In the book, I Read it, but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers, Cris Tovani tells the story of her transformation from a struggling adolescent reader to a high school reading teacher. Many adolescents—and some middle and high school teachers—think that anyone who hasn’t learned to read well by sixth grade is probably never going to succeed. Because Tovani, by contrast, sees learning to read as a lifelong process, she’s developed a number of strategies for helping students improve their reading comprehension.
For years, reading specialists identified what struggling readers did poorly and then tried to correct it. I didn’t think this would work with high school readers who already thought they’d never be good readers. I believed in the work of Donald Graves and Nancie Atwell. The thinking behind the writers-workshop movement of the mid-1980s—to teach students what good writers do when writing—made sense. There wasn’t any reason why the same idea couldn’t be adapted to reading instruction. I would concentrate my efforts on teaching students how to do what good readers did.
Identifying and sharing successful reading strategies for adolescents lies at the heart of a new series of online graduate courses, offered by EDC’s Literacy Matters project. Close to 30 secondary teachers from around the country are participating in the first course—Helping Struggling Readers Improve Comprehension. Literacy Matters is now enrolling participants for its second online seminar, Improving Reading and Writing in the Content Areas, which will run from March 14th – May 2nd.
“We hope that in addition to ELA teachers, science and social studies teachers will take this course. They do know that reading and writing is the barrier to content learning, but they don’t know how help students overcome their difficulties,” explains Judith Zorfass, Literacy Matters project director and one of the architects of the course.
Each week of the course is organized around a set of readings—such as excerpts from Tovani’s book—and a series of scenarios or prompts from the course facilitators. Participants respond with postings that summarize their reactions to the readings and offer tips from their own classroom experiences.
In the course on reading comprehension, for example, participants explored two dimensions of what it means to comprehend a text: vocabulary (knowledge of words) and comprehension strategies (procedures that guide students as they read). In one online exchange during the course, the participants shared the challenges they face—and possible solutions—triggered by the course readings:
Message 1: All of the students I work with (in a middle school-grades 6-8, regular classrooms) can decode okay, but I find that the students who struggle with comprehension DO NOT like to re-read!!! It seems to me that the reason is that they don’t know what to look for to help them understand the reading. It relates to that chart on what good readers and poor readers do and don’t do—the self-monitoring component. They don’t understand why they don’t understand (metacognition) and they don’t know how to fix the problem. This is a major component of my classes—teaching and reinforcing (often many, many times) these and other reading strategies.”
Response: Your message struck a note with me, because just today I delivered a review lesson on fix-up strategies for when a reader is stuck to my 9th grade literacy class. It then occurred to me that I need to address the metacognition piece (probably should have long ago) and get students engaged in understanding how to recognize when they don’t understand and then what to do. Before I left school today I took a step towards this: I started devising a list of “When I” prompts that have to do with not understanding a text, and I plan on working with my students with them—very soon, like maybe tomorrow. I’ll ask them to put themselves in the situation and look for a fix-up strategy that might be of help, filling in the blank. Example:
“When I do not understand a word I will……”
“When I notice that a text is really long I will…” “When I am not able to retell what is going on I will…”
In another session, participants talked about the challenge of helping students comprehend texts they may find difficult or dull—such as a science textbook chapter on density. One participant suggested augmenting the reading with activities that may make the concept more tangible and interesting for students—in this case, using experiments with JELL-O™ to illustrate the concept of density.
That sort of challenge will be the focus of the upcoming course on reading and writing in the content areas, which begins on March 14th and requires no prerequisite. The course, co-facilitated by EDC’s Joan Dunfey and Judith Zorfass, will explore the importance of reading and writing in science, math, English, and social studies.
An active participant in the current course on struggling readers recently emailed Joan Dunfey to say that she is already looking forward to the next course. She even has a question ready to post for the first session. She added that she expects, based on her experience in the first course, an outpouring of strong support and good ideas.
Originally published on February 1, 2005