TEACHIN G T IP S

arter, not harder: m s d Rea Global reading

PENNY A. BISHOP CYNTHIA REYES SUSANNA W. PFLAUM

doi:10.1598/RT.60.1.7

comp rehen sion s trategies

osalie (all names are pseudonyms), age 12, is a perceptive seventh grader who loves to read. When asked to draw what she does when she is faced with challenging reading, Rosalie provides detailed renditions of a variety of strategies, including visualizing, using the dictionary, rereading, note-taking, and viewing pictures (see Figures 15). In her drawings we see multiple approaches that help Rosalie comprehend her reading. We also ascertain a level of enjoyment in reading: She depicts herself smiling in each picture. Rosalie is a child who views herself as a successful reader. Tobias, also 12 and a classmate of Rosalie, cares similarly about his school success. Unlike Rosalie, however, his repertoire of strategies is relatively limited (see Figures 68). In his drawings, we see him thinking, thinking while pacing, and rereading. While he and Rosalie both reread when they are confused, Tobias lacks awareness of further, specific strategies to use when he encounters difficult text. Instead, he does what he has always done: read, except harder. With their drawings, these two students provide their teachers with powerful insights on instruction. Knowing that Tobias tends not to skim for main ideas, use reference books, or make connections to prior knowledge empowers his teacher to help Tobias read smarter, not harder. Similarly, Rosalies teacher can observe her reliance on fairly fundamental approaches and introduce more sophisticated strategies such as exploring inferences, analyzing text structure, or summarizing and synthesizing.

A call to action
All of these strategies are critical to helping students move beyond literal comprehension and begin to question, evaluate, and reconsider text. True reading comprehension and subsequent reading engagement requires more than cognition; it means entering textual worlds, maintaining a balance between engrossment and critical distance, and formulating ones own responses to various dilemmas in text (DiPardo & Schnack, 2004). The national decline of students reading comprehension as they move beyond grade 3 has been cause for resounding alarm in the United States. The recent RAND Corporation report called attention to this issue when it stated,
Research has shown that many children who read at the third grade level in grade 3 will not automatically become proficient comprehenders in later grades. Therefore, teachers must teach comprehension explicitly, beginning in the primary grades and continuing through high school. (RAND Reading Study Group, 2002, p. 10)

This substantial research review underscored the need for strategy instruction to be explicit, especially for poor comprehenders. But what are the best ways to teach reading strategies? How can teachers help students like Rosalie and Tobias develop rich and highly literate lives? And what makes some readers skillful in comprehending difficult material? Over the past few years we have explored these questions by inviting students from five different

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middle schools to depict their responses to challenging text. Over 80 seventh-grade students have composed more than 300 drawings. The group represents a balance of gender, a vast range of academic achievement, and broad differences in social class. The students reside in communities that range from a rural town with a median household income of US$30,000 to an affluent suburb with a median household income of above US$60,000. As the cases of Rosalie and Tobias illustrate, students drawings show great variety in comprehension strategies. Mokhtari and Reichard (2002) offered three helpful categories of such strategies: Problem Solving, which comprises paying attention to reading, adjusting reading rate, reading slowly, visualizing information, reading text out loud, and guessing the meaning of unknown words; Support Reading, which comprises paraphrasing text information, taking notes while reading, asking oneself questions, discussing reading with others, using reference materials as aids, and revisiting previously read information; and Global Reading, which comprises activating prior knowledge, making text predictions, skimming text, using context clues, and using text structure and textual features. We have found that it is strategies in this third category, Global Reading, that students consistently report using the least, perhaps because these strategies are so challenging to teach. While many students are comfortable using Support Reading and Problem Solving strategies, (especially asking for help, using the dictionary, and rereading) many more students lack the understanding of a metacognitive approach to text that is implicit in strategic reading. Skilled readers are deliberate in their reading. They are able to relate what they read to their own experiences, predict events, and skim text for important information. Such Global Reading strategies are often difficult to teach because teachers must model these skills in order to guide students through the process. Teachers actually tell their students to act out, or make more explicit, what they are thinking as they read.

FIGURE 1 Visualizing

FIGURE 2 Using the dictionary

FIGURE 3 Rereading

Model Global Reading strategies

How can educators move students from decoding to meaningful comprehension? Keeping the

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FIGURE 4 Note-taking

following research-based strategies in mind can help teachers guide students away from sole reliance on asking for support toward more independent and strategic approaches to text.

Ask strategic questions about context clues

Teach students to ask themselves questions about unfamiliar words. Such questions could be, Can I guess what this word means based on what the rest of the sentence means?, Can I use my word analysis skills?, Can I tell its meaning based on sounding it out or recognizing its structure?, Are there parts of the word that I recognize?, and Are there any pictures that add more meaning? Make question asking more explicit by integrating these questions in students daily literacy tasks or during shared reading. Ask students to write in their journals about their progress on strategic question asking throughout the school year.

FIGURE 5 Viewing pictures

Identify a range of textual and visual clues

Expect students to explore texts at the start of a new reading assignment for clues on the content. Look at pictures and ask what meaning they might have in relation to the text. Direct students to read sidebars for key information that the authors emphasize. Model making predictions about the heading, subtopics, and italicized titles, and invite students to consider how those might influence their reading of the information. Are there other miscellaneous items, such as boxed information, italicized words, or graphs to attend to? Ask students to decide whether such information adds to or detracts from the meaning of the text.

FIGURE 6 Thinking

Frontload text
Model how to activate prior knowledge before reading new texts. Create a word web using a key word from the title and link associations to it. Ask students to write about or visualize and draw out their predictions. As a prereading strategy, teachers can create role-play scenarios that engage students with a similar topic, to envision predictions (Wilhelm, 2002). For example, enactments or dramatic plays shape the experience around reading and writing. Dramatizing what students think will

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FIGURE 7 Thinking while pacing

FIGURE 8 Rereading

happen next or what the story is about helps students delve into the content area even before they read about it.

Skim texts strategically

Teach students that skipping words can be a helpful strategy rather than an avoidance of the reading process. When students encounter an unfamiliar word or phrase, ask them to read ahead and then go back to infer its meaning. Initiate a thinkaloud. Is there an idea that continues in the following paragraphs? Is the word or phrase important to understanding this idea? Mark areas that appear challenging and return to them after reading further. Is there a pattern in these challenging areas?

them become more strategic readers. We urge teachers to invite their students to describe the strategies they currently apply. Student inventories, surveys, informal interviews, and drawings can all be powerful ways to better understand the repertoire students may possess. Understanding students current reading strategies can help teachers point the way toward more strategic comprehension in the future. Bishop teaches at the University of Vermont (410 Waterman Building, 85 South Prospect Street, Burlington, VT 05405, USA). E-mail penny.bishop@uvm.edu. Reyes teaches at the same university. Pflaum is an independent consultant.
References
DiPardo, A., & Schnack, P. (2004). Expanding the web of meaning: Thought and emotion in an intergenerational reading and writing program. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 1437. Mokhtari, K., & Reichard, C.A. (2002). Assessing students metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 249259. RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Wilhelm, J. (2002). Action strategies for deepening comprehension: Role-plays, text-structure tableaux, talking statues, and other enactment techniques that engage students with text. New York: Scholastic.

Build on students existing strategies

What sets strategic readers apart from those readers who read but get little information from the text is the understanding that they must read smarter and not harder. Students require a range of strategies, from reading globally to seeking support and problem solving, but explicit teacher modeling of the strategies is crucial. Prompting students to become more aware of the choices they make when readingthrough modeling, peer thinkalouds, visualization, and journal keepinghelps

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