Carolyn L. Streets
Comprehension and decoding strategies are two tools needed to help students become critical readers. Comprehension focuses on metacognitive skills where students are guided to think not only about what they read but
how
they read. These strategies are categorized by skills like making connections, questioning the text, and making inferences. Decoding helps students with unknown words by providing strategies to figure out new and complex words within contextual appropriateness. Students combine these two strategies to synthesize what they read. With this in mind, I will incorporate several of Marzano’s
1
instructional strategies and use scaffolding to offer guidance and support as students build upon their decoding and comprehension. Research-based instructional strategies are a key component of what I already know how to best in my classroom, therefore I will use strategies like QAR (Question/Answer/Relationship), the Frayer Model (an advanced graphic organizer), and didactic journaling. These strategies are pervasive in most school settings and can be found in any ELA classroom. It is important to note that I anticipate resistance from some students given that many are reluctant readers. However, these strategies are proven to have the greatest positive effect on student achievement regardless of ability and grade level, and I have used these with great success in the past. With this in mind, I envision this approach as an agreement between traditional reading and using a broad interpretation of film adaptation as way to complement students’ learning styles while supporting them as they hone their reading comprehension skills.
QAR (Question/Answer/Relationship):
Since I want students to see the connections between the three distinct stories used for this unit, I am confident the QAR method is an appropriate strategy. Overall, I have found that the question/answer/relationship strategy is very useful teaching students how to use their critical thinking as a means to improve their reading comprehension. QAR strategy is not a new concept as it is taught in the primary grades. The difference here is that students will be pushed to understand the relationship between asking strong qualitative questions and inferring the author’s intent. Qualitative questioning may be a new concept to my students, so I seek to provide yearlong practice. So, this is a skill that is used throughout the course of the year and as students build confidence, the expectation is for stronger and more independent articulation between explicit and implicit understandings. First, students learn that there are different types of questions often utilized by strong independent critical readers: 1. Right There: They are the obvious explicit questions/answers easily identified in the text. 2. Think and Search: These are questions generated from implicit text ideas where students must think and infer. This requires that students do more analysis of what is not readily seen. 3. On my own: These are conclusions students draw based on the explicit and implicit questioning. Students are challenged to arrive at these conclusions independently. It is my intention for students to recognize that the quality of the question influences the quality of their inferences; thus they must consider the complexity of the question before developing an answer. QAR is a useful tool because students learn the difference between low and high level questioning; this helps them check their own understanding by relying on the text, and it helps students to critically engage in their reading. I plan to use QAR throughout the unit before, during, and after reading, but will rely on it the heaviest during the initiating exercise explained in the classroom activities section of this unit.
Frayer Model
The Frayer Model is also seen in many ELA classrooms because it is also identified as a high yield nonlinguistic strategy. This model is flexible enough to be used as a simple or advanced graphic organizer. I appreciate the fluidity of this because it allows me to provide differentiated instructional strategies to students with varied reading levels. I also appreciate this model as it is useful in underscoring the power in figurative language like similes, metaphors, and analogies. I selected this model specifically because of the prose style of one of the authors we will study. By using this model, students will be assisted in identifying the relational patterns of language and author’s intent. It is critical that students be guided with instruction that allows them to see the relationships between what they are reading and how they read, so word analysis and vocabulary building is a key component. I will mainly use this strategy during reading as students will be required to do some level of analysis and synthesis. Students will create a four-square model that prompts them to think about and describe the following: 1. Define the term (analysis). 2. Describe its characteristics (analysis). 3. Give examples like synonyms (synthesis), and 4.Give non-examples (synthesis). Given the complexity of the text they will be reading, this model is critical because it stresses how students can understand words within the larger context of their reading. Essentially, I will use this to push students to develop their interpretations around the enduring understandings not explicitly seen in the texts.
Didactic Journaling
Didactic journaling falls under the category of summarizing and note taking-an identified high yield strategy. This type of journaling can be considered a more advanced sophisticated way for students to critically engage with the text. Didactic journaling is a way for students to practice how to differentiate between unnecessary and important information while writing and analyzing information. Since the goal is to support students’ critical thinking skills through reading comprehension, didactic journaling is a sound way to facilitate critical thinking of academic content. During this time, students will incorporate their personal responses with key text ideas. These responses can range from students’ focus on themes, characters, events, gathering of textual evidence to support inferences for example, in efforts to evidence how they process what is being read. Students will be guided to structure their journaling by questioning, making connections, predicting, clarifying, reflecting, or evaluating. Summarizing and note taking is not a new concept, given that students are taught these skills the previous year, but the term didactic may be a new concept. I plan to introduce this as a higher form of the familiar terms summary and note taking and will do this by modeling through incorporating aspects of the Frayer model by defining the term and giving examples. This will be detailed in the classroom activities section of my unit.