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During teaching practice you need to demonstrate competency in delivering a reading lesson that involves top down reading strategies. Top-down reading processes impact the way we teach reading. Top down reading strategies involve the students' use of schema and strategic processes to create a meaning from a text.
Pre-reading Stage
Overview: Prepare for a successful read by doing the following:
1. Activating Schema & Creating Interest
2. Preparing critical vocabulary
3. Setting a purpose for reading
4. Asking for predictions about content of the text
Activating Schema:
This is actually a very critical part of the lesson, and it should be more than just a few simple questions. The way an athlete prepares for a match is like the way the reader prepares to engage a text. Each requires a warm up and their performance is directly associated with the quality of the warm up. Therefore, choose your questions and the ORDER of the questions carefully: Start with simple questions and work your way up the cognitive ladder: Try to use Higher order questions from Blooms Taxonomy as much as possible. You can start with simple yes-no questions, but you should move to higher order questions that require opinions, evaluation, and even the creation of ideas as soon as possible. This is where the brain really wakes up.
e.g.
Do you like sports?
What sports do you play?
Why do you like sports?
Why do people play sports?
What sport do you think is the best for teenagers to play?
Do people need sports in their life or is it simply a convenience?
It is also important to have them write things down during the schema activation. For example, in a reading about space, have them write down five things that we know about Saturn. Writing it down is part of the warm up process. Then have them share it. Have them discuss it. This discussion is also part of the warm up process. Or, create a Concept Map of what the group knows about Jupiter. Not all writing activities must be stories and essays. Sometimes we ask them to brainstorm notes and ideas and write down words or phrases only, especially in the beginning of the lesson. Brainstorming is am important cognitive skill.
When starting the pre-reading stage make sure to have visuals on the screen or board that sets the atmosphere and gets the brain going. Images have been shown to stimulate the creative side of the brain, which is needed to build comprehensions --good readers visualize the story or text.
Sometimes it is appropriate to TEACH key words directly. Use the overhead, show them images, give example sentences, and notices the parts of speech of the word. Choose words that are very important for the reading reading. Don’t choose all the words you think they won’t know because it is the pre-reading stage not the whole lesson. Students will need to get used to figuring words in context or ignoring some words not necessary for comprehension. Remember, that when pre-teaching vocabulary, it is important to give learner-friendly definitions: The dictionary definition is most often too difficult for the learners. The teacher should give the students a definition that is simple and direct.
Setting a purpose for reading
This is very important: Are the students reading for specific information (answering questions) or are they reading for general comprehension. If they are reading for general comprehension,students will need specific ways to monitor their reading. If they are reading for specific information, they can skim and scan as necessary to find the information.
Skimming to get the overview
This is one of the main top down reading strategies: Our students need to skim the text for images, key words, and topic sentences. This is the first time the students really put their eyes on the text. Skimming the text means that they get a general feel for the text so they can activate schema and make a prediction.
Making predictions
It is real important for the students to make predictions and confirm or deny those predictions as they read. Both during and after, students need to be mindful of what predictions were true and what predictions were not true. This is why the predictions need to be written down so they can explicitly checked. Here is an example dialog during the prediction stage:
S -- I think that this article will tell me stuff about planets.
T—what kind of stuff? Talk to your partner and try to be really specific.
S- like the temperatures of the planets, how big it is, and what kind of gasses are in it
T—OK, good job. Why do you think that?
S—I see lots of numbers in the text and I see words like big and wide
T-OK, so do you think this article will be an article that gives information or will it try to convince us of something? Will it discuss problems? Or solutions? Will it talk about history?
S-I think it might talk about history a little, but mostly it will give information.
T-Good, please write the types of information you think will be in the text.
T-Now, share your predictions with your a classmate.
The following resource might be helpful for further investigation on the topic of pre-reading strategies.
While-reading Stage
Implementing Comprehension Strategies
During this stage teachers should support the readers' comprehension. There are many ways to do this, and there is lots of advice on how to do this. However, the main goal is that you help the readers monitor their comprehension 'live'. To check comprehension 'live' means that as the readers build comprehension they stop and check how they are doing. This will require the teacher to ask the students to use some strategies. Common strategies for monitoring/supporting comprehension are:
Identifying main ideas VS Details
Identifying Key words
Visualizing activities (picture drawing)
Taking notes
Making inferences based on schema
Having students create questions for each other.
Use flow charts (to emphasize a process)
Cause and effect charts (to emphasize cause & effect)
Venn Diagrams (to emphasize similarities and differences)
Column notes and sticky notes.
Reciprocal Teaching: Students teach each other.
Meet in corners or groups to discuss what they understand
Drawing pictures at different moments during the reading.
Creating concepts maps of the text
Having peer discussions
Making journal entries
Identifying areas of difficulty & Repairing
Post-reading strategies
The key here is that get them to process and deepen their understanding from the text and by doing an activity that requires them to use or think more about the text. But, be careful that knowledge of the text from reading is necessary to do the project. For me this is important. They must have read and comprehended the text to engage in the post activity. Here are some ideas:
Discussions
Sharing activity
Games shows
Essays
Letters
Posters
Drawings
Reflections
Summaries
Role plays
Listening activities
Each text will offer different possibilities, and your imagination and creativity is the only limit.
More Great Resources for Secondary Reading
http://www.readingquest.org/links.html
Before, During & After Reading
Google Sites
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