The Reading and Writing Connection: Comprehending and

Composing

Chapter 6

Goals in Reading and Writing

1. Develop student’s ability to analyze, interpret, and evaluate literary works and become more comfortable with the power of words.

2. Increase student’s desire to use reading and writing as tools for communication, learning, and pleasure.

3. Use reading and writing to discover insights about themselves and others

4. Expand their knowledge of their multicultural,pluralistic society, heritage, and future

Theoretical Foundation

Reading and writing are so closely related that reading-listening and speaking-writing involve similar mental processes and reinforce each other.

When student’s identify what works will for them in books, they often learn to include these features in their writing.

Comprehending and Composing

The sociopsycholinguistic constructive processes.

Primary teachers need to expose students to as many genres and literary themes as possible

Need to build sense of story

Comprehension

Literal-reading the lines

Interpretive-reading between the lines

Applied or critical-reading beyond the lines

Research says that prior knowledge of genres, as well as syntactical features of the language significantly influences the student’s comprehension!

Strategies

Self-initiated plans of action that readers and writers use to make meaning.

They involve:– intentional and deliberate thoughts– flexible and adaptable skills– reasoning – metacognition

Most successful instructional programs include Extensive explanation

and elaboration of how to use comprehension strategies to gain meaning.

Teach only a few reading and thinking strategies at one time.

Modeling of strategies so students hear about specific thinking processes, genres, syntactical units, and schema

Explain why strategies are important

Feedback about progress as students apply the strategy

Repeated tailored explanations until students can use a strategy independently

Cues to students throughout the year to help then recognize opportunities for a strategy’s use.

How to improve comprehension and recall summarizing imagery story grammar knowledge activation self-questioning question answering

While good and poor comprehenders use similar strategies to understand what they read, good comprehenders are more willing to persist in using them.

Whole Language Approach

Emphasizes the use of meaningful texts and tasks– full length children’s books used for large

and small group decoding and comprehension instruction.

– more rereading– silent reading is vital part of instruction.

During the school year students who read for 20 minutes a day will increase their vocabularies by 2,000 words annually!

Five Stages of comprehension and composing 1. Meaning is frequently disrupted by

decoding difficulties or writing problems, absence of comprehension or composing supports, interrupted concentration, unfamiliar with textual features, or lack of personal goals

2. Literal comprehension and factual writing occur but are not retained completely because of minimal efferent connection was made with the information.

3. Inferential comprehension and effective writing occur because student can make accurate predictions and interpretations.

4. Applies meaning-making and writing of effective personal narrative occur because student made an emotional response to reading and/or writing in new ways about knowledge gained.

5. Self-initiated, value-filled meaning results as student makes emotional and efferent responds to a selection before, during and after reading and writing.

Emergent Literacy It is a continuum of understandings that

enable students to begin to read and write. Children learn to read and write as early as 2 years old.

Writing abilities often develop before reading

Many students can spell before they can read.

Reading and writing can be learned along with speaking.

Kindergartners Special Needs

Comprehension– Brains reach 90% of

adult size by age 5.– If oral language is

advanced, they do better in literacy

– Some enter school with 2 -3 hours of print interaction and some with 2-3,000 hours. Rarely recover from.

Composing needs– reoccurring principle– generative principle– linear principle– flexibility principle– constructive principle– sign principle

How to help them acquire skills

Copy environmental print

Retell, predict, and write using the story elements,characterizations, and new vocabulary words, and settings while being read aloud to.

Find a word on the page that had been pointed out to them elsewhere.

Dictation Write messages Make a newsletter Develop hand

dominance and fine motor skills

How to help students beyond emergent stage Tilling the text-strategies that fully

engage them in selections they read or compose. Students establish a purpose for reading.

Attending to Author’s writing style Understand the

connections between events in the story and the types of paragraph structure

Paragraph functions– introductory

– explanatory

– descriptive

– cause and effect

– conditional

– time or spatial

– question and answer

– summarizing or concluding

Establishing a purpose

Do before reading and writing– Establish a personal purpose for reading

and writing– Activate prior knowledge before, during, and

after reading or writing– Clarify meanings by adding to their text-

specific knowledge and vocabulary– Focus and refocus their minds on reading

when interrupted

Using prior knowledge

The more automatically prior knowledge can be elicited while reading and writing the more fully and effectively students will comprehend and write.– Must recognize when their knowledge

contains naive or incorrect information– Ask students what they are thinking as

they are reading

Metacomprehension and Metacomposing Be aware of what they are thinking and

why Use self-initiated strategies to improve

and sustain focus Overcome disruptions or obstacles in

comprehension and composition

Students need to learn to

Connect their past experiences to printed material

Take risks or infer so reading will be enjoyable

Ask themselves questions before,during and after reading

Scan or skim to connect ideas in their long and short term memory

Reread to eliminate confusion

Develop an inquiring mind

Become personally committed to making their own meaning

Activities that increase comprehension and composing abilities Asking questions types of thinking

– stop to think about new ways to use

– reread what doesn’t make sense

– predict what will come in next sentence

– imaging

– summarize at each subheading

– draw conclusions about author’s purpose

– ask questions about concepts

– pose and ask questions to each other

K-W-L

reverse think-alouds make free

associations and skim

use clue words to detect sequence

Explaining and interpreting

When students explain their reasoning, their comprehension is enhanced.– Purpose of details is to tell who, what,

when, where, how, and why– Step 1-Collect details, gather facts, and

ask questions– Step 2- Organize details and put in logical

order

– Step 3- Revise and figure out what you need to know. Any confusion?

– Step 4- Interpret and apply to life

Summarizing

Retention increases by 16% when students create mental and written summaries– `1. Delete duplication– 2. Combine ideas with same subject– 3. Restate in fewer words– 4. Use summary words– 5. Remove details that are not about the

main subject

Inferring and Predicting Infer is to construct meaning that is not

literally stated Interpret is the reader connecting literal

information to background knowledge and uses opinions to make a judgement– Think about inferences they have made– Figure the “I” in a first person story– Remove dialogue from last two sections of a

cartoon– Explain reasons behind inferences and

predictions

Imaging Allows student to become immersed in

experience Tends to produce vivid images in written

text Make text more retrievable in memory

– Learn to paint pictures in mind– Create similes that describe main ideas– Tell about event that they are writing about– Personify human traits for animals or inanimate

objects

Metacomprehending and Metacomposing Crucial to development of insightful

comprehension and creative composition

Learning how to learn Enhances readers’ motivation and

positive attitude toward reading

– Lessons 1-3 Show students how to plan before they read, monitor while they read, and reflect after they read with think-alouds

– Lessons 4-5 Self monitor and interact individually with student to help them with metacognitive questions

Singing

Helps students from whom English isn’t first language

Vivian Vinn Method Martian Songs Rap songs Choral readings

Using Technology

Working in pairs at computer makes comprehension better

Helps make information more vivid, so comprehension is better

Exposes students to high quality examples of communication

Reading Response groups

Small groups of students that meet to discuss their ideas and reactions to their readings– Assigned group– Self selected group– Selected book groups them

• Enact their responses

Reading and Writing Response Journals Integrate thoughts, comments, and

questions about their comprehension and composing process

Emphasize that what students think matters

How can parents help?

Parent involvement program Intergenerational programs Home and Back with Books Reference books Suggest home activities that develop

literacy