Teaching Reading

1. ResearchandDiscoursesonFactorsAffectingReadingandthe
TextandContext
GERALDG.GUINTO
Student, PhD-ELS

2. a. TEXT ORGANIZATION & STRUCTURE
b. READABILITY
c. THE READING TEACHER

3. Text Organization & Structure
Good reading comprehension skills are crucial
for understanding text and play a pivotal role
in academic, social, and economic success.
(Oakhill, Cain, & Elbro, 2015; Rapp, van den
Broek, McMaster, Kendeou, & Espin, 2007).

4. According to national standards, by the end of
primary education, students should be able
to understand simple narrative and
informational texts, distinguish various
genres, and learn from texts

5. One of the factors that contribute to poor
text comprehension is readers’ inability to
perceive the meaningful relations between
information units (e.g., events, facts,
settings) in a text (van den Broek & Kremer,
2000).

6. Empirical research has shown that struggling readers
typically fail to rely on text structure to guide their reading
(Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980; Rapp et al., 2007).
By contrast, proficient readers make active use of text
structure to organize their memory for textual content;
they attend to both the external physical organization of
the text (e.g., headings, table of contents) and the
internal structure of ideas for a better understanding
(Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Kendeou & van den
Broek, 2007; Meyer & Rice, 1984).

7. Text structure refers to how the information
within a written text is organized. This
strategy helps students understand that a
text might present a main idea and details;
a cause and then its effects; and/or
different views of a topic. Teaching
students to recognize common text
structures can help students monitor
their comprehension.

8. BENEFITS
Teachers can use this strategy with the whole class,
small groups, or individually. Students learn to identify
and analyze text structures which helps students
navigate the various structures presented within
nonfiction and fiction text. As a follow up, having
students write paragraphs that follow common text
structures helps students recognize these text
structures when they are reading.

15. Two meta-analyses have shown that text
structure instruction is a promising
approach for improving text
comprehension for learners of various
ages (i.e., kindergarten to high school) and
abilities (i.e., with and without learning
disabilities),

16. Content-Related Features of Text Structure Instruction
students struggled most with expository
text comprehension
possibly because expository texts contain a
high amount of specific vocabulary and
many unfamiliar concepts and vary more in
their

17. In addition, the reading curriculum in primary
schools was strongly focused on narrative texts
(Duke, 2000; Durkin, 1978; Moss & Newton, 2002),
which resulted in limited exposure to expository
texts.
As a consequence, primary school students displayed
fewer spontaneously developed intuitions about
expository text structure (Goldman, 1997).

18. •Structure recognition (e.g., identifying top-level and
paragraph-level structures, story grammar)
•Structure visualization (e.g., story mapping, GOs)
•Structure-based summarization (e.g., hierarchical
outlining, rule-based summarization)

19. Typically, these interventions consist of teaching questions
that are answered (e.g., what are the differences between A
and B?) and practice items in which students categorize
short texts as belonging to one structure or another. Also,
students learn about cue words or signaling words that
frequently appear in these types of structures (e.g., similar
or likewise in compare-and-contrast texts), as these words
instruct readers in how to process an upcoming information
segment and how to relate it to a previous one, thereby
assisting them toward building coherent text representations

20. teach students how paragraphs are typically
structured in topic sentences, supporting
details, and concluding sentences.

21. In other studies, students learned about the
blueprint of narrative texts, also called story
grammar.
In general, it seems that students with knowledge of
story grammar are better able to make predictions
about a text, recognize what information is crucial for
the plot (Wolman, 1991), and recall more about the
main story elements, such as the setting or
protagonist

22. Structure Visualization
Another family of strategies for improving comprehension and recall is to
teach students how to visualize the organization of main ideas via GOs.
GOs can be used as visualizations of the hierarchical relations of textual
information (Griffin, Malone, & Kameenui, 1995), in which relations
between concepts are communicated through the visual placement of
concepts relative to each other (Robinson & Molina, 2002).

23. Other GOs emphasize the hierarchical relations of textual
information (e.g., between main ideas and supporting
details), without focusing on a specific discourse structure.
One example is mapping (Armbruster & Anderson, 1982;
Berkowitz, 1986; Griffin et al., 1995), in which main ideas
and their relevant relations are represented in a diagram.

24. In the context of narrative text structure instruction, story
maps—schematic representations of the key information
in narrative texts (Gardill & Jitendra, 1999)—are used. A
story map can, for instance, include boxes for setting,
goal, plot, and outcome, respectively (Tackett, Patberg &
Dewitz, 1984).

25. Structure-Based Summarization
To get the gist of a text, readers must overcome the
limitations of working memory by ignoring extraneous
or redundant information and focusing specifically on
macro level information, such as topic sentences.

26. What is readability?
Readability is a measure of how easy a piece of text is to
read.
The level of complexity of the text, its familiarity, legibility and
typography all feed into how readable your text is.
Readability is a key factor in user experience. Accessible
content builds trust with your audience.

27. Readability
Some authors regard readability and
comprehensibility as synonymous (Adelberg &
Razek, 1984, cited in Wissing, Blignaut, & Van
den Berg,).

28. Readability considers word difficulty and sentence length.
With word difficulty, we refer to the number of syllables in
a word, where more syllables mean more difficult words
(Zamanian & Heydari,).

29. According to Adelberg and Razek (1984, cited in Wissing et al.),
a learning material is comprehensible if the readers can
understand the content of a material and complete the act of
communication initiated by the writers of this material, and when
the receiver receives the message as intended by the sender
(De Vos & Raepsaet, 2010, cited in Wissing et al.,).

30. In the explanation of Curtis & Hassan, cited in To, Fan, and Thomas
(2013), written texts which are “fairly difficult to read” are suited for
students from Grade 10 to Grade 12, and those described as
“average” or “standard” are appropriate for those in Grades eight and
nine. When texts are described as “fairly easy to ready”, they are
suited for Grade seven learners. Finally, texts described as “easy”
and “very easy to read” are appropriate for learners in Grade six and
Grades five, respectively.

31. According to experts in curriculum materials
development, textbooks must be written two levels lower
than intended users (Trowbridge et al., Citation2000). In
the case of the intended users who are non-native
speakers of English, reading science texts which are
written far beyond their grade or age level must be
frustrating.

32. THE READING TEACHER
Yes, Every Teacher is a Reading Teach

33. “Every teacher is a reading teacher.” Like many educational “trends,” this
statement is a point of contention today. Some ELA teachers want other
teachers to leave the teaching of reading to them, and many content teachers
want to focus on the information and skills unique to their field; but the truth is
that EVERYONE needs to be involved in the process. We all have a job to do!
All content has a language and a reading style of its own.
As specialists, we must apprentice our students to read in our content area.
We must model the habits we want to see in our students, and guide them as
they grow in the practice. If we take the time to teach the discrete skills
necessary for specific content reading, our students will develop sound
reading habits and experience greater understanding and independence.

34. Components
Model pre-reading skills, which include identifying the type/style of text, and the
purpose for reading. We can show them how previewing the entire text helps them to
anticipate what they will find in the text.
Demonstrate the habits of an active reader, which include metacognitive processes -
thinking about our own thinking. Engaged readers often have “conversations” with the
text in their minds. Our students need to see and hear us as we interact with the text.

35. Suggest appropriate methods/styles of reading and
note-taking while reading. Students need to understand
that there are multiple approaches to reading texts, and
that they will need to choose the most effective method
for each text.
The Cornell note-taking system often works with
information-laden texts. Sometimes,
creating Sketchnotes serves a better purpose.
SQ3R is an excellent resource for multiple types of texts.

36. Discuss and apply the new knowledge gained. This should circle us back to
the reading purpose. The students should be able to explain what they have
learned and how they are going to apply it. Will they conduct a science lab?
Defend a side in a debate? Write a response to the author?

38. Thank you for
listening!