meetmeinmemphiscomprehensionvocabulary-171230112124.pdf

“
“MEET ME IN MEMPHIS”
MEET ME IN MEMPHIS”
A Framework for Teaching
A Framework for Teaching
Reading Comprehension
TESOL CHILE 2006
INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE
Sep 29 – Oct 1
Thomas Baker
Colegio del Verbo Divino
profesorbaker@gmail.com

What problems do students have
What problems do students have
in reading comprehension?
in reading comprehension?
 Think
 Pair
 Share

Recognizing the Problems
Recognizing the Problems
 As students grow older, academic
instruction shifts from an emphasis on
learning to read to reading to learn.
 A significant number of students have
difficulty reading and comprehending at a
basic level of proficiency.
 Many students come to school with
challenges related to language, life
situations, cognitive abilities, behaviour, etc.

Toward Solving the Problem
Toward Solving the Problem
 Learn about and understand what
students already know.
 Identify and build connections between
the text, ways of thinking, and the learner.

Objectives
Objectives
 The importance of reading
comprehension instruction.
 A Framework for teaching
reading comprehension.
 “Meet Me In Memphis”

 Comprehension is the complex cognitive
process involving the intentional
interaction between reader and text to
extract or construct meaning.
(National Reading Panel, 2000)
Comprehension is the
essence of reading.

 Time spent reading is highly correlated with
comprehension.
 Reading comprehension is not an automatic or
passive process, but is highly purposeful and
interactive – good readers apply a variety of
strategies to process text.
(Honig, Diamond, & Gutlohn, 2000)
What the Research Says
What the Research Says
About Comprehension
About Comprehension

 “Text comprehension can be improved
by instruction that helps readers use
specific comprehension strategies.”
 “Effective comprehension strategy
instruction is explicit, or direct.”
Put Reading First, pp. 49, 53
Text Comprehension Instruction
Text Comprehension Instruction

Reader Strategies:
Previewing / Predicting
Making connections
Monitoring and Clarifying
Question generation
Inferences
Summarization
National Reading Panel (2000)
Comprehension Strategies
Comprehension Strategies
Supported by Research
Supported by Research

 Inadequate instruction.
 Insufficient exposure and practice.
 Deficient word recognition skills.
 Deficient memory capacity /
functioning.
 Significant language deficiencies.
 Inadequate comprehension monitoring.
 Unfamiliarity with text features.
 Undeveloped attentional strategies.
 Inadequate cognitive development and
reading experiences.
(Kame'enui & Simmons, 1990)
What the Research Says:
What the Research Says:
Causes of Reading Comprehension Failure

What readers understand
•What’s familiar
•What’s seductive
•What’s explicit
Instructional Implications
•What’s meaningful
•What’s supported
•What’s expected
•Many students with
diverse learning needs
are stranded on what is
familiar, expected and
seductive.
•Meaningful content and
explicit instruction with
adequate support are
essential.

Narrative text tells a story and
usually follows a familiar structure.
Expository text provides an
explanation of facts, concepts, and
principles.
TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXT
TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXT

Application Activity
In August, Henry and Henry's big dog Mudge
always went camping. They went with Henry's
parents. Henry's father had been a Boy Scout,
so he knew all about camping. He knew how to
set up a tent. He knew how to build a campfire.
He knew how to cook camp food.
Discipline Crisis in British Schools
London, UK (AP) – In a survey of 500
teachers across England conducted by
Teacher’s TV in 2005 more than 60% said
that there was a behaviour crisis in British
schools. The parents blame the teachers
and the teachers blame the parents.

• How are these two text examples different?
______________________________________
• How might an expert reader approach
comprehending these two text examples
differently?
______________________________________
Examine the two text examples from the
previous slide:

Why is Vocabulary
Why is Vocabulary
Knowledge Important?
Knowledge Important?
 The importance of vocabulary knowledge
to reading comprehension, in particular,
is widely documented.
(Becker, 1977; Anderson & Nagy, 1991).

What the Research Says about
Vocabulary Development
 The relationship between reading
comprehension and vocabulary knowledge
is strong and unequivocal (Baumann & Kame’enui,
1991; Stanovich, 1986).
 Even weak readers’ vocabulary knowledge
is strongly correlated with the amount of
reading they do (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1998).

Vocabulary instruction should include:
 Intensive study of some words involving
multiple exposures in a wide range of
meaningful contexts.
 Direct teaching and modeling.
 Opportunities to use new vocabulary in
discussions about books and related
activities.

VOCABULARY RESEARCH
VOCABULARY RESEARCH
 “We do not learn a word from one
meeting. Research tells us that it
takes between 5-16 meetings
(or more) to ‘learn’ an average
word.” ( Nation, Paul 1990: 41)

 Texts used for comprehension instruction
should be chosen carefully.
 Instruction should progress from easy
skills to difficult skills.
 Strategies should be introduced and
practiced one at a time.
Comprehension Task Factors

Words selected for direct vocabulary
instruction should:
 Be critical to the meaning of the story.
 Enhance student comprehension.
 Not be defined in the context of the selection.
 Be of high utility. (i.e., words the student is
likely to encounter in the future)
Vocabulary Factors
Vocabulary Factors

Objectives of today’s session:
1. Understand the importance of
vocabulary/comprehension in reading instruction.
2. Examine a framework for teaching comprehension /
vocabulary.
3. “Meet Me In Memphis”
Next Section:
Next Section: Objective 2
Objective 2

Before Reading During Reading After Reading
•Set objectives
for instruction
•Preteach
vocabulary words
•Activate
Background
Knowledge
•Teach
Preview/Predict
•Teach
Summarizing
or finding the
Main Idea
•Assessment of
students’
understanding
Framework for Teaching Comprehension
•Stop periodically
to ask students
questions, generate
questions, and
teach contextual
analysis
•Teach text
structure
elements
•Teach monitoring
and clarifying

Good Readers
•Consider what they
already know about
the topic
•Use text features to
get a sense of what
they will read.
Poor Readers
•Begin reading without
a purpose for reading.
•Do not consider
background knowledge
about the topic.
Before Reading
Before Reading
•Lack motivation or
interest.

Before Reading Activities
Before Reading Activities
•Set objectives
for instruction
•Preteach
vocabulary words
•Activate
Background
Knowledge
•Teach
Preview/Predict

Which words will be barriers to
students’ independent reading?
What procedures can you use to
teach the difficult-to-decode words?
Preteach
Preteach difficult-to-decode
difficult-to-decode words
words

Levels of Vocabulary Knowledge
Levels of Vocabulary Knowledge
 Little to no knowledge
 I never heard the word before or I’ve heard the word
but don’t know what it means
 Associative processing
 Linking the word to synonym, definition, or specific
context
 Comprehension Processing
 Can use word in context - fill in blank, group words
 Generation Processing
 Using the word in expressive vocabulary and in
multiple contexts

Preteaching Vocabulary
Preteaching Vocabulary :
:
3 Big Questions
3 Big Questions
 Which vocabulary words should
you teach?
 Which approach should you use?
 How can you reinforce and
consolidate the meanings of
words?

• Limit it to essential words or phrases that
will increase students comprehension.
• Teach high-utility, frequent words.
• Teach the important words thoroughly.
• Don’t overwhelm students with too many
new vocabulary words.
Which vocabulary words
Which vocabulary words
should you teach?
should you teach?

Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3
Description Basic words that
most children
know before
entering school
Words that appear
frequently in texts
and for which
students already
have conceptual
understanding
Uncommon
words that are
typically
associated with
a specific
domain
Examples clock, baby,
happy
sinister, fortunate,
adapt
isotope,
peninsula,
bucolic
(Beck, McKeown, Kucan, 2002)
Selection Criteria
Selection Criteria
for Instructional Vocabulary
for Instructional Vocabulary

1. Use contextual analysis when the text provides
sufficient support to determine a word’s meaning.
2. Provide a definition or synonym when necessary.
3. Frequently use the word during guided reading
and discussions of the content.
4. Teach the concept with examples and
non-examples if appropriate.
5. If the concept is unfamiliar, teach the concept
using diagrams, concept maps, or feature
analysis.
How should you
How should you
teach new vocabulary?
teach new vocabulary?

VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT
VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT
 Three Options
(Sheehan, A., 2004)
- Topic / Theme
- Focus on Form
- Focus on Meaning

TOPIC / THEME
TOPIC / THEME
 List these words under a topic in the table:
trailer confident cult-film director
extrovert interrupt laid-back multiplex
mumble eclectic obnoxious praise
shout subtitled whisper magnetic
special-effects shy touchy chat
Ways of talking Personalities the Cinema

Baker, T. 2006. Adapted from Longman Active Study Dictionary
Baker, T. 2006. Adapted from Longman Active Study Dictionary
TELEPHONE
Phrasal
VERBS
to call again
call back
phone back
to end a
phone call
hang up
put down
to call someone
call up
ring up
other verbs
hold on
get cut off

Ogle, 1986
Activating Prior Knowledge:
Activating Prior Knowledge:
Narrative & Expository Text K-W-L
Narrative & Expository Text K-W-L
K
What do you
know?
W
What do you
want to learn?
(or what do
you think the
reading will be
about?)
L
What did you
learn?

Story Blocks for
Setting
Characters
Problem(s)
Solution
Theme
For Narrative
Texts

Good Readers
• Monitor their comprehension.
• Reading fluently and use
word identification strategies
to decode unfamiliar words.
Poor Readers
•Do not read fluently and lack
strategies for decoding
unfamiliar words.
•Move through the text with or
without understanding.
During Reading
During Reading
•Lack strategies to repair
comprehension problems.
• Use context to figure out
meaning of unfamiliar
vocabulary.
• Recognize and use text
structure to identify main
ideas and supporting details.
•Do not recognize and use
text structures.

•Stop periodically
to ask students
questions, generate
questions, and
teach contextual
analysis
•Teach text
structure
elements
•Teach monitoring
and clarifying
During Reading

Water is a renewable resource because it is
constantly replaced by rain.
Many countries use their nonrenewable
resources.
Use contextual analysis
Use contextual analysis
What do you think renewable resources
means?

Renewable resources can be replaced by nature.
Nonrenewable resources cannot be replaced by
nature.
Which of the following are renewable and which
are nonrenewable?
copper water gas oil
Can you think of some other renewable
resources? Nonrenewable?
Provide a
Provide a definition
definition or
or synonym;
synonym;
examples
examples and
and non-examples
non-examples.
.

Monitoring and Clarifying
Teaching students effective thinking and
learning strategies.
Declarative knowledge
 knows about strategies and why they are
important
Procedural knowledge
 knows how to use strategies
Conditional knowledge
 knows when to use strategies

•Students check and recognize when they do
understand what they are reading.
•Students are aware of when they do not
understand (a word or what is happening)
when they are reading.
•Students have and use ways to figure out
what they do not understand.

How to Teach Monitoring and Clarifying
Teacher actions should model how to stop
periodically and check understanding.
Example: Teacher thinks aloud: “Every
now and then I stop reading and see if the
story is making sense. I ask myself if I know
who the story is about and what is
happening.”

Teacher actions should model how to
respond when something doesn’t make
sense.
Example: Teacher says: “If I come to a
word I don’t know, I can keep reading to
see if the rest of the sentence helps me
figure it out. If that doesn’t work, I might
ask someone for help or look it up in the
dictionary.”

 Teacher actions should model how
to respond when something doesn’t
make sense.
 Example: Teacher says: “If I don’t
understand what’s happening in the
story, I would go back and re-read
part of the story to see if it helps
me to understand what is
happening.”

Teacher
Support
Student
Independence
Time
Scaffolding Instruction
Scaffolding Instruction
Guided
Practice

Mediated Scaffolding
• Begin with passages that are read aloud by the
teacher accompanied by pictures to model for
students how to monitor for understanding.
• Once children are reading independently, use
passages in which the content and the vocabulary
are relatively simple, but which provide
opportunities for students to monitor and clarify.
• Once students learn to monitor and clarify, use
passages with more complex and unfamiliar
content and vocabulary.

Retelling Stories and Main Ideas
•Proficient readers periodically
summarize text as they read monitoring
their understanding of the passage.
•Teaching children to retell occurrences
in a story or the main ideas of
informational text helps them become
more accurate in summarizing and
monitoring their understanding.

Paragraph/
Section
Using a Main Idea Chart
Details Main Idea

Good Readers
• Draw inferences.
• Can summarize reading
and identify BIG IDEAS.
Poor Readers
•Cannot summarize
important points.
•Have poor recall of facts
and supporting details.
After Reading
After Reading
•Reflect on the content
through activities of
prediction, explanation,
application, and evaluation.
•Do not use strategies to
reflect on reading.
•Recall important related
facts.
• Unable to draw
inferences.

•Teach
Summarizing
or finding the
Main Idea
•Assessment
of students’
understanding
After Reading

 Use graphic organizers, framed notes,
study guides
 Teach identification of main idea
 Teach writing strategies for…
 Note taking
 Question answering
 Summary writing
 Extended response

REFLECTION TIME
REFLECTION TIME
3 things I’ll
try to learn
more about
3 things I’ve
learned
TODAY
3 things
I knew

Objectives of today’s session:
1. Understand the importance of
comprehension & vocabulary in reading
instruction.
2. A Framework for teaching reading
comprehension.
3. “Meet Me In Memphis”
Next Section:
Next Section: Objective 3
Objective 3

1. Teachers demonstrate explicit steps
and strategies to students explaining
what the strategy is and what its
purpose is.
Comprehension instruction is
most effective when:
Meet Me In Memphis
Meet Me In Memphis

Students will not develop effective or
efficient comprehension strategies on their
own. Strategies must be taught explicitly.
1. Students should be explicitly taught to think
strategically about reading.
Why do we read?
How do we know when we don’t
understand what we are reading?
When do we use different comprehension
strategies?
Demonstrate Explicit Steps & Strategies
Demonstrate Explicit Steps & Strategies

Setting a Purpose for Reading
Example: Tell students that it is important to know what
kind of book you are reading before you begin. Explain
that we read stories differently than we read informational
books.
Say: “We are going to learn to figure out why we are
reading a book before we begin to read. For example, if
we are reading Meet Me In Memphis, we know that it is a
story about a meeting. But if we are reading a travel guide
about Memphis, we would read to learn about tourism in
Memphis.”
Meet Me In Memphis
Meet Me In Memphis

2. Teachers model multiple examples of
how to apply the strategy using a “thinking
aloud” procedure while interacting with
actual text.
Comprehension instruction is most
effective when:
Meet Me In Memphis
Meet Me In Memphis

Example: Model how to predict what is going to
happen based on the title or section of text.
Say: “Meet Me in Memphis” is the title. “Do you
think Maximus Dan is going to meet someone in
Memphis?” “Why do you think that?”
“Maximus Dan is sipping a Pisco Sour and
listening to music.” “Meet Me In Memphis”
by T. Jerome Baker
Predictions
Model Multiple
Model Multiple
Examples
Examples

Example: Provide subsequent models of making
connections.
Say: “Many people like to visit the houses of
famous people. Pablo Neruda has three houses
in Chile. Have you visited any of these houses?”
Making Connections
“Dan has asked to meet her in Memphis, at
Graceland, in the King’s “Jungle Room”.
Model Multiple Examples

Example: Provide subsequent models of making
connections.
Say: “Like Maximus, I was named after my father.
My nephew, Chatom, was named after my brother,
Charlie, and me, Thomas.”
Making Connections – “Meet Me In Memphis”
“When I was born my father wanted to name
me Maximilian. But my mother wanted to
name me after my grandfather, Seamus. Like
your parents, they compromised and I was
named Maximus. Dan was my father’s name,
and so I became Maximus Dan.”

3. Teachers provide students with
extensive opportunities to practice
strategies and offer high-quality
feedback.
effective when:
Meet Me In Memphis
Meet Me In Memphis

 As students practice, teachers should
engage them in discussion or ask
them to “think aloud”. During this time,
the teacher can provide feedback
about correct and incorrect responses.
Opportunities to practice skills and
strategies is a powerful predictor of
student learning.
(Howell & Nolet, 2001)
Provide Extensive
Provide Extensive
Opportunities to Practice
Opportunities to Practice

Example: Read Aloud from Meet Me In Memphis.
Stop at intervals and ask students to tell the most
important parts of the story. Write these on the
board. Then have students work in pairs to identify
the beginning, middle, and end of the story. They
can record their findings on a story structure page.
After teaching how to retell a short story and
after modeling periodic summarizing of the
story using a simple story structure such as
main character, problem, solution, and end,
do the following:
Retelling

Provide Opportunities to Practice
Provide Opportunities to Practice
MEET ME IN MEMPHIS
MEET ME IN MEMPHIS
Simple Story Retelling
Simple Story Retelling
WHO
Maximus Dan &
Goddess Estrella .
PROBLEM
They are in love but
they are apart.
SOLUTION
Maximus travels to
Memphis.
END
They meet in a
hospital in Memphis.

4. Teachers structure ample review and
opportunities for learning how and when to
use strategies, within the context of new texts.
effective when:
Meet Me In Memphis
Meet Me In Memphis

 After students have learned individual
strategies, teachers should have the
students apply strategies to a wide range
of texts.
 Students learn to independently
determine how, when, and why to use
the strategies.
Review needs to be sufficient, distributed
across time, cumulative, and varied
Structure Ample Review
Structure Ample Review

 Engage students in dialogue about words.
Vocabulary Instruction

 Modeling - when difficult/impossible to use
language to define word.
 Synonyms - when new vocabulary equates to
a familiar word.
 Definitions - when more words are needed to
define the vocabulary word.

Chapter 10 – An Irishman’s Luck
When the plane crashed Dan was thrown forward violently. He
hit his head on the seat in front of him and lost consciousness
immediately. When he regained consciousness he was at
Baptist Memorial Hospital, in the Intensive Care Unit. Nurse
Belynka O’Sullivan was smiling down at him.
“Where am I?” asked Maximus.
“Welcome to Memphis”, said Belynka. “You’re at Baptist
Memorial Hospital.” “I’m Belynka O’Sullivan. I’m your nurse”.
“How long am I going to be here?” asked Maximus.
Read the following extract from “Meet Me
In Memphis” and answer the questions.

“The doctors should be here any moment now on their morning
rounds. I think they will probably keep you for observation for
another 24 hours and then release you. You don’t have any
neurological problems and the CAT scan of your cranium was
negative.”
Questions
 Using the vocabulary selection criteria, which
words would you choose to teach?
How would you teach the words? Why?
Which words would you teach through context?
Why?

Pre-teaching Selection Vocabulary
Prior to reading aloud from “Meet Me In Memphis” Chapter
10, a hospital setting, pre-teach the concept of observation.
Example: Model with Pictures of a Thermometer, Pen
light, Stethoscope & BP cuff.
Say: “This is a thermometer.”
“This is a stethoscope.”
Follow up with questions, such as:
“What is this?” or “Why / How does a nurse….”
Modeling with Examples
Modeling with Examples

While reading “Meet Me In Memphis”, use a definition to
teach the meaning of the word ‘rounds.’
Example: Read: “The doctors should be here
any moment now on their morning rounds.”
Say: “Rounds is a new word. Rounds is
when doctors go to see their patients in a
hospital.”
Follow up with a question, such as: “Why
do doctors do their rounds in the morning?”
Teaching Vocabulary Using
Teaching Vocabulary Using
Synonyms
Synonyms or
or Definitions
Definitions

Summarizing Strategy
Summarizing Strategy
Teacher Modeling: “We’ve seen a lot of different
things so far. This is a good place to stop and
review, or summarize, what we have learned.
When we summarize, we think about all the
important information we have read and that helps
us remember it.”
“Today we have learned that people who lose
consciousness receive neurological examinations
and are kept for observation. We learned also that
doctors do their rounds in the morning.”
(Second teacher model included later in selection.
Third teacher model provided in rereading of
selection in subsequent lesson.)

After reading, remind students that
summarizing helps readers focus on important
information in a text and helps them keep track
of the events.
Ask a volunteer to summarize a chapter, page
or paragraph, using their own words.
Then ask other volunteers to summarize the
student’s story. Repeat this exercise for
another chapter, page or paragraph.
Remind students to use who, what, when,
where, why, and how questions.
Summarizing
Summarizing

Teach: Ask students to tell the story of
Maximus Dan’s plane crash.
Practice: Have students reread the
accident report and have them
summarize it. Invite students to share
their summarization with the class.
Summarizing: Meet Me In Memphis

Introduce the Strategy: Tell children that good readers
make inferences. As they read, they think about what they
already know from their own lives and what is in the story to
make inferences about things or figure out what the author
does not say directly.
Teach/Model: Use “ the ending in Chapter 10” to model the
strategy.
Ask: “How did Maximus Dan get to the hospital?”
Model: “I know that Dan lost consciousness when the plane
crashed. When he regained consciousness he was in the
hospital. So I can make the inference that he was one of
the 2 passengers who were seriously injured in the crash.”
Practice/Apply: Remind children to make inferences if they
have trouble understanding words or ideas as they read.
Making Inferences

Rating the Lesson
Underline the instructional language. Does the lesson
demonstrate explicit steps and strategies?
Count the number of modeled examples. Does the
lesson model multiple examples?
Count the number of opportunities to practice. Does
the lesson provide multiple opportunities to practice
with high-quality feedback?
How well do you feel the lesson will meet the needs of
the students?
Evaluating the Effectiveness of
Evaluating the Effectiveness of
the Lesson
the Lesson

Fix-Up for the Lesson
Fix-Up for the Lesson
 What strategy is being taught? ___________
 Is it a high priority strategy? Yes No
Areas Targeted for Enhancement
Criteria How to Enhance
Explicit steps &
strategies.
Increase specificity.
Number of modeled
examples.
Add modeled examples. Include
“think aloud” procedures.
Opportunities to
practice.
Provide students with additional
opportunities to practice. Give
immediate corrective feedback.

CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
 By using a framework to teach our
students comprehension strategies that
are supported by scientific research, we
can help them achieve the ultimate goal
of reading, namely, comprehension.
 This may seem
like an impossible dream,
but.....

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