Group items tagged

"n the previous literacy post I identified a few take-away questions and related issues from my recent research on comprehension, and looked at some tips related to the 1st question: Do students understand the real point of academic reading? Do students understand that the aim of instruction is transfer of learning? Am I using the right texts for making clear the value of strategies? Do students understand the difference between self-monitoring understanding and knowing what they might do when understanding does not occur? Am I attending to the fewest, most powerful comprehension strategies for academic literacy? Am I helping them build a flexible repertoire instead of teaching strategies in isolation? Do students have sufficient general understanding of the strategies (which is key to transfer)? Am I doing enough ongoing formal assessment of student comprehension, strategy use, and tolerance of ambiguity?"

"In the three previous posts on reading for understanding (here, here, and here) I looked at the general question: What can we say for sure (or not) in research on comprehension in reading? Here, I take a closer look at comprehension strategies and what the research does and doesn't say. In general, it supports many of the blunt comments I made here and here a few years ago: there is still a lack of clarity about what the right strategies are, how to teach them, and which ones work for older students (my focus in these current posts)."

"Jon Negroni isn't done with his Pixar theories. As it turns out, Andy, the boy Woody and Buzz Lightyear belong to in the "Toy Story" movies, has a surprising family history. Remember last summer, when Pixar superfan Negroni wrote up his incredibly comprehensive report linking all of the studio's movies into one giant, linear universe? It was an ambitious undertaking that resulted in something obsessively researched and remarkably well-reasoned. In short, it blew our minds. And now, he's reemerged with a new theory, this one revealing the secret identity of Andy's mom, pointing to the many clues served up in "Toy Story 2.""

"Yes, reading strategies - and explicit teaching of them - make a considerable difference, as my previous four blog posts here, here, here, and here make clear. And there is much to like about the idea of the gradual release of (teacher) responsibility in the teaching of those strategies for reading - or anything else where we want skillfulness. The approach is interactive, empowering for kids, easy for most teachers to grasp and implement, and grounded in research."

"As the first phase of bringing closure to these blog posts on literacy at the secondary level, I want to offer a tentative list of recommendations that I believe follow from all the research cited in the previous posts. I will say more about each principle in follow-up posts, as well as offering brief bibliographic and graphic-organizer resources in support of each idea. (I offer some initial thoughts on Principle #1, below)."