Course: C&T 741: Comprehension and Study Strategies for Use with Multiple Texts

Title: Strategies and Activities that can be Implemented in Reading and Writing to Improve Scholars’ Learning

Final Paper

In C&T 741: Comprehension and Study Strategies for Use with Multiple Texts, I wrote a final paper titled “Strategies and Activities that can be Implemented in Reading and Writing to Improve Scholars’ Learning.” For this paper I created a plan for integrating strategies and activities into my reading and writing classes. The three parts to my final paper are: Part I describes my classroom environment, part II provides strategies and examples of how to implement strategies and activities into reading and writing, and part III explains the importance of implementing these strategies.

Learning Outcome B focuses on how to plan and implement appropriate and varied instruction practices, strategies, and methods to differentiate instruction, engage scholars, and improve learning. In my artifact, I show how to implement comprehension strategies to support scholars’ understanding before, during, and after reading a text. One strategy I learned and have shared with my families is how to activate background knowledge. Activating background knowledge can help scholars become engage and interested in the topic they are about to read because it this process can remind them of any knowledge, they already have that may relate to what they see if in the text.

To activate background knowledge, I like to use phase I: Previewing, Noticing, and Naming from Youngs and Serafini’s (2011) article “Comprehension Strategies for Reading Historical Fiction Picturebooks” which is to model how to properly and actively look at the cover, title, and other visuals in the text to make predictions about what it might be about and then having scholars do the same. Then following up with what they will be expected to do when reading the text. For example, I would say, “Now that we have made our predictions, we will need to find out if our predictions are correct or incorrect.” That would hold scholars accountable to pay attention to the text to see if what we wrote down as our predications were accurate or not and how so. So, after reading the text, we would have a discussion focused on the predictions or questions we had to see if they were accurate or not and how so.

In addition, to previewing the text and illustrations to see if anything stands out to them to connect to any previous knowledge they have, I also like to ask my scholars if they have any questions they would like to find out about the text. Some scholars may not have background knowledge on a topic so providing them the opportunity and space to ask question is important for them to become engage with the text. So, after reading the text, we can have a discussion about the questions we asked to see if any were answered.

Since Learning Outcome B focuses on how to plan and implement appropriate and varied instructional practices to improve scholars reading skills, using the skill of activating background knowledge can help all scholars when reading a text or when coming across a new or challenging problem in another academic subject such as math. They have to observe what is in front of them to think about what they already know in order to become more connected to the situation and then form questions about anything they are still confused about.

The course C&T 741 was helpful because it provided many readings and resources to build my knowledge on strategies and activities I can use in reading and writing, such as how to help learners determine the main idea, how to summarize, activate background knowledge, synthesize information, which vocabulary to review with scholars before reading a text, and how to help scholars make inferences. I have been able to use a few of the strategies from this course in my classroom and have seen it improve my scholar’s attention span when reading because it is more purposeful than just reading for fun. At times, they are reading to find out if their predications were accurate or questions were answered so that can tie into our discussion of what they learned from reading the text.

Reference

Youngs, S. & Serafini, F. (2011) Comprehension strategies for reading historical fiction picturebooks. The Reading Teacher, 65(2), 115-124.