The document discusses strategies for improving literacy skills, with a focus on building executive function and reading comprehension. It describes techniques for developing cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. Specific strategies addressed include using graphic organizers, summarization, making inferences, and monitoring comprehension. The document also provides guidance on teaching narrative and expository text structures to improve comprehension, such as using story grammar maps, character event maps, and text structure strategies. The goal is to help students organize information and develop habits of mind that support comprehension.

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Level 3: Building EF and
Comprehension
Pamela Williamson, Ph.D.
Christi Carnahan, Ed.D.
HELLLLOOOO!
• Describe your current literacy targets (what
you’ve tried, what you’re working on/targeting).
• What’s going well?
• Opportunities for growth?
• Two burning questions

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Organizing our Thinking
Learner
ContextText
Building Executive Function Skills
• Cognitive flexibility: Thinking about things in multiple
ways
– Perspective taking
– Multiple meanings of words
• Working memory: Keeping information in mind and
manipulating it
– Integrating ideas during reading into a coherent whole
• Inhibitory control: Suppressing attention and
subsequent response to something
– Over attention to minute details

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Comprehension
Receptive/Expressive
Language Skills
Receptive/Expressive
Language Skills
Listening
Comprehension
Listening
Comprehension
Reading
Comprehension
Reading
Comprehension
Building Comprehension AND
Executive Function
• What? Comprehension
– Receptive and expressive vocabulary
– Listening comprehension
– Reading comprehension
• How? Use EBPs to build executive function
– Cognitive flexibility
– Working memory
– Inhibitory control

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Evidence‐based Practices
Note. From autismpdc.fpg.unc.edu.
Why do we read?
• Remind students that the goal of reading is
comprehension
• Tell them what they will be learning about, and
why it’s important
– “When we learn about how author’s organize text, it
helps us understand it better.”
– “When author’s write stories, they use characters, or
the people in the story, to help us understand what’s
happening in the story.”
– “We use graphic organizers as thinking tools. They
help us think about what authors want us to learn,
and they can help us plan what we want to write.”

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The Big Idea: Developing Habits of
Mind that Support Comprehension
• Organizing what the author has written in our minds
– Graphic organizers for support (working memory and inhibitory
control)
– Summarize verbally and in writing (working memory)
• Connect to relevant background knowledge (working
memory)
• Make inferences and predictions during reading (working
memory)
• Ask and answer questions during all phases of reading
(cognitive flexibility and working memory)
• Understand and remember word meanings (cognitive
flexibility)
• Monitor comprehension during reading (working memory,
inhibitory control)
Macrostructure of Texts
The macrostructure of a text acts as the overall plan of
development of the text. The macrostructure has a
semantic (meaning) representation of the text.
When students understand the macrostructure of text,
comprehension improves.
• Narrative
• Expository

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Building Comprehension of Narratives
• Who doing what?
• Beginning, middle, end events
• Simple story grammar map
– Characters
– Setting
– Problem
– Events in the story
– Solution
• Advanced story grammar
– Major/minor characters
– Setting
– Events: Rising and falling action
– Conflict
– Resolution
– Author’s theme
Review: Who, doing what?
Pictures of
interest
Pictures not
related to
interests
Sentences related
to interest
Sentences not
related to interest
Short text related to
interest
Short text not
related to interest
Who?
Who doing
what?
Who doing
what
where?
Who?
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what?
Who doing
what where?
cture
osely
lated
text
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ot
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cture
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where?
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where?
Who, what, when,
where, why
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Who doing what
where?
Who, what, when,
where, why
Who?
Who doing what?
Who doing what
where?
Who, what, when,
where, why

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Beginning, Middle, End
Beginning
Characters
(Who)
Setting
(Where, When)
Middle
Problem
(What’s
happening)
End
Resolution
(How did it end)
Simple Story Grammar Map
Note: From Dailyteachingtools.com, n.d.

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Advanced Story Grammar
Note: From Dailyteachingtools.com, n.d.
Narrative Genres
• Nonfiction
– Essays
– Biography
– Autobiography
• Fiction
– Drama
– Poetry
– Fantasy
– Humor
– Fable
– Fairy tales
– Science fiction
– Short story
– Realistic fiction
– Folklore (e.g., songs, stories, myths, proverbs)
– Historical fiction
– Horror
– Tall tales
– Legends
– Mystery
– Mythology

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Characters
• Developing understandings about characters
– Draw attention to illustrations
– Character maps
Early Character Maps
Note. From www.sparklebox.co.uk

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Character Event Maps

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Character Event Map
Predication
• Predictions use information to make informed
guesses about what is likely to happen next in
a story
– Information from the text
– Information drawn from background knowledge

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Building Prediction Skills
• Predictions from books concepts during read
alouds
– Title
– Author, especially if you’ve used the author’s
books for other read alouds
– Pictures
– Text
Prediction Strategies
• Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA)
– Direct students to begin thinking about the reading by doing a
picture walk or previewing text features. Encourage students to
make predictions using the information.
– Read up to a predesignated stopping point. Prompt students to
important information related to predictions that were made.
– Think about and revise predictions after each section.
• It says, I say, and so
– Three columns

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Building Comprehension of Expository
Text
• Develop prediction skills using THIEVES or TIPS
• Text structure strategy instruction
– Orally first
• Teach it exactly as you would when students read
independently (e.g., explicitly teach key words, use of
graphic organizer as a thinking tool) one structure at a
time
• During reading, one structure, model passages
• During reading with multiple structures
Writing Text Structures
• Use text structure graphic organizers as
planning tools
• Use key words to support writing from graphic
organizers
• Start with one structure at a time and
systematically work through all of them
– Use them together to form a cogent paper (e.g.,
description of two concepts that is then compared
and contrasted)

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Genres of Expository Texts
• Textbooks
• News articles
• Speeches
• Instruction manuals
• Recipes
• City/country guides
• Language books
• Self‐help books