1. Making the Trip More Meaningful: Deeper Comprehension
The Next Chapter
Session 9
Barb Mick - COOR ISD
Jackie Fry - COP ESD

2. Time for a roadmap check…
We’ve introduced assessment, thought about our literacy histories and those of our students, looked at the developmental progression of readers and how to determine the level of our students, and taken a deeper look at comprehension. We looked at writing from a number of angles, and began to practice assessing our students’ writing. We’ve looked more closely at formative assessment and goal setting, and practiced using tools to score our students’ writing and confer with individual writers. We’ve been down the path of oral language and talked about talk as the foundation of comprehension. We looked more closely at phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and vocabulary and examined the Digging Deeper Tools
Tonight we will complete our journey with yet another look at comprehension through the continuum: the earliest acquisition of comprehension to the deepest levels of understanding.

3. Your Turn…
Appoint a time-keeper at your table. (You will have 15 minutes total for discussion, so make sure everyone gets a chance to share.)
Talk in your group about the results of your Spelling Inventory. Talk about ideas for teaching “what’s next” for your case study students. Talk about how you think you might manage the different spelling levels in your classroom.
Show the group the other assessment you chose to use and discuss why you chose that particular one. What did you learn from it?

4. Goals for Session 9
Understand the connection between the stages of literacy.
Learn (or review) how to use the Sulzby Storybook Classification Scheme.
Understand the importance of retelling in comprehension assessment, and learn to use assessments that inform our instruction.
Understand deep comprehension and learn to use the Profundity Scale for Narrative and Expository for assessment.

5. A Continuum of Comprehension

6. Reading Conventionally
Three inseparable components during early elementary:
Comprehension
Letter-Sound Relationships (Alphabetic Principle)
Fluency

7. Reading Emergently
The Reading (and Writing) Concepts and Behaviors that Precede and Develop into Conventional Literacy (Sulzby, 1996)
Three Aspects that Develop Emergently and Come Together in Conventional Reading:
Comprehension/Understanding
Letter-Sound Knowledge (AP)
Concept of Word
When a child begins to read conventionally, he or she uses all three aspects FLEXIBLY and in a COORDINATED way in order to interpret text.

8. The Sulzby Classification Scheme of Emergent Storybook Reading
Comprehension entails linking what is being learned to what is already known.
It is the process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction between a reader’s existing knowledge, the information suggested by the written language, and the context of a situation in which the learning is taking place.
WHAT: An assessment measuring the rudimentary forms of written language comprehension.
WHY: Allows us to understand how literacy is developing, up to conventional reading.
WHEN: Preschool and Kindergarten

9. A Pre-Reading Activity for Non-fiction (an alternative to K-W-L)
Equador 10 year olds banana tree sharp, heavy knives poor country harmful chemicals 250 million kids banning child labor laws 12-hour days as little as $27 a week no longer attend school forced to work
From Kylene Beers, MRA 2014
Participants should read the list of phrases and think about them for a moment. Then get with a partner (only 2!) and write 5 sentences using the words and phrases. You can’t use more than 3-4 words or phrases per sentence, but you need to use them all. Once the partners have created their sentences, ask for volunteers to share one. Create a double-columned document with rows and columns; write the sentences on the left side. Ask, “What questions do you have when you read that sentence?” Record several questions for each sentence on the right hand column.
When you are done, you have engagement and relevancy. Students will now want to read the non-fiction article and they will read with purpose. You have also introduced vocabulary.

10. Questions you could ask at this point to “score” their work:
Do you have 5 sentences?
Did you use all the words and phrases?
Are they all nonfiction?
Each question receives a or a , or do again.
Get out of ppt and go to the T-Chart. Take sentences from the groups, typing them in the boxes on the left as they say them. Once you have a good number, have the participants generate questions for the sentences, one at a time, writing all of their questions into the box on the right of the sentence.

11. Remember…
RIGOR is the energy and attention you bring to the text. Until someone wants to know, it doesn’t matter. This activity builds relevance. Rigor without relevance is JUST HARD!

12. Retelling Definition:
A retelling is an oral or written recount of a text in a child’s own words.
It is an assessment and an instructional strategy that provides information on comprehension, sense of story, and oral language.

13. Rationale Retelling builds comprehension skills in students
Provides teachers with insights on how students organize and process text
Shows how students interpret and comprehend text
A retelling can reveal a particular element that confuses or interferes with a child’s comprehension

14. Retellings can enhance both comprehension and oral reading proficiency
Children naturally love to share stories or information they have read or heard

15. Remember the GRR…

16. Webb’s Depth of Knowledge Level 1: Recall; Level 2: Skill/Concept; Level 3: Strategic Thinking; Level 4: Extend Thinking

17. Profundity
a theoretical construct (developed by Sargent, Huus and Anderson- 1970)

18. Two Profundity Scales …are explicit teaching tools to
develop deep thinking in:
Narrative readings
Expository readings (a distinct skill in Content reading)

19. Steps to Deeper Understanding for NARRATIVE Text

20. Steps to Deeper Understanding for EXPOSITORY Text

21. Why bother with Profundity?
It is an explicit series of strategies to take students from simple to abstract.
It starts by reducing complicated things to simple principles.
It allows for the realization that 2 different ideas can share attributes.
It transforms thinking into themes and universal truths.

22. Your Assignment
Do at least one lesson from the Profundity Scale heuristic for both Narrative text and Expository text.
Assess your case study students’ depth of comprehension using the Narrative Profundity Scale and the Expository Profundity Scale.
Fill out the TNC Student Summary Data and Analysis packet for ONE of your case study students. Bring this, along with the artifacts you have been collecting throughout the course, to our final session. Be ready to share with colleagues.
Bring all of your Reflections Sheets from the previous sessions.

23. Ticket Out the Door & Wrap Up
Make sure to clean up your area and recycle your water bottles.
Please complete your Exit Ticket and turn it in as you leave.
Our next meeting will be: Destination Achieved! Sharing Our Journey
Thank you for your hard work, thoughtful contributions, and professionalism.
Use as their Ticket Out the Door.