Writing and Reading Comprehension

 

         

 

Writing Instruction for Diverse Learners

Research by Schulz (2009) indicates that teaching diverse learners in the area of writing should include the following:

• Be knowledgeable about students’ lives outside of school to aid in selecting developmentally appropriate writing instruction & assessment.
• Create a supportive learning environment that includes flexibility so all students can progress at their own pace.
• Teachers should focus on what “each individual student is capable of achieving instead of what the student cannot do.” (p.59)
• Be sure to select writing activities that are within their student’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1978). Diverse learners have different starting points so teachers need to remain open-minded about appropriate progress throughout the school year.
• Include explicit and authentic writing instruction which includes academic conversations about the student’s learning.

6+1 Trait Writing Model of Instruction

This approach is effective in making writing accessible for students, inclusive of diverse learners. It breaks down the cognitive process in writing into six traits. The six traits are:

• Ideas–  the big or main idea. This includes supporting details.
• Organization–  the internal structure of the writing. This includes events occurring logically throughout piece, strong connections, and a conclusion.
• Voice– the tone of the author’s message. When the writer comes through in their choice of words.
• Word Choice- vocabulary that is used to give meaning to the message. This provides imagery, sensory, clarifies, and expands ideas within the writing.
• Sentence Fluency- the rhythm and flow of the language used in the piece. This includes sound of word patterns, cadence, power, rhythm, and movement.
• Conventions- the mechanics of the piece. This includes spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar/usage, and paraphrasing.
• Presentations- the visual and textual elements of the piece. It is how the writing actually looks on the page.

Please see examples of 6+1 rubric and writing chart below:

Click on the website below to read further on difficulties diverse learners may have concerning  knowledge, skill, and motivation in writing:

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-writing-diverse-student-populations

The following website showcases the “Getting Better Together Project” where a group of teachers implemented best practices of literacy instruction in their classroom. The goal for the project was to maximize all teachers in the room through use of small group instruction using stations. Students were given a survey to reflect on their own growth in mastering learning targets. Also, students used graphic organizers to assist in organizing their writing to cite textual evidence to support inferences within the novel. Finally, teachers debriefed with learners about strategies they chose to use during learning stations. https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teaching-diverse-learners

Another useful site is the “Teacher’s College” website. This website offers a multitude of writing.  The writing resources include videos, assessments, and student work. The videos demonstrate lessons from Lucy Calkins’ units of study in grades K-8.  The student work samples that the website provides can be very helpful to show students examples and non examples of exemplary work. It can also be used to help teachers decipher what would be considered on grade level, below grade level, and above grade level student work.

Reading  Comprehension

Reading comprehension is a major part of becoming a good reader. There are many different strategies and skills included in comprehension.

• Predicting
• Connecting
• Questioning
• Visualizing
• Inferring
• Determining Importance
• Summarizing
• Synthesizing

We need to explicitly teach strategies that will assist the students with each of these areas. One way to teach comprehension is to use the student’s schema (organized knowledge of the world) to bring an understanding of the events within the story (Anderson ). The student’s background knowledge and culture will also impact their understanding of the story.

There is not one system or program that will work for every student. As teachers, we have to have a variety of resources available to support all students no matter what their comprehension level shows. The best lessons include teacher modeling, think alouds, scaffolding, guided practice, direct instruction and independent silent reading opportunities. Comprehension requires the student to continue to apply their skills and strategies because they are encountering new information that needs to be processed as the texts become more complicated. Although we teach many of the same strategies, they should look different at each grade level. (Block,C. & Lacina, J. 2009).

Jan uses many instructional strategies  that offer students various ways to practice comprehension of the texts they read.  Guided reading allows teachers to match students with texts that are on their instructional level and apply reading and writing skills within the context of what they are reading.  Jan Richardson also provides links to research that she collected from school’s (grades K-8) that she has worked with to improve student literacy learning.

Resources

http://mrnussbaum.com/langcode/- This website has a variety of passages for the kids to read and answer a variety of comprehension questions. Some passages allow the student to highlight information in the text. The passages vary in length and difficulty. It can be a great resource to find texts at different levels on subjects which is helpful to differentiate. There are also a variety of games that focus on a particular skill. They are grouped by suggested grade level. Parts of this website only become available through a subscription, but the reading comprehension passages and games are available for free.

http://www.readingrockets.org/reading-topics/reading-comprehension – This website has a variety of materials for teachers and parents. There are teaching videos, articles and other resources.

http://www.learner.org/workshops/teachreading35/pdf/Dev_Reading_Comprehension.pdf- This is an interesting article on comprehension.

http://www.cabarrus.k12.nc.us/cms/lib09/NC01910456/Centricity/Domain/2627/Leveled%20Comprehension%20Questions.pdf- This is a list of comprehension questions for all reading levels both fiction and non-fiction.

Other titles of professional books that are helpful for teaching comprehension: