Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Adolescent Literacy
Q. Why has NHREADS chosen to focus on grades 4-12?
While there is reason for some optimism regarding growth in reading achievement in grades
1-3 in the United States, the same cannot yet be said for grades 4-12. During the period from 1992 to 2005, the percentage of students performing at or above Basic on The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) decreased from 80% to 73%. The percentage of students performing at or above Proficient decreased from 40% to 35%. The gap between males and females widened. As the RAND Report (2004) on reading points out, that decline is at odds with the heightened literacy requirements of the Information Age.
The Report of the National Reading Panel (2000), RAND Report and Reading Next all point to the critical importance of increasing content area reading comprehension skills through middle and high school.
To help teachers become expert facilitators of such growth, Federal Title II-A monies are funding NHREADS’ professional development activities.
Q.What kinds of things do good readers do to comprehend challenging material?
A. In a meta-analysis of reading instruction studies, The 2000 Report of the National Reading Panel found seven categories of text comprehension instruction that most appear to improve comprehension in non-impaired readers. These are:
- Comprehension monitoring, where readers learn how to be aware of their understanding of the material;
- Cooperative learning, where students learn reading strategies together;
- Use of graphic and semantic organizers (including story maps), where readers make graphic representations of the material to assist comprehension;
- Question answering, where readers answer questions posed by the teacher and receive immediate feedback;
- Question generation, where readers ask themselves questions about various aspects of the story;
- Story structure, where students are taught to use the structure of the story as a means of helping them recall story content in order to answer questions about what they have read; and
- Summarization, where readers are taught to integrate ideas and generalize from the text information.
Reading Next, a 2004 report from the Alliance for Excellent Education (Biancarosa and Snow) identified 15 critical elements of effective adolescent literacy programs. Click here to read the executive summary of that report.
Q. What are reading comprehension “strategies”?
A. Good readers sharpen their understanding of complex text or text with unfamiliar vocabulary by using particular focused steps before, during and after reading. Such steps are “strategic”, that is, used consciously and to accomplish particular aims. For example, while reading, good readers ask themselves silent questions of the text such as:
- “Is this a factual article, or is the author interjecting his or her opinion? If the latter, what are my thoughts about that opinion?”
- “I wonder what “interstitial means? Am I confident in my guess as to its meaning based on the context? Shall I stop reading now and look for the meaning or paste a sticky on this page to remind myself to come back to it?”
Another strategy good readers use is answering internal questions as they read, such as:
- “Oh, I remember that “inter” means between, so maybe “interstitial spaces” in this article about cells has something to do with the space between cells.
Strategic readers varying the speed at which they read and consciously monitor their degree of comprehension. When comprehension breaks down, they move to a strategy that can restart comprehension. Research has shown that in order to comprehend increasingly dense and complex text without becoming discouraged (“I just don’t get it!”), the great majority of middle and high school students benefit from some direct instruction in meta-cognition of their reading, that is, instruction in what and how to think when reading.
Q. I am a content area teacher, not a reading teacher. Why should I teach reading strategies in my class?
A. Content area teachers help their students comprehend the course content when they
include focused reading strategies in their teaching. For example, full understanding of a scientific paper includes noting the authors’ qualifications and previous research and whether the author(s) cite the study’s limitations.
NHREADS consultants are experienced former math, science, social studies and language arts teachers who are also knowledgeable in subject-specific comprehension strategies. NHREADS workshops do not intend to produce reading teachers, but rather to equip teachers with ways help students learn the content of their classes in greater depth and with greater understanding.
