The document discusses using technology to develop reading comprehension skills through the START framework. START involves modeling and scaffolding eight comprehension strategies during teacher read-alouds. The strategies include predicting, visualizing, making connections, questioning, determining main ideas, summarizing, checking predictions, and making judgments. A variety of technologies are presented that teachers can use before, during, and after reading to engage students in practicing the comprehension strategies, such as Blabberize for predicting, VoiceThread for questioning and connecting, and Fotobabble for summarizing. The goal is to improve students' reading comprehension through actively teaching comprehension strategies.

1. USING TECHNOLOGY TO
DEVELOP COMPREHENSION
SKILLS IN THE CONTENT AREA
IRA Conference: Whitney Westfall

2. PROBLEM WITH READING
TODAY
According to the International Reading Association (IRA),
• Students read BUT do not
understand
• Little comprehension
instruction given in the
classroom
• Students need more
strategies to be
metacognitive readers
& thinkers

3. A SOLUTION
According to the IRA,
• Although comprehension
improves through extensive
reading, researchers have
concluded that
comprehension could improve
more if all readers were taught
to use the comprehension
strategies that good readers
use

4. START COMPREHENDING:
STUDENTS AND TEACHERS ACTIVELY
READING TEXT
•The START framework can improve
students’ reading-comprehension
achievement and instruction
through the modeling and
scaffolding of eight
comprehension strategies during
teacher read-aloud.

5. 8 COMPREHENSION
STRATEGIES OF START
1. predicting/inferring
2. visualizing
3. making connections
4. questioning
5. determining main idea
6. summarizing
7. checking predictions
8. making judgments
art

6. BEFORE READING:
PREDICTING
• Blabberize
 How to make a blabber (with student examples)
 Example with “A Bad Case of the Stripes”
• Glogster
 How to make a glogster
 Example with “Sniffy and Fluffy Have an Adventure”
• Pinterest Resources
 http://pinterest.com/momma2c/predictions/
 http://pinterest.com/12trey16/predicting/
 http://pinterest.com/mbnickerson/predicting/

9. BEFORE READING:
INFERRING
• AnswerGarden

11. DURING READING: MAKING
CONNECTIONS/QUESTIONING
• VoiceThread
Example of 5th grade students asking questions during
their Egyptian Unit. Students watched the created
content and asked questions about the information.
Example of 2nd grade students making connections to
information learned during their animal unit.
Example of 1st grade students fall unit on apples. Here,
students read their poems while it’s displayed on
screen.
Example of 4th grade students explain their robots.
Example of 3rd grade students using voice thread on
math facts.

13. AFTER READING:
SUMMARIZING/CHECKING
• Fotobabble
How to create a Fotobabble
Example of a student using fotobabble to retell her story.
Students from another class had to try to guess the story
based on the summary.
• Polleverywhere
Check it

14. AFTER READING:
MAKING JUDGMENTS
• Photostory

15. OTHER RESOURCES
• Scoop It: tool is helpful for parents to have access to
sites based on what is being taught in the classroom for
support
• Fodey: tool can be used during writers workshop at a
center or whole group with the newspaper generator
• PhotoPeach: tool is great when going on observation
walks (create pictures w/captions)
• Voki: tool can be used for children to tell about
themselves
• Vocaroo: tool is helpful for recording to model fluency
or to share their writing in writing workshop