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Content Area Reading
Chapter 10
The ability to read well in a basal does not guarantee comprehension in
content areas.
Why?
• Content area reading has more specific and more difficult vocabulary.
• Narrative reading (stories) are easier to read that expository text.
• Students may lack background knowledge.
• Teachers should supply a number of books on different levels dealing with a topic.
Summary writing of content material is helpful.
• Writing everything you know about the topic and any questions you have about the topic helps to “establish set.”
• Turn each heading into a question. Then read to find the answer to that question and write it also.
• Write about inferences to be drawn from the text and creative reactions to the text.
Teaching reading during social studies, science, or math:
• Reading comprehension, studying strategies and specific reading study skills also must be taught.
• Graphic aids such as timelines, maps, flowcharts, graphs, and Venn diagrams help build and review difficult concepts.
Teaching content reading in primary grades:
• Use concrete manipulatives, require retellings, develop summaries, use visual imagery.
• Reflect the stages of reading defined by Jeanne Chall
Readability
• Approximate reading difficulty of material.
• Should match child with text readability.
• Sentence structure, organizational pattern, interest level, background knowledge of the students all determines readability.
• It is measured based on number of words in a sentence and number of syllables in a word.
Informal readability checklist:
• Teachers should use the formula, personal knowledge of the child, and informal check of the text:– understandability– learnability– reinforcement – motivation
More about predicting text difficulty.
• Collect outside the head information: word difficulty, sentence length, chapter headings and questions.
• Collect in the head information: word recognition ability and background knowledge.
Goal: Make students more independent readers
• Content reading is one skill needed to become an independent learner.– Specific skills and strategies– study skill instruction– knowing how to collect, organize and criticize
facts
5 Components to content reading:
• Vocabulary development
• studying strategies
• reading and study skills
• location skills
• critical reading skills
Vocabulary
• Crucial for comprehension (usually unfamiliar)
• Content area words are interrelated. If you don’t understand the primary words, the secondary words are impossible.
• Idiomatic and figurative expressions increase the difficulty.
• Understanding requires planned systematic instruction.
Making vocabulary stick:
• 1. Must be connected to known words.
• 2. Must be repeated. 6xs
• 3. Meaningful use.
• Visual aids: diagrams, flowcharts, outlines, maps and timelines.
• Examples of familiar words used in more difficult connotation: “A belt of irrigated land stretches almost all the way around the coast.”
Studying strategies
• Metacognition: knowing when it doesn’t make sense and making adjustments.
• Poor readers do not skim, scan, reread, plan ahead, take notes, or make inferences.
• Pre-reading strategies: review prior knowledge, relate it to the last chapter, discuss key vocabulary, predict what the chapter is about, see the patterns, set a purpose.
Know. . .Want to Know . . . Learned
• (Ogle, 1986) Keep in reading journal. Have students write individual responses and compare.
• Turn bold face heading into questions, read and answer these questions.
• If you can’t remember, reread that part.
• Find the author’s pattern
After reading:
• Check comprehension with questions at chapter’s end.
• Summarize key points.
• Study guides with key points.
• DRA After silent reading, answer the purpose questions.
• Semantic mapping
• Reciprocal teaching.
Reciprocal teaching
• Students focus on – summarizing– use different levels of thinking– clarify answers to questions– predict what comes next.– KWL: write what you learned and still need to
know.– Cooperative groups. End of the chapter activities
together.
Writing to learn:
• Writing helps the student to understand ideas better and enlarge schemata. (Holbrook, 1984) (Anderson, 1987)
• Model this activity with student dictated ideas that the teacher writes on the board.
• Use compare and contrast assignments for student to do independently.
Smith and Bean 1980
• 1. Students write 2 paragraphs after pre-reading discussion.
• 2. After silent reading, make revisions.
•
• Have student interview historical figures in social studies.
How to reach the extremes in reading ability:
• Use multi-level text. Provide taped oral reading of text. Use videos, audio tapes, and computer programs with content information, assign different level library books, incorporate the arts in instruction.
SQ3R
• Read the introduction
• Survey all visual aids
• Read the summary
• Study the questions
• Return to the beginning and read the text.
New basal readers:
• Include content area reading with– strategies– skills– content knowledge– Practice materials with both narrative and
expository writing.
Meaningful practice
• Teachers must provide practice time to promote transfer of a particular skill.
• Interesting, varied practice is need for transfer of a skill to content materials.
• Location skills: Index, contents, glossary, and appendix. Use a book mining exercise to quickly get information.
Library
• Research techniques are taught here.
• Reference materials:– Encyclopedia: ABC order, cross listings and
key words.– Map reading skills are necessary.
Critical reading skills:
• Analyzing and evaluating information is necessary after you have found the information.
• Interpreting and evaluating requires systematic practice.
Critical reading involves:• 1. Knowing what the author said.
• 2. Knowing when and how to verify the information.
• 3. Deciding facts from opinions.
• 4. Identifying Inferences
• 5. Detect author bias; satire, humor, irony.
• 6. Understanding your own bias.
• 7. Criteria for judging author’s competence.
Instructional activities:
• Identifying propaganda techniques
• Analyzing editorials, political cartoons,
• Distinguishing between fact and opinion.