How beginning teachers can help young readers to be more strategic about their efforts at meaning making

1. Supporting Reading in the
Middle/Upper Stages
Helping Children to become
strategic readers

2. Purpose of This Presentation
To suggest how teachers can help
pupils move from ‘learning to read’ to
‘reading to learn’
To suggest how, as classroom
teachers, we can help pupils to
become more purposeful in their
active engagement with text
To put these practical ideas in a
theoretical context

3. The Molrog approach to reading
development
Molrogs are brocklesome freggi. They have foll,
greb rashklings and bratch moodgrobs. Their
neshes are frebbi rittle and their broaki are
gretta grack. They yeg and trill if cramvled; they
groush and vrachle if noomphed. Nobody
schmettles them when they are groushed
because their their grot is so kraddlesome.
1) What sort of freggi are molrogs?
2) How would you describe their rashklings?
3) What are their moodgrobs like?
4) How rittle are their neshes? How grack are their broaki?
5) How would molrogs react if you cramvle them?
6) Why do you think no-one schmettles molrogs?

4. Some problems with this approach
Absence of context
Lack of explicit purpose for reading
No attempt made to connect with pupils or
their lives
Reading conceptualised as passive
absorption of someone else’s meaning
Activities constructed as ‘school stuff’
rather than authentic tasks
Lack of challenge, stimulation; children not
encouraged to exercise cognitive muscles

5. Alternative approaches
Contextualising reading
Where does this passage fit in to a coherent,
on-going, meaningful sequence of learning
experiences?
How can it be introduced to pupils in a way that
will ensure a clear sense of purpose?
How can we ensure that activities associated
with the text will enable pupils to be active,
interested participants in the making of
meaning?
How can we make children’s reading fun,
stimulating and worthwhile, helping them to
become more effective readers?

6. Alternative approaches: making
emotional connections
The importance of pre-reading
Setting the passage up, preparing the ground,
getting children fired up
Visual imagery and associated discussion
Making use of film/video/DVD + discussion
Sharing personal anecdotes
Using KWL frames
Generating debate
Creating a sense of purpose
‘What kind of information are we looking for (to meet
our purposes for reading)?’
‘What do we already know about this kind of text?’
‘How should we go about reading the text?’
‘How will we use what we already know about the
topic?’

7. Pre-Reading Strategies
Skimming – going for a walk around the text to gain
familiarity with key aspects
Checking out structural guiders – headings, sub-headings,
signalling devices
Using visual images to build understanding
Reminding oneself about reason for reading, purposes etc
Identify significant portions of text in order to adjust reading
strategies
Identify key terms, terminology, concepts, subject specific
vocabulary in order to clarify significant subject matter
Questioning – using text clues (typeface, headings, captions,
graphs etc) to generate meaningful questions that relate to
reading purposes

8. During Reading Strategies
During Reading, we can help children to…
Monitor their own understanding – clarifying how reader is getting
on with text (understanding main ideas, craft features)
Develop comprehension strategies – using context clues to figure
out unknown words, imaging, inferencing, predicting
Integrate new concepts with existing knowledge and revising purposes for
reading; making connections within text and between texts
Become more aware – of text purpose, genre and how language and
structures help text expectations to be realised (eg focus on topic sentences
where most important information often comes)
Activate fix-up strategies
Ignore and read on
Suspend judgment (wait and see)
Form a tentative hypothesis and keep revising it
Use background knowledge
Re-read current sentence
Use contextual information
Go to an expert source

9. After Reading Strategies: genuine
discussion about content (K and U)
What did you find most interesting in the passage?
Why?
Was there anything you read that surprised you?
What was it and why were you surprised?
How did you react when the passage said …?
Why did you respond this way?
Was there anything in the passage that you might
wish to disagree with? Explain why.
Was there anything in the passage that you
particularly liked/disliked? Give reasons.
What kind of view comes across about Molrogs in
the passage? Do you agree with it? Explain.
What is the most important point made in the
passage? Why do you think this?

10. After reading strategies: genuine
discussion about writer’s craft
Is this a piece of fiction or non-fiction? How do you know?
What style of writing does the writer employ (formal or informal)? Give
examples. Why does he do it like that?
How did you react when the passage said … How did the text make you feel
this way?
Are there any obvious tricks that the writer uses to get his point across even
more forcefully or clearly? What are they and how do they work?
Why does the writer say … What is his intention in saying it like this? How
else might he have said it; how would this have changed the effect?
What did you notice about the length of sentences used by the writer in lines
… Why do you think he wrote the text like this? Did it work? Explain
why/why not. How could he have done it differently? How would this have
changed the meaning of the text?
Did you notice anything about the writer’s use of punctuation? Was there
anything unusual or unexpected? Explain.
Did you notice where in the paragraph the most important information
comes? Why is this, do you think?
Did you notice that the writer uses a lot of examples? Why does he do this?

11. After Reading Strategies: opening
up critical literacy
Who wrote the text? What do we know about him/her? Is s/he
reliable?
For what purpose was the text written?
Who is target audience? How do we know?
What are key messages? What point of view comes across? Is this
a balanced view? What does this tell you about the text?
What beliefs/attitudes/values underpin the messages?
What kind of reality is presented?
Whose interests have been served by the text?
What assumptions have been made?
What are the implications of all of this?
What is missing in the text?
Is there information in the text that is contradicted by information in
other texts we know about?
How has the reader been positioned in the text? (are there issues
of gender/race/class?)

12. After Reading Strategies: having a
meta-cognitive conversation
How did you go about reading this text? (visual imagery,
headings, subheadings, columns, double page spread)
Why did you read it like this?
Is there any other way to read it? Who read it differently?
What were you thinking when the writer said …?
How were you feeling while you read the passage? Why did
you feel this way? Did your feelings change? What caused
this to happen?
Did you get stuck at all? What was difficult? What did you do
to solve your problem? What other strategies could you have
used?
What did you learn about reading this kind of passage?
How might you be able to use what you’ve learned
elsewhere in your class work?

13. Practical approaches: using DARTs
(Directed Activities Relating to Texts)
Reconstruction Activities Analysis Activities
Text Completion (cloze)
Word completion Text marking
Phrase completion Underlining certain parts
Sentence completion Annotating text
Sequencing Questioning text
Time base Labelling
Other base Text Diagrams
Prediction
Segmenting
Pupils predict next part orally
Pupils write next part Finding the breaks (paras)
Table completion Table Construction
Pupils fill in cells Pupils construct headings
Pupils devise headings and fill in cells
Diagram completion Diagram Construction
Label completion Flow chart, mind map,
Diagram completion Venn diagram

14. Practical approaches: reciprocal
reading
Reciprocal Teaching: teacher models 4
comprehension strategies:
summarising,
questioning,
clarification,
prediction.
and invites pupils to assume teacher
role with partner, thinking aloud as s/he
reads passage to partner and imitates
teacher’s use of strategies

15. An example of Reciprocal Reading
Now, let’s look at the heading. This is where the main topic will be
introduced to the reader (clarification). Yes, it’s about ‘Molrogs’. Now what
do I already know about them? (questioning) Yes, I think I remember
reading somewhere that they were very blocklesome. Let’s read the
opening sentences to find out if that’s correct. The start of sentences usually
give us the main information. (clarification) Molrogs are brocklesome
freggi.They have foll, greb rashklings and bratch moodgrobs. Ah, that’s
interesting, I was right about them being ‘brocklesome’, but I didn’t know
about their rashklings and I’d forgotten about their moodgrobs. The writer
seems to be painting a very negative picture of Molrogs (summarising). I
wonder if the rest of the passage is the same. I’ve a funny feeling it might
be. Let’s read on to see if my prediction is right. (prediction) Their neshes
are frebbi rittle and their broaki are gretta grack. They yeg and trill if
cramvled; they groush and vrachle if noomphed. Just as I thought, it’s
all negative, although I’m not sure about the meaning of the word ‘cramvled’
(clarification). I wonder how I can work out what it means. It can’t be good,
as the rest is so negative …

16. To sum up: Conceptualising the Reading Process –
some theoretical ideas to support the practical
strategies
Reading is a The emphasis is on
constructive process teaching strategies
involving transactions within social support
between reader, text systems
and context
Readers are active Reading purpose and
participants in the text form are crucial
creation of individual determinants of
texts potential text meanings
Teacher’s role is to
help pupils construct It is important to help
richer text readings (gp pupils develop
discussion and sharing, awareness of their own
modelling, open mental processes while
agendas) reading

17. Evaluating Classroom Reading
Activities
PURPOSE
RELATIONSHIPS
IDENTITY
MEANING-MAKING
ENGAGEMENT
DISPOSITIONS

18. A Model of Effective Literacy
Learning
Literacy is practised in contexts that enable children to
experience it as personally worthwhile in some way
(PURPOSE)
Through literate activity, children forge relationships with others,
often coming together to form supportive communities
(RELATIONSHIPS)
Doing meaningful things with literacy enables pupils to bring in
their identities and to develop a positive sense of themselves in
relation to others (IDENTITY)
Literacy is a personally significant meaning-making activity
(MEANING-MAKING), involving the strategic use of a range of
reading, writing, talking, listening, thinking skills
Children participate fully in literacy experiences - with interest,
with others and in anticipation of success (ENGAGEMENT)
Through literacy activity, children develop a range of worthwhile
learning dispositions – eg resilience, empathy, creativity,
curiosity, criticality (DISPOSITIONS)