Describe in broad stokes the reading processes that take place during comprehension of informational text (p. 362, under Construction of Meaning and Concept Development with Informational Texts).
The comprehension of informational text requires assessing accurate, relevant knowledge, managing mental processes, during reading within the confines of a limited working memory, and constructing a coherent mental representation through pruning and organization processes. Research has indicated that both explicit cognitive strategy instruction and high level social interaction around text are important keys to improving text comprehension and concept development.
Specify the effect that background knowledge may have on constructing mental representations from informational text. Why should teachers be concerned about activating prior knowledge?
Children rely heavily on background knowledge in constructing mental representations from information text. One problem that seems to occur are children that have inaccurate or irrelevant background knowledge, therefore teachers must be sensitive to dialogue that the children are using.
What are the three instructional approaches that can be used to help primary-grade students comprehend informational text? Describe their common (p. 365) and distinctive features (p. 363-5).Picture Walk:Know-What to Learn-LearnDirected Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA)
What is the purpose of the experimental study reported?
The purpose of this study was to explore how the picture walk, know-what to learn-learn and the DRTA might influence developmental reading abilities and content acquisition when used with informational text in the primary reading group context.
Who were the subjects?
The participants were 31 second-grade students in two demographically similar schools, in the same school district, in a midsize Midwest city. There were eight groups of four students participating in the study—four groups in each of two cycles of instruction. The cycles were conducted consecutively during the first half of the academic year with a three-week break between the cycles.
Describe the reading materials used during the intervention.
The reading materials used during the intervention were science topics that were taught to the students in their first or second grade science curriculum. The specific topics for each during both cycles were: spiders, the moon, how water changes form, and insects. In the end they used a total of twelve texts or leveled little books during the study.
How long did the experiment last?
Data was gathered over a ten week period then conducted two four-week periods of intervention within each time frame. Groups one through four from School A received the intervention during the first cycle, and Groups five through eight from School B received the intervention during the second four-week cycle.
What were the experimental conditions?
The study was designed to replicate the small group reading instruction that approached grade level readers typically experience. All lessons were recorded on audiotape and interventions and data collections were conducted for each group. In School A, sessions were held at a table in a hallway. In School B, sessions were held at a table in the school’s kitchen or at a table in a partitioned room shared with other teachers working with small groups of children.
Describe the procedures specific to the Picture Walk, KWL, DRTA, and the Control Group conditions.
During the picture walk, Stahl chose a book that was represented by the guidelines for that level. Before reading, she presented a brief overview of the text . After this, Stahl engaged the class in an interactive discussion about the book, talking about the pictures, the text structure, discussing the student’s prior knowledge while formulating predictions based on that information. After reading, they discussed whether their predictions were verified and then summarized the information from the text.
On Day one and three, they made a group KWL chart, after Stahl introduced the topic the children discussed it. The information the children provided was written in the Know column of the chart. On day two and three, each child wrote what he or she knew on a individual KWL chart then it was shared and written on the large group chart. The next step was for the children to generate questions about the topic and Stahl organized them in the What I Want to Learn column.
For the DRTA the students formulated and justified predictions about the text based on the title, cover, prior knowledge and the table of contents. After reading each sections of the text, a discussion was held to verify predictions, summarize the information in the text and generate new predictions for the next section.
What measures were used to determine the relative effectiveness of the treatments? Describe the measures briefly.
The Vocabulary Recognition Task (VRT) is an experimenter-constructed yes/no task used to estimate vocabulary recognition in a content area and to confirm that groups had similar levels of prior knowledge of the topic.
In a Cued Recall, each child is asked to answer three explicit and three implicit questions based on that day’s text. First, the items are scored as correct or incorrect as a measure of general comprehension. Both correct and partially correct items were scored as correct. A four point scale is used to produce weighted scores for each answer.
The Maze Task is a multiple-choice cloze modification. It is a timed, group-administered task. The original text read by the students is reprinted after the deletion of 10 content words. The score on the maze task is the number of correct responses.
Free Recall is the students recall of everything they can remember from the day’s text.
Which treatment(s) were found to be more effective in increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge and maze performance (p. 381)?
All intervention groups made vocabulary gains. Both the PW and DRTA yielded statistically significant effects on the maze. A comparison of effect sizes suggests that a slightly larger proportion of variance is explained by PW than DRTA. Both procedures were more effective than KWL or the control procedures in facilitating fluent reading and micro-level comprehension.
Students’ comprehension of the texts was greater under the DRTA condition than KWL and the control conditions. What do you think explains DRTA’s advantage over the KWL condition (p. 382)?
Although the students in all four groups were monitored during mumble reading to be sure that they could read the text and were, in fact, reading the text, teacher guidance during the DRTA tended to direct the children’s attention to the important ideas and assist with difficult text concepts in a way that was not provided for in the other interventions. Having the support of the teacher allowed the students to gain the main idea and the important aspects of the text.
It was found that the treatments did not differ in the quality and quantity of students’ retellings (p. 384). In other words, students were not differentially affected by the treatments in the way they integrated textual information with prior knowledge. What does this finding mean in terms of the different emphases employed by experience-based (KWL) vs. text-based (DRTA) treatments?
This finding supports and extends the earlier research that indicated that DRTA is effective in promoting inferential and evaluative responses to text. DRTA has several features that recent studies have associated with higher levels of achievement. DRTA procedures tended to demand higher levels of thinking by the students compared for the KWL and the PW.
In light of the findings from this study, what conclusions can you draw about the role of teacher support in children’s construction of mental representations from informational text?
I think that the teacher’s support in children’s construction of mental representations of the text is of great importance. With the guidance of the teacher the students can focus their attention on the important ideas and it will create an easier understanding of the difficult text concepts.
: This is an instructional framework that views reading as problem-solving process that is best accomplished in a social context. The teacher’s role is to select an instructional level text, divide the text into meaningful sections, and facilitate discussion of each section of text. During the reading the students are asked to make predictions about the next few pages in the book along with questions about whether their predictions have been correct.: This technique is meant to enable teachers to access the prior knowledge of students and to help students develop their own purposes for reading expository text. This is a process in which the teacher generates a discussion about a text topic and uses a chart or worksheet to record students’ statements about what they know, want to learn, and, after reading, what they learned.The pre-reading conversations that happen before readers begin a text. Picture walks are commonly used with leveled texts which are small paperbacks which have been leveled, using a narrow gradient readability scale based on qualitative text features. The conversations typically consist of the teacher and student previewing each page of a new book before reading. The pictures are typically used as a basis for discussion of what the book is most likely going to be about.
