L517: Advanced Study of the Teaching of Secondary School Reading

PROVIDING STUDENTS WITH THE OPPORTUNITY TO ASSESS COMPREHENSION; EXTENDING AND ELABORATING ON TEXT IDEAS

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After students have read the text, it is important that teachers provides students with the opportunity to do each of the following:  

Perhaps the most common teacher follow-up question to a reading assignment, "Does anyone have any questions?" While there is nothing really wrong with this question, it should never be assumed that the silence that follows it means that everyone, or even anyone, feels confident about their comprehension of the text they just read. Students' failure to respond to this question could be due to any number of factors:

What might you do instead of asking, "Does anyone have any questions?" Simple. Provide students with the opportunity to discuss what they gleaned from the text in light of what you asked them to focus on (your specific, explicit purpose for reading). For example, if you asked students to think about how the character in the text they were going to read compares and contrasts with a character from a previous book, after students read ask, "In what ways are Felipe and Alden alike? In what ways are they different?" Here's another example: If students completed an anticipation guide prior to reading, and you asked them to read in order to determine whether they have changed their minds about any of the statements on the anticipation guide, after students read say, "Let's read statement number one on your anticipation guide. How many people agreed with that statement before reading the chapter? Of those of you who agreed with it before reading, how many of you no longer agree with it? Tasha, what in the chapter caused you to change your mind?" (Obviously, do this with each statement.)

It is important to provide students with an opportunity to assess their own comprehension of the text they read in light of the specific focus or purpose for reading. Students need that feedback to monitor their efforts. Keep in mind, this is not a formal paper and pencil assessment. It's a discussion--either in small groups or a large group--that will give students some idea of how well they achieved their goal. 

Extending and Elaborating on Text Ideas

Providing students with the opportunity to extend and elaborate on text ideas will result in better comprehension and retention of text ideas. Extension opportunities encourage students to make connections beyond the text and refine emerging concepts. 

These instructional strategies include elements that assist in providing students with the opportunity to assess comprehension:

These instructional strategies include elements that assist in extending and elaborating on text ideas:

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If you were an 8th grade social studies teacher you might include a unit on world cultures, which may include a lesson on different holidays celebrated around the world. One text students might read as part of this lesson is "Chu-Suk" by Ju-Un Lee. (This text has a Fry Readability of 8th grade.) The text describes the Korean holiday, Chu-Suk. Because it is unlikely that your students are familiar with this holiday (although you should certainly ask), you decide not to elicit prior knowledge by having brainstorm what students know about Chu-Suk. (You probably wouldn't get anything.) Instead, you decide to elicit students' prior knowledge on America's Thanksgiving holiday. You have several reasons for this:

1. Chu-Suk has a lot in common with Thanksgiving, so a lot of the ideas in the text are similar to those Americans associate with Thanksgiving.
2. One of the objectives for the lesson is this: "As a result of this lesson, students will be able to compare and contrast the purposes for and celebration practices associated with many different holidays around the world."
3. Students' explicit purpose for reading will be to keep a list of ways in which Chu-Suk is like America's Thanksgiving, and ways in which it is different, so getting students to think about Thanksgiving before reading would help students achieve this purpose.

After students have read the text and complete their lists of similarities and differences between Chu-Suk and Thanksgiving, you plan on having students share their lists as a class and engage students in a large group discussion about them.

What are you going to do as an extension activity? What are some ideas? On Oncourse describe to your partner three extension activity ideas that could be used following the Chu-Suk text, and explain why you think they would be appropriate. Be creative! (Clearly this activity would be a lot easier if you knew more about the class for which you were designing these activities. Just do the best you can with the little you know. The purpose of this activity is just to get you thinking a bit about how to extend ideas from a text after reading.)

For each of the activities your partner has posted try to identify three strengths and provide one suggestion.