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Teaching Reading Strategies Online


Improve Comprehension Across the Curriculum

Course Outline


Course Description

This course is designed to assist teachers (elementary through high school) in the development of specific skills/methods needed to effectively teach strategic reading that improves comprehension across the curriculum. These methods will be used as a tool for thinking and learning in all content areas. The course will include strategies for comprehending non-fiction, informational, and narrative text, vocabulary development, Reciprocal Teaching, reflective strategies, writing strategies that construct and extend meaning, assessments, and strategic lesson planning. A framework for teaching reading will be established by examining current research and effective practices that will allow the teacher to develop content literacy for them and their students.  Reading is a complex process and teachers will gain an understanding of the metacognitive skills and strategic reading strategies needed to effectively utilize specific skills to facilitate student growth in the reading process.

Objectives

  • Understand why reading is important across the curriculum, the stages of reading development, real-world literacy demands, and examine proficient reader research
  • Understand three interactive elements of reading and their impact on reading, the five basic premises needed to teach reading, the process needed to motivate students to take control of their reading, and discuss six assumptions about reading
  • Learn four specific cognitive tools for reading and develop lessons across the curriculum using the four cognitive tools
  • Develop an understanding of nonfiction and informational text, recognize text features and structures of nonfiction and informational text, learn before reading specific strategies to use with nonfiction and informational text, and activities across the curriculum using before reading specific strategies for nonfiction and informational text
  • Learn before reading, during reading, and after reading strategies to assist with comprehension of nonfiction and informational text, and develop lessons across the curriculum using before reading, during reading, and after reading strategies for nonfiction and informational text
  • Learn specific reading strategies to use with narrative text, and develop lessons across the curriculum using specific reading strategies for narrative text
  • Understand the importance of vocabulary development and the role it plays in the comprehension of a particular text, learn specific strategies for vocabulary development, and develop a lesson that effectively uses vocabulary instruction
  • Understand the purpose of reflective strategies to assist in the comprehension process, learn specific reflective strategies, learn several different writing strategies, which include exploratory and finished writing activities, develop writing to learn strategies to construct and extend meaning in the content areas, develop lesson plans across the curriculum using reflective and writing strategies
  • Learn the four Reciprocal Teaching strategies, how to use Reciprocal Teaching in a whole-class session, guided reading group, and literature circles, and develop rubrics for the assessment of Reciprocal Teaching
  • Understand the importance of strategic teaching and planning to effectively implement reading strategies across the curriculum and develop appropriate assessments


Curriculum Design & Time Requirements

The following methodologies will be used during the course: cooperative learning, applied practice assignments, development of lesson plans and unit, and reflective written responses. This is an online sixty-hour, three credit graduate level course that is completed over a thirteen-week period.

Hardward Skill & Computer Requirements

Students may use either a Macintosh computer or a PC with Windows 2000 or higher. Students should possess basic word processing skills and have internet access with an active e-mail account. Students also are expected to have a basic knowledge of how to use a Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Safari, Mozilla Firefox etc.

Course Materials

The required text for this course is Teaching Reading in the Content Areas: If Not Me, Then Who? by Dr. Rachel Billmeyer and Mary Lee Barton. A variety of readings and resources will be referenced throughout the course. Additional supplementary readings and resources will be provided.


Session Outline

Session 1: Foundations of Teaching Reading Across the Curriculum
Contents:
  1. Introductions
  2. Establishing class/group expectations and norms
  3. Course overview
  4. Establishing individual course expectations and goals
  5. Course requirements
  6. Course registration
  7. Why is reading import across the curriculum?
  8. Examine the stages of reading
    • Stage 1: Initial Reading and Decoding
    • Stage 2: Confirmation, Fluency, and Ungluing from Print
    • Stage 3: Learning the New
    • Stage 4: Multiple Viewpoints
    • Stage 5 Construction and Reconstruction
  9. Real-World Literacy Demands
    • How we can prepare students (Workplace Competencies)
  10. Five Premises Basic to Teaching Reading
    • Reader constructs meaning
    • Role of prior knowledge
    • Metacognition-the ability to think about and control thought processes before, during, and after reading
    • Reading and writing are integrally related
    • Learning is a socially interactive process

Session 2: Understanding the Reading Process
Contents:
  1. Three interactive elements of reading
    • Reader
    • Climate
    • Text features
  2. Six assumptions about reading
    • Goal-oriented
    • The linking of new information to prior knowledge
    • The organization of new information
    • The acquisition of cognitive and metacognitive structures
    • Nonlinear, yet occurring in phases
    • Influenced by cognitive development
  3. Motivating students to take control of their learning
  4. Modeling problem solving
    • The think aloud process

Session 3: Cognitive Tools for Reading
Contents:
  1. Questioning strategies
  2. Summarizing strategies
  3. Predicting strategies
  4. Clarifying strategies
  5. Developing reading activities and lesson plan development

Session 4: Nonfiction/Informational Text
Contents:
  1. What is it?
  2. Content
  3. Text Features
  4. Text Structures
  5. Directed Reading/Thinking Activity
  6. Graphic Organizers
  7. Developing reading activities and lesson plan development

Session 5: Nonfiction/Informational Text: Before, During, and After Reading Strategies
Contents:
  1. Graphic organizers
  2. Anticipation/Prediction Guide
  3. Group summarizing
  4. K-W-L
  5. Pairs read
  6. Problematic situations
  7. Note-taking
  8. SQ3R
  9. Developing reading activities and lesson plan development

Session 6: Narrative Text
Contents:
  1. Prior Knowledge
  2. Connections to Text
  3. Monitoring Understanding
  4. Extending Understanding
  5. Character Map
  6. Story Frame/Map
  7. C Block
  8. Developing reading activities and lesson plan development

Session 7: Vocabulary Development
Contents:
  1. Mapping
  2. Graphic Organizers
  3. Pre-reading Predictions
  4. Feature Analysis
  5. Word Sorts
  6. Developing reading activities and lesson plan development

Session 8: Reflective and Writing Strategies
Contents:
  1. Journals
    • Response
    • Learning Logs
    • Double-Entry
  2. Exploratory Writing
    • Point of View Guides
    • Admit Exit Slips
    • Directed 3-2-1
    • Writing Warm-ups
  3. Finished Writing
    • Essays
    • Constructed Responses
    • Analytical Paragraph
  4. Writing-to-Learn
  5. Discussion Web
  6. Read-Write-Think
  7. Conversation Sparks
  8. Writing toward Understanding
  9. Developing reading activities and lesson plan development

Session 9: Reciprocal Teaching
Contents:
  1. The Four Reciprocal Teaching Strategies
    • Predicting
    • Questioning
    • Clarifying
    • Summarizing
  2. Reciprocal Teaching in the Whole-Class Sessions
  3. Reciprocal Teaching in the Guided-Reading Group and Literature Circles
  4. Assessment and Reciprocal Teaching
  5. Develop a Reciprocal Teaching lesson

Session 10: Strategic Teaching and Planning
Contents:
  1. Preparation and Planning
  2. Assistance and Associations
  3. Reflection and Readiness
  4. Assessments
  5. Unit lesson plan
  6. Course review
  7. Final examination
  8. Course evaluation


Grading

    Assignment Points   Grading Scale  
  Forum Postings   14      100 – 93 A
  Reading Activites   35       92 – 85 B
  Reflective Responses   27       84 – 77 C
    Project: Reading Strategies Lesson Plan   24            
  Total Points  110    

Student Requirements

1. Participation: Actively participate in all Forum activities.
2. Assignments: Complete all reflection assignments, reading strategies activities development, and final lesson plan development.

Student Academic Integrity

Participants guarantee that all academic class work is original. Any academic dishonesty or plagiarism (to take ideas, writings, etc. from another and offer them as one's own), is a violation of student academic behavior standards as outlined by our partnering colleges and universities and is subject to academic disciplinary action.

Register

To register to take TEI's Teaching Reading Strategies Online course, go to the Course Registration page.