Reading Specialist Blog

Here are some things that you can do to prepare ahead for instruction that can promote knowledge building in your students in terms of reading comprehension and more.

Story grammar is a semantic-organizer framework, or set of “rules” that students can use to describe and talk about stories’ common elements—characters, setting, plot actions and events, solutions/outcomes, theme—and how the relationships among these elements contribute to a particular story.

Story maps are graphic organizers that show the sequence, of events that make up the plot of a story. This version of a story map allows young children to see the three basic parts of a story and introduces them to the idea that all stories contain this structure.

We have seen encouraging news of marked improvements in the abilities of beginning readers to relate sounds to letters, to translate these relationships to words, and to link words with meanings. And as these students move beyond the primary grades, many continue to refine and improve their reading skills, easily making the transition to independent reading.

Comprehension strategies are specific sets of cognitive procedures that good readers can call up and apply as needed to get meaning from and to keep track of how well they understand what they read.

Good readers have available a large set of cognitive strategies that they can use as they read. Clearly, it would be impossible—and pointless—to teach students all of the strategies they might conceivably need as readers. Which strategies, then, should be the focus of our instruction?

In addition to identifying which comprehension strategies should be targeted for instruction, the NRP (2000) also provides guidelines for conducting strategy instruction. Like most components of good reading instruction, strategy instruction is most effective when teachers explicitly and directly teach the strategies, following an explain/model/scaffold-practice-apply model

This entry presents evidence that lends support to the idea that all students can benefit from some form strategy instruction, including English Learners and older struggling readers.

Alexander, P. A., & Jetton, T. J. (2000). Learning from text: A multidimensional and developmental perspective. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 285–310). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Almasi, J. F., McKeown, M. G., & Beck, I. L. (1996). The nature [...]

The pay off for reading instruction is tremendous. It sets students firmly on the path to becoming lifelong readers and learners.