Empowered Teachers Empower Students
Middle School: Good news! During effective Reading Comprehension Instruction, your lesson should only target the specific comprehension processes required for students to meet their lesson objectives or purpose. While there are many aspects of language and new concepts to address, only those that further the purpose should be included in the lesson plan. This ensures you maximize the instructional time of your lesson. Please: watch this 4-minute video; review this framework; and, this example. Then, respond to the prompt below.
Elementary: After watching Lesson 8 and completing your Assessment, please respond to the following prompt:
Prompt: These lessons describe a shift to a more in-depth approach to lesson planning that highlights the complex processes readers engage in during a reading of text, instead of reading a text from beginning to end and then hoping for a meaningful product at the end.
Reflect on your own lessons. After this course, what shifts could you apply to your lesson planning to increase reading comprehension AND content-based learning?
Using the provided questions in Jacob’s Ladder I determine my objective or purpose and direct the read-aloud accordingly. However, I would like to explicitly teach students about annotating and outlining during independent reading. I loved the question mark for confusing text, circling unfamiliar words, and asterisking important information. This would be so easy to incorporate into the Google Slides or Kami. I also want to have them create comments showing meaning, as well as, used strategy to gain meaning of new words (dictionary, morphemes, context, and/or function of word). I think requiring students to annotate and outline will improve their metacognition and study skills for middle school, and beyond.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of close reading, when students use question marks, circling of the text and asterisks to identify known and unknown words. I like the outlining as well, especially for upper grades. To me, this will allow them to chunk important information in the text.
DeleteI have been using annotations largely with 6th grade and starting to incorporate some with my 5th grade class. I LOVE this! I see improvements with students who make a valiant effort to annotate. This is a feature built into HMH!
DeleteJennifer, yes, when students annotate it is amazing to see the growth and this allows them to understand the concept of "actively reading" as well as allowing them to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses.
DeleteWhen shifting from learning to read to reading to learn, students have to learn strategies to help them overcome stuggles in text. This productive struggle leads them to utilize their own strategies for text comprehension. I will continue to model these strategies for students when teaching comprehension. The goal is for students to become metacognitive learners to independently use the strateiges that fits them best for a particular text.
ReplyDeleteI agree that getting students to use the strategies is important but I feel it takes a lot of modeling as well as trial and error. We also need to remind our students to make those mistakes and learn from them!
DeleteWhen previewing the text, in addition to identifying words that students may not be familiar with, I also need to identify parts of the text where I can stop to model think alouds, ask questions, or have a quick discussion. Before reading the text with students, I would like to take time to intentionally build background knowledge to help students understand the text better and make connections. During and after reading, I use discussions, open-ended questions, and graphic organizers, but I would also like to include writing prompts and peer discussions for students to build comprehension and further have a “product” after the reading process.
ReplyDeleteI too want to include more writing prompts and peer discussions. Let me know if you find good strategies for peer discussion. I still struggle with being in a virtual environment and keeping second graders on task in a break-out room.
DeleteI am also working on ways to incorporate and model more peer discussions. I think the students benefit from these so much! The most difficult aspect of it for me is most of the Kindergarten and First grade students can not be put in a break out room and have a successful discussion. The modeling that I am doing in class with it has been successful and students are picking up on how to do it.
DeleteI really enjoyed learning further with comprehension. I feel like it was a great reminder of different strategies to use. I feel like I sometimes stick with the same learning strategies and I am going to be more diligent about trying new things. I like to idea of not having to always compete a text or passage, rather using time to embed think alouds, predictions, and writing. I think the quote "life is a journey, not a destination" is relatable here. We need to include thinking, discussion, and injury during our lessons and reading. My students like to make predictions but I know I can extend their thinking by also including questioning, visualizing, clarifying, and self monitoring. Second grade is the time where students are moving to reading for learning, therefore as an educator think alouds and inquiry are so important. I am modeling how to find answers and also how to figure what questions to ask. Overall, I am excited to add more in my comprehension instruction.
ReplyDeleteI think I use a lot of the same strategies most of the time too. With allowing more time model thinking and asking questions, building background knowledge, and having discussions, I find myself wanting to rush so that we can do a graphic organizer or answer questions, but reading comprehension is not just filling out a worksheet. I’m working to slow down and really allow time for a full discussion and letting students guide the discussion more because this is an important part of helping students in their comprehension and making connections.
DeleteI agree Angela! This course highlighted strategies that I knew about and many that I currently use. It helped me become more intentional about the strategies I use each day.
DeleteAs I have learned more about reading and comprehension throughout the Cox courses, I have modified my lesson plans and teaching strategies. I have linked the resources I find most useful to my lesson plans so they are easily accessible to guide me and other teachers through the lessons. I am seeing an increase in student comprehension.
ReplyDeleteI believe planning your lessons with the purpose in mind is a major component in teaching. The phrase "failure to plan is planning to fail" comes to mind. I like seeing the frame work for building the comprehension lesson and the breakdown of aspects. I do feel that it follows some of what I do using the Diffitt Ai creation tools- especially with splitting pre-reading, vocabulary, comprehension, and critical thinking questions. I feel like I get bogged down in trying to deliver content that I forget to extend into critical thinking, wich in many cases (in science) is the most important part.
ReplyDeleteI agree that planning with a purpose is crucial! It’s important to start by identifying the purpose for reading the text and what goal I have for students when planning and to make sure what we are doing aligns with these.
DeleteAs I have been moving through these modules I have become more aware of individual student needs and my own desire to be more familiar with the needs. While my lessons are not structured to teach literacy, I do plan them with literacy in mind and they do require literacy skills, specifically fluency and comprehension. Having the entire school population in my classes, I often struggle to reach all of their needs when presenting my lessons. I understand now, more in depth that these two aspects of literacy are tied to may others and I am starting to rethink and focus more attention on literacy when I am teaching musical concepts. This is something I am noting and making an effort to document and address. "Fair is when everyone gets what he or she needs..."
ReplyDeleteWhat a good point. I too struggle to reach all of their needs since we teacher EVERYONE!
DeleteI have started to create AI vocabulary sentences/context clues and AI paragraphs where students have to identify the meaning of vocabulary in the text, as well as antonyms that would coincide with the vocabulary terms. Readers must understand 90% of vocabulary to understand the sentence for reading comprehension. Many times, in my plans, I reflect on my students understanding the text, but I realize that I have to back up and focus on the vocabulary as well. Students will not understand the beginning to end if they don't understand word usage. I try to BEGIN with the END IN MIND!!!! One good planning guidepost that I found was interesting in the video is to find your purpose, preread, process, prioritize, and prepare. This will allow me as a teacher to utilize my time effectively as I plan instruction.
ReplyDeleteIntegrating AI is an absolute game changer! I'm so excited to see you talking about it. I also love the idea of Beginning with the End in mind. Despite knowing this, I think I coul be alot more consistent in actually doing it.
DeleteAs a math teacher, I really felt like I could easily connect the planning guidepost to math instruction. I appreciated the 5 steps and feel like most of us are already doing these things as good teachers! It is a good reminder to see it in writing and thought out methodically. Moving forward, I can be more intentional with following these steps to enhance both reading comprehension and content-based learning in my math classes.
ReplyDelete1. Articulating clear instructional goals and previewing all questions and content prior to teaching.
2. Prioritize which math concepts are most essential to the lesson.
3. Ensure all content and materials are relevant to student learning to better engage them in the learning process.
4. Provide additional support (videos, graphics, etc) for students that are struggling and extension activities for those that can move beyond the concepts.
I agree that actually seeing the steps written helps to be more intentional .
DeleteBeing in Math and Science, content doesn't always jump out and scream "READ"(unless it's the directions). However, looking over lessons I have done or unit in the future, I can see my making a conscientious choice in choosing more text for my students than just a textbook. I enjoyed doing all of these strategies before, during, and after reading when I taught "the little ones" . I just need to bring it out and dust it off for the bigger kids. Recently, I did some of these strategies with Stellaluna which 5th grade enjoyed. There was even a pdf they could follow along with while I was reading and then to use for their assignment. I will need to find more books to do more lessons.
ReplyDeleteAs I listened to the video and reviewed the framework, I came to the realization that I need to make sure that I stay focused on the learning purpose. I realize that there are times I try to do too much with a text in "real time". My lesson plans are purposeful but I need to make sure that I limit the direction I go in during a lesson. I am looking forward to trying this less is more approach when my purpose is a standard and then allow for those teachable moments or extensions within a lesson.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of "less is more" so resonates with me here. I am always trying to do too much! I think relying on a strong but simple approach would be helpful for most of us! I appreciate this reminder!
DeleteI plan to enhance reading comprehension and make content stickier in my social studies classes. One idea I'd like to utilize more consistently is pre-reading activities, like comparing images to tap into students' prior knowledge. I also want to employ more interactive reading strategies that'll increase engagement. I'm planning to use resources from Diffit, like concept maps and graphic organizers, to really bring the material to life and support my students. I'd also like to leverage SchoolAI to pinpoint where my students might need scaffolding strategies employed in these units.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the comprehension lessons. They reminded me to be sure I am being intentional about what I am teaching. I, too, often try to do too many things. I need to focus on the purpose of the lesson.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking about how I could apply some of this explicit instruction to my middle school health lessons. At times we have some independent reading of an article and these teaching strategies would be helpful for my classes that don't seem to be gleaning the information. Instead of waiting until time is up to read I could add explicit instruction throughout the reading time.
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