Goals for Understanding Comprehension and discussion as a teaching tool The important parts of planning for a text-based discussion Text analysis Setting learning goals The kinds of questions and responses to students that support students in building a robust mental representation of a text How to apply a scheme for planning, conducting, and evaluating text-based discussions How to assess whether students actually learned what you set out in your learning goals

Traditional (Outdated) View of Comprehension Comprehension is a set of skills (main idea, cause and effect, sequencing, predicting) The meaning of a text resides in the text itself The job of the reader is to remember the specific information using skills (e.g. identify main idea)

Traditional (Outdated) View= Traditional (Outdated) Instruction Teach comprehension skills (e.g. finding the main idea) Assess whether students can apply a given skill Assess whether students have gained a specific meaning of a text Focused on mentioning vs. teaching Remembering information vs. creating meaning

Traditional (Outdated) View = Traditional (Outdated) Patterns of Classroom Talk IRE (Initiate, Respond, Evaluate) or “Classroom quiz show”: Teachers act as quiz show hosts, asking questions that have one correct answer, which can usually be found right in the text (Dillon, 1998; Roby, 1988; Mehan, 1979) Teacher: What was Toad looking for? Student: His button. Teacher: That’s right. “Bull sessions”: Students offer opinions, but comments are not connected or responsive to what others are saying (Roby, 1988). Scaffolding Comprehension through read-aloud Scaffolding comprehension through reading

Current Research-based Principles of Comprehension

Comprehension Process Active: Making sense of the text ideas by questioning, connecting, and explaining them; more than remembering; requires effort and engagement Constructive: Constructing meaning during reading based on the interaction between the reader (with prior knowledge, skills, and strategies), the text, and the context Strategic: Knowing when a text is not making sense and consciously acting on this awareness Holistic: More than a set of skills; an active engagement with a text where strategies are applied to gain meaning

Current Views, Current Instruction: Moving Beyond Quiz Shows and Bull Sessions

Discussing Texts During Reading Links oral and written language Students can think and talk about sophisticated texts even if they can’t read those texts themselves (read-aloud texts) Discussion of texts provides students the opportunity to experience and use decontextualized language Helps expand vocabulary knowledge Social context of the group can support student effort to comprehend text ideas.

Planning and Conducting Text-Based Discussions

Teachers’ Role in Discussion The questions teachers ask and the ways they respond to students’ comments can support students’ comprehension as well as their understanding of the process of comprehension Discussion during reading models what good readers do as they read Engaging in discussion helps students understand that actively engaging with what an author has written is what reading is all about

Cornett, Chapter 7, Review: What kinds of questions are most effective for sparking discussion and meaning making? Open-ended questions; more than one right answer Challenging enough that students have to “think” (infer, connect, integrate) What is an example of this kind of question? What’s going on here? What is the author trying to say here? What makes you think that? (back to the text) What is the ultimate goal of a text-based discussion? Realizing meaning-making is hard work! Support students in building meaning (constructing their own mental network) through language and discussion Fill this out as a group after partners work to complete the activity sheet: Identifying and Addressing Students’ Reading Comprehension Needs

Text-Based Discussion Video Review What do you notice about questioning and talking in this lesson? What do you notice about the teacher? What do you notice about the students? How did this happen??

Text-Based Discussion – How does this happen?? Teachers come to each lesson PREPARED – read the book and know main ideas and big ideas, figure out what will be challenging/helpful and think about questions PREPARE students to understand/teach how a discussion words (practice over time) Know your students and put yourself in your students’ shoes – think like them…ANTICIPATE: What will they struggle with? What will make sense? HIGHLY SKILLED IN ASKING HIGHER LEVEL QUESTIONS (what are the right ones and when) MODEL (TEACH!): model the discussion process; and show how YOU would do this/solve this as an “expert” – don’t just ask questions that test students (teach them and then gradually release responsibility) Set learning goals It depends on Learning goals What are the “right” questions and the right locations to ask them?

Thinking about Teacher Questions The questions teachers ask send messages to students about what’s important “What did Joseph do next? (Students need to remember the information) “What does this tell us?; What do you think the author means?” (Students need to think about what they have understood) Develop open questions that require students to describe and explain text ideas What’s going on here? What’s happening? Avoid solely asking questions that require students to give one word answers or playback words from text

What’s going on with these questions? What can you tell me about some of the characters? Who’s one of the main characters? Can someone describe the setting of the train? What’s the train like? Would you want to be on that train? So how about her as a person? Is she more successful or does she feel better about herself? What kind of things are they doing to send off the ship? Is it just leaving and nobody cares? That’s the memo written by Dr. Seymour. What about that one? Is this the longest or the shortest? What is important about being near the waterways? What is it helpful for? What kind of ship was it? Was it sailing with freight on it? Carrying goods somewhere?

What’s going on here? Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is about a boy named…? Prizes in their cereal, and Alexander got…? Right, his paper was…? Every once in a while we have a what…?

Planning a Text-Based Discussion Select the text Analyze the text Identify learning goals Decide what to do before reading Segment the text Plan out initial questions Decide what to do after reading (to assess learning goals)

Conducting a Discussion

Three Parts of a Discussione Discussion Pre-reading (introduction/launch) Question/activity/comment Use of time Use of voice/gesture/text During reading (support student interactions with the text) Use of plan Question asking Responding to students After reading (Exit, assess learning goals) Assessment Transitioning

Introducing/Launching the text Ask questions that focus on specific ideas that are relevant to understanding the story Help students connect what they know to what they will be reading Pre-reading discussions should be brief and specific. Prolonged discussion can overemphasize the importance of what students already know (or think they know) (over-reliance on background knowledge) Prolonged discussions can divert students’ attention away from what they might discover from the text (under-reliance on text)

During Reading: Quality Questions Lead students to make connections So what’s this about pheromones, food, and a chemical trail? Focus student thinking on specific information in a text So now we start to find out more about the dance. What do we find out? The author told us a lot about pheromones here. What did we find out about them? “The males can’t help themselves.” What does that mean? There’s a lot of information in that long section, but what do you think the most important ideas are? What do you think the author wants us to understand from this part? Elicit explanation How would that work? Support students in making inferences Why do you think Lee is acting this way? What is she trying to do? Get at the big ideas Why did scientists invent a robot bee?

Responding to Student Comments During Reading (Following-up) The ways teachers respond to student comments send messages about what’s important and scaffold students constructing meaning from text

Quality Responses to Student Comments Connect: Connect student ideas, weave them together You have given us such good examples of how the ants release the pheromone. Putting them together lets us understand how that works very well now. Revoice: Rephrasing what students are struggling to express, or broadening a response to be more general It seems as if you’re talking about the robot as if it were a little bee. Is that what you mean? Student Response: Because he might try to eat her. Teacher Follow-Up: He might try to do something bad to her. Turning Back: Bring students back into the text to reread and talk about what that part of the text is about You think the flute is magic. Does anyone remember what she said whenever they were about to go back to his place? Find it in your text.

Quality Responses to Student Comments Marking: Acknowledge and use important student comments and ideas That’s a very important idea. Let’s remember that. Probing: Encourage students to explain, elaborate, and provide reasons for their thinking Tell us more about that. What makes you think that way? Annotating: Providing additional information that is not in the text, but could help students in comprehending the text There’s no information in the text that explains how this works, so I had to look up some facts about how the dance is really done.

Quality Responses to Student Comments Reinforcing/Agreeing: Let’s students know they are on the right track; Reinforces idea and allows teacher to model her own thinking Teacher Q: Why are they worried? Student: They're probably looking for her. She hasn't been back. Teacher FU: We got it. That's right. Student: He probably is mean because he said that he was pretending to be her friend. Teacher: Oh, I like what Donald just said. Well, I agree with you, Donald. Anyone that pretends to be someone's friend is not very nice. Modeling: Thinking aloud or demonstrating how to resolve a point of confusion or lack of understanding. For example, a teacher might say, “That part is confusing. I need to read it again.”

Unproductive Moves Asking students about personal experiences related to the text Asking students to predict Repeating verbatim student contributions Collecting a series of student responses to one question without building connections Over-relying on questions that ask students to retrieve or remember information in the text Asking students to guess at the meaning of a word, instead of providing a quick definition

Practicing in Groups: Pompeii and Herculaneum Challenges and Resources Main Idea Big Idea Learning Goals How would you launch the text? Pages 1-2: Potential stopping points and questions to ask How to follow-up?

The First Discovery (Section 1) Main idea: Students should know that marble pieces have been discovered that give clues to something that happened a long time ago. STOP: After first two paragraphs Q: So, what do we know so far? A: (S1)An Italian farmer found some beautiful stones in the ground while digging out a well. F: Okay, yes, these stones were marble and alabaster (which are both valuable kinds of stones). What else does the author tell us in this first section? A. (S2) The farmer decided to sell them to get more money. F: Good. What does the author tell us about where the farmer found these stones? And why might that matter? A. In the shadow of the volcano…in Italy…maybe the marble came from the volcano?? F. Ok, so we know from previewing the text that the next section is titled “From Decorations to Discovery.” How do you think this first section is connected to the rest of this text? Q. Let’s read the next section to find out.

The First Discovery (Section 2) Main idea: STOP: Q: A: F: A. Q. Purpose: Let’s read the next section to …

Your section Main idea: STOP: (indicate text section read in left column) Discussion Sequence (in right column) Q: A: F: A. Purpose: Let’s read the next section to …