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Teaching Reading Strategies


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: lectures, reading, individual and group discussions, cooperative learning, applied practice assignments, development of lesson plans and unit, and reflective written responses. This is a forty-five hour three credit graduate level course taught in the classroom and online.

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. In addition, participants will receive a student guide.

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  
  Group & Classroom Participation   15      100 – 93 A
  Reading Assignments   10       92 – 85 B
  Reading Strategies Activities (9)   27       84 – 77 C
    Unit Lesson Plan   20            
    Reflective Responses    8            
    Article Review    5            
    Mid-Term Review    5            
    Final Exam   10            
  Total Points  110    

Student Requirements

1. Attend all class sessions for requisite number of hours and actively participate in all class activities.
2. Complete all class assignments: reading strategies activities, reflective responses, and article review.
3. Complete a lesson plan unit using strategies from Teaching Reading Strategies Across the Curriculum and at least one method of assessment for a five-day period.
4. Pass a mid-term and final exam.

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 course, go to the Course Registration page.