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Fabulous Resource for Differentiating Instruction 

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Fabulous Resource for Differentiating Instruction 

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Colorín Colorado is a national multimedia project that offers a wealth of bilingual, research-based information, activities, and advice for educators and families of English language learners (ELLs). Colorín Colorado is an educational service of WETA, the flagship public broadcasting station in the nation's capital, and receives major funding from the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association.

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Aligned with the science of reading and IDA's Structured Literacy approach, this book is a must for in-service educators and an ideal supplement to pair with core literacy textbooks. Today's teachers will get the essential knowledge and practical tools they need to help every student become a proficient reader—and build a strong foundation for school success.

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Comprehension is a primary ingredient of reading success-but most educators aren't taught how to deliver structured comprehension instruction in their classrooms. K-8 teachers will find the guidance they need in this groundbreaking professional resource from Nancy Hennessy, former IDA President and an expert on reading comprehension. Meticulously researched and masterfully organized, this book offers a clear blueprint for understanding the complexities of reading comprehension and delivering high-quality, evidence-based instruction that helps students construct meaning from challenging texts.

Aligned with the science of reading and IDA's Structured Literacy approach, this book is a must for in-service educators and an ideal supplement to pair with core literacy textbooks. Today's teachers will get the essential knowledge and practical tools they need to help every student become a proficient reader-and build a strong foundation for school success.

EDUCATORS WILL:

Get critical background knowledge. Synthesizing decades of research on reading comprehension, this book provides educators with all the fundamentals they need to teach this key component of reading proficiency.

Master the blueprint. Teachers will get a complete framework for organizing instruction, aligned with the language comprehension strands of Scarborough's Reading Rope. In-depth chapters are devoted to each facet of reading comprehension, including vocabulary, syntax and sentence comprehension, text structures, background knowledge, and levels of understanding and inference.

Make it work in the classroom. Educators will find practical guidance and tools for planning their units and lessons, adapting to the needs of individual students, and assessing student progress. (An interactive book study guide makes this book easy to use as a professional development resource.)
PRACTICAL MATERIALS: To help them apply the science of reading comprehension and design high-quality instruction, teachers will get classroom activities, sample lesson plans, and questions that help them reflect on and strengthen their practices. The photocopiable teaching resources, including unit and lesson plan organizers, can be used again and again in the classroom.

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text [Hennessy M.Ed., Nancy Lewis, Moats Ed.D., Louisa Cook] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

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The BEST handbook for Understanding the Research

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The BEST handbook for Understanding the Research

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This booklet presents an overview of recent findings on reading comprehension development and comprehension problems in children.

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The ultimate aim of reading is not the process but to understand what we read and comprehension can take place at many different levels. There has been an increasing emphasis on the importance of reading comprehension in recent years but despite this there is very little written on this vital topic accessible to trainee and practicing teachers.

The Handbook of Reading Comprehension presents an overview of recent findings on reading comprehension and comprehension problems in children. It provides a detailed examination of the characteristics of children who have reading comprehension difficulties, and examines ways in which comprehension can be supported and improved. It is accessibly written for students and professionals with no previous background in the psychology of reading or reading problems.

This indispensable handbook asks the question 'what is comprehension?' The authors consider comprehension of different units of language: understanding single words, sentences, and connected prose and outline what readers (and listeners) have to do to successfully understand an extended text. This book also considers comprehension for different purposes, in particular reading for pleasure and reading to learn and explores how reader characteristics such as interest and motivation can influence the comprehension process.

Different skills contribute to successful reading comprehension. These include word reading ability, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic skills, memory, and discourse level skills such as the ability to make inferences, knowledge about text structure, and metacognitive skills. The authors discuss how each one contributes to the development of reading comprehension skill and how the development of these skills (or their precursors) in pre-readers, provides the foundation for reading comprehension development.

Areas covered include:-

Throughout the text successful experimental and classroom based interventions will be highlighted, practical tips for teachers and summary boxes detailing key points and explaining technical terms will be included in each chapter

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Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension

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Amazon.com: Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension: 9780415698313: Oakhill, Jane: Books

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Findings of the National Reading Panel, 2000

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Findings of the National Reading Panel, 2000

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According to research, some instructional methods for teaching reading are more effective than others. Find out what the National Reading Panel’s review of the research revealed about best practices in reading instruction.

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Connecting Assessments to Effective Intervention

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After a universal screening assessment, how can K-6 educators translate the results into evidence-based instruction, targeted interventions, and improved reading outcomes? The timely new edition of this bestselling book has clear and practical answers. Fully updated with the latest reading research and models, this teacher-friendly planning guide matches the items of today's most popular reading assessments with Tiers 1, 2, and 3 interventions, strategies, and activities that help struggling readers succeed.

Aligned with the science of reading and extensively field tested, this guidebook is built around the National Reading Panel's big five ideas : phoneme awareness, phonics, fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. Teachers will get a concise introduction to each component, assessment options for each, specific strategies for connecting assessment findings to lesson planning, and dozens of practice activities to incorporate into small-group and whole-group instruction. Packed with strategies, scenarios, and planning worksheets, this book helps classroom teachers and reading specialists take action after assessments, make data-driven decisions, and plan differentiated instruction that makes a real difference for struggling readers.

New focus on today's most widely used assessments: DIBELS 8th Edition, Acadience Reading K-6, easyCBM, and aimswebPlus

Convenient charts with clear summaries of the assessments

90+ new and updated activities specially designed for use with struggling readers during whole-class or small-group instruction

Practical guidance on implementing instruction and intervention within MTSS

Explicit connections to the science of reading, Structured Literacy, Scarborough's Reading Rope, and Ehri's phases of word reading development

New online materials: a quick-reference Assessment Guide, a handy online resources list, and 20+ pages of downloadable worksheets, planning guides, and templates for classroom use

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Next STEPS in Literacy Instruction: Connecting Assessments to Effective Interventions

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Amazon.com: Next STEPS in Literacy Instruction: Connecting Assessments to Effective Interventions: 9781681256221: Smartt Ph.D., Susan, Glaser Ed.D., Deborah, Hasbrouck Ph.D., Jan: Books

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The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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This is a link to a podcast about micro comprehension skills and some classroom activities that you can try tomorrow!

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S1-07. The missing link in reading comprehension: Anne Lucas - Science of Reading: The Podcast

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What is the missing link in reading comprehension? Anne Lucas, former curriculum director and current product manager of Amplify Reading, discusses the multifaceted nature of comprehension, why it's so difficult to teach, a teacher's powerful "eureka! moment," and the specific sentence-level skil...

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The article that was referenced during the presentation. For a complete list of research on this topic, look at the last page of this article.

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The article that was referenced during the presentation. For a complete list of research on this topic, look at the last page of this article.

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This is the BEST, BEST article to understand how to apply the research to your instruction. You won't want to miss reading this one.

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How Comprehension Instruction Fits into Effective Literacy Instruction

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How Comprehension Instruction Fits into Effective Literacy Instruction

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How comprehension fits into effective literacy instruction

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Explore one of the five foundational reading skills and the Science of Reading—reading comprehension—and the role it plays in literacy instruction.

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The reciprocal relationship of reading and writing- excellent book

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The reciprocal relationship of reading and writing- excellent book

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JUDITH C. HOCHMAN is the founder and chief academic officer of The Writing Revolution, a not-for-profit organization. She was the superintendent of the Greenburgh Graham Union Free School District; head of The Windward School in White Plains, New York; and the founder of the Windward Teacher Training Institute. Dr. Hochman is the author of numerous books and articles on the topic of writing. Visit her at thewritingrevolution.org.

Natalie Wexler is an education journalist who serves on the board of trustees of The Writing Revolution. Her articles and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including the New York Times and the Washington Post . She has volunteered as a reading and writing tutor in high-poverty DC schools, and has authored three novels. She has also worked as a lawyer and a legal historian.

"HELP! My Students Can't Write!"

Why You Need a Writing Revolution in Your Classroom and How to Lead It.

The Writing Revolution (TWR) provides a clear method of instruction that you can use no matter what subject or grade level you teach. The model, also known as The Hochman Method, has demonstrated, over and over, that it can turn weak writers into strong communicators by focusing on specific techniques that match their needs and by providing them with targeted feedback.

Insurmountable as the challenges faced by many students may seem, TWR can make a dramatic difference. And the method does more than improve writing skills. It also helps:

TWR is as much a method of teaching content as it is a method of teaching writing. There's no separate writing block and no separate writing curriculum. Instead, teachers of all subjects adapt the TWR strategies and activities to their current curriculum and weave them into their content instruction.

But perhaps what's most revolutionary about the TWR method is that it takes the mystery out of learning to write well. It breaks the writing process down into manageable chunks and then has students practice the chunks they need, repeatedly, while also learning content.

Praise for The Writing Revolution

"Every once in a while, you find an outstanding method that is clear, makes sense, and is embraced by teachers and students alike, and what's most important, works! This is how I would describe The Writing Revolution. I have observed it in action, and I have been encouraging teachers to learn about it and use it." Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D., author of Overcoming Dyslexia , The Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development, Co-Director, Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity

"As an author, I am deeply concerned about the vast number of students who cannot express themselves with clarity in their writing. The Writing Revolution is grounded in research, has been proven effective by decades of classroom application, and is impeccable in its logistics." Mary Higgins Clark, bestselling author

"The writing strategies discussed in this book are life-changing for students who are exposed to them. A must-read for educational leaders, teachers, and parentsgiving students the power of the pen to write their way to a successful future." Deirdre A. DeAngelis-D'Alessio , principal, New Dorp High School, New York City, New York

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The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades

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The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades : Hochman, Judith C., Wexler, Natalie, Lemov, Doug: Amazon.com.au: Books

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This one is also the BEST for understanding and Applying the Research!

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This one is also the BEST for understanding and Applying the Research!

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Tired of hearing about "complex text"? Bothered by the pushy messages about "challenge"? This book is for you! Unlike the many other materials on text complexity, this one focuses on specific comprehension skills that students need in order to really engage with text. This book will help elementary school teachers equip their students with practical tools and understandings of the structures and conventions that allow them to excel, including concrete tools, passages, games, lessons, and examples to teach anaphora, connectives, paragraph structure, evidence-gathering (fiction and nonfiction), and text challenge. A final chapter specifies how to stretch students in texts while attending to their stamina, executive skills, and interests.

Book Features:

Text-based lessons for grades 3-5

Opening vignettes that provide classroom context for each skill

Key objectives and Common Core Standards.

Think-aloud language to guide strategy development.

Research-based strategies and games.

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Teaching Skills for Complex Text: Deepening Close Reading in the Classroom (Common Core State Standards in Literacy Series)

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Amazon.com: Teaching Skills for Complex Text: Deepening Close Reading in the Classroom (Common Core State Standards in Literacy Series): 9780807758144: Mesmer, Heidi Anne E., McKenna, Michael C.: Books

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The National Reading Panel Report 20 years later

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The National Reading Panel Report 20 years later

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Chapter 3 has an excellent summary of the assessment of reading comprehension

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Chapter 3 has an excellent summary of the assessment of reading comprehension

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This booklet presents an overview of recent findings on reading comprehension development and comprehension problems in children.

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The ultimate aim of reading is not the process but to understand what we read and comprehension can take place at many different levels. There has been an increasing emphasis on the importance of reading comprehension in recent years but despite this there is very little written on this vital topic accessible to trainee and practicing teachers.

The Handbook of Reading Comprehension presents an overview of recent findings on reading comprehension and comprehension problems in children. It provides a detailed examination of the characteristics of children who have reading comprehension difficulties, and examines ways in which comprehension can be supported and improved. It is accessibly written for students and professionals with no previous background in the psychology of reading or reading problems.

This indispensable handbook asks the question 'what is comprehension?' The authors consider comprehension of different units of language: understanding single words, sentences, and connected prose and outline what readers (and listeners) have to do to successfully understand an extended text. This book also considers comprehension for different purposes, in particular reading for pleasure and reading to learn and explores how reader characteristics such as interest and motivation can influence the comprehension process.

Different skills contribute to successful reading comprehension. These include word reading ability, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic skills, memory, and discourse level skills such as the ability to make inferences, knowledge about text structure, and metacognitive skills. The authors discuss how each one contributes to the development of reading comprehension skill and how the development of these skills (or their precursors) in pre-readers, provides the foundation for reading comprehension development.

Areas covered include:-

Throughout the text successful experimental and classroom based interventions will be highlighted, practical tips for teachers and summary boxes detailing key points and explaining technical terms will be included in each chapter

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Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension

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Amazon.com: Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension: 9780415698313: Oakhill, Jane: Books

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Very helpful podcast to understand what reading micro-comprehension skills are.

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Very helpful podcast to understand what reading micro-comprehension skills are.

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Episode 7: The missing link in reading comprehension with Anne Lucas

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High-quality K–12 Curriculum and Assessments

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Reading Comprehension of pronoun-referent structures by children in grades two, four , and six

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Reading Comprehension of pronoun-referent structures by children in grades two, four , and six

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Graphic for The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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Graphic for The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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Teaching 3rd grade students anaphoric relationships

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Teaching 3rd grade students anaphoric relationships

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Humans are pattern-seeking animals, pre-tuned to the music of language. We are pleased when we hear patterns in language, perking our ears in recognition, and can be both vexed and delighted when those patterns are broken. Many poetic devices, such as assonance, consonance, alliteration, and sibilance, take advantage of our ability to perceive repetition, making them valuable tools when teaching poetry techniques to both beginning and more advanced students. In the classroom, anaphora can be particularly useful in drawing student attention not only to sound but also to concrete detail, metaphor, and rhetorical movement.

Many of my beginning students enter the classroom with little previous knowledge of poetry, and some are already convinced that poetry is entirely foreign to their experience, possibly old-fashioned, and certainly not reader-friendly. At some point in their education, they've been persuaded that poetry operates via some sort of signifying code to which they don't own the key. Convinced their attempts can't possibly approach those of "the greats," they feel defeated before they begin. They complain that they have nothing to write about, that poetry is hard, then dutifully produce the metaphors they feel are expected: hearts, flowers, love. Just like all expected things, these poems offer no surprises.

My more advanced students have other difficulties. They've been trained to avoid needless repetition, and have responded to this well-intentioned restriction by forgetting the "needless" part, using little to no repetition at all, producing poems lacking musicality. They've also become so focused on the minutia of word choice that they aren't thinking as much about the overall structure of the work, resulting in poems that are carefully crafted, line by line, to no great consequence.

For beginning students, anaphora can be used to demystify poetry, to encourage concrete details rather than abstractions, to combat "I can't think of anything else to write about" syndrome, and to encourage bolder experimentation with metaphor. For more advanced students, using anaphora reinforces these skills as well as encourages thinking about the overall structure of a poem and the importance of knowing when too much is enough.

For my beginning students, anaphora is a device they already have some familiarity with through popular culture and history. Pointing out this knowledge to students can be a way for them to enter into poetry and to demystify what students can see as a daunting subject. Raising this awareness can be done through political speeches, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which uses anaphora not only in its oft-quoted "I have a dream" refrain but throughout, as in this passage:

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

King's anaphora, directly following his acknowledgment that by pursuing civil rights, many of his followers have been "the veterans of creative suffering," exhorts them to return to the oppressive Southern states, to the marginalizing ghettos of the North, in order to continue the good fight. By beginning each phrase with "go back to," he acknowledges their past work and encourages their future commitment, all the while uniting people from different regions of the country under the umbrella of one cause.

It's useful to remind students that anaphora is alive and well in contemporary political discourse as well, as in Barack Obama's 2008 speech after winning the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina:

I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina.
I saw crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children alike. I saw shuttered mills and homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from all walks of life and men and women of every color and creed who serve together and fight together and bleed together under the same proud flag.
I saw what America is and I believe in what this country can be. That is the country I see.

The repetition of "I saw" transforms the speaker into a witness, both to the difficulties facing South Carolina (crumbling schools, shuttered mills, homes for sale) and to the potential of those South Carolinians and, by extension, America. In this way, the speaker becomes not just a witness but an oracle, seeing what America is and what it could be.

Indeed, whenever a soul-stirring speech is needed, anaphora is there, as evidenced in Winston Churchill's famous 1940 speech before the Commons:

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

Churchill's anaphora allows him to conscript his listeners, through the use of both "we" and "shall"-the latter of which, while used interchangeably with "will" in England, connotes obligation, even a sense of a legal contract.

This is so popular and effective a device for politicians and other persuasive speakers that it's ripe for parody, as in Homer Simpson's impassioned speech from the 1994 Simpsons episode "Fear of Flying":

I want to shake off the dust of this one-horse town. I want to explore the world. I want to watch TV in a different time zone. I want to visit strange, exotic malls. I'm sick of eating hoagies! I want a grinder, a sub, a foot-long hero! I want to live, Marge! Won't you let me live? Won't you, please?

As humorous as Homer's speech is, it's also useful in the classroom because of the contrast it provides with these previous examples. The delight we derive from Homer's vision of "explor[ing] the world" stems from the fact that it is so very pedestrian and myopic: watching TV somewhere new, visiting new malls (which, by definition, are like the old malls), trading one sandwich for another. His narrow worldview highlights the expansiveness and inclusiveness of these other speeches.

If politics leave your students cold, try teaching them about anaphora via popular music. Although attempting to find examples may make you look sadly out of touch, it's still worth a shot. Perhaps your lack of connection to the larger world your students inhabit will endear you to them. Here's an example from Mumford & Sons' song "I Will Wait":

And I came home
Like a stone
And I fell heavy into your arms
These days of dust
Which we've known
Will blow away with this new sun

And I'll kneel down
Wait for now
And I'll kneel down
Know my ground

After embarrassing yourself with your unhip taste in music, you can ask your students to volunteer songs with anaphora and have them share sample lyrics on the board. Once students realize that this is a technique they see in their daily lives, it's not hard to encourage them to use it in their work.

I like to use anaphora-heavy poems not only to show students the musicality of repetition, but to suggest a generative engine for their own work. The cascading verbosity we see in poets such as Whitman and Ginsberg shows us the expansive qualities anaphora can give a poem, which is a boon for students who fear they have nothing to say. The anaphora demands more, more, more, and is a never-ending question for the student to answer. If we look at a section of " Howl," for instance, that question is where:

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
...

Each time Ginsberg answers that question, we learn more about Carl Solomon, spinning out into wilder and wilder details, from electroshock to splitting the heavens to resurrection. With each refrain of "I'm with you in Rockland / where," we are grounded once more, and begin again. The refrain brings comfort, both in its reassuring familiarity for the reader and in its promise that the addressee won't be alone.

While Ginsberg's anaphora in this example tempers expansion with contraction, Whitman's anaphora in " Song of Myself " can seem to ever expand the scope and subject of the poem, as in these lines from section 33:

By the city's quadrangular houses-in log huts, camping with lumbermen,
Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,
Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees of a new purchase,
Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river,
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail;
Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field,
Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the gutters,
Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax,
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great gold-bug drops through the dark....

It is difficult to excerpt Whitman for this reason, and this section goes on to take us to the ocean, from the pastures to the city, to Judea with God walking by his side, and to the cosmos beyond-fitting for a passage beginning with the phrase "Space and Time!" You might ask your students how to film the described actions, and it will become apparent that a film crew, a crane, and possibly a helicopter would be needed to do justice to the scope of the vision.

With these examples in mind, I show students model poems and ask them to write imitations, keeping the anaphora but letting their imaginations run free. I choose examples that reinforce different aspects of poetry as well. For instance, these excerpts from Joe Brainard's book-length poem I Remember create the atmosphere of a remembered time and place through specific detail:

I remember a piece of old wood with termites running around all over it the termite men found under our front porch.
I remember when one year in Tulsa by some freak of nature we were invaded by millions of grasshoppers for about three or four days. I remember, downtown, whole sidewalk areas of solid grasshoppers.
I remember a shoe store with a big brown x-ray machine that showed up the bones in your feet bright green.

After reading this, I have students write an "I remember" poem about a specific place and time, requiring them to focus their poem's subject. I suggest they choose a place they know well, such as their hometown, the house they grew up in, their high school. Brainard's poem, with its concrete descriptions, encourages sensual and specific details. The anaphora asks us to return again and again to the well of memory and, like the "I spy" games of their childhood, to articulate what they see there.

Anaphora can also be a way to encourage metaphor. I suggest N. Scott Momaday's " The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee."

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive

The anaphora's declarative motion encourages a confident, assertive voice, while the "I am" construction demands metaphor. After discussing the poem, and noting that Momaday's metaphors are mostly concrete (or, if abstract, quickly linked to a concrete thing-"angle of geese," "hunger of a young wolf"), I ask my students to write their own "I am" poem. Having seen Momaday's surprising lines, they often loosen up quite a bit.

Momaday's poem demonstrates how an anaphora-based poem can function as a sort of generative list-a ready answer to students who claim they don't know what to write about. Models such as Ann Porter's "List of Praises" can provide a structure that such students can't deny; the anaphora "give praise with ..." demands an answer, and the poem rockets forward:

Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.

If some students purport to be too cool or jaded to "give praise," they might consider turning their imitation into an anti-praise poem, either by modifying the anaphora ("Damn the ...," perhaps?) or by adopting a sarcastic tone. Either way, the power of the listing anaphora still works.

For my intermediate students, I eschew the more listlike anaphora poems and provide a poem to imitate that uses anaphora more sparingly, such as " Hospital parking lot, April" by Laura Kasischke:

Once there was a woman who laughed for years uncontrollably after a stroke.

Once there was a child who woke after surgery to find his parents were impostors.

These seagulls above the parking lot today, made of hurricane and ether, they

have flown directly out of the brain wearing little blue-gray masks, like strangers' faces, full

of wingèd mania, like television in waiting rooms. Entertainment. Pain. The rage

of fruit trees in April, and your car, which I parked in a shadow before you died, decorated now with feathers,

and unrecognizable
with the windows unrolled
and the headlights on
and the engine still running
in the Parking Space of the Sun.

In addition to being lovely and heartbreaking, this poem has several advantages from a teaching standpoint. It begins with one anaphora, ends with another, and in between departs from anaphora entirely. This is a significant move for students to emulate, as it recognizes and combats the potential stagnation of an unchanging line. Additionally, the opening lines allow you to address the importance of anaphora's content, as well as its sonic qualities. "Once there was" is the language of fairy tales, promising a story that resolves happily ever after (at least by our Disney-influenced standards). But the initially positive or optimistic opening sentences, "Once there was a woman who laughed for years" and "Once there was a child who woke after surgery," close with conclusions suggesting helplessness and alienation. The impossibility of the fairy tale is further reinforced by the anaphora, as the poem essentially starts and then starts again, to no avail. The happy ending isn't coming.

The poet Sean Bishop suggested Joanna Klink's " Some Feel Rain " for these purposes, and I've also found it a useful poem when considering how form and content can reinforce one another. The initial anaphora calls the world into being and establishes the rules of that world, where some feel some things and, by implication, others do not:

Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips.Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.

The question of the poem seems to be whether one belongs to that former group or the latter, and by ending with lines like "why others feel" [emphasis added], "sparring and pins are all you have," and "the earth cannot make its way towards you," Klink's poem suggests a powerful isolation and detachment from the sensual natural world:

... And wonder. Why others feel
through coal-thick night that deeply-colored garnet
star.Why sparring and pins are all you have.
Why the earth cannot make its way towards you.

When I ask my students to write an imitation of "Some Feel Rain," paying specific attention to anaphora as well as other sonic effects such as assonance, consonance, alliteration, and so on, there's benefit to the exercise regardless of whether they approach the task of imitation strictly or loosely. Here is a first draft of a Klink imitation by my student Paige Townsley, for instance, called "Some See Light":

Some see light. Some see the wheat fields waver
in the end-favor past gates
bare.Some see love. Away but close
to reach in the smoky air, waiting there.
When it shatters,some see the whispered screen
dampen stars from the pinprick glints to
glow. Growing splashes of hue through the cracks,
a seeing-glass defogs and contracts, the stream of morning
you can swallow from the shoving glare and the lucid
truth promised.Some see the weeping red bleed
dark in the irises behind eyelids
and hope to heaven for one last grace.
Knowing that it would have been, ailments pale
and fleeting like forgotten fears on wake of dreaming.
Do I fear there is any wretch so base it can't be
wrecked?Some see waters cleave, dark path
through chasm, as if Cocytus were broken by
the breath of the humble. The bride remains close
to betrothed in strength and shortcoming.
The unseeing stagger in dusk-light until
the second they are renewed.You can wait
to hear the repercussions,you can wait to
taste the sweet of nectar from the fruit
you reaped. And question.Why others see
through muffling silence the moving lips far in
cloud.Why the havens and pills are all you have.
Why the hands of earth still reach and snatch for you.

As is clear from the bolding, the student's first draft hews closely to the original poem's pattern of anaphora, which appears and leaves at approximately the same place in each poem. She also attentively follows the source poem's rhetorical moves by posing questions, shifting address and point of view, and even, in some places, imitating sentence construction. To do so, she had to seriously consider the source poem's structure. This is a valuable activity for a student to perform, as it encourages students to think of poems not as the spontaneous results of a flash of inspiration, but as a series of choices on the author's part. Though many intermediate students have likely progressed beyond this romantic notion, it's still worth reinforcing.

Other students move further afield from the source poem. My student Britney Woodall begins her first draft of "The Night" in Klinkian fashion, with a "Some see" refrain, but uses it only intermittently throughout the poem:

Some see stars. Some see the black expanse
Riddled with bright lights and wonder
At its mysteries.Some see the twinkling telltale sign
Of a satellite, caught in orbit. The moon moves the tides down below
And is worshipped by the wolves, their howls echoing across
The water and surrounding land. Forbidden secrets have no restraints in the world of
The nocturnal-lover's passion or perhaps something much worse
Has been known to transpire-a tangled web which can still ensnare
Those naïve enough to stumble into its grip.Some see shooting stars flash from
One side of the velvet expanse to the other, a diamond falling and disappearing into
oblivion.
The Milky-Way spirals out of control yet still has its hold on our home
And the surrounding spheres that are ever revolving, slowly moving.
When caught in a helpless state,some see hope in the endless blanket
That engulfs and warms even those who have faded to almost nothing.
The largest star of all makes no appearance while the moon has full rein,
Yet its light is what reflects off the surface, so it's not completely in chains.
Some see nothing of interest when glancing skyward, the sparkling abyss holding
No appeal.Some see the shapes and figures of legend and feel blessed in their presence.
The shadows toss and turn, flashing quickly or slowly creeping by,
In the dense foliage, curious eyes watch from afar, the night
Giving perfect cover. Life thrives in the dark, and all activity is observed
By the ever present, all-knowing splash of stars that are splattered
All over the canvas of the heavens.

Though this is a less strict imitation, the exercise still encouraged the student to use anaphora to create cohesiveness in the poem. Her closest placement of "Some see" occurs at the beginning and the end, a move that helps her close up a poem that ambitiously tries to describe our universe and our relation to it, the "all-knowing splash of stars."

Both of these students, regardless of how closely they imitated the original, took risks with their language that they'd not shown in previous exercises, and wrote poems of greater length and complexity than they had before. Thinking about when the anaphora leaves and returns in Klink's poems encouraged them to think about rhetorical movement in their own poems, an attention that bore out in their subsequent poems over the semester.

As a poetic device and as a teaching device, the instances and uses of anaphora seem inexhaustible, just like Whitman's "Song of Myself." Ask your students to note anaphora in everyday speech and advertisements. Ask them to strip anaphora away from a poem that uses it heavily, and see what's left. Ask your students to look at the patterns of the world around them-how do they respond to music that has a chorus? That doesn't? Ask them to look at formal poetry, and consider how pantoums, ghazals, and villanelles use repetition. How does that repetition compare to anaphora? How much anaphora is enough? How much is too much? How will we know unless we try?

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Adventures in Anaphora by Rebecca Hazelton | Poetry Foundation

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Students write more creatively when they repeat themselves.

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This resource has three videos. You will need a copy of the Appositives Handout to complete the activities.

A key element in the video demonstrations is the depiction of the following features of effective instruction:

Explicit instruction with modeling

Systematic instruction with scaffolding

Multiple opportunities for practice

Immediate and corrective feedback

The instruction demonstrated in the videos would likely take place over several class sessions.

You are invited to take an active role as a "student participant" to practice the skills and better understand the concepts and instructional techniques.

Click play on the video below.

Before watching the next video, complete the Video 1 Activity on the handout.

When you are ready to proceed, click play on the video below.

Before watching the next video, complete the Video 2 Activity on your handout.

When you are ready to proceed, click play on the video below.

When you are finished watching the video, complete the Video 3 Activity on your handout.

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This resource is designed to enhance the teaching of grammar in the context of reading and writing by using mentor sentences.

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Comprehension Micro Skills Classroom Activities

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Comprehension Micro Skills Classroom Activities

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Implementing the Text Structure Strategy in Your Classroom

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Implementing the Text Structure Strategy in Your Classroom

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Meyer, B. J. F. (1975). The organization of prose and its effects on memory. Amsterdam: North -Holland.

Meyer, B. J. F., Brandt, D. M. & Bluth, G. J. (1980). Use of the top-level structure in text: Key for reading comprehension of ninth-grade students. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 72-103.

Meyer, B. J. F., Middlemiss, W., Theodorou, E., S., Brezinski, K. L., McDougall, J., & Bartlett, B. J. (2002). Older adults tutoring fifth-grade children in the structure strategy via the Internet. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94 (3), 486-519.

Meyer, B. J. F., & Poon, L. W. (2001). Effects of the structure strategy and signaling on recall of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 141-159.

Meyer, B. J. F., Wijekumar, K., Middlemiss, W., Higley, K., Lei, P., Meier, C., & Spielvogel, J. (2010). Web-based tutoring of the structure strategy with or without elaborated feedback or choice for fifth- and seventh-grade readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 62-92.

Wijekumar, K. K., Meyer, B. J. F., & Lei, P. (2013). High-fidelity implementation of web-basedIntelligent tutoring system improves fourth and fifth graders content area reading comprehension. Computers & Education, 68, 366-379.

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P. (2012). Large-scale randomized controlled trial with 4 th graders using intelligent tutoring of the structure strategy to improve nonfiction reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Technology Research and Development. 60, 987-1013.

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P.-W, Lin, Y., Johnson, L.A., Shurmatz, K., Spielvogel, J., Ray,M, & Cook, M. (2014). Improving reading comprehension for 5 th grade readers in rural and suburban schools using web-based intelligent tutoring systems. Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness, 7:4, 331-357, DOI: 10.1080/19345747.2013.853333

Wijekumar, K., Meyer, B.J.F., Lei, P-W, Hernandez, A., August, D. (in press). Effects of web-based text structure instruction for 4-6 th grade Spanish Els reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Williams, J. P., Hall, K. M., Lauer, K. D., Stafford, K. B., DeSisto, L. A., & deCani, J. S. (2005). Expository text comprehension in the primary grade classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 538-550.

Williams, J. P., Stafford, K. B., Lauer, K. D., Hall, K. M., & Pollini, S. (2009). Embedding reading comprehension training in content-area instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 1-20.

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Implementing the Text Structure Strategy in Your Classroom

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Learn how to implement a research-based text structure strategy that infuses text structures at every step of reading comprehension instruction, beginning with the introduction of the lesson, previewing of text, selecting important ideas, writing a main idea, generating inferences, and monitoring comprehension.

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Nancy Henessey Podcast- Reading Comprehension

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Nancy Henessey Podcast- Reading Comprehension

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S3-09. Deconstructing the Rope: Vocabulary with Nancy Hennessy - Science of Reading: The Podcast - Podcast

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Join Nancy Hennessy, past president of the International Dyslexia Association, as she unwinds vocabulary, a strand of Scarborough's Reading Rope. In the latest episode of our Deconstructing the Rope s... - Listen to S3-09. Deconstructing the Rope: Vocabulary with Nancy Hennessy by Science of Reading: The Podcast instantly on your tablet, phone or browser - no downloads needed.

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Comprehension Instruction that Really Helps

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Comprehension Instruction that Really Helps

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One of my colleagues told us that we should not be teaching guided reading lessons or comprehension skills or strategies. We're using a core reading program that includes those kinds of things. He says that the science of reading proves that we would get higher reading achievement by teaching more social studies and science (he's our science teacher) and dropping the comprehension instruction that we are providing. He's really vocal about this. Can you help us shut him up? RELATED: Shared Reading in the Structured Literacy Era Shanahan response:
Your colleague is partly right. Knowledge about the world is a valuable commodity in reading comprehension. Education should both nurture curiosity and provide the means to fulfilling it - increasing what kids know about science and social studies (and literature and the arts, too.

He goes wrong, however, when he suggests that doing that should take the place of reading instruction. Such instruction can provide your students with a lifetime ability to increase their knowledge independently. Research does not support the idea of simply increasing knowledge about the world results in some automatic improvements in reading ability. There are types of reading comprehension instruction that can provide those kinds of results. Basically, your colleague is very unscientifically going beyond the empirical evidence and overstating his case.

Comprehension instruction is complicated and multivariate - there isn't a single type of skill or approach that is likely to be sufficient. I can't possibly, in the space available here, provide a complete map to what can be included profitably in a reading program.

Research shows that explicit vocabulary and morphology teaching make a difference. We should commit some of the comprehension real estate to increasing what children know about word meanings and how words express those meanings.

Likewise, instruction in how to recognize and use the organizational structure of texts has been well researched, with lots of positive outcomes. Including that is a no brainer.

Strategy instruction - that is, teaching students to execute certain actions before, during, and after reading that can increase their understanding and recall - works too, though admittedly that can be overdone. Such teaching is beneficial, but the regimens of instruction that have been evaluated have tended to be brief and focused on a narrow range of behaviors. But they work.

Not long ago I devoted a blog to the idea of teaching students to read sentences because of the need to makes sense of syntax or sentence grammar. While the general teaching of formal grammar hasn't been found to hold water when it comes to building comprehension, teaching students to make sense of sentences certainly has.

And, what about literature? I haven't gotten into that but hope to soon. Too often those who are promoting knowledge leave that out of the equation, as if nothing of value is gained from commerce with fictional stories and novels, poetry, and drama.

Yeah, all those things deserve instructional time, attention not likely to be provided in social studies or your colleague's science classes.

Let me give one more example of what we need to teach in reading comprehension. Its inclusion is advocated by many of the top researchers in the field - and they have the data to prove it. I haven't written here about this topic before, but it is one that is well worth exploring: cohesion.

Authors try to convey a coherent message through their writing. They do that with several linguistic devices and communications conventions. Readers then try to convert this information into a mental representation of that message. Readers don't put the text itself into their memory (we're not computers). No, we translate what we read, and that translation requires recognition and use of those devices the author put into the text.

For example, here is a brief passage used in a study of cohesion instruction (Baumann, 1986):

Michael got the chicken pox. Then Tom did too.

Michael said, "Wasn't that a terrible sickness?"

"It sure was," Tom said. "Were you as sick as I was?"

To comprehend this text the reader has to make a number of connections. It is necessary to recognize that "did too" refers to "got the chicken pox," and that "sickness" and "It" stand for chicken pox, and that "you" is Michael, and "I" was Tom. Readers who fail to make those connections aren't going to understand what this text is about.

Prior knowledge - the knowledge the reader started with - can help a bit; it is likely helpful to know when you start out that chicken pox is a form of sickness, though this text is simple enough I suspect someone could make the right connections in this case strictly based alone on the linguistic information the author has provided. That might be harder to do if the text was much longer and the distance between the links were greater or if there were more possible choices.

Not surprisingly, younger readers are more likely than older readers to have difficulty with those seemingly straightforward pronoun references - like you for Michael. Or, that older readers who can make those kinds of links might struggle to make causal connections in a science text such as in the following example (Best, Rowe, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2005):

"Plants lack a nervous system. They cannot make quick responses to stimuli."

One would hope that a reader, if asked "why can't plants make a quick response to stimuli?" would answer, "Because they don't have a nervous system" even though the text didn't explicitly say this, but only implied this connection by arraying these sentences in this fashion.

Of course, nobody's perfect. An author may provide a text that allows readers to easily recapture the intended coherence, while others may seemingly be more cavalier - perhaps they expected their readers to have knowledge that they didn't.

One might assume that all readers would be best served by the authors who produce texts with the highest degree of coherence. That would appear to provide the best support for readers. Let's face it, if the author is explicit about connections within a text, then more of us should be able to recognize and use those connections.

It turns out, according to research, that some readers earn more from relatively low coherence texts (e.g., McNamara, 2010; Ozuru, Dempsey, & McNamara, 2009). The more knowledgeable and better readers usually learn more when they are forced, by the text, to engage in more mental processing - generating more inferences and the like. Such readers may give high coherence texts a more superficial once over since it is so easy for them to understand, that they end up with lower comprehension and learning. Alternately, when reading more coherent texts the poorer and less knowledgeable readers tend to do better with comprehension. When reading less explicitly coherent texts, these readers may fail to make the necessary connections or fill the gaps that such texts require, so comprehension suffers.

What that points out is that readers need to learn to negotiate a range of texts - texts that differ in coherence, and, consequently, in their challenge level. Increasing one's knowledge can help with that - at least, if the knowledge and the subject of the text match - but research has found that it is possible to teach students to negotiate the cohesive ties and connections that the author's build into their texts. It is this kind of negotiation that needs to be taught in our reading comprehension lessons.

One of the problems with the research on this topic is that it goes under a variety of titles. Some researchers focus on cohesion and cohesive ties - the linguistic repetitions and links themselves, while others categorize it as a kind of inferencing, the mental action that cohesive elements require. Still others might emphasize specific types of cohesion (e.g., referential, causal, temporal, anaphora, cataphora), or relegate this kind of thing to a superordinate category like Executive Function. I might recommend cohesion training, while a colleague may tout inferencing instruction - when we mean the same thing.

In any event, linguists have done a fine job of identifying and categorizing the many forms of cohesion (Halliday & Hasan, 1976), psychologists have developed innovative techniques for measuring the degree of unity or cohesiveness in texts (e.g., Graesser, McNamara, Cai, Conley, Li, & Pennebaker, 2014; Sheehan, 2013), and there are scads of studies showing the correlation of ability to interpret cohesion ties and reading comprehension (e.g., Duran, McCarthy, Graesser, & McNamara, 2007; Gasparinatou & Grigoriadou, 2013; Hall, et al., 2015; MacLean & Chapman, 1989; Schmitz, et al., 2017). Such studies have found these relations with a variety of text types (including science texts) and with students across a wide range of ages and abilities.

Most importantly, there are a number of studies showing that it is possible to raise reading comprehension by explicitly teaching such skills (e.g., Bauman, 1986; Best, Rowe, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2005). Elleman, 2017; Gallini, Spires, Terry, & Gleaton, 1993; Garcia-Madruga, et al., 2013). This kind of teaching has been effective with a wide range of ages and abilities - but has been especially powerful with low performing readers.

This kind of instruction should explain this aspect of language, providing many examples. Then teachers should provide direct instruction in how to deal with these kinds of connections through a text. This could include both modeling (showing students how to connect the ideas across sentences, paragraphs, and longer expanses of text), and guided reading (having students try to make these connections with explanations). This might be followed by exercises that give students more practice. These might take the form of worksheets, with the students trying to find the references for particular words or phrases or fill-in-the-blank pages. Or, another possibility, is to have students read a text and answer wh-questions about the passages.
Teachers should also raise these kinds of questions during regular group or class shared or guided reading activities. These kinds of activities should take place with a variety of texts.

Along with those earlier mentioned areas of comprehension instruction, this kind of work can have a positive impact on students' reading ability.

Tell that to your colleague - but then also make sure that your kids are learning plenty of content, both in his science classes and in your reading lessons. Every reading assignment is an opportunity to expose children to information about their world. With a little diligent attention and effort, that information can become knowledge available to support future reading. The lessons in vocabulary, syntax, cohesion, and text structure should increase students' ability to gain that information in future reading.
READ MORE ARTICLE HERE: Shanahan On Literacy's Blogs References
Baumann, J. F. (1986). Teaching third-grade students to comprehend anaphoric relationships: The application of a direct instruction model. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(1), 70-90. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/747961

Best, R. M. , Rowe, M. , Ozuru, Y. & McNamara, D. S. (2005). Deep-Level Comprehension of Science Texts. Topics in Language Disorders, 25 (1), 65-83.

Cox, B. E., Shanahan, T., & Sulzby, E. (1990). Good and poor elementary readers' use of cohesion in writing. Reading Research Quarterly, 25(1), 47-65. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/747987

Duran, N. D., McCarthy, P. M., Graesser, A. C., & McNamara, D. S. (2007). Using temporal cohesion to predict temporal coherence in narrative and expository texts. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 212-223. doi:https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193150

Elleman, A.M. (2017). Examining the impact of inference instruction on the literal and inferential comprehension of skilled and less skilled readers: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(6), 761-781. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu00 00180

Gallini, J. K., Spires, H. A., Terry, S., & Gleaton, J. (1993). The influence o macro and micro-level cognitive strategies training on text learning. Journal of Research & Development in Education, 26(3), 164-178.

García?Madruga, J. A., Elosúa, M. R., Gil, L., Gómez?Veiga, I., Vila, J. Ó., Orjales, I., . . . Duque, G. (2013). Reading comprehension and working memory's executive processes: An intervention study in primary school students. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(2), 155-174. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.44

Gasparinatou, A., & Grigoriadou, M. (2013). Exploring the effect of background knowledge and text cohesion on learning from texts in computer science. Educational Psychology, 33(6), 645-670. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2013.790309

Graesser, A. C., McNamara, D. S., Cai, Z., Conley, M., Li, H., & Pennebaker, J. (2014). Coh-metrix measures text characteristics at multiple levels of language and discourse. Elementary School Journal, 115(2), 210-229. doi:https://doi.org/10.1086/678293

Halliday, M. A., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Routledge.

Hall, S. S., Kowalski, R., Paterson, K. B., Basran, J., Filik, R., & Maltby, J. (2015). Local text cohesion, reading ability and individual science aspirations: Key factors influencing comprehension in science classes. British Educational Research Journal, 41(1), 122-142. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3134

MacLean, M., & Chapman, L. J. (1989). The processing of cohesion in fiction and non-fiction by good and poor readers. Journal of Research in Reading, 12(1), 13-28. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.1989.tb00300.x

McNamara, D. S. (2010). Strategies to read and learn: Overcoming learning by consumption. Medical Education, 44(4), 340-346. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2009.03550.x

McNamara, D. S., Crossley, S. A., & McCarthy, P. M. (2010). Linguistic features of writing quality. Written Communication, 27(1), 57-86. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088309351547

Ozuru, Y., Dempsey, K., & McNamara, D. S. (2009). Prior knowledge, reading skill, and text cohesion in the comprehension of science texts. Learning and Instruction, 19(3), 228-242. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.04.003

Schmitz, A., Gräsel, C., & Rothstein, B. (2017). Students' genre expectations and the effects of text cohesion on reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30(5), 1115-1135. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9714-0

Sheehan, K. M. (2013). Measuring cohesion: An approach that accounts for differences in the degree of integration challenge presented by different types of sentences. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 32(4), 28-37. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/emip.12017

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Comprehension Instruction that Really Helps | Teaching Cohesion | Shanahan on Literacy

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Shanahan on Literacy article explains that it is possible to improve student's reading comprehension through explicit instruction in language and how it works. Read here comprehension instruction that really helps - teaching cohesion!

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I've attached a Student Work Analysis tool that we are using. I have read that you oppose attempts to grade students on the individual reading standards. Although this tool is not used for grading students, it is a standard-by-standard analysis of the students' work, and I wonder what you think of it? [The form that was included provided spaces for teachers to analyze student success with each of their state's math standards]. Shanahan response:
In the blog entry that you refer to, I spoke specifically about evaluating reading comprehension standards (not math or even the more foundational or skills-oriented decoding, vocabulary, or morphology).

A common error in reading education is to treat reading comprehension as if it were a skill or a collection of discrete skills.

Skills tend to be highly repeatable things...

Many of the items listed as comprehension skills are not particularly repeatable. All these standards or question types aimed at main idea, central message, key details, supporting details, inferencing, application, tone, comparison, purpose, etc. are fine, but none is repeatable in real reading situations.

Each of these actions is unique or at least high particularized. Each time these instances occur they are in completely different contexts. To execute them, it requires different steps from instance to instance.

Not only does each text have its own main ideas, but because the expression of each text is so different, what it takes to locate, identify, or construct a main idea will vary greatly from text to text. Contrast this with forming the appropriate phoneme for sh or ph, computing the product of 3 X 3, or defining photosynthesis.

Another problem is that these supposed comprehension skills aren't individually measurable.

My point isn't that teachers can't ask questions that would require students to figure out particular things about a text-of course they can-but performance on such questions is startlingly unreliable. Today, Johnny might answer the tone question like a champ, but tomorrow he won't-since that is a different story, and the author revealed tone in a totally different way.

Also, comprehension questions asked about a particular text aren't independent of each other (and item independence is imperative in assessment). The reason, little Johnny struggled with tone on the day after wasn't because he forgot what he knew about tone, nor even because tone was handled more subtly in text two... but because his reading was deeply affected by that text's more challenging vocabulary, complex sentences, or complicated time sequence-none of which are specifically tone issues.

That means that when teachers try to suss out how well Johnny can meet Standard 6 by asking tone questions, his answers will reveal how well he could make sense of tone in one particular text, but it won't likely be indicative of how well he'll handle tone on any other. (Not at all what one would expect to see with math, decoding, or vocabulary assessments).

Reading comprehension is so affected by the readers' prior knowledge of the subject matter being read about and the language used to express those ideas (e.g., vocabulary, sentence structure, cohesion, text organization, literary devices, graphics), that focusing one's attention on which kinds of question the kids could answer is a fool's errand.

If I were trying to assess reading comprehension information to determine who might need more help, the kind of help to provide, or who I should worry about concerning the end of year testing, then I wouldn't hesitate to ask questions that seemed to reflect the standards... but the information I'd use for assessment would ignore how well the kids could answer particular types of questions.

My interest would be in how well students did with particular types of texts.

Keep track of their overall comprehension with different types of text. I'd record the following information:

1. How the student did on each overall text (the percentage of questions answered correctly, or an estimate of the percentage of key information the student could include in a summary).

2. The topics of the texts (with, perhaps, some rating of each child's familiarity with those topics).

3. An estimate of the text difficulty (in terms of Lexiles or another readability estimate).

4. The lengths of the texts (in numbers of words, preferably).

5. Whether the text was Literary (narrative or poetry), or Informational (expository or argumentative).

Thus, a student record may look something like this:

Over time, you'll get some sense that junior does great with texts that are lower than 500L, but not so well with texts that are harder than 550L (unless they're about robots).

Or, perhaps over the report card marking period you may notice a difference in performance on the the literary or informational texts (which you can see in my example above). But you also need to notice that the informational texts were relatively harder here, so it isn't certain that the student would struggle more with content than literature (though one might make an effort to sort this out to see if there is a consistent pattern). Likewise the student seemed to be able to handle silent reading demands with the shorter texts, but comprehension tended to fall off with the longer texts. That may lead me to try to do more to build stamina with this student.

And so on.

Basically, the information that you are collecting should describe how well the student does with particular types of texts (in terms of discourse types, length, topic familiarity, and difficulty), rather than trying to figure out which comprehension skills the individual question responses may reveal.

If a student does well with many of the passages, then he or she will likely do well with the comprehension standards-as long as these weekly dipsticks are reflective of the difficulty, lengths, and types of texts that will appear on the end-of-year tests.

And, If students perform poorly with many of the passages, then their performance on all question types will be affected.

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How to Analyze or Assess Reading Comprehension

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This blog entry explains how and how not to evaluate student reading comprehension performance. Rather than trying to determine how well students can answer questions that reflect particular standards or particular texts, it proposes that teachers track student comprehension performance along with several key text indicators.

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Webinar Beyond Strategies: The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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Webinar Beyond Strategies: The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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Beyond strategies: The missing link in reading comprehension

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The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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The Missing Link in Reading Comprehension

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Comprehension skill, inference-making ability, and their relation to knowledge. 

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Comprehension skill, inference-making ability, and their relation to knowledge. 

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In this series of blogs about micro-comprehension, I have presented strategies that boost micro-comprehension: vocabulary words, gap-filling inference, sentence structure processing, figurative language processing, and applying text structure.

When you teach students how to slow down their own thinking- to become aware of what they are thinking about while reading, you are teaching them comprehension monitoring. However, some readers, especially very young ones, fail to truly read for comprehension. Here's a solution: teach readers to monitor their comprehension in smaller chunks. If you can help readers chunk their understanding step-by-step, you up their odds for success.
Chunks of Meaning
We can help our young readers by teaching them some thinking steps to use when they read. These steps make it possible for readers to put a voice to what they think about when they read. The first step in chunking meaning starts with getting students to slow their reading down a bit when they read harder texts. Then, teach them to ask the following questions after each paragraph or two. Don't do it too often. You can tell when a plot thickens in a story, so that is the ideal place to sprinkle in these comprehension chunks:

What are the times and settings of the story I know about so far?

Who are the main characters so far?

Have any new characters been introduced?

What important events have occurred so far and who was involved?

Make sure you model this process periodically throughout the story or book. You will know students understand the gist of a story by the way they react to and respond to these kinds of questions.
Strategies
When students read aloud, do not allow them to simply skip a word and move on. Sometimes, readers will substitute a wrong word. If the substitution doesn't work, and the reader just keeps plowing through, that's a problem. Don't let them ignore it. Instead, teach them to go back and re-read. Good readers need to re-read to verify comprehension-it's just that a lot of kids will never do so if they aren't taught directly. Teach the following steps when students encounter new words or phrases or whole lines of challenging text. When a student stumbles, hesitates, or substitutes with a nonsense word, do this:

1. Say: "Go ahead and try it."

2. If the student cannot correct the error, say the word for the student.

Note: Decide what caused the problem. Ask yourself if the student made the error because of a phonics problem, a visual miscue, or if the student substituted with a nonsense word. If the student immediately self-corrects the mistake, just move on. If the student substitutes the problem word with a synonym that works in the sentence, have them correct it after they finish reading the whole passage.

3. Have the student start at the beginning of the sentence which contains the problem word or phrase.

As you continue your efforts to help kids learn to read and comprehend, give some thought to all of the micro-comprehension strategies in this series. If you make it a habit, you will multiply your effectiveness and improve your students' reading comprehension at the same time. Thanks for reading!

(This post is part of a series on Micro-Comprehension. To start at the beginning, click here.)

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Micro-comprehension: Comprehension Monitoring - Shurley English Blog

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In this series of blogs about micro-comprehension, I have presented strategies that boost micro-comprehension: vocabulary words , gap-filling inference , sentence structure processing , figurative language processing , and applying text structure . When you teach students how to slow down thei

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Improving Reading Comprehension in the Primary Classes- Timothy Shanahan

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Improving Reading Comprehension in the Primary Classes- Timothy Shanahan

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5 Ways to Improve Comprehension Instruction

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5 Ways to Improve Comprehension Instruction

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Very easy to read/ understand how to apply to instruction.

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Over the coming weeks, Think Forward Educators will be posting a series of blog articles written by educational experts providing ready-to-use tips on how to implement the Science of Reading into the classroom.

Inspired by Tom Sherrington's Five Ways Collection, the posts have been edited and curated by Brendan Lee and Dr Nathaniel Swain.

The third blog post of the series from structured literacy specialist, Debbie Draper gives us a comprehensive look at comprehension.

Comprehension involves forming a coherent mental model that integrates vocabulary, syntax, background knowledge and semantic knowledge. It relies on

It is sometimes assumed (and indeed, implied by the Reading Rope) that fluency and comprehension will automatically result from the coming together of the separate strands. Comprehension can also be improved with explicit instruction.

What is comprehension anyway?

Comprehension, simply put, is understanding. Oral comprehension (listening comprehension) is being able to understand the spoken word. Oral language, however, is usually much less formal in vocabulary and structure than written language. When we are talking and listening, cues such as tone of voice and body language and firsthand background knowledge assists with understanding the speaker's message.

However, written language is rarely just speech written down and we have the complexities of written language to deal with as well. These are outlined in Scarborough's rope under the banner of language comprehension. Language comprehension refers to the understanding of written texts whether they are listened to or read independently.

Reading comprehension, oral and language comprehension are highly correlated. To be skilled comprehenders, readers need to be automatic and strategic with all elements of the reading rope and be able to select and use cognitive and metacognitive strategies. This means that students need to be explicitly taught how to monitor their comprehension, understand when meaning breaks down and be able to select and use appropriate fix-up strategies to build meaning.

The Complexity of Comprehension

Unlike decoding, comprehension is harder to recognise and assess. As it is something that occurs in the brain, we can't actually see or hear it. We can usually only infer that a reader has comprehended a text by their oral, visual and written responses.

Comprehension is an interaction between the reader's

and the text

complexity (syntax, sentence length, multisyllabic words, structure, vocabulary)

difficulty (familiarity with content)

type, genre, forms and features.

Putting it into Practice

Here are five ways to improve reading comprehension instruction:

1. Embed comprehension into content instruction

2. Teach micro-skills as well as whole text comprehension

3. Think about what to teach and when

4. Don't be afraid of strategy instruction - but be wary of decontextualising it!

5. Teach explicitly through the Gradual Release of Responsibility model

(1) Embed comprehension into content instruction

We use the term "mental model" to describe the structure you create in your memory while reading a passage. It makes sense to help students meaningfully interact with a text at the same time as deepening their comprehension of the content. In order to do this efficiently, consider embedding comprehension instruction into content instruction.

Integrated comprehension instruction facilitates reciprocity - the more knowledge developed on a topic, the easier it becomes to read and understand other texts on that topic. As well as helping students develop a rich mental representation of content, it enables teachers to integrate comprehension into all curriculum areas. Rich learning is not about separating what is traditionally seen as English from Science or HASS or the Arts or PE. The aim of all learning areas is understanding of the subject.

So, rather than thinking about comprehension strategies first start with the question "Why is this learning important?"

Consider content (concepts, understanding and skills), then consider the texts that will help support the development of the content knowledge. Finally think about your students and the support that they will need to be able to access those texts.

What text structures and features might students need to be explicitly taught?

What vocabulary (Tier 2 academic and 3 content- specific) will students need to know and how will I teach it?

What skills and strategies will students need to employ in order to understand this text?

How can we best help students meaningfully interact with text to deepen comprehension?
(2) Teach micro-skills as well as whole text comprehension

Comprehension instruction has traditionally focused on comprehension of chunks of texts, if not whole texts. The attention is now being drawn to those comprehension micro-skills that developing readers need to develop a better mental model as they are reading. The micro-skills focus on the sentence level.

Understanding that sentences have particular structures is important to reading comprehension

Anaphors - part of the text that takes it meaning from another part of the text (pronoun - noun connection, ellipses)

Connectives (temporal, causal, contrastive and continuant)

Syntactic Awareness - the meaning behind word order and function, phrase and clause structure and the role of punctuation.

Comprehension of texts also relies on the reader being able to make " gap filling inferences." Writers do not include all the information needed to understand a text. For example, the sentence "Alex looked out the window then searched for her coat." relies on the reader to infer that Alex is about to go outside for some reason, looks out of the window to check the weather, sees that it is cold or windy and decides that she will need her coat.

When teaching these skills explicitly, use authentic texts to find relevant examples. Explicitly teach through modelled reading / think-alouds and shared reading before guided and independent practice.

Here are some examples from a draft English / Science shared reading and writing unit currently being trialed. Take note that teaching syntax and sentence structure is more effective when connected to writing.

Butterflies are flying bugs.

They live on trees.

They live in grassy places.

Butterflies like to be warm.

Anaphora (pronoun - noun connection). What does "they" refer to?

How can we combine the sentences into one or two sentences using connectives (and more scientific vocabulary)?

Butterflies are flying insects that live in trees and in grassy places.

Using connectives to show meaning and relationships

Butterflies cannot live in very cold places because

Butterflies cannot live in very cold places but

Butterflies cannot live in very cold places so

Refer to " The Reading Comprehension Blueprint " by Nancy Hennessy and " The Writing Revolution " by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler for more information and ideas. (NB: these books are available from many sites. I have no affiliation with any book sellers!)

(3) Think about what to teach and when

When we consider all the elements that impact on comprehension, it can become overwhelming. In order to focus your instruction go back to the curriculum. When writing learning intentions consider how students will be assessed and what evidence you will need to collect. The Achievement Standards (or similar) of the curriculum need to be clearly understood in terms of the skills and knowledge required. In this example I have used the Australian Curriculum.

The National Literacy Learning Progressions can help narrow your focus but be wary of teaching these skills in a decontextualised way. Use the curriculum and the progressions as a resource to determine what to focus on within your content rich teaching sequence.

The ultimate goal of strategy instruction is not the strategy itself but the comprehension of texts through the flexible use of a variety of relevant strategies.

The following example details a lesson plan based on these curriculum outcomes:

(4) Don't be afraid of strategy instruction - but be wary of decontextualising it!

Strategy instruction has become a hot topic recently, particularly as a result of Natalie Wexlers's assessment, that the teaching of reading comprehension has become narrowly constricted to practicing a growing set of disconnected skills. Her recommendation is to focus on knowledge and vocabulary building and reject the practising of comprehension skills.

When we look back at the original research , knowledge-building and research-informed cognitive strategy instruction went hand in hand. These studies focused on the cognitive strategies that led to improved comprehension. This was also backed up a meta-analysis of over two hundred studies for the National Reading Panel Report in 2000. The studies took place over a relatively short time with positive results but, unfortunately the idea that "if a little bit is good, a lot must be better" took hold. Strategy instruction is best practised in a relatively short time, with some strategy revisiting as text demands become more complex.

Remember that the aim of strategy instruction is for readers to have a toolkit of strategies to draw from when meaning breaks down. Strategy instruction is a means to an end, that being the comprehension of the text.

The transition from promising research into the classroom practice often involves over- simplification along with a plethora of ready resources from eager publishers. Over time, educators were led to mistakenly believe that practising skills such as finding the main idea or inferring would lead to better outcomes. These skills were mostly practised out of context with no explicit instruction.

Effective comprehension strategy instruction involves teachers modelling through a "think aloud" how to read and understand a text. This process enables students to understand how a good reader thinks while they are reading - opening the "black box" to reveal how a reader develops a mental model.

Strategies that have been determined to have a high effect size include inferring meaning, summarising and synthesising, developing questioning strategies, using graphic and semantic organisers and monitoring comprehension and identifying and resolving difficulties.

However, each of these strategies also require a range of cognitive processes to occur:
Comprehension Strategy
Inferring meaning

Understanding what an inference is

Understanding that prediction and inference are different but share some commonalities

Connecting background knowledge (schema) to information from the text

Determining the validity of an inference

Monitoring and adjusting inferences as more information is learned

Summarising and synthesising

Understanding the purpose of the task (what to summarise)

Determining importance - of the information relevant to the task

Sifting key ideas and relevant / irrelevant details

Collecting and evaluating information from a range of sources

Determining how to present a summary relevant to the task

Developing questioning strategies

Knowing what a question is

Understanding different question types and their purpose

Knowing how to answer different question types

Locating relevant information

Generating relevant questions

Using graphic and semantic organisers

Monitoring comprehension and identifying and resolving difficulties

Knowing when you have lost meaning and locating where

Determining why (vocabulary, semantics, content knowledge etc.)

Drawing from a range of cognitive strategies to resolve the difficulty

It can also be helpful to look at the curriculum expectations to determine which strategies to focus on.

(5) Teach explicitly through the Gradual Release of Responsibility model

The Gradual Release of Responsibility is a model designed to teach students skills and strategies that they have not yet mastered. The model brings back the "teach" into teaching and positions the teacher as an expert. It's sometimes called the apprenticeship model.

Most teachers are competent readers themselves and are unaware of the cognitive processes they are employing to understand a text. Because the strategies have become automatised, it is sometimes difficult to think about what we are actually doing when we read.
When planning to introduce a new strategy to students, it is important to consider the following

Locate an appropriate text which provides several opportunities to highlight the particular skill or strategy you wish to make explicit

Scan the text for relevant teaching opportunities

Read the text, highlighting with sticky notes where you might stop and "think aloud"

Select a few pertinent examples. There is no need to stop and articulate your thinking on every page.

Write a script - determine what you will say and how you will connect your thinking to the text. Write the script in first person using I statements

A think aloud might feel quite unnatural at first, but it is a very powerful strategy when done right.

1. Revisit the strategy with the same, or another text, inviting students to share their thoughts and ideas. Reinforce full sentence answers using scaffolds such as sentence stems if needed.

2. Consider revisiting and reinforcing the strategy during small group guided practice. This approach is effective for fluent readers but may be cognitive overload for emergent readers who should be focusing on decoding.

3. Cooperative structures such as Reciprocal Reading and Literature circle can be useful, but only after students have been explicitly taught the strategies required in these approaches.

4. When students are reading independently, it can be helpful for accountability purposes for students to record aspects of their thinking e.g. record three inferences citing evidence from the text and your own thinking, use a graphic organiser to summarise the text, write three questions about the text for someone else to answer.

I DO, YOU WATCH Reading & Comprehension Modelled Reading
Teacher reads aloud to students whilst modelling and articulating effective reading and comprehension strategies. The teacher articulates the purpose of the read aloud, names the strategy and explains that effective readers use the strategy when they are reading. During the read aloud, students are required to listen to the teacher "thinking aloud" as they read the text.

The teacher talks out loud about what they are thinking as they read the words and the illustrations in a text. The thinking is articulated out loud in the first person (using I).

When I look at the cover of this book, I am predicting..... I am thinking that because (evidence from the text)...... When I just read that bit, I am starting to infer ......because...
I DO, YOU HELP Shared Reading
Shared reading involves a simliar process to modelled reading, except that students are invited to share their own thinking at strategic points in the text.

The turn and talk strategy is very effective for this purpose as all students have an opportunity to participate. Model and reinforce the appropriate language to use.

Building an anchor chart with students helps them remember the strategy and anchors their thinking back to the lesson when they are required to use the strategy independently.
YOU DO, I SUPPORT Guided Practice
During guided practice, teachers explain the purpose of the lesson and can model the focus strategy during the book introduction as a reminder to students.

As students read the text, the teacher listens to the student read aloud. At strategic points in the text, the teacher may ask the student to think aloud (articulate their thinking using the focus strategy). A prompt card or bookmark can be used as a scaffold.
YOU DO, I WATCH Peer Collaboration
Students may work together in pairs or small groups to read and articulate their thinking out loud. For example, after a modelled reading students could "turn and talk" with a partner to explain their thinking about a text - "I infer that the wolf won't blow the house down because in the picture I can see that he looks angry. I think that's because he can't blow the bricks down."

During Literature Circles, students could take on roles and be scaffolded to explain their thinking along with evidence from the text. "When I read ........I made a text to text connection because......."

As students read independently, they should begin to automatically use the comprehension skills and strategies. In order to bring metacognitive thinking to the surface, teachers can require that students record 3 or 4 examples of their thinking. Scaffolds and sticky notes can be used to keep evidence for assessment.

An exploration of the various teaching approaches encompassed within Pearson and Gallagher's (1983) Gradual Release of Responsibility framework can be watched here.

In summary

DO integrate comprehension instruction into rich knowledge based units

DON'T teach comprehension using an isolated, decontextualised skills based approach

DO teach language comprehension from the early years through rich shared texts

DON'T wait to consider comprehension until students can decode

DO explicitly teachquestioning skills and strategies and focus on student generated questions

DON'T think that questioning students is teaching comprehension - it is assessing comprehension

DO use the gradual release of responsibility to model think-alouds and show students what a good reader does metacognitively whilst reading

DON'T expect students to go from explanation to independence

DO teach micro and macro comprehension skills

DON'T ignore word level comprehension (vocabulary) or sentence level comprehension syntax and semantics

DO remember that the ultimate goal of comprehension instruction is understanding the text

DON'T forget that some students seem to automatically develop a range of comprehension strategies but some students will need to be expicitly taught strategies in order to have a repertoire to draw from

Debbie Draper is an educational consultant specialising in the science of reading and writing. Debbie has held many roles in the educational field including over 20 years classroom teaching as well as leadership roles at site, partnership and state levels. Debbie has worked at state level supporting the implementation of the SHIP (Students with High Intellectual Potential) focus school programme and co-developed and delivered a teacher training programme nationally and internationally.

Debbie has held district and regional roles implementing literacy, numeracy and Australian Curriculum initiatives. Whilst working in Northern Adelaide, South Australia, Debbie was instrumental in developing a 4-year professional learning strategy that led to significant improvements in student outcomes in comprehension. She currently enjoys a role working with sites in a private capacity empowering teachers to enrich their reading and writing pedagogy.

Comprehension References and Resources

Cain, K. & Oakhill, J.V. (1999). Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children. Reading and Writing, 11(5) , 489

Duke Nell K., Ward Alessandra E., P. Pearson David (2021) The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction in The Reading Teacher Vol. 74 No. 6 May/June 2021

Hennessy, Nancy Lewis (2021) The reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

Hruby, George G. Grounding Reading Comprehension in the Neuroscience Literatures Utah State University

(PDF) Grounding Reading Comprehension in the Neuroscience Literatures | George Hruby - Academia.edu

McNamara, Danielle S (editor) (2007) Reading Comprehension Strategies Theories, Interventions, and Technologies

Oakhill, J., Cain, K., & Elbro, C. (2015). Understanding and teaching reading comprehension: A handbook. New York: Routledge.

, Natalie(2020) The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America's broken education system--and how to fix it

, Natalie(2022) 'What Works' in Reading Comprehension-And What Doesn't https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2022/04/09/what-works-in-reading-comprehension-and-what-doesnt/?sh=5e36581f4e26
Teaching Literacy Podcast
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/episode-05-comprehension-ci-theory-and-practice-with-dr-d-ray-reutzel/
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/episode-06-comprehension-ci-theory-and-practice-part-2-with-dr-d-ray-reutzel/
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/reading-comprehension-research-schema-simple-view-of-reading-and-the-rope-comprehension-instruction-part-1-3/
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/reading-comprehension-construction-integration-and-common-core/
(This episode explores Kintsch's Construction Integration model)

https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/comprehension-strategies-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

(This episode explores how strategy instruction is a key component of many classrooms, and what does research indicate about its effectiveness?)
Evidence into Action https://evidenceintoaction.podbean.com/e/ep-4-exploring-the-complexities-of-reading-comprehension/
https://evidenceintoaction.podbean.com/e/ep-11-teaching-reading-the-reading-comprehension-house/
Amplify - science-of-reading-the-podcast
https://amplify.com/science-of-reading-the-podcast/

Season 2, Episode 7. Research, comprehension, and content-rich literacy instruction: Sonia Cabell

Season 3, Episode 1. Deconstructing the Rope: An introduction with Dr. Jane Oakhill

Season 3, Episode 6. Deconstructing the Rope: Background knowledge with Susan Neuman

Season 3, Episode 9. Deconstructing the Rope: Vocabulary with Nancy Hennessy

Season 3, Episode 8. Deconstructing the Rope: Language comprehension with Sonia Cabell

Season 3, Episode 10.Deconstructing the Rope: Language structures with Kate Cain

Over the coming weeks, Think Forward Educators will be posting a series of blog articles written by educational experts providing ready-to-use tips on how to implement the Science of Reading into the classroom.

Inspired by Tom Sherrington's Five Ways Collection, the posts have been edited and curated by Brendan Lee and Dr Nathaniel Swain.

The third blog post of the series from structured literacy specialist, Debbie Draper gives us a comprehensive look at comprehension.

Comprehension involves forming a coherent mental model that integrates vocabulary, syntax, background knowledge and semantic knowledge. It relies on

It is sometimes assumed (and indeed, implied by the Reading Rope) that fluency and comprehension will automatically result from the coming together of the separate strands. Comprehension can also be improved with explicit instruction.

What is comprehension anyway?

Comprehension, simply put, is understanding. Oral comprehension (listening comprehension) is being able to understand the spoken word. Oral language, however, is usually much less formal in vocabulary and structure than written language. When we are talking and listening, cues such as tone of voice and body language and firsthand background knowledge assists with understanding the speaker's message.

However, written language is rarely just speech written down and we have the complexities of written language to deal with as well. These are outlined in Scarborough's rope under the banner of language comprehension. Language comprehension refers to the understanding of written texts whether they are listened to or read independently.

Reading comprehension, oral and language comprehension are highly correlated. To be skilled comprehenders, readers need to be automatic and strategic with all elements of the reading rope and be able to select and use cognitive and metacognitive strategies. This means that students need to be explicitly taught how to monitor their comprehension, understand when meaning breaks down and be able to select and use appropriate fix-up strategies to build meaning.

The Complexity of Comprehension

Unlike decoding, comprehension is harder to recognise and assess. As it is something that occurs in the brain, we can't actually see or hear it. We can usually only infer that a reader has comprehended a text by their oral, visual and written responses.

Comprehension is an interaction between the reader's

and the text

complexity (syntax, sentence length, multisyllabic words, structure, vocabulary)

difficulty (familiarity with content)

type, genre, forms and features.

Putting it into Practice

Here are five ways to improve reading comprehension instruction:

1. Embed comprehension into content instruction

2. Teach micro-skills as well as whole text comprehension

3. Think about what to teach and when

4. Don't be afraid of strategy instruction - but be wary of decontextualising it!

5. Teach explicitly through the Gradual Release of Responsibility model

(1) Embed comprehension into content instruction

We use the term "mental model" to describe the structure you create in your memory while reading a passage. It makes sense to help students meaningfully interact with a text at the same time as deepening their comprehension of the content. In order to do this efficiently, consider embedding comprehension instruction into content instruction.

Integrated comprehension instruction facilitates reciprocity - the more knowledge developed on a topic, the easier it becomes to read and understand other texts on that topic. As well as helping students develop a rich mental representation of content, it enables teachers to integrate comprehension into all curriculum areas. Rich learning is not about separating what is traditionally seen as English from Science or HASS or the Arts or PE. The aim of all learning areas is understanding of the subject.

So, rather than thinking about comprehension strategies first start with the question "Why is this learning important?"

Consider content (concepts, understanding and skills), then consider the texts that will help support the development of the content knowledge. Finally think about your students and the support that they will need to be able to access those texts.

What text structures and features might students need to be explicitly taught?

What vocabulary (Tier 2 academic and 3 content- specific) will students need to know and how will I teach it?

What skills and strategies will students need to employ in order to understand this text?

How can we best help students meaningfully interact with text to deepen comprehension?
(2) Teach micro-skills as well as whole text comprehension

Comprehension instruction has traditionally focused on comprehension of chunks of texts, if not whole texts. The attention is now being drawn to those comprehension micro-skills that developing readers need to develop a better mental model as they are reading. The micro-skills focus on the sentence level.

Understanding that sentences have particular structures is important to reading comprehension

Anaphors - part of the text that takes it meaning from another part of the text (pronoun - noun connection, ellipses)

Connectives (temporal, causal, contrastive and continuant)

Syntactic Awareness - the meaning behind word order and function, phrase and clause structure and the role of punctuation.

Comprehension of texts also relies on the reader being able to make " gap filling inferences." Writers do not include all the information needed to understand a text. For example, the sentence "Alex looked out the window then searched for her coat." relies on the reader to infer that Alex is about to go outside for some reason, looks out of the window to check the weather, sees that it is cold or windy and decides that she will need her coat.

When teaching these skills explicitly, use authentic texts to find relevant examples. Explicitly teach through modelled reading / think-alouds and shared reading before guided and independent practice.

Here are some examples from a draft English / Science shared reading and writing unit currently being trialed. Take note that teaching syntax and sentence structure is more effective when connected to writing.

Butterflies are flying bugs.

They live on trees.

They live in grassy places.

Butterflies like to be warm.

Anaphora (pronoun - noun connection). What does "they" refer to?

How can we combine the sentences into one or two sentences using connectives (and more scientific vocabulary)?

Butterflies are flying insects that live in trees and in grassy places.

Using connectives to show meaning and relationships

Butterflies cannot live in very cold places because

Butterflies cannot live in very cold places but

Butterflies cannot live in very cold places so

Refer to " The Reading Comprehension Blueprint " by Nancy Hennessy and " The Writing Revolution " by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler for more information and ideas. (NB: these books are available from many sites. I have no affiliation with any book sellers!)

(3) Think about what to teach and when

When we consider all the elements that impact on comprehension, it can become overwhelming. In order to focus your instruction go back to the curriculum. When writing learning intentions consider how students will be assessed and what evidence you will need to collect. The Achievement Standards (or similar) of the curriculum need to be clearly understood in terms of the skills and knowledge required. In this example I have used the Australian Curriculum.

The National Literacy Learning Progressions can help narrow your focus but be wary of teaching these skills in a decontextualised way. Use the curriculum and the progressions as a resource to determine what to focus on within your content rich teaching sequence.

The ultimate goal of strategy instruction is not the strategy itself but the comprehension of texts through the flexible use of a variety of relevant strategies.

The following example details a lesson plan based on these curriculum outcomes:

(4) Don't be afraid of strategy instruction - but be wary of decontextualising it!

Strategy instruction has become a hot topic recently, particularly as a result of Natalie Wexlers's assessment, that the teaching of reading comprehension has become narrowly constricted to practicing a growing set of disconnected skills. Her recommendation is to focus on knowledge and vocabulary building and reject the practising of comprehension skills.

When we look back at the original research , knowledge-building and research-informed cognitive strategy instruction went hand in hand. These studies focused on the cognitive strategies that led to improved comprehension. This was also backed up a meta-analysis of over two hundred studies for the National Reading Panel Report in 2000. The studies took place over a relatively short time with positive results but, unfortunately the idea that "if a little bit is good, a lot must be better" took hold. Strategy instruction is best practised in a relatively short time, with some strategy revisiting as text demands become more complex.

Remember that the aim of strategy instruction is for readers to have a toolkit of strategies to draw from when meaning breaks down. Strategy instruction is a means to an end, that being the comprehension of the text.

The transition from promising research into the classroom practice often involves over- simplification along with a plethora of ready resources from eager publishers. Over time, educators were led to mistakenly believe that practising skills such as finding the main idea or inferring would lead to better outcomes. These skills were mostly practised out of context with no explicit instruction.

Effective comprehension strategy instruction involves teachers modelling through a "think aloud" how to read and understand a text. This process enables students to understand how a good reader thinks while they are reading - opening the "black box" to reveal how a reader develops a mental model.

Strategies that have been determined to have a high effect size include inferring meaning, summarising and synthesising, developing questioning strategies, using graphic and semantic organisers and monitoring comprehension and identifying and resolving difficulties.

However, each of these strategies also require a range of cognitive processes to occur:
Comprehension Strategy
Inferring meaning

Understanding what an inference is

Understanding that prediction and inference are different but share some commonalities

Connecting background knowledge (schema) to information from the text

Determining the validity of an inference

Monitoring and adjusting inferences as more information is learned

Summarising and synthesising

Understanding the purpose of the task (what to summarise)

Determining importance - of the information relevant to the task

Sifting key ideas and relevant / irrelevant details

Collecting and evaluating information from a range of sources

Determining how to present a summary relevant to the task

Developing questioning strategies

Knowing what a question is

Understanding different question types and their purpose

Knowing how to answer different question types

Locating relevant information

Generating relevant questions

Using graphic and semantic organisers

Monitoring comprehension and identifying and resolving difficulties

Knowing when you have lost meaning and locating where

Determining why (vocabulary, semantics, content knowledge etc.)

Drawing from a range of cognitive strategies to resolve the difficulty

It can also be helpful to look at the curriculum expectations to determine which strategies to focus on.

(5) Teach explicitly through the Gradual Release of Responsibility model

The Gradual Release of Responsibility is a model designed to teach students skills and strategies that they have not yet mastered. The model brings back the "teach" into teaching and positions the teacher as an expert. It's sometimes called the apprenticeship model.

Most teachers are competent readers themselves and are unaware of the cognitive processes they are employing to understand a text. Because the strategies have become automatised, it is sometimes difficult to think about what we are actually doing when we read.
When planning to introduce a new strategy to students, it is important to consider the following

Locate an appropriate text which provides several opportunities to highlight the particular skill or strategy you wish to make explicit

Scan the text for relevant teaching opportunities

Read the text, highlighting with sticky notes where you might stop and "think aloud"

Select a few pertinent examples. There is no need to stop and articulate your thinking on every page.

Write a script - determine what you will say and how you will connect your thinking to the text. Write the script in first person using I statements

A think aloud might feel quite unnatural at first, but it is a very powerful strategy when done right.

1. Revisit the strategy with the same, or another text, inviting students to share their thoughts and ideas. Reinforce full sentence answers using scaffolds such as sentence stems if needed.

2. Consider revisiting and reinforcing the strategy during small group guided practice. This approach is effective for fluent readers but may be cognitive overload for emergent readers who should be focusing on decoding.

3. Cooperative structures such as Reciprocal Reading and Literature circle can be useful, but only after students have been explicitly taught the strategies required in these approaches.

4. When students are reading independently, it can be helpful for accountability purposes for students to record aspects of their thinking e.g. record three inferences citing evidence from the text and your own thinking, use a graphic organiser to summarise the text, write three questions about the text for someone else to answer.

I DO, YOU WATCH Reading & Comprehension Modelled Reading
Teacher reads aloud to students whilst modelling and articulating effective reading and comprehension strategies. The teacher articulates the purpose of the read aloud, names the strategy and explains that effective readers use the strategy when they are reading. During the read aloud, students are required to listen to the teacher "thinking aloud" as they read the text.

The teacher talks out loud about what they are thinking as they read the words and the illustrations in a text. The thinking is articulated out loud in the first person (using I).

When I look at the cover of this book, I am predicting..... I am thinking that because (evidence from the text)...... When I just read that bit, I am starting to infer ......because...
I DO, YOU HELP Shared Reading
Shared reading involves a simliar process to modelled reading, except that students are invited to share their own thinking at strategic points in the text.

The turn and talk strategy is very effective for this purpose as all students have an opportunity to participate. Model and reinforce the appropriate language to use.

Building an anchor chart with students helps them remember the strategy and anchors their thinking back to the lesson when they are required to use the strategy independently.
YOU DO, I SUPPORT Guided Practice
During guided practice, teachers explain the purpose of the lesson and can model the focus strategy during the book introduction as a reminder to students.

As students read the text, the teacher listens to the student read aloud. At strategic points in the text, the teacher may ask the student to think aloud (articulate their thinking using the focus strategy). A prompt card or bookmark can be used as a scaffold.
YOU DO, I WATCH Peer Collaboration
Students may work together in pairs or small groups to read and articulate their thinking out loud. For example, after a modelled reading students could "turn and talk" with a partner to explain their thinking about a text - "I infer that the wolf won't blow the house down because in the picture I can see that he looks angry. I think that's because he can't blow the bricks down."

During Literature Circles, students could take on roles and be scaffolded to explain their thinking along with evidence from the text. "When I read ........I made a text to text connection because......."

As students read independently, they should begin to automatically use the comprehension skills and strategies. In order to bring metacognitive thinking to the surface, teachers can require that students record 3 or 4 examples of their thinking. Scaffolds and sticky notes can be used to keep evidence for assessment.

An exploration of the various teaching approaches encompassed within Pearson and Gallagher's (1983) Gradual Release of Responsibility framework can be watched here.

In summary

DO integrate comprehension instruction into rich knowledge based units

DON'T teach comprehension using an isolated, decontextualised skills based approach

DO teach language comprehension from the early years through rich shared texts

DON'T wait to consider comprehension until students can decode

DO explicitly teachquestioning skills and strategies and focus on student generated questions

DON'T think that questioning students is teaching comprehension - it is assessing comprehension

DO use the gradual release of responsibility to model think-alouds and show students what a good reader does metacognitively whilst reading

DON'T expect students to go from explanation to independence

DO teach micro and macro comprehension skills

DON'T ignore word level comprehension (vocabulary) or sentence level comprehension syntax and semantics

DO remember that the ultimate goal of comprehension instruction is understanding the text

DON'T forget that some students seem to automatically develop a range of comprehension strategies but some students will need to be expicitly taught strategies in order to have a repertoire to draw from

Debbie Draper is an educational consultant specialising in the science of reading and writing. Debbie has held many roles in the educational field including over 20 years classroom teaching as well as leadership roles at site, partnership and state levels. Debbie has worked at state level supporting the implementation of the SHIP (Students with High Intellectual Potential) focus school programme and co-developed and delivered a teacher training programme nationally and internationally.

Debbie has held district and regional roles implementing literacy, numeracy and Australian Curriculum initiatives. Whilst working in Northern Adelaide, South Australia, Debbie was instrumental in developing a 4-year professional learning strategy that led to significant improvements in student outcomes in comprehension. She currently enjoys a role working with sites in a private capacity empowering teachers to enrich their reading and writing pedagogy.

Comprehension References and Resources

Cain, K. & Oakhill, J.V. (1999). Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children. Reading and Writing, 11(5) , 489

Duke Nell K., Ward Alessandra E., P. Pearson David (2021) The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction in The Reading Teacher Vol. 74 No. 6 May/June 2021

Hennessy, Nancy Lewis (2021) The reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

Hruby, George G. Grounding Reading Comprehension in the Neuroscience Literatures Utah State University

(PDF) Grounding Reading Comprehension in the Neuroscience Literatures | George Hruby - Academia.edu

McNamara, Danielle S (editor) (2007) Reading Comprehension Strategies Theories, Interventions, and Technologies

Oakhill, J., Cain, K., & Elbro, C. (2015). Understanding and teaching reading comprehension: A handbook. New York: Routledge.

, Natalie(2020) The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America's broken education system--and how to fix it

, Natalie(2022) 'What Works' in Reading Comprehension-And What Doesn't https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2022/04/09/what-works-in-reading-comprehension-and-what-doesnt/?sh=5e36581f4e26
Teaching Literacy Podcast
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/episode-05-comprehension-ci-theory-and-practice-with-dr-d-ray-reutzel/
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/episode-06-comprehension-ci-theory-and-practice-part-2-with-dr-d-ray-reutzel/
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/reading-comprehension-research-schema-simple-view-of-reading-and-the-rope-comprehension-instruction-part-1-3/
https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/reading-comprehension-construction-integration-and-common-core/
(This episode explores Kintsch's Construction Integration model)

https://teachingliteracypodcast.com/comprehension-strategies-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

(This episode explores how strategy instruction is a key component of many classrooms, and what does research indicate about its effectiveness?)
Evidence into Action https://evidenceintoaction.podbean.com/e/ep-4-exploring-the-complexities-of-reading-comprehension/
https://evidenceintoaction.podbean.com/e/ep-11-teaching-reading-the-reading-comprehension-house/
Amplify - science-of-reading-the-podcast
https://amplify.com/science-of-reading-the-podcast/

Season 2, Episode 7. Research, comprehension, and content-rich literacy instruction: Sonia Cabell

Season 3, Episode 1. Deconstructing the Rope: An introduction with Dr. Jane Oakhill

Season 3, Episode 6. Deconstructing the Rope: Background knowledge with Susan Neuman

Season 3, Episode 9. Deconstructing the Rope: Vocabulary with Nancy Hennessy

Season 3, Episode 8. Deconstructing the Rope: Language comprehension with Sonia Cabell

Season 3, Episode 10.Deconstructing the Rope: Language structures with Kate Cain

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5 Ways to: Improve Comprehension Instruction - Think Forward Educators

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Over the coming weeks, Think Forward Educators will be posting a series of blog articles written by educational experts providing ready-to-use tips on how to implement the Science of Reading into the classroom. Inspired by Tom Sherrington's Five Ways Collection, the posts have been edited and curate

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The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies

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The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies

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Example of a District Assessment Flowchart

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Example of a District Assessment Flowchart

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Nancy Hennessy, literacy consultant, is an experienced teacher and administrator who has worked across the grade levels in both regular and special education. While in public schools, she provided leadership in the development of professional learning systems for all educators, innovative programming for special needs students and a statewide revision of special education code. She is a former National Trainer for Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) and Wilson Language Lead trainer. Nancy has and continues to design and deliver keynotes, as well as virtual and live workshops and training courses, for educators nationally and internationally. Most recently, she has focused on virtual, and in-person professional learning opportunities focused on reading comprehension.

Nancyco-authored Module 6 of LETRS, Digging for Meaning: Teaching Text Comprehension (2nd edition) with Louisa Moats. Her chapter, Working with Word Meaning: Vocabulary Instruction, is in the fourth edition of Multisensory Teaching of Basic Skills. Most recently,Nancy authored the book, A Blueprint for Reading Comprehension Instruction: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text (2020).

She has held positions on varied boards including serving as president of the International Dyslexia Association and as a member of the National Joint Committee for Learning Disabilities. Nancy is currently the vice-president of the North Carolina Branch of IDA. An honorary member of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society, she is also the 2011 recipient of IDA's Margaret Rawson Lifetime Achievement Award.

Resources & Links:

This podcast episode was sponsored by Heggerty Phonemic Awareness.

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Blueprint for Reading Comprehension Instruction - Glean Education

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What's Inside: In this episode, we chat with author and educational consultant, Dr. Nancy Hennessey about her new book, The Reading Comprehension Blueprint (Brookes 2021) . Dr. Hennessey authored this book to raise teacher awareness of the complexities of teaching comprehension as a skill. Her

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Colorado Dept. of Education

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Here is Why you Should Teach Language Comprehension and Word Recognition at the Same Time

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I read some information today about what's missing in reading comprehension instruction, and the research that was provided jumped off of the page for me! I had to get used to some new terminology, but it all made perfect sense!

The article stated that the latest research in early literacy found that there is an extra step between decoding and comprehension that most of us don't know about. They even had a name for the missing skill: microcomprehension.

In a nutshell, microcomprehension is described as the work you do to build a mental model or " visualized graphic organizer" from a text during reading. The language skills that are required to create a mental model are absolutely critical to comprehension.

To help you understand a solid mental model of a text, take a look at this passage from The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh:
It's a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees, They'd build their nests at the bottom of trees. And that being so (if the Bees were Bears), We shouldn't have to climb up all of these stairs.
If I removed the passage from in front of you and asked you to explain what you read, you probably couldn't recite it word for word. However, you could use the mental model you hopefully created to tell me the gist of it.

Basically, it said that if bears were bees they would build their nests down low in the tree, and if bees were bears, they could just build their nest up high without having to climb all of the branches.

Reading research now tells us that developing readers do not need more practice working on answering comprehension questions. What they do need is better microcomprehension. They need to learn the skills that will help them to create a better mental model to help them make sense of what they read.

I can honestly say that Shurley English covers all of the microcomprehension skills necessary to create a mental model in true Shurley style! Repetition, of course, is key! Students learn how to apply this beneficial extra step between decoding and comprehension and to use it automatically.

Are you ready for strategies to improve microcomprehension? Are you ready to explore multi-sensory approaches to help your early readers break the reading code? We invite you to STAY TUNED, as we will discuss these topics and much more in our latest blog series entitled, Early Reading.

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Early Reading: What is microcomprehension? - Shurley English Blog

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I read some information today about what's missing in reading comprehension instruction, and the research that was provided jumped off of the page for me! I had to get used to some new terminology, but it all made perfect sense!

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Basic information on what it is and how it is used in writing.

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Cohesion and coherence are important features of academic writing. They are one of the features tested in exams of academic English, including the IELTS test and the TOEFL test. This page gives information on what cohesion is and how to achieve good cohesion. It also explains the difference between cohesion and coherence, and how to achieve good coherence. There is also an example essay to highlight the main features of cohesion mentioned in this section, as well as some exercises to help you practise.

What is cohesion?

It is important for the parts of a written text to be connected together. Another word for this is cohesion. This word comes from the verb cohere, which means 'to stick together'. Cohesion is therefore related to ensuring that the words and sentences you use stick together.

Good cohesion is achieved through the following five main methods, each of which is described in more detail below:

Two other ways in which cohesion is achieved in a text, which are covered less frequently in academic English courses, are shell nouns and thematic development. These are also considered below.

Repeated words/ideas

One way to achieve cohesion is to repeat words, or to repeat ideas using different words (synonyms). Study the following example. Repeated words (or synonyms) are shown in bold.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

In this example, the word cohesion is used several times, including as a verb ( coheres). It is important, in academic writing, to avoid too much repetition, so using different word forms or synonyms is common. The word writing is also used several times, including the phrase essay or report, which is a synonym for writing. The words important features are also repeated, again using synonyms: key feature, important aspect.

Reference words

Reference words are words which are used to refer to something which is mentioned elsewhere in the text, usually in a preceding sentence. The most common type is pronouns, such as 'it' or 'this' or 'these'. Study the previous example again. This time, the reference words are shown in bold.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

The words it, which and these are reference words. The first two of these, it and which, both refer to 'cohesion' used in the preceding sentence. The final example, these, refers to 'important features', again used in the sentence that precedes it.

Transition signals

Transition signals, also called cohesive devices or linking words, are words or phrases which show the relationship between ideas. There are many different types, the most common of which are explained in the next section on transition signals. Some examples of transition signals are:

for example - used to give examples

in contrast - used to show a contrasting or opposite idea

first - used to show the first item in a list

as a result - used to show a result or effect

Study the previous example again. This time, the transition signals are shown in bold. Here the transition signals simply give a list, relating to the five important features: first, second, third, fourth, and final.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

Substitution

Substitution means using one or more words to replace (substitute) for one or more words used earlier in the text. Grammatically, it is similar to reference words, the main difference being that substitution is usually limited to the clause which follows the word(s) being substituted, whereas reference words can refer to something far back in the text. The most common words used for substitution are one, so, and auxiliary verbs such as do, have and be. The following is an example.

Drinking alcohol before driving is illegal in many countries, since doing so can seriously impair one's ability to drive safely.

In this sentence, the phrase 'doing so' substitutes for the phrase 'drinking alcohol before driving' which appears at the beginning of the sentence.

Below is the example used throughout this section. There is just one example of substitution: the word one, which substitutes for the phrase 'important features'.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

Ellipsis

Ellipsis means leaving out one or more words, because the meaning is clear from the context. Ellipsis is sometimes called substitution by zero, since essentially one or more words are substituted with no word taking their place.

Below is the example passage again. There is one example of ellipsis: the phrase 'The fourth is', which means 'The fourth [important feature] is', so the words 'important feature' have been omitted.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

Shell nouns

Shell nouns are abstract nouns which summarise the meaning of preceding or succeeding information. This summarising helps to generate cohesion. Shell nouns may also be called carrier nouns, signalling nouns, or anaphoric nouns. Examples are: approach, aspect, category, challenge, change, characteristics, class, difficulty, effect, event, fact, factor, feature, form, issue, manner, method, problem, process, purpose, reason, result, stage, subject, system, task, tendency, trend, and type. They are often used with pronouns 'this', 'these', 'that' or 'those', or with the definite article 'the'. For example:

Virus transmission can be reduced via frequent washing of hands, use of face masks, and isolation of infected individuals. These methods, however, are not completely effective and transmission may still occur, especially among health workers who have close contact with infected individuals.

An increasing number of overseas students are attending university in the UK. This trend has led to increased support networks for overseas students.

In the example passage used throughout this section, the word features serves as a shell noun, summarising the information later in the passage.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words. The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The final important aspect is ellipsis.

Thematic development

Cohesion can also be achieved by thematic development. The term theme refers to the first element of a sentence or clause. The development of the theme in the rest of the sentence is called the rheme. It is common for the rheme of one sentence to form the theme of the next sentence; this type of organisation is often referred to as given-to-new structure, and helps to make writing cohere.

Consider the following short passage, which is an extension of the first example above.

Virus transmission can be reduced via frequent washing of hands, use of face masks, and isolation of infected individuals. These methods, however, are not completely effective and transmission may still occur, especially among health workers who have close contact with infected individuals. It is important for such health workers to pay particular attention to transmission methods and undergo regular screening.

Here we have the following pattern:

Virus transmission [theme]

can be reduced via frequent washing of hands, use of face masks, and isolation of infected individuals [rheme]

These methods [theme = rheme of preceding sentence]

are not completely effective and transmission may still occur, especially among health workers who have close contact with infected individuals [rheme]

health workers [theme, contained in rheme of preceding sentence]

[need to] to pay particular attention to transmission methods and undergo regular screening [rheme]

Cohesion vs. coherence

The words 'cohesion' and 'coherence' are often used together with a similar meaning, which relates to how a text joins together to make a unified whole. Although they are similar, they are not the same. Cohesion relates to the micro level of the text, i.e. the words and sentences and how they join together. Coherence, in contrast, relates to the organisation and connection of ideas and whether they can be understood by the reader, and as such is concerned with the macro level features of a text, such as topic sentences, thesis statement, the summary in the concluding paragraph (dealt with in the essay structure section), and other 'bigger' features including headings such as those used in reports.

Coherence can be improved by using an outline before writing (or a reverse outline, which is an outline written after the writing is finished), to check that the ideas are logical and well organised. Asking a peer to check the writing to see if it makes sense, i.e. peer feedback, is another way to help improve coherence in your writing.

Example essay

Below is an example essay. It is the one used in the persuasion essay section. Click on the different areas (in the shaded boxes to the right) to highlight the different cohesive aspects in this essay, i.e. repeated words/ideas, reference words, transition signals, substitution and ellipsis.

Title: Consider whether human activity has made the world a better place.
References
Aktas, R.N. and Cortes, V. (2008), 'Shell nouns as cohesive devices in published and ESL student writing', Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7 (2008) 3-14.

Alexander, O., Argent, S. and Spencer, J. (2008) EAP Essentials: A teacher's guide to principles and practice. Reading: Garnet Publishing Ltd.

Gray, B. (2010) 'On the use of demonstrative pronouns and determiners as cohesive devices: A focus on sentence-initial this/these in academic prose', Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9 (2010) 167-183.

Halliday, M. A. K., and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.

Hinkel, E. (2004). Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc Publishers.

Hyland, K. (2006) English for Academic Purposes: An advanced resource book. Abingdon: Routledge.

Thornbury, S. (2005) Beyond the Sentence: Introducing discourse analysis. Oxford: Macmillan Education.

Checklist

Below is a checklist for essay cohesion and coherence. Use it to check your own writing, or get a peer (another student) to help you.

You need to login to view the exercises. If you do not already have an account, you can register for free.

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Cohesion refers to how parts of a text are connected together. It is similar to but not the same as coherence.

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently. Students can complete the activities in small groups, pairs, or individually.

Accompanying these Student Center Activities is a Teacher Resource Guide that offers important insights on differentiated instruction and how to use the Student Center materials.

Component

Name of the reading component: Phonological Awareness (PA), Phonics (P), Fluency (F), Vocabulary (V), or Comprehension (C). Each component is color coded: PA is purple, P is orange, F is red, V is green, C is blue.

Subcomponent

Name of the reading subcomponent, which is a subskill of the component.

Activity Name

Activity Number

The letters correspond with the reading component (PA, P, F, V, or C). The numbers are listed in ascending order within each component. The activities are sequenced from simple to more complex within each component and subcomponent.

Student Icon

The suggested number of students for the activity. One student icon indicates that students may work independently or with a small group. Two student icons indicate that the activity requires students to work in pairs. Two student icons with a plus sign indicate that the activity requires two or more students.

Objective

States the goal of the activity, which is aligned with the subcomponent.

Materials

Materials are located on the pages that follow the Activity Plan. Most materials are non-consumable to be prepared and used repeatedly (e.g., word cards can be laminated). Some materials are consumable and will need to be duplicated for each student doing the activity. Other materials, such as counters, are commonly found in most classrooms.

Activity Statement

One sentence explanation of the purpose of the activity and what students do to complete the activity.

Activity Steps

The first step describes how to setup the center. The second step begins with: The student, Students, Working in pairs, or Taking turns depending on the number of students needed to complete the activity. The second step also starts the series of steps to complete the activity. The next steps explain what the student does to complete the activity. The last step lists one of three accountability methods: Self-check, Peer evaluation, or Teacher evaluation.

Example

A visual of the activity and key materials.

Extensions and Adaptations

Suggestions that extend or provide an adaptation for additional practice on the skill addressed in the activity. Materials for the extensions and adaptations are included after the pages that align to the Activity Plan.

Users may use the FCRR Student Center Activities resources as long as modifications are not made, the resources will only be used for non-profit educational purposes, and the copyright belong jointly to the Florida Department of Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research. These resources may not be used for any commercial purposes. These resources on our site may be linked to but not reposted, reproduced, modified, or copied to other sites. For questions about the use of these resources, please contact The Florida Center for Reading Research at fcrr@fcrr.org.

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes independently.

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Do I really need to teach sentences? — Reading with Mrs. IF

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Sentences are the Building Blocks to Reading Comprehension Reading comprehension is accomplished through the construction of a mental model , or mental representation of a text’s meaning in our brain. The mental model itself is complicated because there are many components and factors that contrib

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The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system--and how to fix it

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The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system--and how to fix it [Wexler, Natalie] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Knowledge Gap: The hidden cause of America’s broken education system--and how to fix it

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Listen to the interview with Andrea Castellano and Irene Yannascoli:
Sponsored by Listenwise and Studyo

"Make your paper dirty."

I get some funny looks when I say it at first, but it gets the point across. What I mean is I'm looking for annotations. I teach third grade, when young readers typically transition from developing readers to fluent ones, and it's at this stage that they're ready to begin to analyze texts on a deeper level. For that reason, this is the perfect time to introduce them to annotation.

Annotation - marking up and making notes on a text - can be an extremely effective tool for improving comprehension and increasing levels of criticality and engagement. By making these metacognitive markings, students are able to process a variety of texts in unique and meaningful ways. The thing is, it can vary in effectiveness, depending on which classroom you look into, if it's being taught at all. You may have personally found that you aren't getting the results you want from your approach.

After some trial and error, I have developed my own method for teaching annotation, which I'll share here, along with the process my colleague Irene Yannascoli uses at the high school level. Whether you teach ELA or another content area, chances are your students read in your class. And if they read, there's a chance they might need to annotate. Hopefully this post can offer some strategies to help your students establish annotation as part of their regular reading practice.
[skip to high school process]
Elementary Process

Prescriptive vs. Responsive Annotation

One major hurdle students face is deciding what to annotate. Some students are hesitant to mark anything at all while others underline or highlight nearly every sentence in the text. Some teachers have attempted to remedy this by taking a prescriptive approach to annotation. They direct students to locate specific details and what to do when they've found them, saying things like, "find and underline the sentence that proves the character is sad," or "box two words you don't know in paragraph 2." It's like a scavenger hunt: Find three things, answer three questions.

I've used this approach in the past, and it certainly is a great way to get students to notice and name things, but what I kept noticing is that whenever I stopped prompting students to make their annotations, they stopped making them. They were so dependent on my guidance that they never took ownership of the process.

Eventually I realized I needed to teach my students to develop their own systems for annotating. The responsive approach I'm advocating here centers the reader on the basis that we all bring our own perspectives, experiences, and ideas to the text. As much as our interpretations are varied and nuanced, so are our annotations. Teaching students to navigate text as active readers helps them make sense of what they read. Artful annotation is what happens when they're inspired to respond in their own unique way.

Getting Started

One thing teaching has taught me is that straightforward visuals reduce cognitive load and allow students to concentrate on what's important. To simplify annotation for my students, I designed a template (below) with space on the left for me to paste the text and cells on the right and bottom for note-taking.

At the point in the year that we start this process, I've already taught all the literacy concepts they'll need for this activity, such as theme, figurative language, text structures, and more. What this template does is sort each concept into one of two lenses: key words & ideas, and craft & structure. We then comb through the text with these two in mind, asking and answering over and over, What is the author saying? and How are they saying it? To remind them of what to look for, I provide the following graphic on the template. This is a list of look-fors that encompass most of what they'll encounter as they read.

Modeling Responsive Annotation

To introduce responsive annotation, I use a direct approach to make my thinking as transparent as possible. In addition to modeling the use of metacognitive markers, I talk through each step of the process. Here's a sample breakdown of what that would look like in the early stages.

Introducing Each Lens

1. Choose the lens through which you will be approaching the text. In the introductory stage, it is recommended to read the same text twice - one session for key words and ideas, another for craft and structure. Provide the annotation look-fors as an anchor chart or include it on the template itself.

2. Give students a copy of the text and display your copy of the text for all to see. As students watch, read a section of text aloud, stopping to underline, box, and make notations.

3. Think aloud as you annotate. Read, stop, jot, explain. You are responding to the text as you encounter each element rather than searching the text for specific items. Students should either be watching or copying the teacher's moves at this stage.

Guided Annotation (Whole Class)

To help students learn to prioritize information, the teacher will pose questions that reinforce the points made in the explicit model. This will happen in lockstep as a whole class - independent practice comes later. This stage works best directly following the teacher model so students get to immediately put things into practice.

Guide students through the next section of the text, first by reading it together and then by asking open-ended questions related to the chosen lens. For example:

For Key Words and Ideas:
What is the author saying here?
What words seem important?
What part made you stop and think?

For Craft and Structure:
How does the author show you what the character is feeling in paragraph 5?
Who can find and annotate a connection between paragraph 3 and paragraph 4?
What does the author mean by _____?

Students take a turn with another section of the text. Prompt students to share their thinking and show what they did. This is a great opportunity to validate or course-correct as needed.

Guided Annotation (Individual)

When they're ready for the next stage, provide each student with a new text. Give several minutes to read and annotate, one section at a time. Circulate the room, monitoring and offering feedback. As students make their way through each section, give the green light to move on.
Giving feedback in real time adds encouragement and reinforces desired reading behaviors. This type of gradual release model works best when the teacher is responsive to the needs of the class, moving on only when they're ready.
Once they have the hang of it, students continue to read and annotate on their own. Those who need support can now be pulled into a small group. This is also a good time to implement partner annotation for students who may not be ready to read the text independently.

Continue to use the template to support students as they annotate for either key words and ideas or craft and structure. It can be modified to merge the lenses once they can do both with confidence. After several guided annotation lessons, students should be ready to annotate on their own without needing the scaffolding of this stage every time.

Discussion and Feedback
Now that students have a sense of what to look for when they read, what they need at this juncture is a chance to see what other readers are doing and compare it to their own work. This not only deepens their understanding of the text through discussion, it strengthens their grasp on what they should be noticing.

1. Gather the class and project student work (in my class, students volunteer to share). Prompt students to compare annotations, note their peers' insights, and offer feedback.

2. Allow students to "borrow" snippets of each others' annotations if they wish. This is intentionally a collaborative process that promotes the sharing of insights and ideas.

3. Students can use the template as long as it's needed. The cycle of discussion and feedback can continue indefinitely. At any point, the annotation look-fors can be edited for specific genres, content areas, or other purposes for reading.

Click here to make a copy of the elementary process for your Google Drive.

High School Process: Collaborative Annotation

Whether at the secondary or elementary level ( click here to jump up to elementary), the art of annotation is in making it meaningful. Responsive annotation does just this. Because students often believe there's a "right answer" when annotating, asking them what they notice trains them to use their own funds of knowledge as they read. Like my approach to teaching annotation in elementary, Irene Yannascoli gives her 10th graders the freedom to interact with texts on their own terms, deciding for themselves what is meaningful enough to annotate. She also wants them to use peer insight to practice concepts already reviewed in class, so she makes this annotation process collaborative.

Similar to the elementary approach in the previous section, this process has students consider the text through a given lens; in this case, four core concepts that have already been taught in class: identify (notice and name), analyze (explain and connect), evaluate (judge and discuss impact), and synthesize (put it all together). The purpose of the group annotation is to practice these skills collaboratively.

Introducing Each Lens

In order to set this up:

Choose 4 teaching points from your recent curriculum that you would like students to discuss and practice

Choose a passage that reflects the 4 teaching points.

For each of the teaching points, create guiding questions for students to reference while they annotate. It's not necessary for students to answer all of these guiding questions, and as they get used to the protocol they may use them less and less.

Irene's guiding questions are pictured below.

Note that these concepts and questions are specific to language arts study; they can be modified according to any subject or genre.

Independent Annotation

Start by reviewing the "Group Annotation Practice Protocol" slide (below) with the class.

1. Conduct a read-aloud of the passage. Ask students if they have any questions before they begin. To assess understanding, you may ask them to identify key terms in the passage or answer questions related to the who, what, when, where and why of the passage

2. Students re-read the passage independently and jot down their first thoughts.

This is a preliminary step before they annotate to capture a first impression of the passage, and makes space for any clarifying questions that might arise.

Group Annotation
After students have reread the text on their own, it is time to begin their annotations.

1. Students get in groups and each person claims a focus skill: Identify, Analyze, Evaluate or Synthesize. Now, each group member is following one of the 4 sets of guiding questions using the same passage.

2. After taping a copy of the text to chart paper, each student grabs a marker and for 15 minutes, uses the guiding questions to "make their posters dirty." Each student should be huddled around their chart paper, underlining, drawing arrows, and making notes next to the passage.

3. Circulate and observe each group, helping students deepen their thinking by asking questions and making connections between the annotations.

Discussion and Feedback

1. Students wrap up and review their annotations. Each person shares their thoughts and epiphanies from the annotation process.

2. While the group shares out, the "Synthesizers" answer their last two questions about the commonalities between peers and overall meaning of the passage. They write this on their posters.

3. Students then post their chart paper on the wall and conduct a gallery walk, during which they examine peer charts and make notes on post-its expanding, deepening or challenging the original annotations based on their own reading of the text.

Some sentence starters to move students beyond agree/disagree:
This makes me think about...
I can connect this to...
Additionally, this could mean...
I wonder why...

Students return to their original posters and read what other group members commented. They now have an opportunity to add any final notes, ideas or understandings. If time allows, conduct a whole group share-out: What was something that surprised you, inspired you, or made you rethink?

Assessment

At this point, it's up to you how to assess students for this activity. You might just treat it as a practice for building independent annotation skills and assess students individually on their own annotations on a future passage. You might choose to develop a rubric for this activity and give all group members a score on their poster. Or you might have students write a reflection about their strengths and weaknesses in the process and set goals for the future.
Click here to make a copy of the high school process for your Google Drive.[back to elementary process]
A Few Caveats

Although I explicitly model responsive annotation, I don't expect my students to copy my exact style. Yes, I do tell them to mark up the text as well as make notes in the margins, but I want my students to use metacognitive markers in ways that make sense to them. Some like to underline sentences, others highlight. I circle vocabulary words, others box them. Some enjoy creating their own symbols and methods of organizing their notes in the margins. Recently I've noticed a few students creating systems for highlighting in different colors complete with a key.

It must also be said that not every student needs to or should annotate when they read. Some process text better internally and find the annotation system slows them down or distracts them; others can't handle the multitasking element and just need to focus on reading. The supports provided for accessing the text are just a temporary scaffold anyway. As long as they can demonstrate that they understand what they're reading in other ways, (e.g., through discussion or answering questions) I really don't insist that they do it. But for the majority of students who find themselves glossing over key moments or struggling with comprehension, this process is extremely useful. Ultimately, the decision depends on you knowing your students and what works for them as learners.

So, Is This Really Worth It?

Since we've been teaching annotation this way, Irene and I have both observed a correlation between the quality of annotations on the page and the ability to comprehend text. Incorporating the look-fors into the annotation practice reinforces the concepts skills taught across the year. And the confidence our students have in themselves as readers has also grown. My students say things like, "Annotation has helped me become a better reader" and "Annotation helps me understand the text or the things I'm reading a bit more."

This process is about more than preparing students for standardized tests or giving them a strategy to boost their grades. Our students will be reading and comprehending texts for a very long time - hopefully, for the rest of their lives. While they won't always grab a pen when they sit down with a book, there will be many times they can put these skills to work. If the goal is to process what they're reading, annotation provides them with one way to do so.

Annotating, or "making your paper dirty" as we like to call it, is definitely an acquired skill. It takes time to learn, but more than likely, it's worth the effort.
References
Duke, Nell & Pearson, P.. (2002). Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. What research has to say about reading instruction. 3. 10.1598/0872071774.10.

Landmark College. (n.d.-a). Active reading (see also critical reading). Active Reading | Landmark College. https://www.landmark.edu/academics/writing-matters/wac-glossary/wac-active-reading

Lloyd, Z.T., Kim, D., Cox, J.T., Doepker, G.M. and Downey, S.E. (2022), "Using the annotating strategy to improve students' academic achievement in social studies," Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 218-231.

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The Art of Annotation: Teaching Readers To Process Texts

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Annotation can be a powerful way to improve comprehension and increase engagement, but its effectiveness can vary depending on how it's taught.

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Blast from the Past: Re-issued March 22, 2021 and August 3, 2017. First published June 18, 2012; Of all of my blog entries, this one has been read, cited, and distributed most often. Obviously a lot of people have found it to be useful, so I have reposted it for those who might not have seen it before. However, I had another reason this time. These days the term "close reading" is increasingly being used by teachers as a synonym for reading comprehension. Teaching reading comprehension and teaching close reading overlap in important ways but they definitely are not the same thing. No, close reading is not the new cool name for reading comprehension. Check this entry out to find out what close reading is really about. Next week I'll post a new entry -- this one also on close reading (and whether it is supported by research).
The Common Core State Standards are encouraging teachers to engage students in close reading. Much of the focus of discussions of close reading have emphasized what teachers should not do (in terms of pre-reading, or types of questions). I am being asked with increasing frequency what close reading is.

Close reading requires a substantial emphasis on readers figuring out a high-quality text. This "figuring out" is accomplished primarily by reading and discussing the text (as opposed to being told about the text by a teacher or being informed about it through some textbook commentary). Because challenging texts do not give up their meanings easily, it is essential that readers re-read such texts (not all texts are worth close reading). A first reading is about figuring out what a text says. It is purely an issue of reading comprehension. Thus, if someone is reading a story, he/should be able to retell the plot; if someone is reading a science chapter, he/she should be able to answer questions about the key ideas and details of the text.

However, close reading requires that one go further than this. A second reading would, thus, focus on figuring out how this text worked. How did the author organize it? What literary devices were used and how effective were they? What was the quality of the evidence? If data were presented, how was that done? Why did the author choose this word or that word? Was the meaning of a key term consistent or did it change as one progressed through the text? This second reading might be a total re-reading or a partial and targeted re-reading of key portions, but it would not be aimed at just determining what the text said (that would have already been accomplished by this point).

Finally, with the information gleaned from the first two readings, a reader is ready to carry out a third reading-going even deeper. What does this text mean? What was the author's point? What does it have to say to me about my life or my world? How do I evaluate the quality of this work-aesthetically, substantively? How does this text connect to other texts I know? By waiting until we have a deep understanding of a text - of what it says and how it works-we are then in the right position intellectually and ethically to critically evaluate (valuing) a text and for connecting its ideas and approach with other texts.

Thus, close reading is an intensive analysis of a text in order to come to terms with what it says, how it says it, and what it means. In one sense I agree with those who say that close reading is about more than comprehension or about something different than comprehension since it takes one beyond just figuring out an author's stated and implied message. On the other hand, many definitions of reading comprehension include more than just determining a stated and implied message; such definitions include the full range of Bloom's taxonomy in one's thinking about and use of a text. If one subscribes to such definitions of comprehension, then close reading is just a description of a process one uses to arrive at such comprehension.
Should I give the students a preview of a text? No, you probably should not do this At least not in the ways that we often do in classrooms--doing thorough picture walks, guiding the kids' steps through the text, pointing key things out to them and so on. But it is not unreasonable to have students do their own previews, allowing them to get the lay of the land prior to reading if they want to. Is it okay to set a purpose for student reading?
I think with this brief description of the essentials of close reading (e.g., intense emphasis on text, figuring out the text by thinking about the words and ideas in the text, minimization of external explanations, multiple and dynamic rereading, multiple purposes that focus on what a text says, how it says it, and what it means or what its value is), teachers can start to think clearly about a number of issues in close reading.
Does close reading require that every text is re-read?
Yes, it is very reasonable to give students a purpose for reading (read to find out the differences between lions and tigers, or read to find out how this character deals with hard choices). But these purposes should not reveal a lot of information about the text that the students can find out by reading the text. Of course, if you are reading a text multiple times, each time for a different purpose, you might provide a lot more information on later readings. (This text used a lot of metaphorical language to describe how the characters felt, let's re-read those sections and discuss what the author accomplished by doing it that way.)
What if I am unsure whether to discuss prior knowledge before reading a text?
Yes, it really does, but that doesn't mean that every text should be given a close reading. Some texts should still be read only once; that is all they would be worth.

If you think there is key information that students need to know before they read the text (something necessary for making sense of the text that isn't stated in the text), by all means, tell it. If there is no pre-information necessary, then don't make such a presentation or discussion. If you are uncertain, then let the kids have a chance to make sense of it. If it goes well, fine. If not, then add the information to the second reading. (I was just looking at an article on forest fires. "It is only partly true that 'only you' can prevent forest fires." That is a cute beginning, but I'm not sure all of the second-graders will recognize that it is referring to a Smokey the Bear line from a once-common public service announcement. I might want to clarify the source of that before students dig in. But if I didn't do that, I would definitely ask a question about this sentence and would tell that info during the discussion. Sometimes I will anticipate and tell, but whether I do or not, I can always clarify it later in the discussion.

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What is Close Reading? | Shanahan on Literacy

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Close reading requires a substantial emphasis on readers figuring out a high-quality text. This “figuring out” is accomplished primarily by reading and discussing the text (as opposed to being told about the text by a teacher or being informed about it through some textbook commentary).

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Great resource for more information

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Reading is the act of processing text in order to derive meaning. To learn to read, children must develop both fluent word reading and language comprehension (Gough & Tunmer,1986). Language comprehension is built upon vocabulary and morphology, knowledge, syntax, and higher-level language skills.

How Syntax Contributes to Reading Development

Syntax refers to the formation of sentences and the associated grammatical rules ( Foorman, et al., 2016 ). "Syntax skills help us understand how sentences work-the meanings behind word order, structure, and punctuation. By providing support for developing syntax skills, we can help readers understand increasingly complex texts" ( Learner Variability Project).

Syntactic skills are correlated with reading comprehension and language comprehension (Westby, 2012), although the nature of the relationship is still being studied (Oakhill, Cain, & Elbro, 2015). A number of recent studies have shown that syntax and grammar are predictors of later reading comprehension ability (Logan, 2017).

Promoting Syntax Development in the Classroom

Knowledge of how grammatical elements such as pronouns, lexical references, and connectives function in sentences allows young children to follow the ideas in a sentence and understand its meaning (Oakhill, Cain, & Elbro, 2015). Children do not need to know the names of these grammatical terms, but they do need to develop understanding of how sentences work in natural speech and in text. Working with sentences can be part of a class's engagement with complex text. Complex text offers rich language; teachers can facilitate a discussion of short snippets of text to help students parse rich sentences and develop understanding.

Teach Linguistic Structures Such as Pronouns, Lexical References, and Connectives

Teaching these support students to track and follow the meaning within sentences (Oakhill, Cain, & Elbro, 2015).

Example: Marcy was very thirsty for a cold drink* so she gulped her iced lemonade* quickly!

Pronouns: she, he, his her, their, they, them

*Lexical references: when a different word or phrase is used to refer to the original word

Connectives: and, also, because, so, then, before, during, after

Teach Word Functions by Asking Students a Series of Questions About a Sentence

Example from Literacy How: Our wet, hairy dog crawled under my bed during the thunderstorm.

Ask who or what did it? dog (looking for the namer/noun - the who/what)

Ask what did it do? crawled (looking for the action word/verb - the do)

Ask 'how many, what kind, which one? wet, hairy (looking for adjectives describing the namer)

Ask where, when, how, why? under the bed, during the thunderstorm (looking for adverbs that tell about the action)

Teach Sentence Structure, Sentence Types, and How to Build Sentences

Developing syntax can involve examining how sentences are built, learning to expand sentences, and learning to combine short, choppy sentences into longer, grammatically correct sentences. Studies have shown positive effects of sentence combining on reading comprehension (Scott, 2009).

Syntactic Awareness, Teaching Sentence Structure, from Keys to Literacy

Sentence structures that are challenging for children to comprehend. See Juicy Sentence Guidance , from Achieve the Core

Formal Frames/Academic Phrases, from Literacy How (Resource)

Recommendation 3 from the IES Practice Guide "Teaching Elementary Students to Be Effective Writers:" Teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing, and word processing (Resource) (p. 30-32)

Sentence Expanding, from Iowa Reading Research Center (Resource)

Sentence Combining, from Reading Rockets ** (Resource)

Learn More About Syntax Development

Considerations for Students Learning English

English learners should have equal opportunity to meaningfully participate in all literacy instruction. The WIDA Can Do Descriptors highlight what language learners can do at various stages of language development.
Taking Bilingualism into Account
"It's important that young ESL students recognize word order and sentence structure. As students get older and progress with English, it becomes more difficult to correct syntax problems. In many cases, older students translate their native language directly into English without considering the word order that changes between languages" (Lubin, 2020).
Supports for English Learners

Create a rich language environment so English Learners "can be exposed to lots of rich, natural, complex language from which the learner would begin to unconsciously internalize patterns" (Krahshen, 1981).

Support English learners when they encounter complex syntax in academic texts. Such syntax would include passive voice, comparatives and logical connectors, modal auxiliaries, verb phrases containing prepositional phrases, and relative clauses (Freeman, 2004).

"Use cloze activities in which students receive a passage with some of the words missing. Teachers could delete different types of words to help students focus on different aspects of syntax" (Freeman, 2004).

"Use interactive supports to promote comprehension and expose students to a variety of communication styles" (WIDA, Instructional Supports, 2015).

"Spend time and effort engaging students in discussions of the meaning of sentence-level chunks and within the sentence, phrasal chunks, each day. The focus here is to have structured conversations in which children learn how academic discourse works" (English Learner Success Forum ).

Scaffolds to Support English Language Learners in Sentence Writing, from Achieve the Core (Resource)

Interactive reading grade 2, from Colorin Colorado ** (Video)

Text Complexity and Language for English Language and Language Minority Students, from Stanford University (Research)

Sentence Level Fluency for Newcomers, from English Learners Success Forum (Activities)

Do's and Don'ts of EL Instruction, from English Learners Success Forum (Instruction)

The WIDA Instructional Supports provide a reference list of appropriate graphic, sensory, and interactive supports to use with the WIDA Can Do Descriptors when instructing language learners.

References

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: What Works Clearinghouse.

Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, esl, spelling, phonics, grammar. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.

Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Krashen, S.D. (1981). Bilingual education and second language acquisition theory. In Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework. (p.51-79). California State Department of Education.

Logan, J. (2017). Pressure points in reading comprehension: A quantile multiple regression analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(4), 451.

Lubin, M. (2020, March 23). A Simple Guide to Teaching Young ESL Students About Syntax. Retrieved August 24, 2020

Oakhill, J., Cain, K., & Elbro, C. (2015). Understanding and teaching reading comprehension: A handbook. New York: Routledge.

Scott, C.M. (2009). A case for the sentence in reading comprehension. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 40 2, 184-91.Westby, C. (2012). Assessing and remediating text comprehension problems. In A.G. Kamhi & H.W. Catts (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities (3rd ed., pp1-23). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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Thoughts on the Reading Rope and Reading Comprehension

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Thoughts on the Reading Rope and Reading Comprehension

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Thoughts on Reading Comprehension and the Reading Rope- Christine Mecham- RPDP, February 2023

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