Mora,

What you describe, a student who reads with appropriate rate, accuracy, and prosidy (aka, fluency) but cannot answer comprehension questions, smacks me as a learning disability. Note, here fluency is viewed as oral reading. The learner you describe is unable to make sense of the passage by bridging the new (print) with the known (prior knowledge). That is comprehension. Even though her recitation “sounds good” she can’t construct appropriate meaning from print. Rather than talk about the nature of a learning disability, let's explore different ways to figure out how to proceed.

The question is, just what does the adult learner "get" when she reads aloud?

One way we at LIFT assess comprehension is to administer a modified cloze assessment tool developed by Dr. Richard Burnett for one of our adult education ongoing statewide projects. The Adult Literacy Silent Inventory is continuous passage which begins at the primary level and moves upwards in text difficulty to post high school. A maze is provided so that the reader can select the correct word. The beauty here is in the analysis of both correct and incorrect choices to see what meaning is constructed at what difficulty level. Responses are leveled rather than set at single grade levels (which are not all that meaningful for an adult learner). 

We also administer an adult inventory of graded passages (Burnett & LIFT) where the examiner reads the passages aloud and the student retells the passage. The only questions posed are those not covered by the recall. This is built around research on using a learner’s listening comprehension as a predictor of reading ability. 

Of course neither of these assessment strategies involve good comprehension instruction. Strategies such as providing the learner with a brief overview (they used to call these advance organizers), building prior knowledge before reading, setting a purpose for reading, and then monitoring whether that purpose was met (metacognition) are interesting strategies for this discussion.

Jeri Levesque, Ed.D.
Evaluator, LIFT
St. Louis, MO



 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Eugenio Longoria Saenz <ezl109 at psu.edu>
To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List' <familyliteracy at nifl.gov>
Sent: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 3:29 pm
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 957] Re: Comprehension Monitoring StrategiesDiscussionBegins Today

























Fluency and comprehension are not the same thing.  You need
to help the students build comprehension strategies.  Comprehension is a
key skill in learning to read.  Fluency is only one of the seven strategies
of highly effective readers.  Comprehension is also only one strategy. 
When teaching reading, one must focus on a set of skills.



 



Saludos,



 



Eugenio     



 









From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Charlotte Learning
Center

Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 3:54 PM

To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List'

Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 956] Re: Comprehension Monitoring StrategiesDiscussionBegins
Tod









Susan, you said to have a student restate after a few sentences if
necessary. If a student has such low understanding of a text (that they are
able to read fluently) it does make sense to lower their instructional reading
level, to something, as you said, that isn’t too complicated.



However,  I have a native, elderly adult student who can read
fluently up to a 6th grade level, but cannot correctly answer
comprehension questions at any level (1st-6th) on a QRI.   Deciding
an instructional level given her fluency rates is a little baffling. 



How does one assess a starting point for using these comprehension
strategies?



 



And also, how much of comprehension testing is also a test of oral
communication skills, and perhaps in this instance (in the QRI)
“mainstream” communication skills are required to demonstrate
comprehension, e.g. give the main idea.



Mora
















From:
familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On
Behalf Of Susan McShane

Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 11:44 AM

To: The Family Literacy Discussion List

Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 953] Re: Comprehension Monitoring
StrategiesDiscussionBegins Today






 



Hello Everybody! Since there are so many possibilities in the broad
category of comprehension monitoring, Donna and I think that it’s
probably best to start with something that makes sense to the learner and
isn’t  too complicated. 



 



One possibility is restating—that is putting what
they’ve read into their own words. You can explain that it’s a good
way to stay focused on the meaning and to “test” their
understanding.  Ask them to stop after the first section or paragraph (or
even the first couple of sentences) and try to put what the writer said in
their own words. If they can’t do it, that’s a clue that they may
need to re-read and think about it more carefully.



 



Another possibility is a variation on the “coding text”
strategy. The book includes an example that has several different kinds of
marks to indicate questions, mark important facts, and make other responses to
the text. You might start with something much simpler that introduces the idea
of marking the text. Maybe they could just underline any words they don’t
understand or put a check mark by any important or interesting facts or bits of
information. If they begin with just one or maybe two kinds of
“codes” it may be less intimidating. 



 



Starting with one of these simple approaches also makes it easier
for you/the teacher to demonstrate and model the strategy.



 



Does this sound reasonable? Has anyone done anything like this or
used any other comprehension-monitoring strategies?



 
















From:
familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On
Behalf Of Gail Price

Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 11:19 AM

To: The Family Literacy Discussion List

Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 952] Comprehension Monitoring Strategies
DiscussionBegins Today






 



Good
morning, List members,



 



I
am very pleased to welcome Susan McShane, Reading
Initiative Specialist at the National Center for Family Literacy, and Donna
Elder, Reading Specialist at the National Center for Family Literacy, to our
List. They will be leading the discussion on comprehension monitoring
strategies for adult readers. I know many of you have been looking forward to
this discussion and I hope you are prepared to join in with your questions,
comments and experiences. 



 



I would like to get us started by asking Susan and Donna how
they introduce the comprehension monitoring strategies on pages 80- 82 of Applying Research in Reading
Instruction for Adults: First Steps for Teachers, to students. Is
there a particular strategy that you introduce before the others? How might you
present the strategy to maximize learner buy-in? 



 



 



 



 



Gail J. Price



Multimedia Specialist



National Center for Family Literacy



325 W. Main Street, Suite 300



Louisville, KY 40202



gprice at famlit.org



502 584-1133, ext. 112



 



 



Join us for the 17th Annual National Conference on Family
Literacy!

"Literacy Grows Families and Communities"

March
30, 31, & April 1, 2008-Louisville, KY

Register online at www.famlit.org/conference



 






 





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