A Reflection on Planning and Teaching as Enacted in Relation to My English Intervention

My reading intervention for a group of 4 students was a sequence aimed at raising the students
levels of reading comprehension through the explicit teaching of three of Dymock and
Nicholsons (2012) High 5! strategies: activating background knowledge, questioning, and
narrative text structure awareness. In this sequence of lessons I learned the benefit of
adaptation and differentiated planning and instruction. Addressing the unique needs of my group
of learners was a challenge for my burgeoning pedagogical practices in reading comprehension
as it only further exhibited just how much reading comprehension is a complex and
multidimensional construct (Carlson, Seipel & McMaster, 2014, p. 40). Being a passionate and
avid reader myself was not enough to help me explain reading processes. Nor does it help me
evaluate and aid in the teaching and learning of reading comprehension. In consequence, it was
my prerogative to be guided by research and theory.

If the most important skill for success in school is reading comprehension (Hui-Fang & I-Ju,
2010), then as a reading teacher it is necessary to understand the nature of reading and what
really happens when one is reading. In my exploration of reading models, I have found
Stanovichs (1980) interactive-compensatory model of reading the most aligned with my ideas
on reading processes as it integrates both top-down and bottom-up models while taking into
account the readers background knowledge and ability to construct meaning and make
predictions (as cited in Tracey and Morrow, 2012). With this approach, I began to construct
lessons that, through guided reading, explicitly taught reading comprehension strategies and
modelled them with graphic organisers. All three of the aforementioned strategies from Dymock
and Nicholson (2012) were integral to my lessons on reading comprehension but due to the
confined scope of this reflection I will only focus on the High 5! Comprehension strategies of
questioning and analysing text structure. I will also address the importance of developing
metacognitive awareness in students through these strategies to further aid reading
comprehension.
Questioning
For my reading group, questioning was an important focus, as many students were solely
successful in answering in the text questions and were struggling with inferential questions
that required accessing background knowledge. I agree with Dymock and Nicholson (2012) that

students need help to gain awareness and think strategically about the different kinds of
questions and the answers they require. In my lesson sequence I began with the two main types
of questioning: in the text and in your head, and later introduced the four main subcategories
(Dymock & Nicholson, 2012). Being aware of different types of questions had a positive effect
on my learners. Although they still struggled to come up with in your head questions at the end
of the 4 lesson sequence, they were actively questioning while they read and began connecting
their prior knowledge to ideas and questions. In addition, distinguishing in the text and
inferential questions promoted citing supportive textual evidence when writing and answering
questions. My students were unable to successfully distinguish between the four subcategories
of questions in just one lesson but I gave them an info-graphic to put in their books so that they
could use it for further learning. In evaluating and identifying the different kinds of questioning,
students were successfully able to determine whether the answers were in the text or inferential.
The metacognitive implications of teaching questioning
The other benefit of teaching questioning was the engagement it motivated. According to Kelly
and Clausen-Grace (2013), question answering and question generating not only give students
a purpose for reading, they encourage comprehension monitoring(p. 158). This goes hand in
hand with what Calfee and Patrick (1995, as cited in Dymock and Nicholson, 2012) call real
questions that truly require students to think about what they are reading, engage with their
prior knowledge and prompt real conversations. Having a purpose for reading encourages
students to extend their learning beyond what is being taught and stops them from simply filling
out worksheets and writing answers without thinking (Kelley & Clausen-Grace, 2013). By stating
the instructional goals and explicitly telling the students the importance of forming and
answering different kinds of questions, I was beginning my foray into teaching metacognition:
the act of reflecting on and monitoring cognitive activity (Henry, 2010, p. 312). This did not only
apply to teaching the subcategories of questions but also to the questions that the readers must
ask themselves while they are reading to monitor their own comprehension (Hui-Fang & I-Ju,
2010). This includes reflecting on questions around narrative text structure, as well as around
the greater theme of a text. My goal is to raise students awareness as to how the strategy of
questioning can assist in their comprehension and help them to ascertain if they understand a
text or not. If they can do this, then as teacher I have succeeded in teaching them how to be
independent readers with effective strategies for answering questions (Dymock & Nicholson,
2012, p. 91), who can use this strategy in new ways.

Analysing text structure

Dymock and Nicholson (2012) state that knowledge about how writers structure narrative text
can help reading and writing (p. 69). Research has shown that story grammars are helpful for
comprehension and are an important part of narrative text structure awareness (Dymock, 2007).
In my enacted lessons, I modelled the strategy of analysing text structure by filling in story
webs, character comparisons, and episode analyses. In hindsight, I would have liked to
dedicate more time to each individual characteristic of the story grammar in a well established
learning structure so that they would have deeper comprehension. Instead, I introduced 2
characteristics at a time. My students retained the technical language very well and even made
up actions to help them remember the four parts of a plot. Taking the time to explain to them
that knowledge of narrative text structure can help them understand most of the stories they
read helped the students focus on why we were learning it and how they could apply it later.
With this kind of incentive, it is no wonder that that they began to ask their own questions to help
them understand text structure.
Reflection
Through my four lessons, I have started my students on the journey of using comprehension
strategies. Because reading comprehension is learned slowly and gradually as our knowledge
in other areas expands, it is helpful for students to learn step-by-step demonstrations of good
reading strategies (Dymock & Nicholson, 2012). My lessons described and modelled 3 new
strategies and explained why they were worth knowing and using. Ideally the following lessons
would continue to apply the strategies with repetition and different activities. As a reading
teacher, I wish to further apply the interactive-compensatory model of reading through teaching
both word-level and higher order (e.g. comprehension, critical thinking) skills and processes
(Pressley & Allington, 2014). In order to do this I have to continuously develop my own content
knowledge and evaluate my instruction. Upon reflection of my lessons as enacted I have found
changes I would make, but the greatest insight gained from my intervention was how explicit
instruction of strategies focuses student learning and has a positive effect on their engagement
and comprehension. I will continue to model how to be a passionate and avid reader, but
hopefully in acquiring new pedagogical content knowledge, I can also model strategies that help
my students become confident and thoughtful readers.

References
Carlson, S., Seipel, B., & McMaster, K. (2014). Development of a new reading comprehension
assessment: Identifying comprehension differences among readers. Learning and Individual
Differences, (32), 40-53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2014.03.003.

Dymock, S. (2007). Comprehension Strategy Instruction: Teaching Narrative Text

Structure Awareness. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), 161167.
Dymock, S., & Nicholson, T. (2012). Teaching reading comprehension: The what, the how,
the why. Wellington, New Zealand: NZCER Press.

Hui-Fang, S., & I-Ju, C. (2010). The Effect of Self-Questioning Strategy on EFL Learners'
Reading Comprehension Development. International Journal Of Learning, 17(2), 41-54.
Kelley, M., Clausen-Grace, N. (2013) Comprehension Shouldn't Be Silent : From Strategy
Instruction to Student Independence (2 Ed). Newark, DE, USA: International Reading
Association.
Pressley, M. & Allington, R. (2014). Reading Instruction That Works, Fourth Edition: The Case
for Balanced Teaching. New York, USA: The Guilford Press.
Tracey , D., Morrow, L. (2012) Lenses on Reading, Second Edition : An Introduction to Theories
and Models (2). New York, US: Guilford Press.