Transcript A Summary of the Report: What Content-Area

A Summary of the Report:
What Content-Area Teachers
Should Know About Adolescent
Literacy
Report developed by:
National Institute for Literacy
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Department of Education
Summary prepared by:
teachers of
Kinston High School
Introduction
• Staggering statistic: 8.7 million fourth –
twelfth graders struggle with reading and
writing tasks
• Ongoing difficulties illustrate need for
literacy instruction beyond elementary
years
• Middle and high school teachers have
difficulty providing literacy instruction in
addition to content
Key Literacy Components
• Decoding/phonemic awareness and
phonics
• Morphology
• Vocabulary
• Fluency
• Text comprehension
Purpose of the Report
• To make content-area teachers “more aware of
the literacy skills that skilled readers possess
and recognize when students struggle with
these foundational skills”
• Not intended to suggest that content-area
teachers focus on developing these foundational
skills in context of content-area classroom, but
instead to suggest need for more intensive
instruction with a reading specialist
Decoding
• Word identification refers to the ability to decipher a
particular word out of a group of letters correctly
• Phonemic awareness is required for decoding; it is the
understanding that spoken words are made up of
individual sounds called phonemes
• Phonemic awareness instruction is most beneficial at
kindergarten and first grade level; it leads to greater
articulation of unfamiliar words later
• Phonics is also required for decoding; it is the
understanding of the relationship between the letters in
the written word and the sounds of these words when
spoken.
• Phonics is used as the basis for reading and writing; it
helps students to recognize words and decode new ones
Good Readers: Decoding
• Have conscious understanding of
individual sounds, or phonemes
• Make many sound connections at the
syllable level by recognizing chunks such
as re-, pro-, -tion, and –ment
• Use their knowledge of letters and sounds
to pronounce unknown words
• Draw on their own listening and speaking
vocabularies to relate to new words
Challenges of Decoding:
Adolescents
• Approximately 10% struggle with decoding
• Based on research, students who are not successful
reading words that are unfamiliar to them most likely
struggle with phonemic awareness skills
• Studies suggest that the deficit of phonemic awareness
may be responsible for dyslexia
• Since students in fifth grade and beyond encounter
10,000 more new words each year, it is crucial for them
to have decoding skills to tackle unfamiliar multi-syllabic
words
• Poor phonics skills negatively affects reading
comprehension and reading vocabulary
Instruction for Decoding:
Adolescent Readers
• Should emphasize syllable patterns and
morphology
• Should integrate decoding skills with
classroom lessons and assigned texts
• Should focus on content specific
vocabulary like osmosis and perimeter and
academic vocabulary like examine and
cause
Strategy 1- Decoding Instruction
Model phonemic awareness skills when
introducing new vocabulary
• Focus on identification of rhyming words,
blending isolated sounds to form words,
and segmentation of a word into sounds
• Demonstrate how the change of one
phoneme changes a word like revolution,
resolution, and evolution
Strategy 2- Decoding
Providing instruction in phonics
strategies helps students articulate and
identify multi-syllabic words
• Teachers should determine content-area words
that would pose difficulty for students
• Articulate each syllable slowly, pausing between
each syllable, repeat several times
• Point out patterns in pronunciation and spelling
of prefixes, suffixes, and vowels in words
• Point out differences among words that belong
to word families (define, definitely, definition)
Strategy 2- Decoding cont’d.
• Demonstrate using new and difficult words
in different contexts
• Provide opportunities for students to
practice using and pronouncing words
• Ask open-ended questions that require
students to use new or difficult words
Strategy 3- Decoding
Use direct, explicit, and systematic
instruction to teach phonemic awareness
and phonics skills
(Most appropriately delivered by a reading specialist)
• Explain, demonstrate, and model the skill with contentarea words, relate to subject
• Guide students to practice skill with corrective feedback
• Provide time for independent and peer collaborative
practice
• Repeat instructional steps until student is able to apply
skill independently in their reading and writing
Strategy 4- Decoding
Provide extra time for phonemic awareness
and phonics instruction and opportunities for
students to practice new skills when reading
• Struggling decoders need extra time for
reading in class in order to comprehend
the text
• May consider recording lessons for these
students to review at their own pace
Morphology
• Study of word structure, describes how words
are formed from morphemes
• Morphemes are smallest unit of meaning in a
word
• Cats- 2 morphemes; cat + s which indicates
plurality
• Changing the morpheme can change meaning
of word; bakes to baked
• Morphology is still developing in late school-age
readers
Good Readers- Morphology
Adolescents
• Use their knowledge of morphological
structure to recognize complex words
• Are better able to understand the meaning
of words to deal with increased reading
and writing demands across the
curriculum and content areas
Challenges of Morphology:
Adolescent Readers
• Have more difficulty recognizing and
learning words
• May experience delayed vocabulary and
difficulty in defining specific vocabulary
words
Instruction for Morphology:
Adolescent Readers
• Teach different morpheme patterns like AngloSaxon, Latin, and Greek
• Use speed drills to build automatic recognition of
syllables and morphemes
• Teach six syllable types: closed, open, vowelconsonant-e, vowel pair, vowel-r, and
consonant-l-e
• Teach meaning of morphemes in sentences and
derivations jump (verb) changes to jumpy
(adjective)
Fluency
• Ability to read text accurately and
smoothly with little conscious attention to
mechanics of reading
• Includes reading with appropriate speed,
accuracy, proper intonation, and proper
expression
Good Readers: Fluency
• Recognize words automatically and are
better able to understand text
• Reading sounds natural and expressive
• Focus on meaning of text and not on
mechanics of decoding
• Complete work faster and with higher
quality
Challenges of Fluency:
Adolescent Readers
• Read slowly, often stopping to sound out
words
• Spend excessive time decoding and lose
meaning of text
• Fluency varies with difficulty of text,
amount of practice, and genre of text
Instruction for Fluency:
Adolescent Readers
Provide models of fluent reading
• Read from class texts regularly, giving
students a model of fluent reading
Engage students in repeated oral reading
of texts
• Read aloud passages several times
regularly with feedback
• Allow students to practice reading aloud
by themselves first to avoid embarassment
Instruction for Fluency, cont’d.
Engage students in guided oral reading
• High school teachers would target a small
group of struggling readers and rotate
independent instructional time with them,
ask them to read aloud, guide them to selfcorrect, ask questions about content
• Choral reading used with specific key
passages like poems or monologues
Instruction for Fluency
Engage student in partner reading
• Pair more and less fluent readers
• Consider compatibility and fluency
• Introduce reading material by reading
aloud a few paragraphs
• Inform students that they will read aloud
different passages after first reading
silently
• Take turns reading with partner
Vocabulary
• Words used in print and speech to
communicate
• Two types include oral and print
• Oral- words recognized and used in
speaking
• Aural- words understood when listening to
others
• Print- words used in reading and writing,
most difficult to obtain
Vocabulary
Two important skills of development
• Word identification- decoding of a word
• Word analysis- process of understanding the
letters, sounds, roots, prefixes and suffixes that
make up words, and enable student to
understand the words, also refers to syntactic
awareness (grammatical use of the word),
demonstrated by using the word appropriately in
sentences and context
Good Readers- Vocabulary
• Know a wide range of oral and print
vocabulary
• Read approximately one million words per
year, results from extensive and repeated
exposure to words through reading and
speaking
Challenges of Vocabulary:
Adolescents
• Students not successful in using strategies
to decode words especially in academic
vocabulary; meaning of text is lost
• Understanding meaning of word from one
content to another; meter means a
measurement in math but a poetic rhythm
in English class
Instruction: Vocabulary
Pre-teach difficult vocabulary
• selected on the importance of the word,
prior knowledge of similar concepts,
multiple meanings of the words, grouping
words to enhance understanding of a
concept
Instruction: Vocabulary cont’d.
Use Direct, explicit, and systematic instruction
to teach difficult vocabulary
• Lessons should be fast paced, brief, multisensory, and interactive
• Explain meanings, provide guided practice with
words, provide time for independent practice
with vocabulary (collaborative learning), repeat
steps until students can use words successfully
in reading and writing
Instruction for Vocabulary cont’d.
Use students’ prior knowledge and provide
opportunities for multiple exposures to new
words
• Elicit prior knowledge of content vocabulary from
students to help with selecting vocabulary
• Provide multiple repetitions of the words in
different contexts
• Point out non-specialized academic words that
talk about content like cause, consequence,
relationship, etc.
Instruction for Vocabulary cont’d.
Use computer technology to help teach
new vocabulary
• Computer games, online dictionaries,
content-area-related websites, computer
animation
Text Comprehension
• Process of extracting or constructing
meaning
• Making sense of the information and ideas
conveyed in a text
• Even good readers struggle sometimes
because of content, style, or syntactic
structure of the text
Good Readers and Text
Comprehension
• Set a purpose for reading- informational,
instructional, entertainment
• Use strategies like drawing conclusions,
predicting, summarizing, contrasting ideas,
connecting to other texts
• Analyze how writers, illustrators, and
others represent people and ideas
• Apply critical thinking
Challenges of Comprehension:
Adolescent Readers
• Lack adequate fluency to achieve
comprehension
• Lack strategies to understand text
• Limited background knowledge
• Encounter expository texts most often in
school setting and lack strategies,
background, etc. for dealing with difficulty
Instruction for Comprehension
Integrate strategies into instruction
• Generate questions before, during, after reading
• Model how to formulate answers, where
answers come from, drawing on prior knowledge
or information in text, charts, graphs, etc.
• Monitor Comprehension along the way by
stopping to interpret
• Use text structure to analyze transition words,
patterns, underlining key words, looking for
clues
Strategies for Comprehension
cont’d.
Teach students to use multiple strategies
• Questioning, chunking information,
summarizing, predicting
Writing
• Ability to compose text effectively for
various purposes and audiences, tool for
communication and learning
• Provides ability to express oneself and
persuading others
• Researchers believe improving writing
skills improves capacity to learn
Good Writers
• Employ different types of strategies to help
navigate through writing process
• Learn to be self-directed and goaloriented
• Learn how to plan, organize, and revise
• Are aware of audience, genres, and
purpose of writing
Challenges of
Writing: Adolescents
• Lack effective communication and learning
tool when students can’t write well
• Limits opportunities for future education
and employment
• Suffer academically
Instruction for Writing
• Explain the writing skill or strategy and
then model it
• Guide student in using the skills and
strategies and provide corrective feedback
• Provide time and opportunities for
independent practice with writing skills and
strategies
• Repeat steps until students are able to use
them independently
Writing
• Teach students importance of prewriting
• Provide a supportive instructional
environment for students
• Use rubrics to assess writing
• Assess the needs of diverse learners
Motivation
• Motivated readers are:
• Self-determined, self-regulated, engaged
Problems with Motivation:
Adolescents
• Changes in beliefs, values, and goals
• May read magazines of personal interest
outside of school, surf the Internet, send
and receive email
• Tracking and grouping students with other
unmotivated students
• Lack of confidence in their reading skills
Instruction for Motivation:
Adolescents
• Set clear goals and expectations for
performance, set purpose for reading, let
students know what to expect
• Guide students to focus on their own
improvement by setting goals and tracking
progress through reading logs and charts
• Provide a variety and choice in reading materials
• Provide opportunity for students to interact
through reading
Needs of Diverse Learners
• Use multiple methods of instruction for
presenting text, ideas, and strategies in different
ways
• Break down content instruction into smaller
chunks for struggling readers
• Provide extended talk time, small group
discussion
• Model and provide instruction in academic
English
• Talk with students individually, ask them
questions about how they are learning
Conclusion
• Struggling readers are at every
socioeconomic level.
• Explicit, systematic, and direct instruction
is the most effective strategy for improving
reading skills among adolescents.