CHAPTER 4

COMPREHENSION
INSTRUCTION

“Teaching Content Reading & Writing”

by : Martha Rappp Ruddell
Presented by:
Justin Balli, Anayeli Hernandez, Amanda Casas,
Chelsi Borjas, and Angela J. Haley-Aguilera
The Comprehension Process and Comprehension
Instruction

 The common academic goal of reading is

text comprehension.
 Reading has three additional goals:
 Subject Matter Learning: Students read to
understand text but to extend their
knowledge in subject areas as well.
 Increasing Reading Skills: During each grade
level, students are expected to become
better readers and read increasingly difficult
text.
 Knowledge Application: Through middle and
secondary grades, students are expected to
apply knowledge from the reading of the
Centerpiece Lesson Plan

 This lesson plan is constructed of the Directed

Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) and the Group
Mapping Activity (GMA).
 The following elements can be applied:
 Identification of the lesson being taught, course and grade
level the plan is for, and materials needed for the lesson.
 Identification of the lesson objectives, that state the
students are to know and be able to do at the end of the
lesson
 Identification of content standards associated with each
lesson objective.
 Statement of lesson procedures that is written in such a way
that a substitute can comprehend and teach it the way the
teacher intended.
 Identification of lesson assessments that directly reflect
students mastery of the objectives.
 Provisions that guide students before, during, and after the
learning event.
Example of Center Piece Lesson Plan for Mathematics

 Turn to page 92.

 First set includes: The lesson, the
course/grade, and the materials
required.
 Lesson Objectives (with Content
Standards)
 Lesson Procedures: Before, During,
and After motif.
 Lesson Assessments: That includes
the Observational Assessment and
The Comprehension Process

 The amount of redundancy present in text, controls to some

extent the rate of progress and focus of reader energy and
attention. The more or less skilled of the reader determines
the pace of the learner.
 Elements of thoughtful readers includes:
 Constantly search for connections between what they know and
what they encounter as new information in the text.
 Constantly monitor the adequacy of the models of text meaning
they build.
 Steps taken to repair faulty comprehension upon realization of
failure.
 Distinguishing between important and less important in the text
they read from the text.
 Adept at synthesizing information within and across texts and across
reading experiences.
 Making inferences of the reading to achieve a full integrated
understanding of the text.
 Promoting self-made questions about the author, the texts, and
themselves.
-Continued; What Processes Mature Readers Use to
Flexibly and Selectively Read

 Being aware of their purposes for reading.

 Over viewing text before reading.
 Reading selectively.
 Making associations between new ideas and prior
knowledge
 Evaluating and revising predictions as reading progresses
 Revising prior knowledge that is inconsistent with ideas in
the text.
 Figuring out meanings of new words.
 Underlining, rereading, and making notes.
 Interpreting text through imaginary conversations with the
author
 Evaluating the quality of the text
 Reviewing after reading
 Thinking about how to use/apply the information in the text
-Continued

 Strategic Reading: Reading in which

the reader not only knows what to do,
but how to do it and when to do it.
 Students are sometimes labeled as:
 Declarative: Knowing what to do.
 Procedural: Knowing how to do it.
 Conditional: Knowing when to do it.

Emphasis on skilled readers knowing the

task at hand.
Guided Comprehension

 Important goal for all students is that

they become thoughtful, mature, and
strategic readers of content texts.
 Ways to help students to achieve this, is
to teach in such a way that develops
their characteristics of thoughtful,
mature, strategic readers.
 Goals of the instructional strategies in
this chapter are focused on guiding
comprehension.
 Instructional practices assist students in
learning and applying content
The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA)

 Introduced by Russell Stauffer in 1969 to

develop higher level thinking while
reading.
 Key element of DR-TA is prediction.
 Teachers structure DR-TA lesson in such
a way that students:
 Make predictions about what they are going
to read
 Read to see if predictions were
accurate/useful
 Reconcile their predictions with what they
read
 Revise or add predictions
 Read again
STEPS IN
THE DR-TA
Step 1: Identifying Purposes
for READING
 Begins with students setting individual
and group purposes for reading as they
create intertextual links by combining
prior knowledge with information in text
to predict what the text is going to be
about.
 In discussion, new links occur, and
students therefore return to text
repeatedly with a purpose for reading; to
get answers to questions arising fro their
predictions or to see whether new
information will cause theses predictions
to be revise.
 In the first prediction, the reader had very
little information to go on; the last prediction,
DR-TA with Narrative and Extended
Expository Text
 Teachers’ role during discussion is to accept
student predictions, making no judgment about
how “correct” the predictions are, and to
concentrate on follow-up probe questions after
reading that assist students in making linkages
between what they predicted and what they
found and in articulating the reasons, logic and
evidence for the predictions that were made.
 Teacher’s role involves much more listening
than talking
 Good DR-TA teachers quite often find themselves
stating in form of a class calling on students,
nodding, and saying, “why?” , “ What makes you
say that?”, “um-hmmm”, “Really”, etc.
 One of the greatest values of a DR-TA is the
sharing of diverse individual experiences and
perceptions but this does not mean that DR-TA
lessons compromise the integrity or precision
of what is to be learned
 Understanding of the subject matter
infmormation is the final outcome.
 First, because the text itself is different
DR-TA with other texts
 Different
 First, because the text itself is different
 Example: mathematics texts generally have much
less extended exposition and often combine
exposition with other signs systems.
 Second, information is usually very densely packed
in these texts, so it requires more discussion in
fewer pages
 Example: in the algebra DR-TA discussion steps 4-8
covered only 1 ½ pages of the algebra text, whereas
the full text of “Splendid Outcast” is 15 pages
 Similar
 In each, student acquisition is of new information
informs and strengthens their predictions ad they
progress through text
The Teacher’s Role
 It is important for teachers to listen to
what students say during DR-TA
discussion
 They can learn a great deal about their
prior knowledge base and how they are
creating textual links between what they
know and what they are learning
 The value here, then, is the sharing of
personal background and reasoning,
different as these may be, to increase
everyone’s fund of knowledge, hone
thinking skills and provide immediate
purpose for reading.
Step 2: Adjusting Rate to
Purpose and Material
 Rate adjustment occurs in two dimensions
 1. Rate and Flow of information (teacher determine)
 2.Reading rate (student determine)
 The teacher determines the amount of text to be revealed
between stop and points and the length of discussion time
at each.
Rate and flow information
 The first stop-point should occur immediately following a tile
or opening line. Students are invited to speculate about all
the possible contexts into which the title(or line) might fit.
 The second stop point may be after one or two paragraphs
in some texts where introductory information provides clues
as to the central ideas of the text, or it may be with other
texts after the stated goals/aims/objectives of a chapter in
which such information also resides.
 From this point forward, the nature of the text determines
the amount of text between stop-points.
 A good rule is to have no more than four or
five stops in one lesson.
 The amount of time allowed determines how
long students will have to think and draw
conclusions or make decisions about what
they are reading. It depends in part, on the
amount of information available and the
degree of student participation
Rate Adjustment
 The second of rate adjustment occurs
spontaneously as students alter their
reading rates to meet both their own needs
and the needs of discussion
 The degree and amount of rate adjustment
vary considerably from individual t individual
 The importance here is that, for all students,
situational demand requires the application
of a reading skill that increases their
Step 3: Observing the
Reading
 The Round Robin Oral reading really does
not belong in the classroom because it
simply leaves students on their own to sink
or swim and the other because it promotes
dependency by removing all responsibility
for reading from them.
 For instruction to be effective, a certain
amount of guided silent reading needs to
be done in school; it is not wasted time.
 Whether in a small groups or with an entire class,
the teacher can quickly learn which students are
faster readers and which are slower, which are
actually reading and which are not, which
students exhibit signs of serious reading
problems , what strategies they use to get
meaning from text or figure out word , and many
 Oral reading can and should take place,
either spontaneously when a student
reads from text to support an opinion, or
focused by teacher direction.
 Teachers observations of both silen and
oral reading yields information about
individuals and groups that is useful for:
 Conducting the lesson at hand
 Planning subsequent lessons
 Selecting materials that are appropriate and
useful with this class
 Determining the amount and kind of
guidance needed for future instruction
 Making recommendations for students to be
screened for special programs
Step 4:Developing
Comprehension
 It occurs as students combine prior knowledge
and new information to make predictions, read
confirm or adjust their predictions, and then draw
conclusions and speculate during class
discussion. It also occurs during the periodic
discussions as students compare their knowledge
base with others’, review and revise their own
logic, and add others’ ideas and viewpoints to
their thinking.
 Also critical to developing comprehension in the
DR-TA are questioning strategies that teacher use
to initiate and extend discussion.
 The standard DR-TA has essentially two types of
questions
 Questions that require speculation, prediction, and
critical analysis (can be seen in page 108-109)
 In the DR-TA, questions other than those
that require making and supporting
predictions and drawing conclusions are
generally probes to assist students in
articulating t their thinking.
 The open-ended questions of the DR-TA
focus attention on the larger issues, and
thus literal meaning remains in rightful
perspective. It is only when students
response to the open-ended question
indicates misunderstanding that literal
questions are asked. Literal questions
are asked immediately to clarify and
remove the misunderstanding; as soon
as that is accomplished, teacher
questions should return to the types
Step 5:Developing Fundamental
skills and Assessment
 When the reading is completed, the teacher directs
the class in developing skills that are appropriate to
student needs and instructional goals
 Activities should extend student response to the text
in some important way and may include solving
problems, writing experiment logs, vocabulary study,
various activities to organize ad combine information,
or any of numerous writing activities.
 The importance here is that
 1. follow-up activities are thoughtful, meaningful
additions to the reading experience
 2. assessments that accompany these activities
reflect what students were taught and the lesson
objectives and content standards identified for the
lesson

Turn to page 99-101, to view textbook DR-TA LESSON

Creating Strategic
Readers
-Becoming a strategic reader is essential for higher
learning.

-One must use introspective and metacognitive thought.

-You can help students become strategic readers by using

the DR-TA’s.
HOW TO MAKE A
DR-TA
1. Select the reading assignment
2. Determine stop-points.
3. Prepare questions to be asked at
stop points, and have students
predict out comes.
4. Obtain/ prepare cover sheets for
students. (If needed)
5. Determine and prepare
assessments needed for the lesson.
CRITICAL LITERACY AND
GUIDED COMPREHENSION

-To be literate is to go beyond simple literal construction of

meaning to engage in critical examination of the world with
respect to issues of power, politics, economics, voice, and
available Discourses, and one’s position in relationship to all.

-Bakhtin (1981) calls this “independent discriminate thinking”.

-Different theorists have different approaches to critical literacy

pg. 114
- Allen Luke
-Tom Bean and Karen Moni
-Colin Harrison
THE GMA
GMA- Group Mapping Activity
-Introduced by Jane Davidson (1982)
- Used to help students organize information after
reading.
- it may have shapes, lines, figures, words,
anything you want.
- GMA should follow a DR-TA lesson because it
helps organize and retain information.
-ex. Story train
- allows students to respond to the text from their
own knowledge base and preferred means of
representation.
Transmeditation – translation of content from one
sign system to another.
Map Sharing – after mapping, student can explain to
their peers what they understood from the text,
How to do a GMA
1. Prepare “dummy map”

3. After reading, instruct students to map their

perceptions of the reading

5. Have students display maps

7. Allow students to tell about their maps, to a partner or

to entire class.

9. Encourage, and model, questions that allow students

sharing their maps to clarify and extend their thinking

11. Determine and plan assessment procedures.

 117.1. IMPLEMENTATION OF
TEXAS ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE
AND SKILLS FOR FINE ARTS,
ELEMENTARY
(1)  Four basic strands--perception, creative
expression/performance, historical and cultural
heritage, and critical evaluation--provide broad,
unifying structures for organizing the knowledge and
skills students are expected to acquire. Students rely
on their perceptions of the environment, developed
through increasing visual awareness and sensitivity
to surroundings, memory, imagination, and life
experiences, as a source for creating artworks. They
express their thoughts and ideas creatively, while
challenging their imagination, fostering reflective
thinking, and developing disciplined effort and
problem-solving skills.
 (2)  By analyzing artistic styles and historical periods
students develop respect for the traditions and
contributions of diverse cultures. Students respond to
and analyze artworks, thus contributing to the
development of lifelong skills of making informed
judgments and evaluations.

 §117.3. Music, Kindergarten.

 Knowledge and skills

 Response/evaluation. The student responds to and
evaluates music and musical performance. The student
is expected to:
 (A)  identify steady beat in musical performances; and
 PART II: COMPREHENSION
LEVELS, TEACHERS QUESTIONS,
AND COMPREHENSION
INSTRUCTION
 Four goals:

 Comprehending
 Learning subject area
content
 Increasing reading skills
 Applying new knowledge
 Levels of comprehension

 “levels
of
comprehension”- levels of
questioning that guide
student’s comprehension
3 LEVELS OF COMPREHENSION

 LITERAL COMPREHENSION- “reading the lines”/ text

explicit
 The reader understands the ideas stated directly in
text
 INTERPRETIVE COMPREHENSION- “reading between the
lines”/text implicit
 The reader draws conclusions in response to unstated
cause-effect relationships or comparisons
 APPLIED COMPREHENSION- “beyond the line”/schema
explicit
 The reader is able to integrate new information with
previous knowledge, from which new relationships
emerge
*THE GOAL OF COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTION IS
TO TEACH STUDENTS HOW TO ACHIEVE ALL
 TEACHER QUESTIONS

 Teacher questions and teacher-led

discussions have been the subject of
much study and concern since the mid-
1960’s.
 Frank Guszak published research that
reported: 74% teachers ask at the literal
level, 8% at the interpretive level, and
19% at the applied level.
 Majority of instruction time is devoted to
students’ supplying literal answers to
teachers’ literal questions.
 John Goodlad describes this as “frontal
 Donna Alvermann and David Moore
describe the common scene pg.
124

 Often discussions rarely get around

to the higher-level questions
because teachers simply don’t
know how get beyond literal
questions.
 Teacher questions and guided
comprehension
 Directed Reading Activity (DRA)- designed originally
for the purpose of increasing students’
comprehension of text by removing barriers to
comprehension, encouraging guided silent reading
of text, and embedding skill development into
lessons focusing on conceptual understanding.
 5 Steps of DRA
3. Preparation for reading
4. Guided silent reading
5. Comprehension development
6. Skill development and application
7. Extension and follow-up activities
 Step 1: Preparation for reading

 Vocabulary presented in the text

 Identify words that are critical to comprehension of the passage
 words in the passage are unfamiliar
 Presentations of the vocabulary words must be done in context so that
students will have sufficient information to understand each word
 CSSD-
 Context-try to construct the meaning of the word from the meaning
of the surrounding text
 Structure- look for known words ( prefixes, roots, suffixes)
 Sound- pronounce the word to see if sounds like any word you know
 Dictionary- when all else fails, look it up.
 Focus student attention on the subject matter of the text and engage
student interest and participation
 Step 2: guided silent reading

 Guided silent reading begins with a statement of purpose

for reading given by the teacher which should shape the
reader’s stance in relationship to the text.
 The purpose statement should be prepared in advance
and should correspond directly to the teacher’s
instructional objectives.
 Discussion of the reading occurs the next day of class.
 When text is long it is preferred to use the “sectional
approach”.
 Step 3: Comprehension
development
 The comprehension development begins the moment we initiate the
DRA lesson.
 It is imperative that you ask the purpose-setting question first and that
discussion of it involves students’ prior knowledge as well as new
information from text.
 Purpose-setting statements that are followed up as opening-discussions
questions teach students how to enter text with focused intent and
increase the possibility that all students will construct purposeful
meaning from the text.
 DRA GUIDELINES
 TAKE THE TIME TO ARTICULATE CLEARLY YOUR INSTRUCTIONAL
OBJECTIVES FOR UNITS OF STUDY AND LESSON PLANS
 FOCUS YOUR TIME AND ENERGY ON HIGHER-LEVEL QUESTIONS
AND INITIATE DISCUSSION WITH THEM
 CONSTANTLY SEEK TO CONNECT SUBJECT MATTER CONTENT TO
STUDENTS’ LIVES
 WRITE AND ASK QUESTIONS THAT YOU FIND INTERESTING,
INTRIGUING, AND PROVACATIVE
STEP 4: SKILL DEVELOPMENT AND
APPLICATION
 Skill development and application should
follow logically and reasonably from
discussion that has take place and from
the lesson objectives.
 The intent is to give students the
opportunity to practice doing what
they’ve just learned to do
 Ex. Drills, vocabulary study, expository
or narrative writing, group mapping with
discussion and analysis, individual or
group projects
 Step 5: extension and follow-up
activities
 Extension and follow-up activities allow
both closure- bringing a lesson bound-
end
 Extension- pursuing an exciting idea well
beyond immediate lesson boundaries
 Ex. Skits, plays, science fairs, paintings,
research papers
 These activities are a primary basis for
assessment of how well students
achieved lesson and unit goal.
 Recommended activity
 Three-Minute Write
DRA LESSON PLAN:

 EXAMPLE OF A DRA LESSON PLAY

 SOCIAL STUDIES
Request

 The purpose of Request is to use

student-to-teacher/ teacher-to-
student questioning interactions to
engage students in the same type of
purposeful reading and rich
comprehension processing as is found
with DR-TA.
Steps for Using
Request
 Step #1- The teacher and students
silently read a segment of text (the
amount of text is predetermined and
announced by the teacher). After
reading, the teacher closes her/his
book, and students are invited to ask
as many questions as they wish about
the text. They are encouraged to ask
“teacher-type” questions. The teacher
answers all questions as fully as
possible.
 Step #2- After students have finished
questioning; they close their books
and the teacher asks questions,
following up on items/ideas students
raised, raising new issues, and/or
calling students’ attention to other
important information. The teacher is
responsible for asking good questions
and for asking questions at all levels
of comprehension.
 Step #3- The next segment of
text is read, and the reciprocal
questioning between students
and teacher continues. By the
second segment, and continuing
throughout the procedure, the
teacher’s questions should
include those that explicitly
integrate information from one
 Step #4- The procedure continues
until students can reasonably predict
what is going to happen, what further
information they are going to get, and
what they need to do to complete
activities and/or exercises. At that
point, the teacher can engage the
students with comprehensional
questions.
 Step #5- Students write the purpose-
setting question and complete the
reading/ activity assignment. To initiate
discussion, the teacher begins by asking
the purpose-setting question and
allowing students to answer and
evaluate it. A purpose-setting question
the class formulated that was not
answered by the text (an “imperfect”
question) is identified as such at the
onset of discussion when the teacher
 7 Categories of
Questions for
Request
1. Questions for which there is an
immediate reference; questions
that can be answered by looking
at the text:

 “How do you read m<ABC?”

 “What does vertex mean?”
2. Questions that relate to common
knowledge and fro which
answers can be reasonably
expected:

 “If you hadn’t seen the

illustration here, how would you
expect a right angle to look?
 “Why?’
3. Questions for which the teacher
does not expect a “correct”
response but for which she or
he can provide related
information:

 “Have you ever seen a quilt

made from angled pieces?”
 “Let me show you one my
grandmother made…”
4. Questions fro which neither the
teacher nor the selection is likely
to supply a “right” answer but
that are nonetheless worth
pondering or discussion:

/ “I wonder how any of us could

use comparison of angles in our
daily lives?”
5. Questions of a personalized type
that only the students can
answer:

/ “What do you find hardest about

using a compass or protractor?”
6. Questions that are answerable
but are not answered by the
selection being read; further
reference is needed:

/ I wonder how sophisticated

computers and computer
programs are in generating and
measuring geometric figures
7. Questions requiring translation- for
example, from one level of
abstraction to another, from one
symbolic form to another, from one
verbal form to another:

/ “In your own words, how do we tell

an obtuse angle from a right angle?
From an acute angle?”
Always Remember:

 During Request, it is critical that the

teacher listens carefully to the
questions students ask, not only to
monitor the kinds and quality of those
questions, but also because often the
students “beat you to the punch” by
asking all the questions you’d
planned.
In conclusion,

 Request is a powerful strategy for

increasing students’
comprehension, teaching lesson
content and developing students’
reading/ learning skills.
Thank You!!!