What incredible timing.  We had just finished administering the TABE
test to our prospective ABE/GED and High School Diploma students.  A
student asked me afterwards the exact same answer.  I am very interested
in your response.

 

Steven Ewert

Fresno Adult School Instructor

 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Charlotte Learning
Center
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 8:35 AM
To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List'
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1060] Re: Story Grammar and Expository
Structure

 

Gail,

Thanks. That ERIC article was informative. 

I have another question: I have heard students ask, "Why are the
passages on tests so boring?"  What does an instructor do to help?

 

Thanks again,

Mora 

 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Gail Price
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 10:22 AM
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1053] Story Grammar and Expository Structure

 

Mora,

 

I certainly am not an expert on either story grammar or expository
structure, but I will give you my thoughts and perhaps some other
subscribers will jump in and correct me or offer further explanation.
Perhaps there are some who will share their personal experiences in
working with these ideas with their students. 

 

 

I think story grammar is often used to refer to narrative story
structure-those elements a reader can expect to find in a story.
Narrative story structure would include many types of stories, i.e.,
fiction, fairy tales, mysteries, plays, and real life adventures.

 

The following explanation of story grammar comes from an ERIC Digest
article, "Strategic Processing of Text: Improving Reading Comprehension
of Students with Learning Disabilities," by Joanna P. Williams. 

 

"Probably the most effective of strategies has been teaching story
grammar to use as an organizational guide when reading. Story grammar
refers to the principal components of a story: main character, action,
and outcome. This technique has been applied by using story maps and by
asking generic questions based on story grammar. It has also been used
to move beyond the plot level of stories to teach students with
disabilities to identify story themes, a more abstract comprehension
level than is typically taught to students with learning disabilities."

 

You can access the article at
http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-4/reading.html

 

Expository structure has to do more with informational texts, such as
content area material, i.e., science and social studies. It would
involve how the text is organized to help readers identify key ideas and
make connections between ideas. This is where using skills, such as
reading headings and subheadings, reading graphic information, and
understanding sequence, comparing and contrasting and classification
would come in handy.

The idea is that understanding the structure of stories or expository
text increase comprehension. 

Mora and I would love to hear from others.

 

 

 

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

 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Charlotte Learning
Center
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 1:06 PM
To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List'
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1050] Re: Comprehension
MonitoringStrategiesDiscussion

 

When instructors list under comprehension strategies "work with story
grammar or expository structure", I am interested to know more in
detail. I am doing a seminar on using story and test structure and would
love to hear from practitioners. 

Mora Doherty

Charlotte Learning Center

 

 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Gail Price
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 3:24 PM
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1049] Re:Comprehension Monitoring
StrategiesDiscussion

 

The following is posted on behalf of Molly Elkins. 

 

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

 

________________________________

From: Molly Elkins [mailto:melkins at dclibraries.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 2:05 PM
To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List'
Subject: RE: [FamilyLiteracy 1009] Re:Comprehension Monitoring
Strategies Discussion

 

In our classrooms we used to use what we called metacognitive thinking
strategies, in other words, thinking about thinking. The goal of our
activity was to make readers aware of the conversation they were having
in their head while they were reading (or perhaps to encourage them to
have the conversation in their head at all). These were the strategies: 

Visualizing 

Questioning 

Paraphrasing

Evaluating 

Summarizing 

Predicting

Connecting text to self 

Connecting text to world 

Connecting text to text

 

First, as teachers, we would model our thinking as we read aloud. Then
for fun, we would put a little sticky note in the text (since we
couldn't make marginalia in the text). Next, we would read aloud a text
with the class, and encourage students to model their thinking as well.
Finally, learners could fill the texts with their own little sticky
notes. 

 

Molly Elkins
Literacy Specialist
Douglas County Libraries
Phillip S. Miller Library
  100 S. Wilcox Street
  Castle Rock CO 80104
  Map
<http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&addtohistory=&formtype=
address&searchtype=address&cat=&address=100%20S%20Wilcox%20St&city=Castl
e%20Rock&state=CO&zipcode=80104%2d1911&search=Get%2bMap> 
Phone: (303)791-READ 

Fax: (303) 688-7655
Email: melkins at dclibraries.org
Web: www.DouglasCountyLibraries.org
<http://www.douglascountylibraries.org/> 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of jalsails at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 12:52 PM
To: familyliteracy at nifl.gov
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1009] Re:
ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today

 

Susan,

According to our research (using the CORI during 10 minute observations)
in elementary school classrooms, 3rd grade teachers who do address
comprehension are four times (on the average) more likely to direct
students to practice comprehension strategies than to model it. 

I agree with you that it's hard to explicitly model comprehension
strategies with large groups of adults who have diverse reading
abilities. It's a stellar strategy for tutoring and working with small
groups of beginning (adult) readers.

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

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Susan McShane <smcshane at famlit.org>
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List <familyliteracy at nifl.gov>
Sent: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 1:18 pm
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1008] Re:
ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today

That's interesting Jeri. One of the things we've found we really have to
hit hard is the need for explicit instruction. Most often in adult
education settings, that's not done, and it can be hard to manage in a
multi-level group, especially when people are also studying math and
writing, etc. The researchers I worked with in writing the book
suggested that a teacher could introduce a strategy to the whole group
and then have them practice with different materials at their own
reading levels. I agree it's a good idea, but I think it's easier said
than done in some classrooms and programs.

 

What do you think, Jeri? And can we hear from others about their
experiences in managing comprehension-monitoring instruction? And how
about that idea of modeling your own strategies by reading and thinking
aloud? 

 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
<mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov?> ] On Behalf Of
jalsails at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 1:35 PM
To: familyliteracy at nifl.gov
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1005] Re:
ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today

 

Susan,

Good point about teachers explicitly modeling their comprehension
strategies while reading with students. We use an instrument called the
Classroom Observation of Reading Instruction (CORI) <Levesque & Drew> to
document direct and explicit instruction across the five essential
reading constructs. For comprehension instruction (Teacher
models/demonstrates), during a ten minute observation we track the
number of times a teacher describes and names a specific comprehension
strategy and expounds on its value. The strategies we tract are

*	Prereading comprehension strategies
*	Describing comprehension strategies

*	retelling
*	sequencing
*	drawing conclusions
*	predicting
*	text connection (self, world, other text)
*	summarizing

*	generating/answering own question
*	re-reading for meaning
*	confirming/rejecting predictions

*	work with story grammar or expository structure

The parallel column of the CORI tracks: Teacher Directs Students to
Practice: literal recall of text, using context clues (pictures, format
etc) and all the other ones above.

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

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Susan McShane <smcshane at famlit.org>
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List <familyliteracy at nifl.gov>
Sent: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 11:02 am
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1004] Re: Comprehension Monitoring Strategies
Discussion Begins Today

Thank you, Aaron, for sharing those experiences. Stopping and
restating/summarizing is among the research-based monitoring strategies.
Asking yourself questions is another. Has anyone else used these
approaches? 

 

________________________________

From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
<mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov?> ] On Behalf Of Kohring, Aaron
M
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 11:04 AM
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1002]
Re:ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today

 

Susan,

 

I have experienced what you mention working with some students in the
past- where we discovered their decoding/word analysis skills (for the
level of text we were using) had improved to the point where their oral
fluency was good.  But they had very little comprehension of what they
had just read.  So we introduced & taught students to use a
comprehension strategy- summarization, for example- and asked them to
stop after a few sentences or a paragraph and summarize what they had
read.  Later, we'd add another strategy- such as a graphic organizer-
and practice using that as a comprehension strategy.

 

Another great activity was to extend the question generating/answering
strategies for comprehension and have students do this themselves in
pairs or groups.

Aaron

 

 

Aaron Kohring

Research Associate

UT Center for Literacy Studies

600 Henley St, Ste 312

Knoxville, TN 37996-4135

Ph: 865-974-4258

Main: 865-974-4109

Fax: 865-974-3857

akohring at utk.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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