sense of ownership over the material. Individual responses, if supported in the text, must always be valued. Just as we have very individual tastes in reading, so do our students. Thinking that a book is "stupid" is a valid but inarticulate response. A student should be able to verbalize why the author has failed to touch him or her as a reader. As always, this must be strongly supported in the text.
* Reading research again indicates that drama and art activities tend to develop this sense of involvement and ownership in poor readers. Students may act out a process (mitosis) or scene, become characters or historical persons, deliver newscasts and press conferences, write scripts and make films, write correspondence as characters or historical figures, draw illustrations or book covers, role-play, or take notes in picture form. All of these activities have been valuable in practice, especially with poor readers who were not read to as children and who have never been able to enter the imaginary world of books. To these students reading is, as Wilhelm has learned, "being able to answer the questions at the end and stuff" or doing meaningless exercises "for someone else so you can get through the year."
* Thanks for all of your help on this project. Together we can make a difference.