2022 Literacy Symposium: Secondary Literacy Strand

Reading comprehension is multifaceted, and as such requires a multifaceted instructional approach. This session will address the need for brief instruction that engages students in strategic actions designed to develop monitoring skills and flexibility in navigating text in order to create that “mental model” of understanding. Specifically, we will examine:

• What leading experts have concluded about comprehension strategy instruction’s limitations and benefits: what processes, when to teach, and how;

• The gradual release approach (“I do, we do, you do”) in strategy lessons;

•  The importance of utilizing Think-Alouds; and

• A model lesson in teaching inference. 

Virtually all experts in the field of teaching vocabulary agree that using the dictionary to teach word meanings is ineffective.  So, what does work?   Through active participation, participants learn how to (1) have students create their own meaningful definitions, (2) get the word and meaning into long-term memory, and (3) spell the word (in grades where spelling the word is appropriate).  The instructional techniques are explicit and multi-sensory, and they connect speech, print, and meaning.   

Comprehension involves creating a meaningful representation of the text within the reader’s mind. The skilled reader builds this mental model by intertwining background knowledge with the semantics, syntax, structure of the text. Inference plays a critical role in integrating and constructing this representation at successive levels of understanding including the meaning of words, sentences and what is implied in the text. Let’s explore inference, its multiple contributions to comprehension and related instructional implications and applications.   

Many students learn to read one-syllable words with relatively little difficulty, but they find it much harder to read polysyllabic words (with more than one syllable). This presentation includes (a) an explanation why polysyllabic word reading is difficult based on reading science and (b) easy-to-implement research-based strategies to help students read those long words using information about syllables and morphemes. 

Do you have intermediate and secondary students that are still not reading accurately and fluently with good comprehension?  In this webinar, Dr. Archer will review the major recommendations of the Educator’s Practice Guide recently released by the Institute of Education Sciences.  These recommendations include:

1. building students’ decoding skills so they can read complex multi-syllabic words,

2. providing purposeful fluency-building activities, and

3. utilizing a number of research-validated comprehension practices. 

Although universal screening can identify the students who are not comprehending, more in-depth, diagnostic assessments are needed to guide next steps for instruction. This session will provide a framework for conducting an instructionally-relevant diagnostic assessment of reading comprehension. Diagnostic assessment will be defined and differentiated from screening and progress monitoring assessment. A case study will be used to illustrate how the Simple View of Reading can guide the selection of assessment questions and assessment tools that can inform classroom instruction and intervention.