1. Describe in broad stokes the reading processes that take place during comprehension of informational text (p. 362, under Construction of Meaning and Concept Development with Informational Texts).
Comprehension of informational texts requires accessing accurate, relevant knowledge, managing mental processes during reading within the confines of a limited working memory, and constructing a coherent mental representation through pruning and organizational processes.
2. Specify the effect that background knowledge may have on constructing mental representations from informational text. Why should teachers be concerned about activating prior knowledge?
The evidence currently indicates that young children rely heavily on back-ground knowledge in their interactions with text. Mediation that prompts young readers to activate relevant background information is an important support, but teachers must be sensitive to dialogue indicating that children may be relying on inaccurate or irrelevant prior knowledge. Ideally, instruction should help children learn to use their knowledge of both content and genre to effectively make specific connections to text. Discussion plays a critical role in exposing inadequate or inaccurate prior knowledge and in scaffolding the meaning construction process of novice readers.
3. What are the three instructional approaches that can be used to help primary-grade students comprehend informational text? Describe their common (p. 365) and distinctive features (p. 363-5).
All three approaches are structured, teacher-facilitated social interactions, focused on increasing students’ comprehension of text. All three approaches engage students in generating purposeful predictions based on prior knowledge and informational text features, such as pictures, table of content, and headings. The commonalities in all three approaches are an emphasis on reader engagement and social mediation, activation of relevant prior knowledge and anticipation of what information might be likely to be included in a text.
- Picture Walk – Conversations typically occur as the teacher and students preview each page or few pages of a new book, before reading. The pictures are used as a catalyst for a discussion of what the book is likely to be about. Two or three vocabulary words are explicitly introduced during the Picture Walk. Aimed at promoting fluency and comprehension, the Picture Walk is used flexibly and in response to students’ needs and the challenges of a particular text.
- Know-Want to Learn-Learn – This technique was originally developed to enable teachers to access the prior knowledge of students and to help students develop their own purposes for reading expository text. In this process the teacher generates a discussion about a text topic and uses a chart or worksheet to record students’ statements about what they know, want to learn, and after reading what they learned.
- Directed Reading-Thinking Activity - The teacher’s role in a directed Reading-Thinking Activity is to select an instructional level text, divide the text into meaningful sections, and facilitate discussion of each section of text. Students are responsible for establishing their own purposes for reading, generating predictions, justifying those predictions, independently reading the text, and verifying or revising predictions based on evaluations of information in the text during the teacher-led discussion of each section.
4. What is the purpose of the experimental study reported?
The purpose of this study was to explore how the PW, KWL, and DRTA might influence developmental reading abilities and content acquisition when used with informational text in the primary reading group context. The focus of the investigation was on the ways the differences in instructional approaches influenced the construction of meaning by novice readers.
5. Who were the subjects?
The participants were 31 second-grade students in two demographically similar schools, in the same school district, in a midsize Midwest City. All students were proficient in English. There were 25 African-Americans, 3 European-Americans, 1 Latino, and 2 Asian/Pacific Islanders. Of the participants, there were 16 boys and 15 girls. The students had an instructional reading level three to six months below grade level.
6. Describe the reading materials used during the intervention.
The selected informational texts were topics that were likely to be familiar to second-grade students. The texts addressed science topics that had been taught to the students in their first or second grade science curriculum as part of the state science content standards. The specific sequence of topics for each group during both cycles was spiders, the moon, how water changes form, and insects.
7. How long did the experiment last?
I gathered data over 10 weeks, conducting two four-week periods of intervention within that time frame. Following two days of individual pre-experimental screening to endure that readers shared a common instructional level, I conducted a 45 minute orientation session with each group. There were 12 days of intervention in each cycle. Each group received each treatment for three days, with data being collected only on the third day. On the day following the conclusion of the intervention cycle, I interviewed students about the comprehension strategies and instructional preferences.
8. What were the experimental conditions?
One day after screening, but before interventions, a 45 minute orientation session was held with each group. This orientation was conducted to practice logistical routines such as management procedures, scheduling confirmation, and assessment tasks. Each day, the same book was introduced to all of the children for a total of 12 text selections during the intervention. Assessments were conducted only on Day 3, so the treatments were tested using four different texts.
9. Describe the procedures specific to the PW, KWL, DRTA, and the Control Group conditions.
- PW – We engaged in an interactive discussion about the book as we worked through the book page-by-page, talking about the pictures, the text structure, and the student’s prior knowledge, and formulating predictions based on that information.
- KWL – We made a group KWL chart. Their input was written on the chart in the Know column. Each child then wrote what he or she knew on a personal KWL chart before it was shared and written on our large group chart. Next, the children categorized the recorded information. The next step was for the children to generate questions about the topic. Before generating questions that were placed in the “What I Want to Learn” column, they were provided the same brief overview of the book that the other groups received before reading. Their questions and “Want to Learn” statements were written on the group chart each day. After reading, we began our post-reading discussion by considering whether the text had provided answers to any student questions. If so, I recorded the information in the “What I Learned” column. Then we discussed other new learning and recorded it on the group chart.
- DRTA – Before reading, the students formulated and justified predictions about the text based on the title, cover, prior knowledge and table of contents. Students predicted for a two-page or three-page section of text. After reading each section of text, a brief discussion was held to verify predictions, summarize the information in the text, and generate new predictions, and headings.
- Non-Instructional Control Condition – The children had an opportunity to read the same informational texts that were read in the intervention conditions. Before reading I presented the same brief overview of the text that had been provided to the treatment groups. Independent reading was always followed by drawing a picture and/or writing about something they would like to share with the group based on the text.
10. What measures were used to determine the relative effectiveness of the treatments? Describe the measures briefly.
- Vocabulary Recognition Tasks – Evaluate entry level vocabulary, whether vocabulary gains were occurring, and whether any of the treatments was superior in helping children become familiar with the content vocabulary.
- Maze – It was a timed, group administered task. The original text read by students was reprinted after the deletion of 10 content words. The score on the maze task the number of correct responses.
- Free Recall – Students responded to the prompt, “Please tell me everything you can remember about the book. Also tell me anything the book made you think of.” The answers were written on the code sheet and scored.
- Cued Recall – After the free recall, each child was asked to answer three explicit and three implicit questions based on that day’s text. First, the items were scored as correct or incorrect as a measure of general comprehension. Next, a four point scale was used to produce weighted scores for each answer.
- Post-Intervention Interview – At the conclusion of each research cycle, individual interview with the students in that cycle were conducted. The question surveyed three types of strategy knowledge: Declarative, Procedural, and Conditional Knowledge.
11. Which treatment(s) were found to be more effective in increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and maze performance (p. 381)?
All intervention groups made vocabulary gains. This finding demonstrates that the use of informational texts with novice readers does extend their vocabularies. Both the PW and the DRTA yielded statistically significant effects on the maze. The page-by-page walk-through of the text either before reading, as in the PW, or during reading, as in DRTA, seemed to promote a close reading that enabled students to identify words automatically and to facilitate higher scores on the timed maze task.
12. Students’ comprehension of the texts was greater under the DRTA condition than KWL and the control conditions. What do you think explains DRTA’s advantage over the KWL condition (p. 382)?
Although the student sin all four groups were monitored during reading the teacher guidance during the DRTA tended to direct the children’s attention to the important ideas and assist with difficult text concepts in a way that was not provided for in the other interventions.
13. It was found that the treatments did not differ in the quality and quantity of students’ retellings (p. 384). In other words, students were not differentially affected by the treatments in the way they integrated textual information with prior knowledge. What does this finding mean in terms of the different emphases employed by experience-based (KWL) vs. text-based (DRTA) treatments?
It was expected that KWL, an intervention that encourages, documents, and honors students’ experiences, would yield retellings that included more content or broader content than a text-based interventions such as the DRTA or the PW. Analyses did not reveal any significant differences by intervention for the number of total ideas recalled or differences in importations of outside information.
14. In light of the findings from this study, what conclusions can you draw about the role of teacher support in children’s construction of mental representations from informational text?
From this article I have learned of the importance that prior knowledge can have on a students’ understanding of their reading. However, I have also learned that it is important for educators to correct prior information if it is inaccurate or irrelevant prior knowledge. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye on what is happening in the classroom because if not we could cripple students reading and vocabulary skills.
