TEACHING READING

SOLVING PROBLEMS IN THE TEACHING OF LITERACY

Cathy Collins Block, Series Editor

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Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6

Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli
Teaching Reading
Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6

Rachel L. McCormack
Susan Lee Pasquarelli

THE GUILFORD PRESS

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© 2010 The Guilford Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCormack, Rachel L.
Teaching reading: strategies and resources for grades K–6 / Rachel L. McCormack, Susan
Lee Pasquarelli.
   p. cm. — (Solving problems in the teaching of literacy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60623-483-9 (hardcover: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60623-482-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Reading teachers—Training of. 2. English language—Composition and exercises—
Study and teaching (Elementary) 3. Reading (Elementary) I. Pasquarelli, Susan
Lee. II. Title.
LB2844.1.R4M35 2010
372.41—dc22
2009037260
 About the Authors

Rachel L. McCormack, EdD, is Associate Professor of Literacy Education at Roger Wil-

liams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, where she teaches undergraduate and gradu-
ate courses in reading and writing methods and children’s literature. She is a frequent
presenter at national conferences; her research interests include strategies for improv-
ing comprehension, literature discussions, and teaching reading to children with hear-
ing disabilities.

Susan Lee Pasquarelli, EdD, is Professor of Literacy Education at Roger Williams Uni-
versity in Bristol, Rhode Island. For the past 3 years, she has been conducting research in
urban classrooms on using multicultural literature to teach children in grades 1–6 about
tolerance and diversity. Dr. Pasquarelli teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in
reading and writing methods and adolescent literature.

v
 Preface

Teachers of reading have one important goal: to prepare children to be independent,

strategic readers in real life. This text is intended to help teachers and reading special-
ists achieve this goal by providing research-based instructional strategies for teaching
phonological/phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, all aspects of compre-
hension, and writing in response to literature. The strategies are geared toward teach-
ing diverse learners in grades K–6.
This book includes many special features: sample scripted lessons; classroom-ready
instructional materials; and photographs of classroom-­literate environments with bul-
letin boards and other elements that support effective reading instruction.

How to Read This Text

Interacting with the Text
This book is meant to be interactive. We hope you will read it with some type of writ-
ing implement in your hand. We know that good teaching requires practice, reflection,
and more practice, so we provide many opportunities for you to do these things. We
ask you questions periodically, and provide space for you to jot down your responses
or additional questions you may have. Sometimes we ask you to engage in a theoreti-
cal exercise; many of these exercises are applications of what we have described in the
chapters’ sections on pedagogy. At other times, we make suggestions for implementing
ideas in the future. We urge you to fill in the charts and figures as you read, and to use
the white spaces in the text to record additional notes and reflections. As a result, the
text can become a record of your growth as a teacher of reading, in addition to being a
good reference for teaching reading.

How the Book Is Organized

After Chapter 1, which encourages you to think about what makes a good teacher of
reading, we have organized this text according to the key literacy categories: contexts
for literacy learning (Chapter 2); phonological/phonemic awareness, phonics, and flu-
ency (Chapter 3); vocabulary (Chapter 4); comprehension (Chapters 5–8); writing in
response to literature (Chapter 9); culturally responsive classrooms (Chapter 10); and

vii
viii Preface

reading assessment (Chapters 11–12). We conclude with a discussion (Chapter 13) of

your continued professional development. Much of this volume is devoted to compre-
hension instruction, and this emphasis is deliberate. When we work with teachers on
their reading programs, most of their questions are about comprehension; we have tried
to answer them.
In each chapter, we remind you of the good work of experts who have preceded
us. Their work has been the basis for our own practice, and we often begin a chapter by
discussing the guiding principles derived from their work. Also included in this section
are our own current investigations.
Most of each chapter, however, is devoted to bringing best practices to life with
many illustrations from our own classroom experiences and those of teachers with
whom we have worked. Photographs of classrooms, student work, and other artifacts
accompany our descriptions.
Near the end of each chapter (except Chapter 13), we provide a Key Terms Chart
for that chapter. We encourage you to pause and reflect on the vocabulary and concepts,
and to jot down your understanding of the terms. We have selected the words and con-
cepts that are critical to your background knowledge as teachers of reading. Knowing
how to define and apply the key terms is essential for an excellent teacher of reading.
We urge you to use them when thinking and talking about teaching reading.
In the final section of each chapter from 2 through 12, we guide you through a self-
study review process, which is described step by step below. You may find this process
particularly useful if you systematically need to collect, analyze, and submit evidence
of your knowledge and performance as a teacher for a teacher education program or
for state certification. However, we would argue that the process of self-study is critical
to good teaching and that all teachers should engage in it, regardless of their require-
ments.

The Self-Study Review Process

If you interact in writing with each chapter, you will have a record of your thoughts,
ideas, and implementation of the topics presented. At the ends of Chapters 2–12, we ask
you to reflect on these interactions by engaging in a self-study review. To help you, we
have placed a Self-Study Review Chart (as shown here in Figure P.1) at the end of each
of these chapters.
The chart’s first column asks you to name an artifact. An artifact is any lesson or
learning event you create as a result of trying out the ideas in this book. Your artifacts
may include a drawing of a literate classroom, a plan for a reading lesson, or any other
learning event you design as a result of interacting with this book. The chart then asks
you to consider each artifact in terms of five categories of good pedagogy: (1) teacher
instructional actions and language; (2) provisions for individual differences; (3) vari-
ety of modes of communication; (4) critical thinking and active engagement; and (5)
opportunities for assessment. We selected these categories after researching profes-
sional teaching standards from state to state and identifying those that were consistent
across the states. We then restructured them into broad categories that represent good
pedagogy and an understanding of how students learn. We now outline the self-study
review process.
 Self-Study Review Chart

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

ix
FIGURE P.1. Self-Study Review Chart.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
x Preface

Step 1: Try the Best-­Practice Suggestions in Each Chapter

Each chapter has model learning events for best-­practice teaching of reading. If you are
reading this book on your own, we hope you will design lessons and other learning
events that you might like to try out in your own classroom. If you are using this book
as a course text, you may be assigned to create lessons or other best-­practice tasks as
course assignments. Whenever you are able, we encourage you to try them out in real
classrooms.

Step 2: Gather Your Artifacts for Self-Study Review

If you design a lesson plan, you will probably have a written plan, instructional materi-
als you have designed for the children, and a companion assessment. All of these mate-
rials can be considered artifacts for self-study. These artifacts will allow you and others
to evaluate your performance in a given area of reading instruction, such as fluency,
vocabulary, or comprehension.

Step 3: Reflect on the Artifacts You Have Collected

Reflect on the artifacts you have collected that show evidence of using the five standards-
­derived categories discussed above. That is, look at them for evidence of (1) teacher
instructional actions and language; (2) provisions for individual differences; (3) variety
of modes of communication; (4) critical thinking and active engagement; and (5) oppor-
tunities for assessment. The following questions are intended to help you understand
each category and to guide your reflection.

Teacher Instructional Actions and Language

•• Does the artifact contain components of direct instruction providing clear expla-
nations, scaffolds, guided practice, and independent practice?
•• Does the artifact reflect a variety of explanations, analogies, and demonstrations
tailored to help meet the needs of all students?

Provisions for Individual Differences

•• Does the artifact reveal accommodations of individual differences, including
prior knowledge, cultural background, native language, specific challenges, and
learning differences?

Variety of Modes of Communication

•• Does the artifact support a variety of ways students and teachers can communi-
cate to promote student learning?
•• Does the artifact reflect opportunities for growth in written communication by
all students?
 Preface xi

•• Does the artifact illustrate the use of technological advances in communication

to enrich the discourse during the lesson?
•• Does the artifact demonstrate the use of discussion—­listening and responding
to the ideas of others?

Critical Thinking and Active Engagement

•• Does the artifact suggest opportunities for students to solve problems?
•• Does the artifact reflect opportunities for students to develop higher-level cogni-
tive skills?
•• Does the artifact reflect opportunities for students to engage in intellectual risk
taking?
•• Does the artifact include opportunities for students to discuss and understand
multiple perspectives?
•• Does the artifact reveal opportunities for students to work collaboratively and
independently?

Opportunities for Assessment

•• Does the artifact support appropriate formal or informal assessment strategies
with individuals and groups of students?
•• Does the artifact reflect provisions for sufficient feedback to plan for future
instruction and professional development?
•• Does the artifact demonstrate provisions for the students to evaluate their own
work?

Step 4: Take Time to Evaluate the Strength of Each Artifact

What did you learn about yourself as a teacher of reading from each of your artifacts?
How does each artifact reflect the professional standards of good pedagogy? We sug-
gest using the Self-Study Review Chart at the end of each chapter from 2 to 12 (again,
see Figure P.1 for an example) to note your answers. Also, record at the bottom what
went well, so that when you teach this lesson to another class, you will be sure to retain
the best parts.

Step 5: Make the Necessary Changes to the Lesson, and Attach These
to the Original Artifact
Chances are great that the process of self-­evaluation will generate new ideas. If so, be
sure to include these new ideas in the chart. Make the revisions to an artifact as soon as
you think of them; this way, there is less chance of forgetting your ideas. This process
will show your growth as you reflect on your work. Ask yourself, “How can I improve
the lesson next time I try this?” or “How can I make this plan better?”
xii Preface

Step 6: Organize and Store Your Artifacts in a Hard-Copy

or Electronic Portfolio
As the final step of your self-study, gather the chapter Self-Study Review Chart and
the artifacts for each chapter, including your revisions. Then devise a way to organize
and store them. For example, you may want to organize them according to the chapter
topics, as they represent a wide range of topics in teaching reading. You may elect to
store everything in a binder or portfolio, or you may decide to transfer everything to
an electronic portfolio program. Whatever you decide, set it up so that storing your
artifacts becomes an ongoing process. We are sure that as you progress through the text
and participate in chapter-by-­chapter self-study reviews, your teaching of reading will
improve.

Rachel L. McCormack
Susan Lee Pasquarelli
 Acknowledgments

We, the authors of this book, are literacy colleagues at Roger Williams University,
friends, and partners in many projects. While writing this book, we also took courses
in the Italian language. As second-­language learners, we found ourselves taking a fresh
perspective on literacy learning that has found its way into this book. We think it was
our success in learning the language that drove us to balance the demands of writing
a book, fulfilling our beloved teaching duties at the university, and practicing Italian
verb tenses. Whenever we had an experience of “getting it right,” we found ourselves
motivated to learn more. Our success led to more success. We hope this book inspires
you to help young children “get it right.”
In Chapter 1 of this book, we quote two Boston University professors who have
had an important impact on our own teaching: Dr. Roselmina Indrisano and Dr. Jeanne
Paratore. You will recognize them when we refer to “our revered professors.” Our debt
of gratitude to them both is very great.
We would also like to acknowledge our students in the Roger Williams University
MA in Literacy program, who have generously offered their thoughts, comments, and
revisions as they tried out our instructional materials in their own classrooms. They
will recognize their influence in our writing.
This book would not have been as colorful without lesson ideas and photographs of
bulletin boards, classrooms, and children’s work. For these materials, we would like to
thank and acknowledge the following teachers and reading specialists who have gener-
ously allowed us into their classrooms:

Dale Blaess, Carey School, Newport, Rhode Island

Christina Camardo, Underwood School, Newport, Rhode Island
Michelle Carney, The Atlantis Charter School, Fall River, Massachusetts
Rachael Ficke, The Atlantis Charter School, Fall River, Massachusetts
Sybil Grayko, Carey School, Newport, Rhode Island
Sue Moore, Carey School, Newport, Rhode Island
Liz Rosenthal, Carey School, Newport, Rhode Island
Aaron Sherman, Carey School, Newport, Rhode Island
Meghan Snee, Dighton–Rehoboth Schools, Dighton, Massachusetts

xiii
xiv Acknowledgments

For some of the beautiful charts and other figures, especially those that defied our
computer drawing ability, we thank our faculty secretary, Mary Gillette.
Rachel L. McCormack is grateful to her husband, Bill, who took over 100% of the
cooking and cleaning during the last revisions; and her children, Patrick and Ian, who
patiently waited for everything until “after the book is done.” She also thanks her niece
and nephew, Polly and Christian, for sharing their work and their love for reading.
Susan Lee Pasquarelli thanks her children, Rachael and Erik, for their words of
encouragement: “You go, Mom!” She also thanks them and her whole extended family
for the multitude of text and picture messages she received during the busiest part of
this writing, so she would not miss out on any of the family news.
Finally, we thank Chris Jennison of The Guilford Press, who believed in our project
and gave us sterling advice about writing a volume that our students might actually
read and enjoy.
In Chapter 9, you will read a short vignette that we wrote in Italy this past winter.
To practice our new language skills and to have time to work on this book together, we
packed up our computers and books and headed to Siracusa, Sicily, to finish writing this
volume. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge our Sicilian friends, Salvo and
Giordana Baio, and Irene Randazzo Rizza, who encouraged us to put away our writing
night after night to eat sumptuous Sicilian food and practice the Italian language with
the locals. To them we say, “Grazie mille!”
This is the first book that we have written together, and we dedicate it to our stu-
dents, who will be our first critics.
 Contents

Chapter 1. Investigating Our Own Literacy: 1

What Makes a Good Teacher of Reading?

Chapter 2. Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 9

Chapter 3. Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers: 37

Phonological/Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Fluency

Chapter 4. Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words: 68

Teaching Vocabulary

Chapter 5. Preparing Strategic Readers: Teaching Reading 91

through Cognitive Strategy Instruction

Chapter 6. Helping Children to Construct Meaning: 108

“Good-­Reader” Comprehension Strategies

Chapter 7. Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 132

Chapter 8. Appreciating Children’s Literature: Teaching the Language 162

of Narrative Text

Chapter 9. Supporting Children’s Voices: Response to Literature 185

through Writing

Chapter 10. Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom Community 204

Chapter 11. Assessing Children’s Reading Development: 222

Part 1. Motivation, Phonological/Phonemic Awareness,
Word Identification, and Fluency

xv
xvi Contents

Chapter 12. Assessing Children’s Reading Development: 244

Part 2. Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Reader Response

Chapter 13. Viewing Ourselves as Professional Teachers of Reading 282

Appendix A. The Most Common Phonetic Elements and the Most Common 291
Onsets and Rimes

Appendix B. Second-Grade Sample Reading Performance Assessment 297

References 311

Index 321
TEACHING READING
 Chapter 1

Investigating Our Own Literacy

What Makes a Good Teacher of Reading?

If you are reading this book, you are—or will become—a teacher of reading. Anyone
who uses any text to teach children any subject teaches reading. Our primary goal in
writing this book is to show you, as best we can, what good reading instruction looks
like and sounds like. Throughout this text, you will find many lessons, activities, and
suggestions. We have used all of these with children in public school classrooms, so we
have had the benefit of modeling everything we present to you. Through your interac-
tion with this text, we hope to give you a clear picture of effective reading instruction.
Good instruction is ultimately defined by its goal. Our goal as teachers of reading
is to prepare students to be independent, strategic readers in real life. Let us begin this
book by looking at what this goal means.

Preparing Students to be Independent,

Strategic Readers in Real Life

It is not enough that our students do well in our classrooms; the true measure of good
teaching is our students’ reading performance when they are on their own. Johnston
(2002) gives this sage advice: “Set your gaze on the endpoint.” Our endpoint consists of
students who can independently read and understand any text.
Readers become independent when they can read strategically—that is, when they
learn strategies for decoding and deciphering unknown words and can monitor their
comprehension in a variety of texts and situations. In other words, we are preparing
students for reading in real life outside the classroom. This goal has implications for the
way we teach.

In Real Life, We Do Not Read Something Aloud

Unless We Have Read It Silently First
In many classrooms, children are expected to read aloud a great deal of the time, and
too often they must do so without having had the chance to read the text silently. We

1
2 TEACHING READING

know many people, including ourselves, who have been asked to do readings at wed-
dings or other public occasions. After the initial panic, we agree to do it, but we request
a copy of the text before the event. We want to practice reading it before we must read
it aloud under “high-­stakes” circumstances. We do not want to make mistakes because
we would be embarrassed. It is not fun to make a mistake in public.
Children who are good readers (and some who are developing readers) love to
read aloud. There are many ways to foster this love for reading. Chapter 3 gives several
examples of fluency-­building oral reading activities that are fun and motivating, but
they provide for silent practice first. In the real world, most of the reading our students
will do will be silent reading. So, if we are preparing our children to be readers in the
real world, we should trust them to read silently, give them substantial practice in being
fluent, and check in as often as we need to with one-on-one assessment of their oral
reading.

In Real Life, Texts Are Not Read to Us First

It would be ideal if we woke up every morning and had someone read the newspaper
to us while we went about our morning routine. But, of course, that’s not reading. That’s
listening. In order to read the newspaper, we have to contend with the text on our own,
reading it silently. Teachers who read everything to their students are doing them a
great disservice. We think it is better to ask ourselves these questions: What texts can
our students read on their own? (Let them.) What texts do they need help with? (Help
them.)

Every Content-Area Text Is Different

Students encounter a wide range of texts during the school day. Reading a fictional
story (narrative text) is different from reading a text about rocks and minerals (exposi-
tory text). The two types of texts are set up differently. Their text structures and text
features vary. So it makes sense that each teacher has a responsibility to teach his or her
students how to read the text they will be using. In most elementary classrooms, one
teacher teaches all the content areas. In some of the upper elementary grades, teachers
may departmentalize their instruction so that one teacher teaches language arts and
social studies, for example, and another teaches math and science. Nevertheless, the
premise is the same: Each must teach the students to negotiate the text. Dispensing with
a text in a content area is not a good practice; it does not help students who will have to
read and understand text in every content area in real life.

Reading a Lot Really Matters

Reading has many benefits, and these benefits increase as we increase the amount of
reading our students do in a variety of texts and contexts. Their background knowl-
edge increases, and their knowledge of text structures and complex syntactic structures
improves.
Good readers often choose to read; conversely, struggling readers often avoid it.
So good readers get lots of practice getting better, and struggling readers often do not.
Stanovich (1986) refers to these outcomes as the Matthew effects in reading. The term Mat-
 Investigating Our Own Literacy 3

thew effects is a reference to a verse in the Biblical gospel of Matthew (Matthew 25:29),
the gist of which is that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Using this anal-
ogy, let us imagine two cycles in reading. As illustrated in Figure 1.1, good readers
are likely to be ones who have had the benefit of rigorous instruction in decoding and
comprehension. They are given opportunities for sustained practice; they get better at
reading; they choose to read more; “the rich get richer,” and the cycle continues. On the
other hand, struggling readers may have received less-than-­optimal instruction when
they started to learn to read; they have limited skills in reading; they do not choose to
read on their own; their reading does not improve; “the poor get poorer,” and the cycle
continues.
Allington and Cunningham (2007) also remind us that reading a lot really matters.
They advocate wide reading—an abundance of reading in a great variety of texts and
contexts—and describe the many benefits students obtain from this practice, ranging
from increased vocabulary knowledge to achievement in high-­stakes circumstances.

Students Students
choose receive
to read. instruction
in decoding.

Students Students
receive become
instruction in more skillful
comprehension at reading.
strategies.

Students Students
increase read more
background and get more
knowledge practice.
and vocabulary.

FIGURE 1.1. One of the Matthew effects in reading (“the rich get richer,” for good readers). The
converse of this effect (“the poor get poorer”) occurs for struggling readers. Based on Stanovich
(1986).
4 TEACHING READING

Work done by Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988) provides further evidence of the
effects of wide reading on achievement in reading. In their study, they investigated the
independent reading habits of fifth graders in and out of school. What did they find?
The students who typically scored at the 98th percentile on state tests read approxi-
mately 65 minutes independently per day (both in and out of school), which translated
to about 4½ million words a year. These were the “rich” students, in Stanovich’s anal-
ogy. However, the students who typically scored at the 50th percentile read about 4½
minutes independently per day, which translated into approximately 200,000 words a
year. These were students who might hardly, if ever, get a chance to read silently. These
were students who went home and did not choose to read. These were the “poor” stu-
dents, in Stanovich’s analogy. The more able students—the ones who probably didn’t
need it as much—were reading 20 times more words than their less able peers. These
two groups of students had unequal access to learning simply because of the amount of
text they read on a day-to-day basis.

Not All Reading Situations Are the Same

As adults in the real world, we read for many different reasons. The way we read is
determined by the type of text and our purpose (or the purposes others set for us). So it
is reasonable to say that each and every act of reading we do is different.
Look at the chart in Figure 1.2. In the first column, we list several different types of
texts. The second column is for noting the purposes for reading the texts. In the first row
is a real-life reading situation: reading an entertainment magazine while waiting for an
appointment with the dentist. We often read this kind of text while waiting for the den-
tist to call us into the office. It helps pass the time. If we are anxious about the appoint-
ment, it helps get our mind off the procedure. If we happen to have many choices for
reading material, we choose to read something that is easy, informative, and of interest
to us. We do not choose to learn something difficult or to read something lengthy. We
also know that the dentist is not going to ask us questions about the magazine to assess
our comprehension. So the text (entertainment magazine) and the purpose we set (pass-
ing time while we wait to be called) determine our reading behavior (skimming the text
and choosing things to read that are of interest).
The second row of the chart offers a very different situation: reading directions
for a task. The stakes are very different now; carefully reading and thoroughly under-
standing the text are necessary to get things done. The text (directions to assemble a
bookcase) and the purpose (successfully assembling the bookcase) have a direct effect
on the way in which we read. We will have to reread sections many times as we do the
assembling, particularly if this is the first bookcase we have assembled. We may employ
other strategies, such as reading aloud to purposefully slow down our reading. We may
have to ask someone questions about a term or tool or technique. The reading may be
interactive and collaborative. We keep the directions close at hand. Reading directions
to assemble a bookcase differs greatly from reading while waiting for an appointment,
but they are both examples of ways we read in the real world.
On the chart, we have suggested other situations in which adult readers use text to
get things done or for pleasure. Take a few minutes to jot down what you, as a reader,
experience in each of these situations. You will see that every reading situation is differ-
ent and puts different demands on you.
 TEXT + PURPOSE = BEHAVIOR
Entertainment To pass time while waiting to go I skim the magazine and find articles of interest. I know I’m not accountable for
magazine into the dentist’s office. remembering the information. I am merely reading for pleasure.

Directions for To guide me through the task of I read the text over once and see which parts of the task I can do without help. I get
assembling a assembling. started and reread the directions that need careful attention. I may have to read the
bookcase directions several times. I keep the directions close to me.

Course text

Novel (for a

5
book group)

Novel (for
pleasure)

Recipe

FIGURE 1.2. Text + purpose = behavior.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
6 TEACHING READING

The concept of text + purpose = behavior is a crucial one to teach, especially to our
developing and reluctant readers. Those students are the ones who often think that
they have to remember everything they read after reading aloud once, because that is
the way they do most of their reading. Consequently, they often dislike reading, and
their dislike escalates as they get older. These students, in particular, need to know that
there are low stakes as well as high stakes in reading. They need to get experience and
practice in all kinds of reading, so that they will choose to read more outside of school
and when they are adults. However, they will not choose to read if the stakes are always
high. When students’ reading is oral, their mistakes are always public. They may rarely,
if ever, get to choose their own purposes and texts. They may rarely, if ever, get a chance
to solve problems privately. It is no wonder to us that there are large numbers of adoles-
cents and adults who never read.

Learning to Read Well Is Really Hard, So We Need as Much Help

as We Can Get
One of our revered professors began her classes on teaching reading with this saying:
“Let them in on the secret: Learning to read is hard work.” We always remember this
advice, and we pass it on to our own students. Our more able readers make reading
look easy. Our developing readers think there is something wrong with them if they
have to read something more than once, or if they have to decipher an unknown word
they encounter in the text, or if they have to stop for a while and think about what they
read. What they don’t know (and we don’t always tell them) is that good readers do
those things—that good readers encounter problems while reading, and good readers
fix them up. Learning to read well in a variety of situations is hard, and we are always
developing more skills as adult readers.

We Cannot Improve as Readers Unless We Are Willing to Step Outside

Our Comfort Zone
Learning something new involves taking a bit of risk and stepping out of our initial
comfort zone. We learn this from Vygotsky (1978), a Russian psychologist who first
described a concept known as the zone of proximal development. Vygotsky asserted that
a task a child does in collaboration with a “more knowledgeable other” today will be
accomplished independently tomorrow. In order for this to happen, learners have to take
the chance of trying something difficult, but know that there is someone available to
help them achieve success. The zone of proximal development is wide; in fact, it is prob-
ably wider than their initial comfort zone. By presenting students with an appropri-
ate level of challenge within their zone of proximal development, and giving them the
appropriate amount of support, we can guide all students in their attempts at learning
to be excellent readers.
We worry about our most fragile students a great deal. We worry about the effects
that challenges might have on their self-­esteem. And so we feel that we should not
encourage them to step outside of their comfort zone; this zone is very narrow. This
is the reason why we may read everything to them and explain everything in detail.
Ironically, attempting to make them feel good about themselves may take away their
opportunities to think, take chances, set goals, stumble, and get themselves back up
 Investigating Our Own Literacy 7

again. Another revered professor used to chastise us when we argued in support of this
practice: “You want to build their self-­esteem? Teach them to read!”

Every Child Has the Rights to Excellent Instruction by Qualified Teachers

of Reading
The International Reading Association (2000) has published a position statement that
includes a set of reading rights to be honored for all children. See www.reading.org for a
list of these rights. As teachers, we have a responsibility to prepare our students for the
reading demands they will encounter as adults. The demands on today’s readers are
far greater and the stakes are higher than in the past. This is why we need to prepare
students for the real-life demands they will encounter in reading. That is what this text
is about: preparing teachers to prepare students for these demands. If you are still read-
ing, we have accomplished what we set out to do. We are confident, if you have come
this far, that you will find this text useful and informative.
From what you have read so far, and from your own experience, what do you think
makes a good teacher of reading? Record your ideas in the space below. We have started
it for you.

An excellent teacher of reading does the following:

1. Provides many opportunities for students to read.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

In Chapter 2, we begin the process of guiding you through an interactive investiga-

tion of research-based reading instruction. We describe the physical environment for
delivering reading instruction and supporting literacy learning, as well as the routines
that should be part of the everyday instruction in teaching reading to children in grades
K–6.
Before you read the next chapter, take a few moments to assess your comprehen-
sion of this chapter by referring to the Key Terms Chart in Figure 1.3 (page 8). Try to
write definitions for the terms in your own words.
8 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 1

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

Matthew effects in reading

wide reading

text + purpose = behavior

zone of proximal development

FIGURE 1.3. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 1.

 Chapter 2

Creating a Literacy-Rich
Classroom Environment

Pam’s Classroom

Pam, a third-grade teacher, is sitting at a table with five students. She is leading this
group of developing readers in reading “A List,” a chapter in Frog and Toad Together
(Lobel, 1972). The students are highly engaged and animated while reading with Pam.
“Toad is so silly,” cries Marco. “Doesn’t he know you don’t need a list to tell him to get
up?” Pam enjoys these small groups of learners, as she is able to give them individual
attention, and the students know that they are encouraged to speak freely and engage
in conversations without raising their hands.
Occasionally Pam sweeps her eyes around the classroom, to keep up with what is
going on in other areas. She sees a group of students in a center called “Word Sorts.”
They are taking turns leading the group as they participate in sorting the words they
learned during a lesson the day before.
In the classroom library, Pam observes two pairs of students who are reading books
on predators and prey—two concepts they are learning in science. They are reading
to each other, occasionally stopping to talk about the information they are obtaining.
Another group of students are at the computers, researching information about adopt-
ing wolves. Pam has set the computers on the website the students need, and given
explicit directions about how to navigate the website and record the information. Once
again, the students are talking softly to each other, pointing and helping each other.
After approximately 20 minutes, a chime goes off. The students stop what they are
doing and pay attention to Pam as she gives directions. The students who are in the
classroom library move to the word study center. The students who have been reading
with her go to the classroom library to choose books to read on their own. The students
in the computer center stay there and are given the extra time they need to work on their
research. The students rotate one more time in the hour dedicated to centers.
Establishing an efficiently-run classroom is hard work. Although it took Pam a
great deal of time and effort at the beginning of the year to build the structure and pro-
vide the practice, it has paid off for the students in her productive classroom.

9
10 TEACHING READING

Classroom Contexts That Foster

Motivation to Read

Researchers have learned a great deal about the effects of motivation on students’ atti-
tudes about reading and performance while learning to read. They agree strongly that
motivation improves performance (Gambrell, 1996, 2004; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). We
have drawn upon Gambrell’s (1996, pp. 194–197) guidelines for creating classrooms that
foster motivation to read:

•• Students are motivated to read when the environment is literacy-rich.

•• Students are motivated to read when they are involved in choosing texts and
materials they want to read.
•• Students are motivated to read when they have opportunities to engage in sus-
tained, independent reading.
•• Students are more motivated to read when they have opportunities to discuss
with others what they have read.
•• Students are more motivated to read when literacy activities recognize and value
their cultural identities.

Highly Effective Classrooms

In Cunningham and Allington’s (2007) review of the studies of highly effective class-
rooms, they have drawn the following conclusions (pp. 7–9) about what it takes to pro-
vide an environment in which all students can learn to read and write well:

•• The most effective classrooms provide balanced instruction.

•• Children in the most effective classrooms do a lot of reading and writing.
•• Science and social studies are taught and integrated with reading and writing.
•• Meaning is central, and teachers emphasize higher-level thinking skills.
•• Skills are explicitly taught, and children are coached to use them while reading
and writing.
•• Teachers use a variety of formats to provide instruction, as well as a wide variety
of materials.
•• Classrooms are well managed, with high levels of engagement.

At the beginning of this chapter, you have read about Pam’s classroom, a well-
­ esigned learning space that invites, encourages, and inspires her students to read and
d
write. Although an attractive physical environment is not a guarantee or a substitute
for effective reading instruction, it can clearly contribute to the overall comfort and
motivation of the learners within its walls. It is clear that Pam has put a great deal of
thought into the physical space in her classroom, and she uses the space effectively to
support the literacy routines that she has put in place. In the rest of this chapter, we
discuss ways you can establish a positive learning environment, with well-­designed,
literacy-rich physical spaces, and consistent daily routines that support the develop-
ment of excellent readers.
 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 11

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Setting up a literacy-rich classroom.
99
Using a word wall.
99
Using flexible grouping.
99
Teaching reading in a variety of contexts and using a variety of materials.
99

The Physical Space

We have little, if any, control over the size of the spaces given to us to deliver reading
instruction. The spaces may range from cramped closets (where reading specialists are
often delegated to work with students one on one or in small groups) to large, airy
classrooms with high ceilings and windows that open to let in fresh air. Most classroom
spaces fall somewhere in between. The good news, however, is that once we are given
the space, much of what is inside is within our control, and we have the freedom to cre-
ate an inviting and motivating environment in which our students can thrive. Assum-
ing that this is, or will be, the case for you, we offer you suggestions for designing a
space that sustains and supports excellent reading instruction.

Seating
An efficiently running classroom has a variety of seating for the students: desks and
chairs, benches, rocking chairs, and beanbag chairs. We like to think of students’ desks
as their home bases, not the places where they spend the entire day learning. Students’
desks can provide the space to store some personal materials, such as writing instru-
ments and notebooks, and can serve as personal space in which to write or read. Move-
able desks are also ideal for group work or projects, as the desks can be moved close
together. The dynamic nature of the seating has many possibilities for supporting lit-
eracy learning.
In younger grades, trapezoid, rectangular, and round tables make it easy for stu-
dents to work together; in the upper elementary grades, larger bodies require more sub-
stantial personal spaces, so desks work well. We have seen classrooms in which desks
are grouped so that one empty desk serves as a place to store supplies (extra pencils,
erasers, markers, etc.). Or the empty desk can hold baskets of books that students can
read during transition periods, center time, or independent reading.

Wall Space
The classroom walls offer optimum opportunities to support literacy learning. We
encourage you to be thoughtful about the kinds of print you display on the walls. Too
much print is overwhelming. We advise against purchasing ready-made posters and
wall displays that simply decorate the room and fill up space. These are often distract-
ing, and the students stop noticing them after they have been up for a while. We encour-
age you to display purposeful print that the students can interact with and refer to
throughout the day. Figure 2.1 depicts an example of an interactive wall display. The
12 TEACHING READING

FIGURE 2.1. Exemplary interactive classroom wall display.

photo shows a part of the classroom where students gather with the teacher each day to
discuss the days of the weeks, months of the year, and daily weather, among other top-
ics. The number chart and tally pockets help the students calculate how many days they
have been in school that year. Students also log the weather and use graphs to aggregate
the data they collect.
Another example of an interactive wall space is a word wall (Cunningham, 2005;
Wagstaff, 2001). At first glance, a word wall may simply resemble an organized dis-
play of words. However, as Figure 2.2 explains, word walls are anything but simple.
Word walls frequently display words in alphabetical order that students use frequently
in their writing, including their own names, the teacher’s name, and the name of the
school. High-­frequency words are added gradually as the students begin encountering
them. A first-grade word wall featuring high-­frequency words is illustrated in Figure
2.3.
Words on a word wall can also be displayed according to spelling patterns or
­content-area themes. The spelling patterns might coincide with your word study, and

•• A developmentally appropriate collection of words for students to study

in the classroom.
•• A cumulative collection to which new words are added as they are
introduced and needed.
•• A visual scaffold that temporarily assists students in reading and writing.
•• A conversational scaffold that structures the ways students study, think
about, and use words.

FIGURE 2.2. What is a word wall? Based on Brabham and Villaume (2001).
 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 13

FIGURE 2.3. First-grade word wall.

the words on the word wall reinforce the patterns learned. Or during a theme or unit of
study in one of the content areas (such as math, social studies, or science), word walls
can contain the words the students will see and write often during that unit as a means
of reference, and then the words are removed at the end of the unit. No matter how the
words are arranged, the words should be clearly written and accessible to all students
from wherever they sit. In Figure 2.4, we summarize Cunningham’s (2005) guidelines
for using word walls.
The classroom walls can also display print that reinforces the classroom routines,
rules for procedures, responsibilities, and other important information that may stay
the same throughout the year. These can be written by you and your students together.
When students assist in devising rules and procedures, their voices are heard and their
ideas are honored; they take ownership of an efficient classroom. Most of the print, how-
ever, should be dynamic, and it should be revised or changed periodically. For example,
strategies for reading and writing become part of the wall display, and the contents
change as the strategies are added to the students’ repertoire.

•• Be selective.
•• Limit words to common words students need frequently in writing.
•• Add words gradually—five a week.
•• Make words accessible and easily read by all children.
•• Practice words by chanting and writing them.
•• Use a variety of activities to provide sufficient practice in using the words.
•• Make students accountable for spelling word wall words in all writing they do.

FIGURE 2.4. Guidelines for using word walls. Based on Cunningham (2005).
14 TEACHING READING

Student work on display is an example of meaningful and purposeful print on the

walls. In addition to completed work, work in progress should be displayed, to show-
case the development of a piece of writing. Classroom walls can exhibit anything that
showcases the students’ strengths. Other ideas for student work are listed below:

•• Written responses to literature

•• Book reviews
•• Graphic organizers and other strategies for organizing text designed by indi-
vidual or groups of students
•• Word problems or word stories in mathematics
•• Science journal entries
•• Research reports
•• Art
•• Computer-­generated materials
•• Published books

Dedicated Spaces
Dedicated spaces are areas set aside for a specific purpose. They contribute to an orga-
nized literacy classroom. Such spaces provide a sense of security and ownership for
your students, especially if they are involved in the designing and maintenance of the
spaces. The dedicated spaces that we recommend include a common meeting area,
classroom library, quiet reading space, computer center, writing center, and resource
center. We elaborate on each type of area below.

Common Meeting Area

The common meeting area is a place in a busy classroom where everyone meets to
serve a common purpose. It is the place where students gather for morning meeting or
participate in calendar activities. Students can also meet in the common meeting area
during reading instruction to learn or debrief a strategy, engage in whole-class instruc-
tion, or watch a demonstration of answering an open-­response question.
In many classrooms, the common meeting area is designated by a carpet and con-
tains something to write on (a whiteboard or easel). The area should be large enough for
all the students to sit comfortably. The students should know that whenever they meet
in the common meeting area, there is a common goal or purpose.

Classroom Library
We can immediately recognize a well-­designed classroom, because the classroom
library is the focal point. Its prominent position in the classroom space gives the strong
message that reading is vital to learning in the classroom.
Effective teachers know that the classroom library is more than a set of shelves for
storing books. These teachers also know that the library is a dynamic place. They con-
tinually scrutinize the space: They give a great deal of thought to the way the books are
organized, the materials and texts that are included in the space, and the procedures
 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 15

surrounding the selection of books. We know that the materials in classroom libraries,
as in other types of libraries, should be well organized, accessible, and multidimen-
sional.
The classroom library should include a wide variety of texts and genres, and should
be highly accessible. Worthy and Roser (2004) humorously refer to this as “flood ensur-
ance,” since it will enable you to accommodate a “flood” of eager readers! They define
access as appropriateness, appeal, and sufficiency. They remind us that “students who
have ready access to a wide range of reading materials are more likely to read, and to
make more progress, than those who do not” (p. 184). The International Reading Asso-
ciation (2000) makes recommendations about specific numbers of books that students
should have access to: seven per child in each classroom library, plus two more per
child each year for books that are no longer timely or that have been damaged.
Like public libraries, classroom libraries should contain a balance of expository and
narrative texts, and should also include other kinds of print materials (such as maga-
zines, newspapers, and reference texts). Narrative and expository materials should be
shelved separately, as they represent very different kinds of reading, and they may
be chosen for very different purposes. Duke’s (2000) investigations remind us of the
importance of including expository texts both in elementary classroom libraries and in
our instruction.
Books can be labeled by categories and stored in a variety of colorful bins and
shelves. In Figure 2.5, you can see books stored in this way; they are arranged in catego-
ries and well labeled. Books can be also showcased in a separate display to complement
a science unit, a social studies unit, or a genre or author study. Showcasing books is
another way to make them highly accessible for the students.
To help your students discover what is in the classroom library, you can choose
a few books each week to preview and endorse. In addition, any new acquisitions to
the classroom library should be introduced. These books will often be chosen by the
students during self-­selected reading, as they have received the stamp of approval by
the teacher.

FIGURE 2.5. Books in storage bins.

16 TEACHING READING

To maintain the efficacy of your classroom library, we suggest the following:

•• Ensure that there are books representing the cultures of all readers in the class-
room.
•• Ensure that there are books that all readers can read independently.
•• Review the books on the shelves for condition, appropriateness, and accuracy.
•• Rotate the books on the shelves periodically.
•• Showcase certain books that complement a unit in the content areas.
•• Use a variety of shelves, bins, and containers to display the books in creative
ways.
•• Involve the students in organizing the classroom library by sorting and labeling
the texts and devising guidelines for using the library space.

As with any literacy space or center, certain procedures and routines need to accom-
pany the use of the space. In many classrooms, we see rules and procedures written by
children for using the classroom library. We think this is a great idea. In this way, stu-
dents and teachers work together to create an optimum library space.
Figure 2.6 is a chart for rating your classroom library. If you are a practicing teacher,
take the time to evaluate your own classroom library—your most important literacy
space. Then, using what you have recorded, make a plan for improving this space. If
you do not have your own classroom, visit the classroom of a peer, and use the chart as
a way to inventory your peer’s classroom library.

Quiet Reading Space

Aside from the classroom library, there should be a space designated as the quiet read-
ing area. We understand that a highly productive classroom will not always be quiet,
but it should include at least one quiet space. At least some students in a busy classroom
may need and seek a quiet space. The space need not be large; in fact, a small space is
better. A comfy armchair or beanbag chair, a small rug, and more shelves with limited
books can serve effectively for this space. Figure 2.7 (page 18) depicts an example of a
quiet space for reading and writing.

Computer Center
The computer center is a fundamental learning space in the 21st century. It is no longer
an option; it is a necessity. Kuhn and Morrow (2005) explain that despite initial diffi-
culties with using technology in classrooms (not enough computers, non-user-­friendly
computers), the implementation of computers in classrooms is increasing in the United
States. Kuhn and Morrow go on to explain that there is a cause-and-­effect action in
play: As computers and other technology become increasingly sophisticated, they also
become more user-­friendly; as they become more user-­friendly, they become more pro-
lific; as they become more prolific, teachers and students are more at ease using them.
If students have computers at home, school use of computers reinforces the home–­
school connection; if students do not have computers at home, the classroom is an indis-
pensable place for them to learn and practice the technology they will be expected to
know and use with relative ease. Because students in grades K–6 spend the majority of
 How Does Your Classroom Library Rate?

0: Not yet
1: Need more
2: Growing
3: Excellent

Does your classroom library have . . . 0 1 2 3

Current and appropriate reference materials?

Expository texts containing accurate information?

Narrative texts representing all levels of reading ability

in the classroom?
Narrative texts representing all children in the classroom?

Narrative texts representing our multicultural world?

Texts representing a variety of genres children love?

Realistic fiction
Fantasy
Traditional tales
Historical fiction
Biographies
Poetry
Informational text
Picture books?

Wordless picture books?

Current children’s magazines in good condition?

Current newspapers?

Well-organized shelves and bins?

Displays that showcase authors, themes, topics, or genres?

FIGURE 2.6. Rate your classroom library.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

17
18 TEACHING READING

FIGURE 2.7. A quiet reading space.

their school day within the classroom setting, it makes sense for them to have access
to technology within the classroom walls, rather than going to a computer lab once or
twice a week.
The directions for using computers and other technology should be clearly dem-
onstrated by the teacher, and then written out and strategically placed in the computer
center for reference. There are many high-­quality educational websites for students to
use during their computer time; these sites continue to change and improve. As you
have read at the start of this chapter, Pam integrates the computers into her center time,
while she works with small reading groups. If students use headphones, computers can
be part of a quiet area also devoted to reading.

Writing Center
The writing center stores writing materials and provides a space where students can
work on writing projects independently or in small groups. The writing materials
should be accessible, and the writing center should be stocked with the kinds of things
students will need and can get themselves. Morrow (2005), Bromley (2007), and Diller
(2003) provide suggestions for the types of materials writing centers should have. Sug-
gestions are also given in Figure 2.8.
Diller (2003) has suggested positioning a writing center (she calls it a “work sta-
tion”) near a word wall, for easy accessibility when students are working independently
or in small groups in the center. A small table and chairs allows students a comfortable
and temporary place to work. Several types of paper, including blank books, should be

•• Assorted paper
•• Pens, pencils, markers
•• Table and chairs
•• Reference materials
•• Books, photographs, and pictures for models and ideas
•• Strategies for revising/editing
•• Ideas for writing topics
•• Student writing in various stages
•• Author’s chair

FIGURE 2.8. Materials for the writing center.

 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 19

a staple of the center materials; pens, pencils, and markers should also be available in
abundance.
Students of all ages need books, magazines, photographs, and other visual aids to
give them ideas for topics and to provide models of good writing. Reference materi-
als such as dictionaries and thesauruses should be accessible as well. The walls of the
writing center can contain specific suggestions for writing topics and can clearly post
the strategies the students have already learned for revising and editing their work. It
is also a good idea to display student writing in various stages, so they have models of
writing in progress.
A chair specifically designated for sharing work, the author’s chair (Calkins, 1994),
can be stored in the writing center and used when students are sharing their work in
small groups or with the whole class. We discuss the author’s chair further in connec-
tion with the writing workshop, later in this chapter.

Resource Center
A resource center has shelves for various types of materials. These include core content-
area texts for science, social studies, and math; manipulatives for math; science sup-
plies for hands-on learning events; atlases and maps for social studies; and dictionaries
for all subjects. They should be well labeled and organized, and students should be
able to find them easily. You can also store published anthologies of literature used for
your reading program and leveled texts used for small-group reading instruction in the
resource center, as these would not normally be part of your classroom library.

T ry T his
Visit a classroom of a teacher you consider to be a highly effective literacy instructor,
who has an appealing and well-­organized classroom. Look at the space carefully and
ask yourself these questions:

•• How are the students’ desks arranged?

•• Is there a common meeting area?
•• Where is the classroom library?
•• Is it organized according to the guidelines in this chapter?
•• Is the information on the walls dynamic and interactive?
•• Are there dedicated spaces for students to work independently?
•• Are there sufficient materials?
•• Are centers well labeled with clear directions?

Now, using the good ideas you have gathered from observing one or more effec-
tive classrooms and the information in this chapter, design a classroom in the space
provided on the following page.

•• First, choose a grade level for your classroom.

•• Next, decide on the types of centers and dedicated areas you want to include.
•• Then consider the kinds of grouping you will want to use.
•• Finally, make a sketch of your ideal space. Share your sketch with your peers.
 20 TEACHING READING

Sketch it here.

Now record the materials you need to include in each of the spaces designated
below. Use observations you have made of a literacy-rich classroom and the ideas you
have read in this text. What would you choose for each area? What specific materials
are necessary for each area to be effective? Make a list in each column, and share your
ideas and questions with your peers.

Classroom
Walls Library Writing Center Resource Center Computer Center
 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 21

Managing Literacy Spaces, Events, and Materials

The well-­designed literacy spaces we have described provide excellent opportunities

for the students to get sustained practice in a skill or strategy recently taught, to work
independently, and to extend their knowledge beyond what has already been taught.
They also provide opportunities for the students to work collaboratively in a more infor-
mal setting. Diller (2003) reminds us that the literacy spaces should not replace good
instruction or be places where students merely keep themselves busy.
In most cases, the students will move to these spaces on their own, either individu-
ally and/or in small groups. Many inquisitive bodies moving in and around a class-
room space can be chaotic if specific procedures are not in place. At the very least,
there should be (1) clear directions for each space; (2) sufficient materials and resources
to work independently; (3) bins, folders, and other types of containers for storing and
organizing completed work and works in progress; and (4) reference materials and
books to assist the students.
Students need to be taught how to navigate through literacy spaces, and this can be
done the same way you would teach any new skill: through demonstration and guided
practice. Reutzel and Morrow (2007) suggest a procedure for introducing each center
one at a time, over a period of weeks. They begin by explicitly modeling the use of each
space (and the materials contained in the space), followed by guided practice. Then the
children can begin to use the space independently. Eventually the students will under-
stand the procedures for each center and the routines for moving among several centers
in the same classroom.

Grouping
Deciding how to group students effectively is a common concern of teachers in a liter-
acy learning classroom. Types of grouping include whole-class instruction, teacher-led
homogeneous groups, teacher-led heterogeneous groups, student-led heterogeneous
groups, peer dyads, and individual learning. The ways in which we group students are
dependent on a few factors: (1) the particular literacy event, (2) the type of text used,
and (3) the makeup of the class. The way you arrange your classroom is related to the
kinds of grouping you plan.
Paratore (2000) suggests using many grouping options to allow all children equal
access to learning. See Figure 2.9 (page 22) for an explanation of the grouping prac-
tices.

Daily Routines That Support Literacy Learning

Throughout this text, you will learn about specific ways to teach reading, from word
study to strategy instruction to fostering engagement in literature. In this section, we
present a broad model that defines the kinds of reading our students need to do, the
kinds of support we must provide, and the kinds of texts our students require in order
to be accomplished readers. Paratore (2000) refers to this model of reading instruction
as multiple grouping, and it includes three daily literacy events: community reading, just-
right reading, and on-your-own reading (see Figure 2.10 on page 23). Below, we describe
Paratore’s framework for excellent reading instruction; this passage is adapted from
22 TEACHING READING

Grouping
Options

Whole-Class Instruction:
For introducing ideas, concepts,
and strategies that are new to all
or almost all students in the classroom.

Small
Groups

Student-Led Heterogeneous Groups: Teacher-Led Homogeneous Groups:

For practice and application of For instructing students with similar
previously taught information. learning needs.

Peer Dyads: For practice and application

of previously taught strategies
with one peer.

Individual Learning: For using and

applying skills and strategies
in independent work.

FIGURE 2.9. Grouping options. Based on Paratore (2000; see also Paratore & McCormack,
2005).

Paratore and McCormack (2005, pp. 101–105).* Some of the practices described are more
fully explained in Chapter 3 of the present book.

Community Reading
In community reading, children read or listen and respond to text that will support the
development of language and concepts appropriate at their grade level. Community
reading is intended to achieve two major purposes. The first is to provide every child
with access to grade-­appropriate curriculum, and by so doing, to provide opportuni-

* Copyright 2005 by The Guilford Press. Adapted by permission.

 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 23

Multiple
Grouping
for Reading
Instruction

Community Just-Right On-Your-Own

Reading Reading Reading

Time each day Time each day Time each day

when children read when children when children read
or listen to receive instruction anything of their
grade-appropriate in text that will own choosing.
text. support the
development of
word-level and
comprehension
strategies.

FIGURE 2.10. Multiple grouping for reading instruction. Based on Paratore and McCormack
(2005).

ties for every child to acquire grade-­appropriate vocabulary, concepts, and language
structures. The second purpose is to create contexts that support the development of the
classroom as a learning community, where a focus on the same text or topic by children
of differing ability levels enables all children to interact and provides an opportunity
for them to learn from one another.
In classrooms where teachers use a basal reading program, children may read a
selection from the anthology during the community reading period. In classrooms
where trade books frame the reading program, children generally read a teacher-
­selected trade book or choose from a selection of thematically related trade books dur-
ing the time period.
Because all children read the same text, or a collection of texts, about the same topic
or theme during this particular time period, these lessons typically begin with whole-
class instruction, during which children prepare for reading by making predictions,
reviewing key vocabulary and concepts, and posing questions. Although time alloca-
tions differ in every classroom, on average, teachers allocate about 45–60 minutes to the
community reading component of the literacy program.
During the period when children read text, small groups are usually formed on the
basis of children’s reading needs. In one group, children who are capable readers are
directed to read the text on their own and to complete a teacher-­assigned cooperative
learning activity. The assigned task is selected precisely to motivate students to reflect
on, and respond to, the texts in ways that will clarify meaning or challenge their think-
ing.
24 TEACHING READING

In choosing the comprehension tasks, we are guided, in particular, by three crite-

ria. First, the tasks we assign must be consistent with strategies previously taught. For
example, after we have provided explicit instruction in story mapping to the whole
class, we might ask children to work with partners to construct a story map of the next
story. Second, the tasks we assign must also engage students in higher-level thinking.
So, for example, after constructing a story map, we might ask students to consider the
connections between a character’s actions and story outcomes. What if the character
had acted differently? How would that different behavior have changed the outcome?
Third, we plan comprehension activities that we expect could be useful to students
during subsequent lessons. For example, students might save story maps in a journal
or notebook and, after a few weeks, review their collection of maps and compare or
contrast events or characters.
In another group the teacher may assist struggling readers. For some children,
grade-level text represents “frustration-level” material, and without teacher guidance
and support, some students are likely to fail. In these cases, the teacher’s responsibility
is to mediate text difficulties in ways that prevent frustration. That is, the teacher must
intervene with strategies and practices that make the text readable. Such intervention
strategies include (1) reading all or part of the text aloud before children are expected to
read it on their own; (2) providing instruction in vocabulary that is essential to compre-
hending the selection; (3) engaging children in choral or echo readings; or (4) assigning
buddy reading. Students who need to develop word-­reading accuracy and fluency may
be given additional opportunities to reread parts or all of the text individually, with a
partner, or with the teacher. After children have finished reading the text, they work
with the teacher to complete the same comprehension task their higher-­performing
peers completed on their own or in small groups. In the teacher-led lesson, struggling
readers are given more explicit instruction when required by the text. That is, they may
be reminded of text structure and guided to use the structures when recalling or retell-
ing important ideas. Or the teacher may focus on specific vocabulary, concepts, or lan-
guage structures and discuss how the writing style influences their understanding of
the text.
After all children have read and responded to the text, the groups reconvene as a
whole class or as small heterogeneous groups to share what they have read and learned
that day. See below for a graphic representation of the community reading segment of
daily literacy instruction.

Story Introduction (Whole Class)

• Preview text, develop background knowledge, make predictions.

Reading the Selection (Needs-Based Groups)

No Help With Help (Teacher-Led Group)
• Silent reading • Read-aloud by teacher
• Partner reading • Rereading with teacher or partner
• Partner response (oral) • Group response (oral)
• Individual response (written) • Individual response (written)

Responding to the Selection (Heterogeneous Groups or Whole Class)

• Small-group or whole-class discussion or strategy lesson
 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 25

Just-Right Reading
In the just-right reading period, small groups are formed to provide children with
instruction with text that is “just right” for them—that is, text they can read with 90–95%
accuracy, a level that is widely believed to be optimal for acquiring word knowledge,
fluency, and accuracy. Just-right reading groups are usually small (four to eight chil-
dren) and typically last for 20 minutes or so. This group-based model allows the teacher
to work with more than one child at a time. In addition, it includes three important
tasks in each lesson: reading a focal book, engaging in systematic and explicit word
study, and rereading familiar books.
For able and advanced readers, the just-right reading period offers opportunities to
return to the text during community reading for explicit instruction in word-level or com-
prehension strategies, or, when appropriate, to read beyond the grade-level text and receive
instruction that will challenge them cognitively, linguistically, and motivationally.

On-Your-Own Reading
On-your-own reading encompasses activities more widely known as sustained silent
reading or “drop everything and read.” It is the time of day when children choose to
read any book or text of interest to them, and, if they wish, to share their responses with
teachers and peers.

Designing a Literacy Plan

A well-­designed literacy plan or schedule can include and integrate all kinds of text
reading described above. You can see an example of how they can be coordinated in
Figure 2.11 (page 26). We suggest that you devise a consistent schedule. If you schedule
a separate block of time for on-your-own reading, we suggest using the guidelines in
Figure 2.12 (page 26) for creating an independent reading program, which were inspired
by the work of Cunningham and Allington (2007).

Promoting Peer Talk

We know that in order for children to become competent language users, they need
frequent experiences of talking to each other in the classroom (Cazden, 2001). To our
dismay, we also know that this practice is often highly discouraged. In many class-
rooms we observe, students are given little time to socially construct meaning. Most
lessons are offered as recitations, with the predominant participation structure being one
in which the teacher initiates (I), a student responds (R), and the teacher evaluates the
response (E). This structure is referred to as the I-R-E structure and offers little time for
open student talk (Mehan, 1979). A classroom transcript of a discussion with an I-R-E
structure is below. Each is marked with an (I) for initiation, an (R) for response, and/or
an (E) for evaluation.

(I) Teacher: We are studying mammals. What makes a mammal different from
other animals?
(R) Student 1: It is warm-­blooded.
26 TEACHING READING

Community Reading

On-Your-Own Literacy
Reading Centers

Just-Right
Reading

Writing Workshop
(Whole Class)

FIGURE 2.11. An example of a literacy plan.

•• Create a program that will promote independent reading both in and out of school.
•• Begin the program in kindergarten.
•• Allow 10–15 minutes a day for independent, in-school reading in grades K–2.
•• In grades 3–5, increase the amount to 15–20 minutes per day.
•• Above grade 5, continue to increase the amount of time for independent reading.
•• Have designated periods of time devoted to independent reading.
•• Establish a no-wandering rule.
•• Encourage students to talk about what they’ve read.
•• During independent reading, the teacher should also read. During sharing time, the teacher
should share what he or she has read.

FIGURE 2.12. Guidelines for creating an independent reading program. Based on Cunningham
and Allington (2007).
 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 27

(E) (I) Teacher: Yes, you are right. What else?

(R) Student 2: It carries its baby inside? I mean, mammals don’t lay eggs like
birds.
(E) (I) Teacher: Yes! Very good! Mammals do carry their babies inside and give
birth to live young. Are we mammals?
(R) Student 3: Yes, we are mammals.
(E) (I) Teacher: Very good. We are all mammals. We are warm-­blooded, and our
mothers gave birth to us alive. Mammals also have some sort of fur or hair
that sets us apart from egg-­laying animals. So can anyone think of another
characteristic of a mammal?

Do you notice in the transcript that the teacher is doing most of the talking? Figure
2.13 shows graphically how the I-R-E structure gives much more opportunity for teacher
talk than student talk. Encouraging student talk helps children clarify their thoughts,
assists them in understanding what they have read, and helps them develop confidence
as language users (Paratore & McCormack, 1997). With opportunities to practice, stu-
dents are able to use both the language of the curriculum (school talk) and the language
of personal identity (home talk) (Cazden, 2001).
By building specific experiences for your students to talk together, you can cre-
ate authentic ways for your students to practice becoming more competent language
users. By listening to them talk, you have a unique opportunity to discover the ways
in which they negotiate meaning. You will often find your own pedagogical language
replicated in their voices. What better way to assess their knowledge and the efficacy of
your teaching? Promoting peer talk provides your students with rich opportunities for
personal interactions, and it gives sanction for them to discuss their observations about
their world and themselves in an authentic way.
Discussions of the books students read with others and on their own provide one
context for helping students construct meaning about the world around them. These
discussions are not limited to talking about narrative text; rather, the discussions should

70%
Teacher 60%
Initiates 50%
Student 40%
Teacher

Responds 30%
Student

Teacher 20%

Evaluates 10%
0%

FIGURE 2.13. Proportion of teacher talk to student talk in I-R-E participation structure.
28 TEACHING READING

include talking about the many expository books they read to gain information about
the world around them.

Supporting Good Book Discussions

Fostering good discussions takes time and patience. We have used practical suggestions
from the work of Lapp, Flood, Ranck-Buhr, Van Dyke, and Spacek (1997) and Roser,
Strecker, and Martinez (2000) to devise the following guidelines for nurturing critical
thought and insightful talk in the classroom. The guidelines are also summarized in
Figure 2.14.

Choose Good Books

The books you choose will affect the quality of the discussions. Select books that have
strong plots, good characterization, and worthwhile themes. Expository texts should be
engaging, accurate, and well presented.

Model Good Discussion Behaviors

Appropriate Turn Taking

Taking turns is not instinctive; it has to be taught. Modeling turn-­taking behavior in

front of the class with parent volunteers, teacher aides, and other support staff in your
classroom is one way to show your students how to “get the floor.” It is important to
establish a list of rules to govern the active participation of all students.

Listening

Teaching active listening skills is important before young children can participate in a
group discussion. Children are likely to think about and dwell on what they want to
say next, instead of listening to what another student is saying now. You can teach your
students these aspects of active listening: (1) making eye contact with the speaker; (2)
showing they are listening by responding with nonverbal language, such as nodding
their heads when they are in agreement; and (3) appreciating the speaker’s message.

•• Choose good books.

•• Model good discussion behaviors:
Appropriate turn taking
Listening
Speaking
•• Arrange seating strategically.
•• Encourage students to think on their feet.
•• Gradually relinquish control of the discussions.

FIGURE 2.14. Guidelines for promoting good discussions.

 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 29

Speaking

It is very important to model appropriate speaking behaviors before your students

participate in discussion groups. Rules and routines must be clearly established. For
example, students need to see modeled: (1) constructive, positive talk; (2) talk that keeps
the conversation flowing from point to point; and (3) talk that clarifies, initiates, and/
or questions.

Arrange Seating Strategically

Whether the whole class or part of the class is participating in the discussion, the stu-
dents should be seated so that they can have face-to-face interactions. This can be done
by arranging the students in a circle on the floor or at their desks. You should situate
yourself within the group without being in a position to be the “leader” of the discus-
sion, but rather just one participant. If students think you are leading, they will defer to
you as the voice of authority.

Encourage Students to Think on Their Feet

Many students think they are only allowed to speak in a discussion if they know “the
right answer.” You can encourage them to use talk to clarify their thinking.

Gradually Relinquish Control of the Discussions

As students begin to show competence in the give and take of discussions, your role
should change from discussion leader to discussion facilitator. At some point, your
presence will not be essential to the discussions, and the students can engage in their
own constructive discussions of the books they read.

Using Small-Group Formats

Book circles, literature circles, or book clubs (Kong & Fitch, 2002–2003; Raphael & McMa-
hon, 1997; Raphael, Florio-Ruane, & George, 2001) can be highly structured, small-group
contexts for teaching reading and talking about books; they can also be more informal
contexts for students to talk about the books they have self-­selected and are reading
on their own (McCormack & Carney, 2005). In the formal contexts, teachers can begin
with the whole class to teach a strategy or introduce a genre. Students can then meet in
groups to read and discuss a common book. They may follow their discussion with a
written assignment or journal entry. Following the written assignment, the whole class
can reconvene to debrief the strategy the students have learned and to discuss their
books.
In the informal contexts, the students can meet periodically in small groups to
share their self-­selected books. This practice can take place at any grade level, and the
groups can be led by the students themselves. It is ideal to let the students establish
their own guidelines for talking about books and for participating in the discussions,
as illustrated in Figure 2.15.
30 TEACHING READING

1. Come to the group prepared.

2. Listen to the leader’s directions.
3. Be respectful and helpful to each other.
4. Have lots of conversations about the books.
5. Have fun!

FIGURE 2.15. Student-devised rules for literature circles.

We provide more elaboration of the value of peer talk in Chapter 12, when we dis-
cuss assessing vocabulary, comprehension, and response.

T ry T his
In order to understand what book discussions look and sound like in real classrooms,
schedule a time to observe and listen to a teacher-led discussion. If possible, try to
observe a peer-led discussion as well. Use the questions in Figure 2.16 to guide your
observation. What have you learned about the discussion between teacher and students
or among students? How would you facilitate the discussion to make it different? How
would you change the participation structure?

Writing Workshop

Writing workshop is the ultimate format for teaching process writing (Calkins, 1994;
Graves, 1994), and it perfectly illustrates what we mean by a teaching and learning

Observe the members of a discussion group. Use these questions to

guide your observations.

•• How can you describe the participation structure?

•• Did any student emerge as the leader? How did you know?
•• How did the participants get the floor? Maintain the floor?
•• What were the purposes of the talk?
Initiating
Questioning
Agreeing
Seeking clarification
Challenging
“Upping the ante”
Elaborating/explaining
Other
•• To what extent did everyone participate?
•• Was there overlapping talk? If so, was it appropriate?
•• Was any of the discourse off topic? If so, was it redirected? If so, how?

FIGURE 2.16. Participation structure exercise.

 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 31

event that encompasses all the guidelines of best practice. It provides instruction in a
variety of grouping options; allows substantial opportunities for peer interaction; con-
tains authentic and meaningful instruction; and engages all learners in the acts of read-
ing, writing, listening, and speaking. In writing workshop, students are active learners
of the process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing their own writ-
ing, the way real writers do.
Although students should be writing all day, in every subject, a writing workshop
format provides direct instruction in the writing process, specific genre elements, and
grade-­appropriate writing conventions (such as grammar, capitalization, and punctua-
tion). A large block of time within the writing workshop structure allows for sufficient
practice. We suggest that you set aside up to 1 hour one or two times a week in grades
K–2, and 1–2 hours one or more times a week in grades 3–6. We agree with writing
experts that writing instruction should be structured around the standards your stu-
dents need to meet and the genres you need to teach (Pasquarelli, 2006a).
A typical writing workshop has four basic components: reading, mini-­lesson, writ-
ing/conferring, and sharing (see Figure 2.17). We like to see each writing workshop
session begin with immersing the students in the genre you are teaching. This may only
take a few minutes each session, as you read to or with your students some excellent
examples of the genre you are studying.
The next component of writing workshop is a mini-­lesson focusing on a strategy
for revising or editing the writing pieces the students are working on. Each mini-­lesson
should center on a piece of real writing, preferably your own.
After the mini-­lesson, the students continue working on their writing pieces,
applying the strategy they learned in the mini-­lesson to their own pieces of writing.
Mini-­lessons should not be followed by worksheets; rather, the students’ writing pieces
become their “personal worksheets” as they apply the strategy you have taught to
revise or edit their own writing. During the writing time, students can engage in peer
conferences, working collaboratively to improve their pieces. You can also confer with
students in small groups or one on one, focusing on process or product.
At the end of writing workshop, you can choose two or three students to share
their finished pieces or works in progress by taking the author’s chair (Calkins, 1994), the
chair of honor (see Figures 2.18 and 2.19 on page 32). This is a time for positive feedback.
See Figure 2.20 (page 33) for the kinds of comments the students can expect from their
peers. Final draft pieces or pieces in varying stages of development can be displayed in
the classroom, specifically in the writing center.

•• Reading the genre with, by, and to children: Immerse the students in the genre by
sharing lots of examples of great writing.
•• Mini-lesson: Teach a strategy to revise or edit their writing by applying the strategy to a
piece of your own writing.
•• Writing and conferring: Guide students to apply the strategy to their writing while they
plan, draft, revise, and edit their work. Meet with students one on one or in small groups.
•• Sharing: Choose two or three students to take the author’s chair.

FIGURE 2.17. Components of writing workshop.

32 TEACHING READING

This is a great opportunity to share your writing

with others!

• Hold your piece so you can see it, but without

covering your face. Smile.
• Read slowly and with expression.
• Look up from time to time and make eye contact
with your audience.
• Call on a few classmates for their comments.
• Thank your classmates for their input.

FIGURE 2.18. Directions to students for taking the author’s chair.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L.
McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford
Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this
book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

We have had success using a writing workshop format to teach writing, beginning
in kindergarten. There are many good resources for implementing writing workshop in
your classroom. We suggest that you consult a writing text for an elaboration on how to
carry out an effective workshop. For example, for younger students, the text Scaffolding
Young Writers: A Writer’s Workshop Approach (Dorn & Soffos, 2001) is an explicit text for
setting up a workshop model in your classroom. For older elementary students, Teach-
ing Writing Genres across the Curriculum (Pasquarelli, 2006b) is an excellent resource for
teachers to help students skillfully negotiate the writing tasks they will need as they
get older.

FIGURE 2.19. Student taking the author’s chair.

 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 33

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FIGURE 2.20. “What can I expect my classmates to say when I take the author’s chair?”: Exam-
ples of positive peer comments.

The chart below lists the kinds of grouping options effective teachers use through-
out the literacy curriculum. Reflect on the kinds of literacy events that occur on a typical
school day. Then, indicate how they can be carried out through a variety of grouping
configurations. A few are already listed as a model.

Teacher-Led Student-Led
Literacy Homogeneous Heterogeneous
Event Whole Class Groups Groups Peer Dyads Individual
Literature × × ×
circles

Independent × ×
reading
34 TEACHING READING

Following Gina: Community Reading

through the Eyes of a Third Grader

Let us follow Gina as she navigates a flexibly grouped classroom, and participates in
some of the reading routines described in this chapter.
Gina is an energetic and gregarious third grader. She loves to read, but she still
struggles a bit with decoding new words. Although she often feels challenged, she is
quite cheerful. In the common meeting area, Gina’s teacher introduces the whole class
to the core reading selection of the day: A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison (Adler,
1996), which is a selection from the district-­adopted reading list. The biography is chal-
lenging because of the number of new and difficult words Adler presents to the reader,
but Gina’s teacher shows how Adler defines each word explicitly in the sentence fol-
lowing the words, and provides a detailed illustration on each page. The whole-class
instruction is a great format for introducing the selection and getting the students ready
to read on their own.
As this text is too difficult for Gina and several of her classmates to read completely
on their own, Gina joins a group of six children at a table with her teacher, while the
other students read the selection about Edison on their own. The teacher spends the
next 20 minutes guiding the reading of Gina’s group along. Sometimes he reads to them,
and sometimes he asks them to read parts of it alone. All the while, he is reviewing
how Adler structures the vocabulary support. Gina is animated and talkative during
this group session, especially when her teacher starts asking questions about Thomas
Edison. At the end of the session, the students choose two pages to read together. They
practice these a few times.
Gina now joins all her classmates back in the common meeting area. Gina’s teacher
asks, “So what do you think about Thomas Alva Edison?” The students laugh, and they
start talking about Edison’s quirkiness, drawing specific examples from the text. Then
Gina’s teacher says, “Turn to the person next to you and talk about some of Thomas
Edison’s inventions.” Gina turns to a boy who was not in her small group, and they
begin to list some of the inventions mentioned in the book. After this peer talk activity,
one student says, “He invented the telephone.” Gina looks aghast, but politely says, “No,
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Thomas Edison improved it.” She is proud
of herself, because that was precisely what they had talked about in her small group. To
finish the lesson, Gina’s teacher says, “How about if we read a couple of pages together?
Let’s read the part when Thomas Edison was a boy and worked as a candy butcher. Can
you find those pages?” Of course, Gina finds those pages quickly. Those were the exact
pages her group practiced!

Before you read the next chapter, take a few moments to assess your comprehen-
sion of this chapter by referring to the Key Terms Chart in Figure 2.21. Try to write
definitions in your own words.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 2.22 (page 36) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
 Creating a Literacy-Rich Classroom Environment 35

Key Terms for Chapter 2

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

word wall

dedicated spaces

multiple grouping

community reading

just-right reading

on-my-own reading

participation structures: I-R-E versus peer talk

writing workshop

author’s chair

FIGURE 2.21. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 2.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 2

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

36
FIGURE 2.22. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 2.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Chapter 3

Developing Foundations
for Fluent Readers
Phonological/Phonemic Awareness, Phonics,
and Fluency

Learning to read is hard work. Reading is a complex process influenced by an assort-

ment of cognitive, linguistic, and affective factors. As difficult as it is, children usually
follow a somewhat standard developmental course in learning to read that begins well
before they arrive at school. Clay (1979) has described this early process as emergent liter-
acy. Children can learn a great deal about books, print, and writing from many sources
before coming to school. They learn the functions (the reasons why we have print) and
the forms (all kinds of writing) of written communication through their experiences
with environmental print—signs, labels, and billboards. They learn that symbols repre-
sent sounds and words. They learn that print conveys meaning. This awareness is sup-
ported when home environments nurture literacy through storybook reading, writing
experiences, trips to museums, and other outings.
We know of many children who come to school with thousands of hours of literacy
instruction derived from those very experiences: from storybook reading to learning
about letters and sounds from popular children’s television programs. For other chil-
dren, trips to the grocery store are opportunities for them to observe printed labels and
associate them with things they know. For still other children, their classrooms will be
the only places where they read and enjoy books, write for a variety of purposes, and
“talk the talk” of the classroom.
Our students develop as excellent readers, in great part, because of the time they
spend with teachers and other students who make learning to read the top priority in
the early grades. We have a responsibility to provide our students with the best experi-
ences we can to prepare them to be independent, strategic readers.
In this chapter, we describe the foundations of strategic reading: phonological and
phonemic awareness, knowledge of phonics and high-­frequency words, and fluent
reading.

37
38 TEACHING READING

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Teaching phonological and phonemic awareness.
99
Choosing approaches and contexts to teach phonics.
99
Teaching high-­frequency words.
99
Teaching fluency.
99
Using the fluency development lesson.
99
Choosing books that help build fluency.
99

Teaching Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

What Are Phonological and Phonemic Awareness?
Phonological awareness is the consciousness of sounds in words (Adams, 1990; Yopp,
1995). When children have phonological awareness, they can hear and manipulate the
sounds and chunks of sounds in spoken language. They enjoy and appreciate words that
rhyme, and they delight in hearing, reciting, reading, and rereading poems and rhym-
ing books. They know that our spoken language is divided into separate words, and
the evidence of this is seen in their writing, when they can separate the words that they
have previously written as connected strings of letters. They understand the concepts
of syllables, onsets (beginnings of letters up to the vowel in a syllable or a one-­syllable
word), and rimes (the vowel and everything after in a syllable or a one-­syllable word).
Phonological awareness is a broad term and includes the concept of phonemic awareness.
When children have phonemic awareness, they understand and can manipulate the
individual phonemes—the smallest speech sounds—in words. They can tell you that
the word dog is like log because you can take the d sound away and replace it with an l
sound. They can listen to the sounds made by the letters c-a-t and know the word is cat.
Conversely, they can listen to the word cat and tell you the sounds made by the letters
c-a-t.
The prevalent thinking is that there is a reciprocal relationship between phone-
mic awareness and reading (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001; Snow, Burns, & Griffin,
1998). Being able to detect and manipulate phonemes in our spoken language helps a
child to read, and the act of reading promotes growth in phonemic awareness. Adams
(1990) refers to students’ phonemic awareness as a major predictor of reading success.

How to Teach Phonological/Phonemic Awareness

Teaching phonological and phonemic awareness takes a bit of planning, but after a short
while, many of the focused lessons can become second nature to you and your students.
There are few, if any, materials to prepare, and your students will look forward to their
word play by ear. Yopp (1993) provides us with recommendations for teaching phono-
logical and phonemic awareness. These are listed below, and we have included some of
our own recommendations as well.

•• Begin teaching phonological awareness through rhymes (e.g., cat, fat, sat). This is
the easiest of the phonological awareness tasks.
•• Plan deliberate lessons and teach the sounds through explicit instruction.
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 39

Although some students may pick up phonemic awareness later through inter-
action with print, most need direct instruction. This instruction needs to be carried
out in the form of oral activities.
•• Plan child-­appropriate and playful activities to teach and provide practice. We
use italics below to stress the oral or other sound-based aspects of these activities.
•• Teach students to sing new songs, leaving out some of the rhyming words and
encouraging the children to guess at the words.
•• Recite short poems and nursery rhymes.
•• Clap out words in lines of poems, songs, or sentences as you recite them or sing
them.
•• Tap out syllables in words, using musical instruments such as drumsticks,
bongo drums, or tambourines.
•• Practice orally taking words apart and putting them together. These can include
nonsense words. Use your hands to show them how to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the words,
then watch them use their hands.
•• Help parents understand their roles in promoting phonological and phonemic
awareness by showing them how to play word games, reading rhyming stories,
and reciting traditional nursery rhymes and singing songs. (See Chapter 10 for
more discussion of inviting parents to engage in family literacy.)

Figure 3.1 is a chart of the tasks that Yopp (1993) suggests children should know
and be able to do in order to develop phonological and phonemic awareness. Again, the
most important thing to remember is that these tasks are oral. By training your students’
ears to hear and distinguish between sounds, you can help your students to identify
the sounds in print. You can use Figure 3.1 as a way to help sequence your lessons from
easiest to most difficult.
Also remember that your lessons in phonological and phonemic awareness should
(1) have consistent formats from day to day, (2) be integrated into your literacy cur-
riculum, (3) have clear objectives, (4) be cumulative (you should add more tasks as the
students learn them), and (5) be playful and fun. Your students will reap many benefits

1. Rhyming words: Being able to tell that two words rhyme: cat–bat, dog–hog.
2. Counting words in a sentence: Being able to tell that the following is a five-word sentence:
I have a new puppy.
3. Counting syllables in words: Being able to tell that horse has one syllable, while hamster
has two.
4. Segmenting and blending syllables: Hearing the word barking and giving it two syllables;
hearing trot-ting and blending it together.
5. Segmenting and blending onset and rime: Hearing the word skunk and segmenting it
into sk-unk; hearing sk-unk and being able to make the word skunk.
6. Counting phonemes in words: Knowing that pig has three sounds—/p/ /i/ /g/.
7. Segmenting and blending phonemes: Hearing the word bat and giving it three
phonemes; hearing b-a-t and saying the word bat.
8. Substitution of sounds: Taking the word dog, substituting a d for the h, and saying hog.

FIGURE 3.1. Phonological and phonemic awareness tasks. Based on Yopp (1993).
40 TEACHING READING

from your diligence in teaching phonological and phonemic awareness when they are
learning the phonetic elements needed to read print.

T ry T his
Choose one of the phonological or phonemic awareness tasks from the chart in Figure
3.1. Then design a child-­appropriate lesson in which you teach the skill and let them
practice. Write your plan in the box below.

Teaching Phonics
What Is Phonics?
Beck (2006) describes phonics as the “relationship between letters and their sounds”
(p. 25). In order to read words, she states, children need “to know the speech sounds
associated with written words; they need to know how to put those sounds together to
form a pronounceable word; they need to have a string sense of English orthography;
and they need to recognize words rapidly” (p. 25).

What Knowledge Do You Need before You Can Teach Phonics?

We believe that in order to teach phonics well, you have to have a good knowledge of
the terminology and concepts surrounding phonology—the study of the sounds in lan-
guage—and phonetic elements. There has been some concern about the amount of deep
knowledge that teachers of reading need to possess about the subject matter they teach
(Pearson, 2007). We strongly urge you to learn as much as you can about the features
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 41

of phonology, so you can make thoughtful and intelligent decisions about how best to
teach your developing readers the sound–print code. To get a sense of what you must
learn (or relearn) in order to be successful in teaching phonics, see Figure 3.2, which
summarizes Beck’s (2006) definitions of various phonetic elements. It is important for
new teachers of reading to familiarize themselves with these elements before attempt-
ing to teach phonics.
In Appendix A, we again offer you the most common phonetics elements and the
most common onsets and rimes, to get you started on developing the knowledge you
need to be able to teach phonics. We also suggest you consult texts that deal specifically
with phonics instruction, such as Beck’s (2006) Making Sense of Phonics: The Hows and
Whys. In this book, Beck walks teachers of reading through step-by-step, focused pro-
cedures to teach letter–sound relationships, blending, and word building.
So what is the best type of phonics instruction for beginning readers? The answer
may seem paradoxical: “None is best; all are best.” Although some instructors may pro-
mote one method over another, teachers of reading know that phonics can be taught in
every possible way. There are many approaches and contexts for teaching phonics, and
there are many published programs to help teach it. You can see that here (and through-
out the text), we do not advocate any particular program. If your school or district uses
a published phonics program, your job is to learn as much as you can about phonology
and the teaching of phonics, so you can understand the components of the published
program and the reasons why they are included there. We advocate excellent teaching,
because teachers teach phonics; programs do not.

Term Meaning Example

Consonant blend Two or three contiguous consonant letters. Each br = brush
consonant maintains its sound. Sometimes called a spl = split
consonant cluster.
Consonant digraph Two consonants representing a unique sound. sh = ship
Individual letters do not maintain their phonemes. th = that
ch = chat
Vowel digraph Long vowel sounds represented by two or more ee = meet
adjacent letters. ea = meat
oa = boat
Vowel diphthong A single speech sound that begins with one vowel ow = cow
sound and moves to another. ew = few
oi = soil
R-controlled vowels A word or syllable in which the letter r influences how ar = car
the preceding vowel is pronounced. ir = fir
ur = fur
Phoneme Smallest speech sound into which a spoken word can /ch/ai/n/ = chain
be divided. /j/u/m/p/ = jump
Grapheme Smallest written representation of speech sounds. ch-ai-n = chain
(three graphemes)
j-u-m-p = jump
(four graphemes)

FIGURE 3.2. Explanations for phonetic elements. Based on Beck (2006).

42 TEACHING READING

Planning Your Phonics Instruction

If you teach grades K–2, or you are working with developing readers in any grade, you
no doubt have to teach phonics to your whole class, in small groups, or both. Effective
teachers integrate phonics instruction throughout the reading program, but they also
know that it is only a part of an overall reading program. Research strongly suggests that
phonics needs to be explicitly taught in a systematic way (Armbruster et al., 2001). That
means that your lessons need to be preplanned and focused with a consistent design. To
help you plan well-­designed lessons, we have included the most frequently asked ques-
tions we hear in our graduate classes regarding the teaching of phonics. We follow the
questions and answers with three examples of well-­planned phonics lessons.

Question 1: What aspects of phonics do I teach, and in what order do I

teach them?

To help you decide what to teach and in what order, you can refer to one of the many
professional texts entirely devoted to teaching phonics, or you can consult a commer-
cially designed phonics program. Fortunately, there are plenty of both. Commercially
designed phonics programs and professional texts dedicated to the teaching of phonics
usually offer a suggested sequence for teaching the phonetic elements.
Although the methods for teaching the elements may vary from program to pro-
gram or from book to book, they typically begin with teaching single-­consonant sounds
that correspond well with the letter names. For example, the suggested instructional
sequence might begin with teaching such single consonants and sounds as T = /t/; M =
/m/; S = /s/; and B = /b/, because as you pronounce those letters, you can actually hear
the sounds of the letters. Approximately two-­thirds of the consonant letter names in the
English language correspond closely with their sounds, so planning your instruction to
begin with these consonants makes sense.
A typical instructional sequence that follows teaching the sounds of single conso-
nants might look like this (again, see Figure 3.2 for definitions and more examples for
each term):

1. The short sounds of vowels—for example, /a/ as in the word hat.

2. Consonant blends—for example, /st/ as in the word stop.
3. Consonant digraphs—for example, /sh/ as in the word ship.
4. Vowel digraphs—for example, /oa/ as in the word boat.
5. Vowel diphthongs—for example, /oi/ as in the word boil.
6. R-controlled vowels—for example, /ar/ as in the word car.

By using a systematic sequence for teaching the phonetic elements, you can be sure that
all the elements are taught to the children who need them. Eventually your instruction
will include teaching all the phonetic elements that correspond with what the students
have learned by ear during their instruction in phonological and phonemic awareness.
Effective phonics instruction will reinforce their phonological and phonemic aware-
ness; effective phonological/phonemic awareness instruction will prepare them for
learning more phonetic elements.
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 43

Question 2: When and where do I teach phonics?

Another important decision you need to make is when and where to teach phonics. In
other words, in what setting or under what circumstances should phonics be taught?
The answer to this question is twofold. Phonics can be taught during a reading lesson,
when you are reading a real book to and with children. In this case, students use the
real text to study the phonetic elements and to practice decoding. This is called contextu-
alized phonics instruction because the instruction occurs in the context of real reading. This
instruction can be carried out in whole-class or small-group formats.
The second part of the answer is that phonics can be taught separately, as a lesson
itself, apart from reading a real text. This type of phonics instruction is called decontex-
tualized phonics instruction, because it is outside the context of real reading. This instruc-
tion can also be implemented in whole-class or small-group formats.

Question 3: How do I choose between contextualized and decontextualized

instruction?

The answer to the third question is simple: You do not have to choose. You can (and
may have to) use both contextualized and decontextualized instruction for teaching
the phonetic elements to your students. Your district or school may require that you
devote a specific number of minutes per day to decontextualized phonics instruction.
Or you may choose to teach phonics in separate, focused lessons, in order to ensure
that all phonetic elements are taught to all your students. However, you can easily and
effectively follow up that instruction by applying what your students have learned in a
more contextualized setting.

Question 4: What does contextualized phonics instruction look like?

A common strategy for teaching a contextualized phonics lesson is the use of big books.
A big book is an oversized picture storybook or expository text that introduces children
to the concept of books, print, and meaning (Morrow, 2005). Big books can be used in
a variety of ways to teach students about book handling (left to right, top to bottom),
turning pages (left to right), and meaning-­bearing print (the letters and words that
convey the message). Many teachers of kindergartners and first graders teach phonics
when they show their students how our language works while reading and rereading
the stories and information in the big books.
A phonics lesson can begin with a reading of a big book, followed by a discussion
of the story. Whenever we are using books to teach phonetic elements, the first reading
should always be accompanied by a discussion that focuses on the comprehension of
the text. Otherwise, we would switch the focus of reading for meaning to reading a col-
lection of words. We do not want to do that for any readers, especially our developing
readers.
The best way to answer the question is to give you an example. We observed a
kindergarten teacher named Patrick as he used a big-book version of Brown Bear, Brown
44 TEACHING READING

Bear, What Do You See? (Martin, 1967) to teach initial-­consonant blends such as br. After
reading the book twice and talking about the playful language, Patrick guided the
kindergartners to be “detectives” and use a (paper) magnifying glass to point out the
words with the br consonant blend. They had to look very carefully, he explained, so
they could find all of them. When the students picked up their smaller copies of Brown
Bear, Brown Bear, they recalled the phonics lesson, but also associated the text with plea-
sure and having fun.

Question 5: What does decontextualized phonics instruction look like?

Decontextualized phonics instruction is referred to in many classrooms as word study.

Good word study always begins with the reading of real texts, but the actual teaching
of phonics is explicit and takes place in a separate, focused lesson that typically lasts
20–30 minutes. For example, in a decontextualized word study activity, the teacher does
the following:

1. Introduce a phonetic element.

2. Model how to read the sound in isolation, then in a word or list of words.
3. Engage the students in hands-on activities to practice using the phonetic ele-
ment. Hands-on activities can include using letter tiles to make words, or using
word cards to sort words by different phonetic elements.
4. Reinforce the new skill by asking the students to write words using the new
sound.

The instruction can begin with a whole-class activity; move to small, focused
groups based on need; and then progress further to a dedicated word study center
where students can continue their practice. In the word study center, the students can
continue to do the things that were modeled by the teacher, such as sorting words on
cards according to phonetic elements, reading more words, and writing words having
similar patterns. Graves, Juel, and Graves (2001) offer a set of principles guiding the
implementation of word study:

•• Start where each child is.

•• Make word study an active decision-­making process, in which children classify
words according to the similarity of their sounds and spelling pattern.
•• Base word study on contrasting words with different sounds or spelling pat-
terns.
•• Help children understand how the writing system works.
•• Keep comprehension as the goal.

There are many excellent texts written specifically about word study. We recom-
mend using the comprehensive suggestions made by Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and
Johnston (2008) in their text Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and
Spelling.
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 45

Question 6: Can I combine contextualized and decontextualized phonics

instruction?

Although you can and may want to keep the two different settings for teaching pho-
nics separate, we also advocate combining both contextualized and decontextualized
phonics instruction in a reading lesson. While decontextualized phonics instruction
provides early readers with focused instruction at decoding words, it does not always
provide enough of a connection to real reading in most of the classrooms we have
observed. On the other hand, contextualized phonics instruction is not often explicit
enough for students and forces them to figure out rules and guidelines on their own—­
something that is not automatic for many of our developing readers.
Here is an example of a combined approach: A reading lesson may (1) start with
the choral reading of a big book for enjoyment and simple understanding; (2) prog-
ress to a teacher-­directed word study session with specific words or phonetic elements
extracted from the big book; (3) involve the students in working with the teacher to put
the words back into the book and then in rereading the text with more fluency; and
(4) end with moving to a dedicated word study center in the classroom, where the stu-
dents can engage in sustained practice on their own or with a small group of peers.

Question 7: We keep hearing about different approaches to teaching

phonics. What are the approaches to teaching phonics?

There are three major approaches to teaching phonics: a synthetic approach, an analytic
approach, and an analogy-based approach. These approaches to teaching phonics should
not be confused with the settings for teaching phonics. Approaches are specific methods
for teaching the phonetic elements; the three approaches vary.
In a synthetic approach, students first learn the sounds represented by letters or
letter combinations. Then they are taught to blend those sounds together to produce
words. A synthetic phonics approach is also called inductive phonics. For example, in
a synthetic approach to teach the word street, the students would use what they know
about the consonant blend str, then use the sounds of the vowel digraph ee, then use the
sound of the final consonant t to read the word: str-ee-t = street. This is an example of
why phonemic awareness is so critical to the task of reading. You can see that if students
cannot break words apart by ear, they have a difficult time taking words apart when
they see them in print.
A synthetic approach is most effective when we are teaching students to take words
apart by listening to the phonemes to read and spell them, and then putting them back
together. The major drawback to exclusively using a synthetic approach is that not all
words can be taken apart phoneme by phoneme and put back together to make a word.
Take a look at the word clothes. This is a very difficult word to teach by using a synthetic
approach. Many developing readers who are taught primarily by using this approach
overuse it and attempt to decode every unknown word they encounter. That is why we
have two other approaches to teaching phonics: analytic and analogy-based phonics.
In an analytic approach, students are first taught a number of high-­frequency words
and then learn phonics generalizations and rules, which they can then apply to other
words. Another word for analytic phonics is a deductive approach. An analytic approach
46 TEACHING READING

is most effective when used with phonics rules and generalizations that have high appli-
cability. To that end, in order to teach analytic phonics, you have to learn another body
of knowledge: knowledge about vowel generalizations, so that you can be prepared
when you ask your students to “deduce” a rule.
For example, most words that have a single medial vowel in the middle take the
“short” sound, such as the words fox, pig, and cat. One vowel generalization or rule
you must know is that when a vowel is found in the beginning or middle of a word or
syllable, it usually takes the short sound. We have placed the vowel generalizations in
Figure 3.3 for your memorization and use.
A drawback to exclusively using the analytic approach is that not all words follow
a rule or generalization that has high applicability. For example, if you teach students
that when they see two vowels together, such as in the word boat, they should use the
long sound of the first vowel, you will actually mislead them much of the time. (We
have seen this sign in classrooms: “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the
talking.”) This rule does not work for the words yield or found, for instance. This gener-
alization has very low applicability (approximately 50%) when it refers to two different
vowels together, so it is not a very good rule to teach if half the time you have to say to
your students, “But that’s an exception to the rule.”
In an analogy-based approach, students are taught to notice patterns in words and
to use the words they know to figure out other words. An example of an analogy-based
approach is teaching words that are consistent with word families or phonograms—the
rimes in printed words. Words such as cat, boat, and ball can be applied to many other
words having the same phonograms; for example, the word cat has the same phono-
gram as the words bat, flat, and sat. As Gaskins, Gensemer, and Six (2005) explain, “our
brains are pattern seekers” (p. 152). In other words, our brains recognize patterns, which
makes it easier to learn new words.
We see a drawback to this approach if the instruction is not systematic and explicit.
It is not enough to tell students to notice the patterns in words. Rather, they need suf-
ficient practice in reading and writing the words. As Gaskins et al. (2005) also note, “our
brains remember better the more time we spend on task, being persistent, and practic-
ing decoding and reading words” (p. 152).

1. One vowel at the beginning or middle of a word or syllable usually takes the short sound.
Examples: at, sat, mat, cat.
2. One vowel at the end of a word or syllable usually takes the long sound. Examples: so,
ro-tate.
3. When the vowels ai, ee, ea, oa, and oe come together, the first vowel is usually long and the
second is not sounded.
Note: There are many exceptions to this rule. For example, ea has three sounds: long e as
in eat; short e as in bread; long a as in steak. However, the digraph ee follows this rule 99%
of the time.
4. When there are two vowels in a word or syllable, the second of which is an e, the first vowel
is usually long and the e is not sounded. Examples: bake, make, cake.
5. When the vowels oi, oy, oo, ou, ow, eu, au, and oe come together, they make a whole new
sound.

FIGURE 3.3. Vowel generalizations.

 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 47

Question 8: What does a specific phonics lesson look like?

To answer the final question, we show you three different phonics lesson plans. You
will see that each lesson is similar to the others in some ways, and very different in
other ways.
The three lessons are alike in the following ways:

•• They share the same objective: to teach students to identify and read the pho-
netic element /ee/ = E.
•• The phonetic element is derived from the same book: Sheep in a Jeep (Shaw,
1986).
•• Each lesson plan combines contextualized and decontextualized phonics instruc-
tion.
•• Each lesson begins and ends with the reading, discussing, and rereading of a
real text.
•• There is a focused phonics lesson embedded within the reading lesson.
•• There are suggestions for following up the lesson with a word study lesson and
a word study center activity.

However, each of the three lessons is different in one important way: Each lesson
uses a different approach to teaching the phonetic element. We have decided to dem-
onstrate the teaching of phonics in this way so you can understand that you can often
teach the same phonetic elements in different ways, depending on the approach (or com-
bination of approaches) you want to use.
We followed a consistent design as we planned our sample lessons for you. First,
we selected a phonetic element to teach (vowel digraph ee). Next, we chose an appropri-
ate book for grades K–2 that has many occurrences of the digraph we wanted to teach.
For our sample lessons, we chose Shaw’s (1986) book Sheep in a Jeep. We then extracted
all the words that use the vowel digraph ee. Next, we planned how to introduce and use
the story. Finally, we decided how and when to teach the vowel digraph, and how and
when the children would practice their new knowledge of the phonetic element. The
three lessons are presented below.

Lesson 1: A Synthetic Phonics Lesson

Lesson: Phonetic element—vowel digraph ee
Context: Combination of contextualized and decontextualized
Text: Sheep in a Jeep (Shaw, 1986)
Phonics Approach: Synthetic phonics
Lesson Grade Levels: K–2
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the sound of the
vowel digraph ee when they encounter it in words in a text.
Procedure:
• Step 1: Introduce the story in a big-book version, and ask the children to read the
title and examine the illustrations on the cover. Your students will mention the
48 TEACHING READING

grass, the sheep in a jeep, and other interesting visual information. Ask the children
to predict what they think might happen.
• Step 2: Read through the text for enjoyment. This can be done as a teacher read-
aloud as the students follow along, or you can ask your students to join in.
• Step 3: Ask the children to respond to the story in a simple way: “What did you like
about the story? What was the problem in the story? What made the story funny?”
• Step 4: (This is the explicit phonics lesson embedded in the plan.) First, introduce
the vowel digraph by telling students that they will be learning about the digraph
ee, as in the word sheep. As you tell them, put the following on the board:
sheep
sh-ee-p
Then, using the second word above and using a pointer, ask the children to follow
along as you slowly pronounce the word: “sh-ee-p” (move your pointer along the
individual phonemes as you speak them aloud). Next, ask the children to close their
eyes and just listen to the sounds that they hear in the middle of the word as you
slowly pronounce it: “sh-ee-p.” Help students realize that the ee sound they hear in
the middle of the word sheep makes the long e sound.
• Step 5: Now reread the text aloud, asking children to help you identify words that
use the ee combination. When you complete this task, your board will look like
this:
sheep
beep
jeep
steep
keep
Finally, ask students to pronounce each word with you. Be sure to segment and
blend the phonemes slowly: “sh-ee-p, b-ee-p, j-ee-p, st-ee-p, k-ee-p.”
• Step 6: Now that students have had direct instruction in the vowel digraph ee, you
can have them engage in buddy reading (see below), using smaller versions of Sheep
in a Jeep.
• Step 7: Use this phonetic element in a word study lesson with your whole class or
with a small group of students. This new phonetic element can also be added to a
word study center where the students can practice reading, sorting, and writing
words with similar elements.

Lesson 2: An Analytic Phonics Lesson

Lesson: Phonetic element—vowel digraph ee
Context: Combination of Contextualized and Decontextualized
Text: Sheep in a Jeep (Shaw, 1986)
Phonics Approach: Analytic phonics
Lesson Grade Levels: K–2
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of the sound of the vowel
digraph ee when they encounter it in words in a text.
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 49

Procedure:
• Step 1: Introduce the story in a big-book version, and ask the children to read the
title and examine the illustrations on the cover. Your students will mention the
grass, the sheep in a jeep, and other interesting visual information. Ask the children
to predict what they think might happen.
• Step 2: Read through the text for enjoyment. This can be done as a teacher read-
aloud as the students follow along, or you can ask your students to join in.
• Step 3: Ask the children to respond to the story in a simple way: “What did you like
about the story? What was the problem in the story? What made the story funny?”
• Step 4: (This is the explicit phonics lesson embedded in the plan.) First you must
introduce the vowel digraph by telling students that they will be learning about the
digraph ee, as in the word, sheep. As you tell them, put the following on the board:
sheep
• Step 5: Now ask the children to reread the text with you and identify words that use
the ee combination. When you complete this task, your board will look like this:
sheep
beep
jeep
steep
keep
• Step 6: Ask the children to read the list of words out loud with you. Then ask them:
“When you hear each word, what do you notice about the sound of the vowels ee
in the middle of the word?” Students will respond accordingly and will notice that
all the words have the same long e sound. Then ask, “If all the words have the same
long e sound, can you think of a rule that will help us remember how to read words
that have the letters ee together?”
• Step 7: Lead students to write a rule adapted from the third generalization in Fig-
ure 3.3: “When the vowels ee come together, the first vowel is usually long and the
second is not sounded.”
• Step 8: Now that students have had direct instruction in the vowel digraph ee, you
can have them engage in buddy reading, using smaller versions of Sheep in a Jeep to
practice their application.
• Step 9: Use this phonetic element in a word study lesson with your whole class or
with a small group of students. This new phonetic element can also be added to a
word study center where the students can practice reading, sorting, and writing
words with similar elements.

Lesson 3: An Analogy-Based Phonics Lesson

You will notice that this lesson looks like a combination of the synthetic and ana-
lytic approaches. What is really different about the analogy-based approach is that the
vowel sound is always taught embedded within a phonogram.
Lesson: Phonetic element—­phonogram eep
Context: Combination of contextualized and decontextualized
50 TEACHING READING

Text: Sheep in a Jeep (Shaw, 1986)

Phonics Approach: Analogy-based phonics
Lesson Grade Levels: K–2
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of the sound of the pho-
nogram eep when they encounter it in words in a text.
Procedure:
• Step 1: Introduce the story in a big-book version, and ask the children to read the
title and examine the illustrations on the cover. Your students will mention the
grass, the sheep in a jeep, and other interesting visual information. Ask the children
to predict what they think might happen.
• Step 2: Read through the text for enjoyment. This can be done as a teacher read-
aloud as the students follow along, or you can ask your students to join in.
• Step 3: Ask the children to respond to the story in a simple way: “What did you like
about the story? What was the problem in the story? What made the story funny?”
• Step 4: (This is the explicit phonics lesson embedded in the plan.) First you must
introduce the vowel digraph by telling students that they will be learning about
the phonogram eep, as in the word, sheep. As you tell them, put the following on the
board.
sheep
sh-eep
Then, using the second word above and using a pointer, ask the children to follow
along as you slowly pronounce the word: sh-eep (move your pointer along as you
speak, but remember to keep the vowel sound within the rime!). Next, ask the chil-
dren to close their eyes and just listen to the sounds that they hear as you slowly
separate the onset from the rime: “sh-eep.”
• Step 5: Now ask the children to reread the big book with you and identify words
that use the phonogram eep. When you complete this task, your board will look like
this:
sheep
beep
jeep
steep
keep
Finally, ask students to pronounce each word with you. Be sure to segment and
blend the onset and rime slowly: “sh-eep, b-eep, j-eep, st-eep, k-eep.”
• Step 6: Now that students have had direct instruction in the word family eep, you
can have them engage in buddy reading, using smaller versions of Sheep in a Jeep.
• Step 7: Use this new phonogram (eep) in a word study lesson with your whole class
or with a small group of students. This new phonetic element can also be added to
a word wall and a word study center where the students can practice reading, sort-
ing, and writing words with similar elements.
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 51

T ry T his
Now that you have had a look at the three types of phonics instruction, you can try one
out on your own. Use Figure 3.4 (page 52) to conceptualize the decisions you have to
make as you design your phonics lesson. Refer back to the three lessons you have just
read. We have provided a template for you here.

Phonics Lesson Plan

Lesson:

Context:

Text:

Phonics Approach:

Lesson Grade Levels:

Lesson Objective:

Procedure:

In the next section, we present another component of the phonics curriculum,

which is essential for students to develop as proficient readers.
52 TEACHING READING

Which phonetic
element shall I
teach?

In which setting
shall I teach it?
 Contextualized?
 Decontextualized?
 Combination?

Which approach
shall I use?

Use analytic phonics Use synthetic phonics Use analogy-based

(whole to part)? (part to whole)? phonics?
Children read words, then Children learn sounds and Children are taught to notice
analyze those words to learn how to put sounds together. patterns in words and to use
rules and generalizations. The texts they read are the words they know to
“decodable.” figure out other words.

FIGURE 3.4. Decisions to make for teaching phonics.

Teaching High-­Frequency Words

High-­frequency words are the words that appear most often in print. They are also called
sight words. Because of their frequency, our brains recognize them as patterns of letters,
and we “call up” the words on sight. High-­frequency words can be recognized instantly
by good readers because they are in their sight vocabularies.
High-­frequency words include such words as the, and, with, because, mother, cat,
under, friend, very, and again. Cunningham (2005), reporting the work of Fry, Polk, and
Fountoukidis (1984), explains that 100 words account for nearly half of the words we
encounter in print. So, you can see that teaching sight words is a high priority if we
want our developing readers to succeed. Using books that have many high-­frequency
words helps early readers to develop their sight vocabularies more easily.
We have found that the books in Lobel’s Frog and Toad series have many high-
­frequency words, and we highly recommend them for exposing students to these
words. For example, the following is an excerpt from “The Garden,” a chapter in Frog
and Toad Together (Lobel, 1972, pp. 18–19). According to two high-­frequency word lists—
those prepared by Fry and Kress (2006) and by Dolch (1950)—the text shown below has
a high percentage of sight words. We have italicized them for you.
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 53

Frog was in his garden.

Toad came walking by.
“What a fine garden you have, Frog,” he said.
“Yes,” said Frog. “It is very nice, but it was hard work.”
“I wish I had a garden,” said Toad.
“Here are some flower seeds. Plant them in the ground,” said Frog,
“and soon you will have a garden.”
“How soon?” asked Toad.
“Quite soon,” said Frog.

As you can see, two of the words in this excerpt are the characters’ names (Frog,
Toad), which are repeated throughout the series. They are the only main characters
throughout the series. Other words—plant, quite, and nice—follow regular phonetic pat-
terns.
Rather than exposing students to word lists and flash cards, having them read
books that are both engaging and have a great percentage of high-­frequency words will
increase their exposure to those words in a meaningful and authentic way. To teach
high-­frequency words, we recommend that you combine reading real books with word
study events, as described below.

Activities for Teaching High-­Frequency Words

Word Walls and Word Study
Cunningham (2005) has suggested a number of ways to teach high-­frequency words,
including using word walls as described in Chapter 2. She has developed many activi-
ties and learning events for developing knowledge of high-­frequency words. For a full
explanation of these activities, see Phonics They Use (Cunningham, 2005).
Cunningham’s suggestions are part of a comprehensive word study curriculum,
which includes phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling as well as structural analysis.
When students are taught to analyze the structure of words, they can recognize the root
words, prefixes, and suffixes, and they know how to divide words into syllables. Com-
bined with excellent instruction in reading comprehension (described in Chapters 5–9),
students can gain the knowledge and skills to be strategic readers.

Reading Real Books

We highly recommend helping students develop their knowledge of high-­frequency
words by reading them in context—that is, in real books. Because high-­frequency words
occur naturally in our speech, writing, and texts, reading many books and other texts
increases the chances of seeing them.
Books labeled as easy readers often have a great number of high-­frequency words.
However, some books are not specifically labeled as such, so you may have to scout out
books that offer your students many opportunities to read many high-­frequency words
in engaging narrative and expository formats. To select books useful for teaching high-
­frequency words, try this exercise:
54 TEACHING READING

1. Choose any page.

2. Count the number of high-­frequency words. Chances are that any page you
choose will have a great proportion of these words.
3. Identify the words that are not considered high ­frequency. Ask yourself: Can
the students decode the text by using the strategies you taught in your phonics
lessons? If not, will the sentence context provide a meaningful clue?
4. When choosing narrative text, ask yourself: Does the story have an easily identi-
fied plot structure? Are the characters well rounded?
5. When choosing expository text, ask yourself: Is the information accurate? Is the
text engaging?

In the next section of this chapter, you will see that students’ development of learn-
ing strategies for decoding words and for identifying high-­frequency words will aid
their progress toward becoming fluent readers.

Teaching Fluency

Fluency is a vital component of the reading curriculum and needs to be modeled and
routinely assessed. Rasinski (2003) describes a fluent reader as one whose reading dem-
onstrates three important characteristics: accuracy, automaticity, and prosody. Each term
is defined below.

•• Accuracy: An accurate reader decodes and recognizes words correctly.

•• Automaticity: A reader who demonstrates automaticity reads quickly, both orally
and silently, and so spends more time making meaning than decoding words. A
reader who possesses both accuracy and automaticity has a large sight vocabu-
lary.
•• Prosody: A reader who has prosody makes the reading sound like natural speech.
Prosody includes appropriate expression and volume, good phrasing, smooth-
ness, and pace.

So a fluent reader is a reader who is accurate, automatic, and prosodic.

Why Is Fluency Important?

Because being a fluent reader means reading accurately, automatically, and with good
prosody, a fluent reader has the ability to read words in context quickly and without
deliberate attention (Allington, 2006; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). Our brains can carry
out many automatic functions at the same time, but can only do a limited number of
nonautomatic things at a time (Cunningham, 2005). An example of a function that is not
automatic is constructing meaning from text. Text comprehension involves very delib-
erate actions, as you will read in Chapters 5–9. If we can teach our students to make
the decoding part of the reading process automatic, they can spend their time more
efficiently by focusing on the part that is nonautomatic: comprehension (Armbruster et
al., 2001; Cunningham, 2005; Cunningham & Allington, 2007; Rasinski, 2003).
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 55

For example, when you are a very experienced driver, steering, accelerating, and
braking are automatic. Things that are not automatic include finding your way in unfa-
miliar places, negotiating traffic, and watching traffic signals. That is why when you
first learned to drive, your driving instructor probably took you to an empty parking
lot where there was no traffic, and you could learn the parts of driving that would
eventually become automatic. Once you demonstrated that you could steer, accelerate,
and brake without too much conscious effort, your instructor probably felt less trepida-
tion about letting you practice your skills under very different conditions: in traffic. We
want our students to be fluent readers so that they can concentrate on the real work of
reading—­comprehending text—and not be hampered by the words they need to recog-
nize automatically.

How to Build Fluency

To develop fluent readers, have them read, read, read. The time students spend in and
out of school reading silently correlates with significant gains in reading achievement
(Allington, 2001; Anderson et al., 1988). As described in Chapter 2, you can provide
silent reading practice by dedicating time during the school day for your students to
read books independently. We have described that practice as on-your-own reading or
sustained silent reading. During those periods of time, the students can select their own
books and choose their own purposes for reading them. The results may be indepen-
dent readers who get lost in a book and choose to read on their own, like the boy illus-
trated in Figure 3.5.
As also described in Chapter 2, a print-rich classroom promotes literacy, because
students rely on the walls and displays to give them information they may need to read
and write accurately. Well-­positioned print, as shown in Figure 3.6 (page 56), allows stu-
dents to practice their independence in finding information strategically placed there
by teachers.
Another way to foster independence is through oral reading practice that is enjoy-
able and engaging. The following discussion is a guide to productive reading that builds
fluency.

FIGURE 3.5. An independent reader.

56 TEACHING READING

FIGURE 3.6. A print-rich classroom.

First, we urge you to eliminate round-robin reading. We begin many of our literacy
classes by asking our students how they practiced reading in school. Most describe a
type of reading where students take turns reading aloud, one at a time, in a whole-
class or small-group setting. We put a name to it: round-robin reading. When we ask our
students (many of whom are already teachers) whether they think it is a good practice,
they hardly ever say, “Yes.” In fact, they can usually enumerate quite easily the reasons
why it is not a good practice, mirroring what Rasinski (2003) and Kuhn (2007) say about
it:

•• Students are not really paying attention.

•• They skip down to where they think they will read.
•• They always lose their places.
•• Most importantly, round-robin reading simply does not give developing readers
enough practice in reading words to build fluency, even in a small-group set-
ting.

Why then is round-robin reading so prevalent? Rasinski (2003) describes it as “an

embedded part of classroom culture in the United States” (p. 17). Yet, he explains fur-
ther, this is not because teachers want to carry out ineffective practices in their class-
rooms. Rather, it is because they have not been given any viable alternatives for promot-
ing fluency. We hope you will try some of the viable alternatives suggested below.
As we have stated above and in Chapter 1, we feel strongly that the oral reading
done in many classrooms is not productive reading. Yet there is often not enough time
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 57

for students to read extensively on their own. We know that there is a place for oral
reading in schools, and that when it is done well, it provides a great deal of reading
practice—and, quite simply, can be fun!
Many literacy experts promote oral reading practice in some form or another (Arm-
bruster et al., 2001; Cunningham, 2005; Kuhn, 2007; Morrow, 2005; Moskal & Blachowicz,
2006; Rasinski, 2003; Reutzel & Morrow, 2007). Furthermore, research has consistently
shown that repeated reading works (Allington, 1983; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Samuels,
1979). There are many suggestions for developing fluency in the context of real reading
and in authentic and meaningful ways. We list some of them below, followed by a short
explanation of each.

Choral Reading
What it is: During choral reading, students read together. You can conduct choral reading
with a whole class or in groups. The idea is for all voices to combine as one.
Why it is beneficial: When children are choral ­reading a 200-word passage, every
student gets the same amount of practice. The students are not listening or scrutinizing
each other. If a student makes an error reading, no one really knows. Choral reading
is also an excellent method to build prosody. As students listen to each other, those stu-
dents who have natural expression and phrasing will model those characteristics for
the others.

Echo Reading
What it is: Echo reading is similar to choral reading, but the students “echo” what the
teacher reads after he or she reads it.
Why it is beneficial: Echo reading has the same benefits as choral reading. It is also
beneficial because teachers can control how the text is read for different purposes. It is
particularly good for teaching students to read with expression and helping them to
phrase sentences into meaningful parts.

Seesaw Reading
What it is: Seesaw reading is similar to echo reading, but the teacher and the students
alternate reading sentences. That is, the teacher reads a sentence, and then the students
read a sentence. It can also be practiced between two students: Each student in the pair
reads every other sentence.
Why it is beneficial: Seesaw reading has the same benefits as echo and choral reading.
It helps students pay particular attention to end marks in sentences, thereby increasing
prosody through proper phrasing.

Buddy Reading
What it is: Buddy reading is also referred to as paired reading. This kind of reading allows
a less able student to read alongside a more able reader. The students take turns read-
ing the selection, and the more able reader gives assistance to the buddy. Student pairs
58 TEACHING READING

should be selected carefully by teachers and changed periodically, so that more able
readers are able to work in turn with less able ones. Figure 3.7 is a photo of two students
engaged in buddy reading.
Why it is beneficial: Buddy reading has many benefits. The main one is that because
fluent readers can be paired with less fluent readers, the former can provide support for
the latter. It is important for buddy reading to be explicitly demonstrated by the teacher
with an able reader in the classroom, so that the students can make the most of this
reading context.

Readers’ Theatre
What it is: In readers’ theatre, students rehearse and perform a play or script for their
peers. Props and actions are not needed; it can take place in chairs in front of the class-
room. As in a theatrical reading of a play, the focus is on the dialogue, not the action.
The actions are derived through the rich dialogue and the information given by the
narrator.
Why it is beneficial: Readers’ theatre is an authentic way of doing repeated reading.
Students know that they must practice their parts before they perform; therefore, they
do not complain about rereading text to make it sound good. Readers’ theatre is also
an exemplary way to model and practice all aspects of prosody. As students repeat and
practice their lines, they will improve their expression, volume, phrasing, and pace. In
Figure 3.8, we provide suggestions for implementing readers’ theatre with fables.

Child–Adult Reading
What it is: Child–adult reading is exactly what its name indicates: one child reading with
one adult.
Why it is beneficial: Children get the benefit of having more than one adult as a
model of fluent reading in the classroom.

FIGURE 3.7. Buddy reading.

 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 59

Getting Ready for Your Readers’ Theatre Performance

1. Read the script silently two or three times. Think:

  Who are the characters?
  What is the problem?
  How does the problem get solved?
  How does it end?
  What is the moral?
2. Talk about the story. Answer the questions together.
3. Choose roles. Be fair and polite to each other.
4. Highlight your part with a highlighting marker.
5. Reread it silently a few times to get more practice.
6. Think:
  How is that character feeling?
  How should I portray him or her?
  How would I feel if I were that character?
7. Practice reading the script with your whole group. Help each other.
8. Read, reread, and reread. You might need to read it many times. That’s okay.

FIGURE 3.8. Student directions for readers’ theatre with fables.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

Integrating Oral Reading Practices into Your Literacy Plan

We suggest that you implement a variety of ways for your students to become fluent
readers. We advise teachers with whom we work that they should never miss an oppor-
tunity to build fluency, and the reading routines described above can be integrated in
every aspect of the curriculum in every grade. In Figure 3.9, you can see that even in
sixth grade, students are encouraged to engage in the kinds of reading that helps make
them more fluent readers.

T ry T his: F luency Ac ti v ity 1

Take a look at the chart in Figure 3.10 (page 61). In the right-hand column, we have listed
the above-­described strategies for supporting the development of fluent readers. As you
look at each strategy, record the kinds of texts you could use and the kinds of grouping
options (as described in Chapter 2) you might use to effectively carry out each reading
event.
60 TEACHING READING

FIGURE 3.9. Sixth-grade fluency chart.

The Fluency Development Lesson

We feel that the fluency development lesson (FDL) deserves a place in the classroom. The
procedure for Rasinski, Padak, Linek, and Sturtevant’s (1994) original FDL is described
in Figure 3.11 (at the top of page 62). Here is Rasinski et al.’s explanation of the lesson:

The [FDL] is a 10- [to] 15-minute instructional event that incorporates several key principles
of effective fluency instruction. To implement the FDL, each student is provided with a copy
of a 50- [to] 150-word text for reading. Although a different text is used each day, teachers
are encouraged to cycle back to previously practiced texts as the class develops a corpus of
practiced texts. Texts are selected for content, predictability, and rhythm. Rhyming poems
and song lyrics for children work well as tests for the FDL. (1994, p. 312)

Rasinski (2003) has since developed different versions of the original. We think that the
FDL has a “value-added” aspect if you use it in your classrooms every day. In addition
to building fluency, it exposes your students to a wide variety of topics, genres, syntac-
tic structures, and rich language that can only help increase your students’ language
abilities, knowledge, literary elements, and background knowledge on a wide range of
topics.

T ry T his: F luency Ac ti v ity 2

Find a text that you think would be good for conducting an FDL as described by Rasin-
ski and colleagues. Follow the plan that Rasinski et al. describe for carrying out your
lesson. (See the box at the bottom of page 62.)
Event Type of text Kind of grouping
Choral
reading

Echo
reading

Seesaw
reading

Buddy
reading

Readers’
theatre

Child–adult
reading

FIGURE 3.10. Oral reading strategies for building fluency.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

61
62 TEACHING READING

1. Teacher introduces the text and invites predictions.

2. Teacher models fluent reading by orally reading text to whole class.
3. Teacher leads discussion of the text content and the teacher’s oral reading of the text.
Particular attention is given to the teacher’s rate, phrasing, expression, and intonation
during reading.
4. Teacher leads whole class in several choral readings of the text.
5. Teacher divides class into pairs, and directs each pair to find a reasonably quiet and
distraction-free place. Each student reads the text to his or her partner three times, and
then the roles are reversed. The listening partner’s role is to provide positive feedback to
and support for the reader.
6. Teacher calls students back to their places after the paired reading practice, and invites
individuals, pairs, or small groups to perform the text for the class.
7. Students place the text in a folder, and are encouraged to practice reading on their own
and to read the text for their parents.

FIGURE 3.11. Procedure for the fluency development lesson (FDL). Based on Rasinski, Padak,
Linek, and Sturtevant (1994).

Record your notes here:

Text:

Plan:
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 63

Choosing Books to Build Fluency

Choosing books to build accuracy and fluency should not be haphazard. The following
are some guidelines.

Easy Readers
When children are learning to read, they should experience success quickly to keep
their motivation high. However, the texts should not be contrived; they should be highly
engaging while using a limited amount of words accessible to beginning readers. Books
nominated and chosen for the American Library Association’s Theodor Geisel Award
give beginning readers a real sense of what it takes to be able to read good books and
experience success. Recent nominees for this award include There Is a Bird on Your Head!
(Willems, 2007), Hello Bumblebee Bat (Lunde, 2007), and Jazz Baby (Wheeler, 2007). (See
Chapter 13 for a description of other book awards for which nominees and winners are
posted on www.ala.org.)

Predictable Texts
Books in which the pictures, formats, test structures, and words are highly predictable
help students take risks when they encounter words they may not know. Predictable
texts include rhyming books, such as Llama, Llama, Red Pajama (Dewdney, 2005); stories
with repetitive text, such as We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Rosen, 1989); and stories with
cumulative rhyme, such as The Napping House (Woods, 1984) or Why Mosquitoes Buzz in
People’s Ears (Aardema, 1975).
Several years ago, using predictable texts was routine practice in elementary class-
rooms for teaching reading. Replaced by highly decodable texts for a time, they have
made a comeback in classrooms as effective texts to use with developing readers, to
teach them to read and enjoy literature. We have never abandoned these texts, and we
are happy to see them appreciated again. These are the books that children pick up
and read over and over. Each reading increases exposure to the rich language of well-
­written literature for children.

High-­Quality Texts
Remember that all the books that effective teachers of reading use with developing
readers should meet high standards, or why would any child learning to read keep try-
ing? As you have seen in the Frog and Toad series, Lobel has carefully crafted engaging
stories for developing readers, using a combination of high-­frequency words and words
that are decipherable through decoding or sentence context. But that is not all. He has
been able to do it all with humor and provide his readers with worthwhile themes and
excellent characterization.
You can use the chart in Figure 3.12 (page 64) to review your bookshelves at home
or in your classrooms. Look particularly at the books you use for early readers. Choose
a few books, and then use the criteria in the chart to assess them. If the books satisfy all
the criteria, they are probably great books to use for developing readers.
 Engaging Percentage of Easily
theme for Predictable Strong high-frequency identifiable
Title of book children? format? characterization? words? plot structure?

64
FIGURE 3.12. Evaluating books for developing readers.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Developing Foundations for Fluent Readers 65

Now take a few moments to assess your comprehension of this chapter by referring
to the Key Terms Chart in Figure 3.13 (page 66). Try to write definitions to these terms
in your own words.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 3.14 (page 67) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
66 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 3

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

phonological awareness

phonemic awareness

phonics

phonetic elements

settings for teaching phonics

approaches to teaching phonics

high-frequency words

fluency

oral reading strategies

fluency development lesson (FDL)

FIGURE 3.13. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 3.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 3

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

67
FIGURE 3.14. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 3.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Chapter 4

Cultivating Children’s Curiosity

for Words
Teaching Vocabulary

Alberto’s Classroom

Alberto is beginning to teach a reading lesson to his fifth graders, using the social stud-
ies textbook. In social studies, they are learning about the westward expansion in the
United States—the migration of early settlers from the East to the West from 1832 to
1860. Alberto has chosen to use the social studies text to teach both reading strategies
and history. All the students have access to the social studies text, and they read it with
support if they need it.
Alberto begins the lesson by preteaching the vocabulary. The teacher’s manual for
the social studies text has selected words for Alberto to teach the students. However,
Alberto has added a few words to the list, because he has reason to believe that they do
not have sufficient background knowledge about the words migration and resettlement.
In addition to the social studies text, the students in Alberto’s class have many
other texts to support their reading and understanding of migration in the 1800s. The
classroom library showcases books—both narrative and expository—about the west-
ward expansion. Alberto has included magazines and journals on this topic, and he has
set the four classroom computers on websites that help the students navigate the routes
of the travelers during that time.
Alberto is an example of an expert teacher who knows that multiple encounters
with new words and concepts, in a variety of contexts, facilitate students’ understand-
ing of those words. We will hear more about Alberto and other excellent teachers in this
chapter on teaching vocabulary.

68
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 69

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Promoting wide reading.
99
Choosing vocabulary words to teach.
99
Teaching vocabulary in the context of teaching reading.
99

What We Know
about Effective Vocabulary Instruction
We know of no teacher who would argue with the fact that teaching vocabulary is
a great responsibility and should be carried out well. Teachers understand the impli-
cations of having a rich vocabulary: They know that understanding the meanings of
words affects their students’ comprehension of the texts they read; they also know that
if their students have a large fund of words that they can use accurately, it affects their
writing; and they realize that precise knowledge and use of terminology can improve
their students’ ability to express themselves orally. We would argue that every teacher
wants to do a great job of teaching vocabulary. The problem is that traditional methods
of teaching vocabulary are not consistent with best practices.
Nagy (1988) offers what he believes are reasons for our failure to teach vocabulary
well. First, he explains, we are not teaching our students in-depth word knowledge—
the rich and deep understanding that is necessary to truly comprehend difficult text.
Second, he believes that our efforts to teach individual words do not always pay off, if
not knowing those words does not hinder the comprehension of the text. Our students
need to encounter those words over and over in text in order to remember them. The
way to increase multiple encounters with those words is not hard to figure out. As Nagy
states, the implication is that “what is needed to produce more vocabulary growth is not
more vocabulary instruction, but more reading” (p. 3).

What Is a Vocabulary Program?

Wide Reading
There is no doubt that Nagy puts the greatest emphasis on the amount of reading our
students should do. This idea of wide reading as an important way of building vocab-
ulary is well supported (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985; Blachowicz &
Fisher, 2002). Recall our reference in Chapter 1 to the study by Anderson et al. (1988)
and their findings about the connection among achievement, the amount of time spent
reading, and the number of words read in a year. Surely students who read 4½ mil-
lion words a year, as described in their study, are encountering new words in multiple
contexts.
Many kindergarten teachers have told us that they notice that their students enter
school with relatively small reading vocabularies, but a much greater knowledge of
words. This is fortunate, but they will need to increase the number of words they know
in leaps and bounds in order to understand what they are expected to read. They may
have a general knowledge or vague idea of many of the words they encounter, but word
70 TEACHING READING

knowledge is far more complex. Knowing words involves understanding that (1) know-
ing words is incremental; (2) words often have more than one meaning; (3) word knowl-
edge consists of multiple dimensions; (4) knowledge of one word is often dependent
upon the knowledge of another word; and (5) knowing what a word means depends
greatly on the kind of word it is (Nagy & Scott, 2000).
According to Graves et al. (2001), if we want our students to understand the texts
they are expected to read, their knowledge of the words must be at the established level.
That is, the words must be easily, rapidly, and automatically recognized.

Students need to know most of the words they encounter at the established level because
words that are not recognized automatically will thwart the process of comprehending text.
Unless words are understood at the established level, students are not likely to use them in
writing and speaking. (pp. 204–205)

Graves et al. (2001) recommend wide reading as part of a comprehensive vocabu-

lary program (see Figure 4.1). They follow this recommendation with suggestions for
teaching individual words, teaching strategies, and promoting word consciousness. We
continue our discussion with the research-based qualities of that instruction.

Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Nagy (1988) describes three qualities of effective vocabulary instruction: integration, rep-
etition, and meaningful use. These are summarized in Figure 4.2, and we provide a fuller
explanation of each quality below.

Integration
Integration is critical to the task of learning new words. Acquiring new words requires
students to assimilate them into their background knowledge or schemas (a detailed
discussion of schemas and schema theory is presented in Chapter 5). In order for new

•• Emphasizes the importance of wide reading, because students learn much of their
vocabulary from reading.
•• Includes instruction on individual words, because such instruction can assist students in
learning some words, improve comprehension of selections from which the words are taken,
and show students the value we place on words.
•• Provides instruction in learning words independently, because students must learn much of
the vocabulary on their own.
•• Promotes activities leading to word consciousness, because only if students are interested
in words, value them, and find them intriguing are they likely to develop full and rich
vocabularies.

FIGURE 4.1. Components of a comprehensive vocabulary program. Based on Graves, Juel, and
Graves (2001).
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 71

Effective
Vocabulary Instruction

Integration
Words must be integrated into students’ prior knowledge.

Repetition
Words must be used often in students’ daily life.

Meaningful Use
Students must use words meaningfully.

FIGURE 4.2. Principles of effective vocabulary instruction. Based on Nagy (1988).

words to make any sense for our students, we have to remind them of the things they
already know and help them make analogies between what they already know and
what they are about to learn.

Repetition
Providing multiple encounters with new words is essential to vocabulary growth. It
is through these multiple encounters and through the repetition of each word or term
(using the word often) that students come to understand the meanings of words at the
established level.

Meaningful Use
It is not enough for students to be able to define words. Being able to define words is not
really what it means to know words. Students who memorize definitions are not neces-
sarily using them in their writing and speaking. In fact, when they encounter those
words in text, they may not even recognize them, especially if they have memorized a
definition that does not match the context. Asking students to demonstrate their knowl-
edge of words in a meaningful way helps to drive them to a deeper understanding of the
words.
72 TEACHING READING

Guidelines for Effective Vocabulary Instruction

Many vocabulary scholars have suggested guidelines for teaching vocabulary to our
students. From his own work and review of the research on vocabulary instruction,
Johnson (2000) offers these guidelines for teaching vocabulary effectively:

•• Involve students in rich oral language activities, including conversations, discus-

sions, debates, participating in/listening to speeches, and watching high-­quality
films and TV programs.
•• Promote and enable wide reading of many genres of print on a daily basis, and
have students engage in discussions of their current and previous readings.
•• Provide direct instruction with important words that might otherwise become
stumbling blocks to students’ understanding. Use strategies that integrate the
words into students’ prior knowledge. In addition, have students use the words
meaningfully and often in your classes.
•• Teach students why, when, and how to use a thesaurus.

As we describe the practices in the rest of this chapter, we use the work of Johnson
(2000), Nagy (1988), and others to present learning events that are consistent with best-
­practice research. We include our own belief that effective instruction in vocabulary
should embrace a great deal of fervor for learning new words.

Promoting Wide Reading

We hope you have discovered that increasing the amount of reading our students do is
a high priority, and it should be foremost in our minds as we develop a curriculum that
includes learning new words.
In kindergarten, it is common practice to immerse the students in good literature
through read-­alouds, repeated reading, poetry, chanting, and singing. In Chapter 3, we
have elaborated on those methods. We applaud kindergarten teachers who do these
things, and we say to them, “Please don’t stop!” Read-­alouds can provide excellent
models of rich vocabulary in any grade. Promoting rich vocabulary through listening
and oral language can only result in better use of vocabulary in writing and better com-
prehension in reading.
Recall that in Chapter 2 we have described the importance of the classroom library.
Your library will be the first place your students choose books; it should be the best
place for them to find books on a variety of topics and genres. To experience the amount
of wide reading your students need, they should not have to go any further than your
classroom. We have seen an excellent example of this in Alberto’s classroom.
In fourth, fifth, and sixth grades, you can further facilitate wide reading by encour-
aging your students to move beyond the classroom library and into your school’s
resource center. If your school has a media center, you can teach your students ways
in which they can research their topics through various media. That way, they will
see the key terms and concepts presented repeatedly in a variety of contexts and texts:
journals, newspapers, textbooks, and expository texts. The slight differences in usage
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 73

among contexts, as well as the repeated exposure to the words, will help the students
grab onto the words.

Choosing Words to Teach

Limit the Words You Teach
One mistake we teachers sometimes make is spending too much time teaching vocabu-
lary and diminishing the amount of time allotted for actual reading. Because we all
develop much of our vocabulary through text reading, the best idea is for students to
do a great deal of reading. This way, the probability of their encountering new words
increases. It is through repetition, integration, and use of new vocabulary that we gain
understanding. Recall that it takes quite a number of encounters with words before we
truly use the words accurately and meaningfully. We cannot expect our students to
grasp the meanings after one encounter.
Graves et al. (2001) have suggested a useful protocol to follow when choosing the
words to teach. Our version of this is shown in Figure 4.3. This figure guides you to
select vocabulary by category. Category 1 consists of words that are essential for under-
standing the day’s reading. Category 2 consists of words that can be used to teach a
particular strategy. Category 3 consists of words in the selection that are otherwise
important for students to know. We discuss each of these categories in more detail
below. We know that many words fall into more than one category, but we have found
that asking ourselves category-­related questions serves as a good guide in making our
selections.

How do I select
words to teach?

Which words are Which words can Which words are

essential to the be used to teach important outside
comprehension a strategy? the selection?
of the text?

Narrative text: Expository text:

Find words that Use words selected
students will need by publisher and add
to understand that day. or subtract.

FIGURE 4.3. Selecting words to teach. Based on Graves et al. (2001).

74 TEACHING READING

Category 1: Words That Are Essential to the Meaning of the Text

Is understanding a word important to that day’s text reading?
Expository Textbooks

Authors of content-area textbooks often identify and reinforce the key terms and con-
cepts in their texts. For example, most science textbooks are divided into units and
chapters, and if the text is read in order, the vocabulary words build on each other. At
the beginning of each chapter, the authors typically select three to five words as the
key vocabulary for that chapter. Limiting the number, especially in the content areas, is
important: The key vocabulary words are often the concepts that need to be taught, and
they need to be well developed.
The words can very often be found enclosed in a box or in a sidebar at the begin-
ning of the chapter. Then, as the words are introduced, they are presented in bold print
or highlighted. The authors may explicitly define each key term within the first or sec-
ond sentence containing that new word. The word is then repeated throughout that
section of the text and is included in the questions at the end of the chapter. For further
help, or to serve as a reference, the vocabulary words are included in the glossary at the
end of the text.
To illustrate, we have chosen the chapter “We Have One President” from Some Peo-
ple I Know, a Houghton Mifflin second-grade social studies text (Armento, Nash, Salter,
& Wixson, 1991). The words selected are set in the margins as key words: president, vote,
ballot. The first occurrence of each word is presented in bold, and the word is defined in
the sentence:

Every four years, grown-up citizens in our country vote on who should be president. They
vote by going to places such as schools in their neighborhoods. There they get a card or
piece of paper called a ballot. They mark the ballot next to the name of the person they want
for president. (p. 115)

The question at the end of the chapter, “How do we decide who should be presi-
dent?”, gives the students opportunities to use all the key words repeatedly in their dis-
cussions and to hear each other use them. The key words are also defined in a picture
glossary at the end of the text. Using the words selected by the authors of expository
textbooks is one way that you can select words to teach in content-area classes. The pro-
gram authors make predictions based on the students’ grade level, but they do not have
the benefit of knowing how much background knowledge your students have. So words
chosen by the authors should be adjusted according to what your students know.

Expository Trade Books

You may also use one of the many available trade books when teaching social studies or
science. Expository trade books offer the reader similar tools for deciphering the mean-
ings of new words, but they are not as conspicuous as textbook tools. In a delightful
expository trade book from National Geographic Children’s Books, Sea Critters (Earle,
2000), the author and the illustrator combine efforts to define and illustrate the many
kinds of underwater creatures. For example, in a chapter called “Animals with Holes,”
the word Porifera is introduced and defined within the context.
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 75

Imagine sitting in one place most of your life with tasty morsels brought to you by the
surrounding sea. That’s what sponges do. Sponges—the animals with holes—are called
PORIFERA. Water flows through hundreds of tiny holes all over the sponge’s body, then
squirts out through a big hole—or lots of big holes—at the top. Sponges come in many col-
ors, from red to bright blue to gold to clear like glass. (p. 7)

From this paragraph, we learn quite a bit about sponges, and we also learn the scientific
name Porifera. However, the author does not repeat the word in the next sections or
chapters, and there is no glossary for further reference. Nonetheless, it is an engaging
text whose purpose is to delight children and teach them the names of underwater sea
creatures. If you were using this text to teach about the ocean, you could easily choose
words to develop with your students.

Narrative Text in Published Anthologies

If a narrative text is part of a published anthology and is accompanied by a teacher’s

manual, the authors select key terms, and they may give suggestions for ways to teach
them. As in content-area text, these are most likely to be the words that students must
know to understand the plot. Once again, you should adjust the words chosen by the
authors according to what your students know.

Narrative Trade Books

Narrative trade books do not provide guidance in which words are absolutely essential
to understanding the text that day. Instead, you must rely on your knowledge of your
students’ needs in selecting these words. For example, in the chapter “Graffiti,” from
The Higher Power of Lucky (Patron, 2006), the main characters, Lucky and Lincoln, revise
a street sign that originally says

SLOW
CHILDREN
AT
PLAY

so that it says

SLOW:
CHILDREN
AT
PLAY

That is, the children add a colon with a black marker. Lucky argues that it is illegal to
draw on a traffic sign, but never once mentions or uses the word graffiti. The reader has
to draw conclusions about the meaning of the chapter title—and can do so as the chap-
ter progresses—but a quick preview and short discussion of the word could help to set
up the reader for the chapter.
76 TEACHING READING

How to Teach Words in Category 1

After you have chosen the words you want to teach, the next step is choosing an effi-
cient way to teach it. We offer some practical suggestions below for introducing words
before reading.

1. Using a visual aid. Many times the easiest and most effective way of introducing
a new word is through a visual aid. For example, in the text A Single Shard (Park, 2001),
the reader encounters the word pottery early in the text. Understanding the meaning of
the word pottery is critical to understanding the context of the novel. As students read,
they will gain understanding of it, but a visual aid—a piece of pottery similar to the
celadon pottery in the text—would be the most efficient way of introducing the word.
It is not necessary to elaborate on the process of making porcelain pottery; in fact, that
would not be a good use of instructional time. The text does an excellent job of weaving
the process into the plot.
2. Making an analogy. Whenever you can introduce a word by using an analogy,
you should. For example, when reading the text Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (Taback,
1999) with kindergartners, you can help them understand the term overcoat (a word they
might not normally use) by showing them one of the pictures and saying, “An overcoat
is like a        .” They will answer coat or jacket. The picture book provides the
repetition as they see the transformation of the overcoat into other items of clothing.
Then it can be further reinforced if they read or reread Grandfather’s Journey (Say, 1993).
The students will recognize a word they have learned: The illustration on the cover
shows a person on a ship wearing an overcoat.
3. Brainstorming through webbing. Another quick and easy way to introduce new
terms is brainstorming through webbing. Webbing words is a high-­utility strategy—
one that has a wide range of applicability. Blachowicz and Fisher (2002) define a web or
a brainstorming map as “any form of graphic representation that shows the relationship
among words or concepts” (p. 96). Webbing gets students thinking and talking about
words, requires little preparation, and can be tied to other parts of the curriculum.
When you use webbing, remember that your lesson needs to be focused on what the
students are reading on that day or soon after. You need not worry about teaching them
everything about the word or concept.

Say, for example, that you are reading the story Stone Soup (Brown, 1947) with
second graders. You want to build background knowledge about the story before you
begin, and you can do it efficiently while introducing some of the vocabulary words.
In first and second grades, many of the words you introduce will be words for which
the students may already have a concept, but they may need a preview to decode them.
Let us follow Taylor, a second-grade teacher, as she leads the students in a prereading
vocabulary exercise before asking her students to read Brown’s (1947) version of Stone
Soup.
Taylor begins by telling the students that they will be reading a story about a very
special kind of soup. She then asks the students whether they know the ingredients that
might go into a vegetable soup. The students begin offering her words, and she records
them on the web. As you can see in Figure 4.4, the students volunteer the following
words: chicken, beef, onions, carrots, celery, broth, potatoes, salt, and pepper. Taylor records
each one. Because she predicts that most of the students know the meanings of these
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 77

QPUBUPFT

DFMFSZ POJPOT

8IBU
HPFT
JOUP
B
TPVQ
CFFG
PS CSPUI
DIJDLFO

TBMU
BOE DBSSPUT
QFQQFS

FIGURE 4.4. Brainstorming web for Stone Soup.

words, she does not take the time to explain what each one is. Instead, she simply has
the children practice reading them. She circles the words that will be in the text, saying,
“Good job! These are all ingredients for soup. The ones I have circled are in the soup in
the story we will read.”
No one has mentioned barley, another ingredient in the soup. Taylor has also pre-
dicted this. From experience, Taylor knows that her students hardly ever suggest bar-
ley, and most of them do not know what barley is. So Taylor is prepared. She shows
the students a glass baby food jar filled with barley. “Do you know what this is?” she
asks. “Rice,” everyone yells. She says that it looks like rice, but directs them to look more
closely; then she gives them the word barley. She asks them, “How is barley similar to
rice? How is barley different?”
Taylor has introduced the only word in the story that she thinks her students might
not know. But she has also helped her students to preread the other words—the ingre-
dients—they will encounter in the story.

Find a narrative text or chapter of a trade book. As you look through the text, select
five words, preferably ones that are used throughout the selection, that fall into Cat-
egory 1: ones that are critical to the understanding of the text. Then plan a procedure for
introducing those words efficiently. Remember to integrate the words into the students’
prior knowledge. The text, and the discussions you have about the text, will provide the
repetition and meaningful usage. (See the box on page 78.)
78 TEACHING READING

Choose a text or section of text you could use to teach reading on one day.
Text:

Word How can I teach this word efficiently?

Category 2: Words That Present Opportunities to Teach a Strategy

Can you teach a strategy to help your students use context or structural
analysis skills to discover the word’s meaning?
Using Context

There is no better time to teach a strategy than before or while students are actually
reading a text. We are strong advocates of contextualized vocabulary instruction, and
we think that this high-­utility strategy is one from which students profit the most.
Teaching words in context usually involves more work for you. It would be far easier
to define the words for your students—but in the end, they would have a meaning, but
not a strategy.
We provide two examples below.

Example 1. In the novel, The House of Dies Drear (Hamilton, 1968), abolitionist Dies
Drear owned a house that was part of the Underground Railroad in the 19th century.
He is described as eccentric. Knowing what eccentric means is critical to understand-
ing the novel. This word presents an excellent opportunity to show the students the
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 79

importance of using a dictionary only after the students have made a prediction about
the meaning of the word.
The novel introduces the character of Drear and the word in the following sen-
tence:

“He was a New Englander,” Mr. Small said, “so independent and eccentric, most Ohio abo-
litionists thought him crazy.” (p. 18)

Like all outstanding authors for children, Hamilton introduces a word that might be unfa-
miliar to many readers, eccentric, but she respects the reader’s ability to decipher the words
in context. She gives the readers a hint about the word’s meaning within the sentence by
using the word crazy. For some students, that might be enough, but she provides more
clues as they read. We could guide the students to confirm the meaning in a dictionary at
this point, but stopping to look up a word in a dictionary is not always an efficient strategy,
and it detracts from the joy of reading. In addition, reading ahead gives more clues.

“He came from an enormously wealthy family of shipbuilders, and yet his house in Ohio
was fairly modest. To give you an idea how odd he was,” said Mr. Small, “his house was
overflowing with fine antiques, which he took neither any interest in nor sold for profit. All
the furniture remained in great piles, with just enough space to get through from room to
room, until the house was plundered and Drear was killed.” (pp. 18–19)

Showing the students the ways to gather the clues—to be word detectives—is a useful
strategy for deciphering the meaning of this word and many others. This is one exam-
ple of teaching students to be strategic and independent when reading on their own.
We observed Julie teaching the above-­described strategy to her fifth graders and
producing the word web shown in Figure 4.5. She began by reading the sentence intro-
ducing Drear from the novel and then asking, “Do we know what eccentric means from
this sentence?” It was likely that most of Julie’s fifth graders were unaware of the exact

DSB[Z
XFJSE JO
UFYU PEE
TZOPOZN JO
UFYU

FDDFOUSJD
OFX
XPSE

TUSBOHF QFDVMJBS
TZOPOZN TZOPOZN
VOVTVBM
TZOPOZN

FIGURE 4.5. Webbing the word eccentric.

80 TEACHING READING

meaning, but they offered the word crazy because it is contained in the sentence. So
she began making a web and said, “Let’s read on and see if Hamilton gives us any
more clues.” The students read on and stated that maybe eccentric means odd, so Julie
recorded that word on the web. As they continued reading, Julie helped the students
tap into their own prior knowledge to find other words that are synonyms for odd, and
then she recorded them on the web.
At the end, Julie guided the students to look at the word web, and she explained
that by being word detectives, they could figure out the meanings of new words while
they read. As a reinforcement of their effective use of the strategy, Julie then guided her
students to confirm their predicted definition by looking up the word eccentric in their
student dictionaries.
This webbing strategy, though initially conducted on the whiteboard for Julie’s
demonstration, could move temporarily into the notebooks of the students as they prac-
ticed the strategy. But, ultimately, this strategy would need to be in their heads, as they
read on and gathered cues from other sentences.

Example 2. You can teach the word detective strategy to younger children and
eliminate the dictionary portion of the lesson if the text purposefully gives more clues.
In the classic novel Charlotte’s Web (White, 1952), White introduces and defines several
sophisticated words for the reader through interactions between Charlotte and Wilbur,
the main characters. For example, when Wilbur meets Charlotte in Chapter 5, she greets
him with the word salutations. Here is the exchange:

Wilbur jumped to his feet. “Salu-what?” he cried.

“Salutations!” repeated the voice.
“What are they, and what are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you
are. And what are salutations?”
“Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy
way of saying hello or good morning.” (p. 35)

White repeats similar exchanges throughout the book to purposefully define other
words and terms, such as sedentary, versatile, and magnum opus. Through these playful
interactions between characters, the readers benefit from White’s unmistakable passion
for words, and they learn the meanings of new words in an authentic and meaningful
way. There is usually no need to develop those words any further, because White has
masterfully guided the reader through the meanings.

Teaching the Strategy of Structural Analysis

Using a similar strategy, students may also predict meanings of words from their knowl-
edge of word parts: Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes. For example, they can
determine the meaning of the word unfortunate by separating the prefix from the root
and determining the meanings of both parts.
Or you can teach students to recognize one part of a term, and then make analogies
to guide their predictions of the word meanings. For example, most students know that
unhappy means not happy. Therefore, if they encounter the word untied, they will be able
to make an analogy and determine that untied means not tied.
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 81

Finally, the students can consult their dictionaries. In this way they have already
done the hard work, and they can confirm what they thought by finding the definition
that best matches the usage in the text that they are reading. This strategy serves as a
good tool to practice predicting and confirming the meanings of words.
Graves et al. (2001) suggest a three-step process for teaching students new words
by using word parts: (1) identify the specific word parts to teach; (2) teach the meanings
of the word parts; and (3) repeat and review the process often, gradually adding new
word parts.
Below is a passage from the second text page of the award-­winning picture book
Rosa (Giovanni, 2005). Read this excerpt and think about how you could teach altera-
tions—the word Giovanni uses as she gives the reader some background about Rosa
Parks. Pay close attention to the word parts and the context clues Giovanni has woven
throughout the passage to help young readers craft the meaning of the word.

Everyone knew the alterations department would be very, very busy. Mrs. Parks would
laugh each year with the other seamstresses and say that “those elves in the North Pole have
nothing on us!”
The women of Montgomery, both young and older, would come in with their fancy
holiday dresses that needed adjustments or their Sunday suits and blouses that needed just
a touch—a flower or some velvet trimming or something to make the ladies look festive.
Rosa Parks was the best seamstress. The needle and thread flew through her hands
like the gold spinning from Rumpelstiltskin’s loom. The other seamstresses would tease
Rosa Parks and say she used magic. Rosa would laugh. “Not magic. Just concentration,” she
would say. Some days she would skip lunch to be finished on time. (p. 2)

Now record your notes below. How can you teach the meaning of the word alterations by
teaching your students a strategy for both decoding the prefix, suffix, or root and using
the context of the excerpt? We will leave it up to you to decide what meaningful parts
are in the word alterations.
82 TEACHING READING

Category 3: Words That Are Important Any Time

How useful is this word outside the current reading selection? What are
the chances that the students will see this word again soon?

Time spent teaching students words that they will rarely encounter is not time well
spent, because the task of teaching vocabulary is enormous. However, if you see a
word in a text that does not fit either Category 1 or Category 2, but that you feel is an
important word to teach or review, you should teach it because (1) it is presented in
context, and (2) it is a word your students should know. Many encounters with words
help ensure the success of learning new words. Frequently students will encounter
words they have seen in previous texts. Making a point of reviewing words they may
have encountered before helps the students gain the repeated exposures they need to
learn them.
For example, suppose you are using the book Hoot (Hiaasen, 2002) while teaching
your fourth graders a reading lesson. In the seventh chapter, there is a passage that
contains the word twilight.

Beatrice parked the bike and motioned for Roy to follow her through the hole in the fence.
They entered a junkyard full of wrecked automobiles, acres of them. In the twilight Roy and
Beatrice crept along, darting from one rusted hulk to the next. From the way Beatrice was
acting, Roy assumed they weren’t alone on the property. (p. 72)

In this chapter, it is not absolutely necessary to understand the meaning of the

word twilight, but it is a word that the students will see again, and it will be useful for
them to know that twilight is the time right before darkness. There is no need to go into
great detail, but teaching the meanings of words as they are encountered—in an infor-
mal way—­increases the number of exposures for your students.

Other Ways to Build Vocabulary:

Strategies That Work in All Categories
Developing Knowledge about Gradable Antonyms

You can use a teacher-­directed learning event for teaching gradable antonyms. These are
words that differ in degree and that occur between two ends of a spectrum, such as
between slow and fast. In addition to helping your students to understand the new word
or words, this activity leads to a kind of wordsmithing, and it helps your students use
words more precisely both in speaking and in writing.
We observed Gail while she was teaching a second-grade science lesson. The les-
son required the students to mix sugar with tepid water, so she took the opportunity to
involve the class in figuring out what the word tepid meant. In Figure 4.6, you can see
that the students brainstormed words between hot and cold. As each word was offered,
Gail asked, “Do you think your word is closer to hot or to cold? Where shall we put the
word?” Then she placed the word in the spot indicated by the students. When the stu-
dents were finished and she wrote the word tepid, she helped the students in discover-
ing that tepid water is similar to lukewarm water.
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 83

)PU

XBSN

MVLFXBSN

UFQJE

DPPM

$0-%

FIGURE 4.6. Gradable antonyms.

Using a Feature Matrix

A feature matrix is a chart that shows how concepts are related to each other (Johnson &
Pearson, 1984). Making a feature matrix with students is another teacher-­directed event
that results in students’ understanding of a concept. The matrix is also an excellent
example of the kind of purposeful and meaningful print on walls we have described in
Chapter 2, because the display is interactive and dynamic. For example, in Figure 4.7, we
see the results of a lesson in which first-grade students were learning about mammals.
After reading the text Animals Born Alive and Well (Heller, 1982) with his students, Jake
recorded the characteristics of mammals. Then Jake provided many more books about
animals, and he directed the students to look through their books and find pictures of
mammals. Together, they listed the mammals, and they checked off the characteristics
of the mammals they read about. As the children read or talked about more mammals
in school or at home, they added mammals to the matrix and checked off the character-
istics. They were able to use the terms associated with mammals often, and the activity
increased their ability to talk about mammals in a more scientific way.

Mammal Fur or hair Plates Wings Legs Live birth Eggs

dog ü ü ü
whale ü ü
platypus ü ü
bat ü ü ü ü
armadillo ü ü ü

FIGURE 4.7. Feature matrix: What is a mammal?

84 TEACHING READING

Look through some of the published anthologies and programs you can use when
teaching reading to children. Choose one narrative selection. Consult the teacher’s man-
ual, and record the words the program authors chose as key words or terms. Ask your-
self these questions: Which words did they choose? Why were these words selected?
How is the instruction suggested for the words consistent with best practice in teaching
vocabulary?

Selection:
Words to Teach Why? How?
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 85

Peer Talk
The Talk around the Task
In Chapter 2, we have described the benefits of peer talk. We cannot overstate the
importance of classroom discussion and peer talk for students in learning to be com-
petent language users, in developing and using vocabulary, and in understanding and
responding to text. Giving students opportunities to use the words they are learning in
school is critical. Children know that there is “school language” and “play language.” If
we do not give our students many opportunities in school to practice “school language,”
we cannot expect newly acquired words to spill into their everyday speech outside the
school context.
We sat in on Nina’s first-grade classroom during a lively discussion of fairy tales. In
this class, Nina was immersing her students in fairy tales. She read many of them aloud,
and the students read many on their own. After they read several of them, Nina put the
students into groups to discuss them, and asked them what they noticed about the fairy
tales they read. They were clever at extracting the elements of fairy tales, such as things
happening in threes, magic, and mean people.
Nina began to make a feature matrix, using the elements of fairy tales the students
had discovered on their own; she supplied others for them. Then she recorded some
of the fairy tales they had read on the matrix (see Figure 4.8), saying, “Let’s check off
the elements of the fairy tales we have read so far. We can add more fairy tales later.”
Some of the words on the matrix were new words—royalty, conflict, and evil—and it was
important to Nina that the first graders use these words when discussing the fairy tales
and completing the chart. In this way, the talk around the task became more important
than the task itself. The students had to use the words over and over as they partici-
pated in the activity. In the end, the students had categorized the fairy tales according
to their features on the matrix. More importantly, they were able to practice using the
words in a meaningful way.
Let us return to Alberto’s fifth-grade classroom, the one we have showcased at the
beginning of this chapter. Recall that Alberto’s students are learning about the west-
ward expansion of the 1800s. Alberto has begun the lesson by preteaching the essen-
tial vocabulary, including the words migration and resettlement. He has provided his
students with many texts about the westward expansion, including websites on the
classroom computers.
Several days later, Alberto guides his students in a discussion about the courageous
women who journeyed to California during the California gold rush. Alberto’s students

Text Magic Things in Animals Royalty Conflict with Special

threes evil phrases
Cinderella ü ü ü ü ü ü
The Three Wishes ü ü ü ü
Rapunzel ü ü ü ü ü
Rumpelstiltskin ü ü ü ü ü ü

FIGURE 4.8. Feature matrix: Elements of a fairy tale.

86 TEACHING READING

have been researching women such as Elizabeth Gunn and Luzena Stanley Wilson, and
they are learning about the kind of character it took to withstand the hardships these
women endured traveling by land and by sea from the East to California. As the stu-
dents learn about the women, they add attributes to a word bank displayed on a wall in
the classroom.

Alberto directs the students to talk in groups of four about the women they have
researched, and he advises them to use the new words they have learned in their discus-
sions. “Yes, we know they were brave,” Alberto says, “but they were much more. Refer to
the word bank we developed when learning about these women, and use them in your
discussion.” In this way, Alberto is encouraging his students to be conscious users of
these words; also, through repetition, they are more likely to integrate the words into
their speaking and writing vocabularies.

Talk around the Edges

One sign that our rigorous efforts in teaching vocabulary are paying off is hearing our
students use the words meaningfully outside the instructional context. Dudley-­Marling
and Searle (1991) describe this as talk around the edges. Talk around the edges, Dudley-
­Marling and Searle suggest, is a context in which students stretch their language. These
times occur before and after lessons, outside school, during field trips—­whenever our
students see us, their teachers, in a less evaluative role (see Figure 4.9). Rather, we are

•• It occurs before or after school or lessons.

•• Teachers establish themselves as listeners.
•• Teachers are more apt to respond like an authentic audience.
•• Teachers focus on the meaning.
•• Students take risks.
They stretch their vocabulary.
They ask questions.
They organize events.
They make meaning explicit.
They learn to handle the give and take of conversation.

FIGURE 4.9. Talk around the edges. Based on Dudley-Marling and Searle (1991).
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 87

listening to what they are saying, not how they are saying it. The students may choose
to “show off” what they have learned, and they may take risks using the new words.
Similarly, we may take the opportunity to use new words in this context ourselves, and
to observe the ways in which each student demonstrates understanding. These “edges”
are important instructional moments, and we feel that they should be as valued as the
scheduled instructional times when we are “teaching” vocabulary.

Satisfying Children’s Natural Curiosity

about Words

Children are naturally curious about words. Observe them after you have shown them
how excited you are about the new words you encounter. Recall that in Chapter 2 we
have discussed the importance of providing a motivating environment by showing
your own enthusiasm for reading. The same is true when creating an environment in
which learning new words is given high priority.
There are many books about words to satisfy your own interest, and there are books
to share with your students during read-­alouds and during sustained silent reading.
Include these books in your weekly book previews, and showcase them in a prominent
place in your classroom library. Some examples of books that quench children’s thirst
for learning words are offered in Figure 4.10.
Your excitement at learning new words is contagious to your students; your enthu-
siasm has an effect on your teaching. Good teaching usually involves very deliberate
actions (you will learn more about these in the next chapter), so modeling enthusiasm
is usually not sufficient. If demonstrating zeal were enough, our students would have
far more extensive vocabularies to use in their speech and their writing, and their read-
ing comprehension would be substantially better. It is the instruction of those words,
explicitly and through the teaching of strategies, that brings those words alive for stu-
dents and makes them their own.

In this chapter, you have learned the value of teaching explicitly the words your
students need to learn for effective comprehension of the texts and books they will read.

Max’s Words by Kate Banks

The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter
Mom and Dad Are Palindromes by Mark Shulman
Many Luscious Lollipops by Ruth Heller

A sample of books by Brian Cleary:

A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What Is a Noun?
Quirky, Jerky, Extra-Perky: More about Adjectives
Slide and Slurp, Scratch and Burp: More about Verbs
Stop and Go, Yes and No: What Is an Antonym?

FIGURE 4.10. Examples of picture books about words.

88 TEACHING READING

Although teaching vocabulary and assessing vocabulary often go hand in hand, they are
really very different. We describe strategies for assessing vocabulary in Chapter 12.
To demonstrate your own ability to learn new vocabulary, please refer to the Key
Terms Chart in Figure 4.11, and attempt to put the terms in your own words.
In the next chapter, we describe the foundations of cognitive strategy instruction,
which underlies all good pedagogy.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 4.12 (page 90) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
 Cultivating Children’s Curiosity for Words 89

Key Terms for this Chapter

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

wide reading

integration

repetition

meaningful use

webbing

gradable antonyms

feature matrix

talk around the task

talk around the edges

FIGURE 4.11. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 4.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 4

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

90
FIGURE 4.12. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 4.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Chapter 5

Preparing Strategic Readers

Teaching Reading
through Cognitive Strategy Instruction

It is often beneficial for teachers of reading to consider their own informal learning and
transfer what they know about those experiences to formal teaching and learning. To
prepare for this chapter on the teaching of reading, we would like you to reflect on the
process of learning basic skills when you were young. To that end, consider the follow-
ing questions, and record your responses in the grid below.

Question Who taught you and how?

How did you learn to tie
your shoes?

How did you learn to

ride a two-­wheeler bike?

How did you learn to fit

in with your peers?

91
92 TEACHING READING

Now compare what you wrote to the responses listed below, which we have
recorded from our work with teachers. We believe you may have recorded similar
teaching methods.

Question Who taught you and how?

How did you learn to tie • Mom showed me how to make bunny ears with the laces.
your shoes? • My kindergarten teacher showed me how to loop and tie.
• Dad had me practice while he talked me through the steps.
• I practiced by myself.
• I tried other ways when it was not working.

How did you learn to • I learned to ride a tricycle first.

ride a two-­wheeler bike? • My friend got on her bike and showed me how she balanced
the wheels.
• My mom held the back of the bike until I told her to let go.
• I fell a lot.
• My friend showed me how she pedaled fast to stay upright.

How did you learn to fit • My friends told me what to say and do.
in with your peers? • I learned by reading books about teens.
• During lunch period, I observed my peers fitting in.
• I tried out some ways to be friendly and meet new friends.

Let us consider what we have learned about teaching and learning from this activ-
ity. First, if you responded that someone “showed” you how to tie your shoes, then you
are suggesting that modeling or demonstration is a valuable teaching step. Did you also
suggest that someone coached you through the act of tying your shoes while repeating the
steps of the activity? We all know the value of coaching in the act of learning something
new. Another teaching method you may have identified was the act of breaking down
a complex task into small manageable parts. This may have occurred when you learned
each step of tying your shoelaces, or when someone held on to the back of your bicycle
until you could balance on your own. This valuable teaching step is called providing a
scaffold or scaffolding, and is explained in this chapter. Other valuable learning activities
or teaching steps you may have identified include repetition, guided practice (practice with
an able adult or peer present), independent practice, trial and error, and observation.
Not surprisingly, you will discover through this chapter that all of these informal
teaching and learning methods are embedded in a model for teaching reading, called
cognitive strategy instruction. This chapter provides a detailed description of this explicit,
direct instruction model, which shows how to teach reading strategies. Chapters 6–9
focus on what specific comprehension strategies to teach. Before we present the cogni-
tive strategy instructional model, however, it is necessary to consider the many research
principles from which it has evolved.
 Preparing Strategic Readers 93

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Teaching cognitive strategy instruction in the elementary curriculum.
99
Scaffolding instruction for all learners through modeling, coaching,
99
and practice.

What Is Cognitive Strategy Instruction?

A well-known body of research evidence conducted from the 1980s to the mid-1990s
supports cognitive strategy instruction (Pearson & Dole, 1987; Pressley & El-­Dinary, 1993;
Pressley et al., 1992; Pressley, Goodchild, Fleet, Zajchowski, & Evans, 1989). To arrive
at a working definition for this type of instruction, let us examine the two key words:
cognitive and strategy. Cognitive, as we know, refers to thinking, or the acquisition of
knowledge by such processes as reasoning, recognizing, judging, and perceiving. The
word strategy typically means a systematic plan of action to accomplish a goal. Thus a
cognitive strategy is a thinking process whereby a reader employs a plan to accomplish
a reading goal.
For example, let’s consider the mind of an imaginary fourth-grade reader, Anthony,
as he is attempting to read the following sentence in an expository textbook about ele-
phants: “Both species of elephant, the African and the Asian, are endangered because
deforestation threatens their habitat.” If Anthony has no idea what the word deforesta-
tion means and has no strategy for attempting to unlock the meaning of this word, then
his understanding of the text is compromised. However, if he has a clear strategy such
as the one suggested below, his chance of success is increased.
Recall in Chapter 4 that we have described how important it is to teach students to
decipher the meaning of unknown words in context. Here is a cognitive strategy you
can teach students to apply when they come across an unknown word:

Strategy for Unlocking the Meaning of an Unknown Word

1. When you come to a word that you do not know, stop and ask yourself if you
have heard of the word before. Where? If you have heard of it, think of another
word or synonym you can insert in its place. Now does the sentence make sense
to you?
2. If that doesn’t work, go back to the word and break the word into smaller words.
Are there word parts that you know? Can you identify prefixes, suffixes, and
root words to help you assign meaning to the word?
3. If not, read to the end of the sentence to see if you can figure out the word from
the surrounding words (the context).
4. Finally, try using your reference books to help you with the word in question.
Or you can look up the word in an online dictionary or other reliable source.

This vocabulary strategy is an example of a cognitive strategy. You can see that
“ways of thinking” or “thinking steps” are embedded in the strategy heuristic. A heuris-
tic is simply a helpful procedure for arriving at a solution; it is not foolproof, but rather,
94 TEACHING READING

provides ways of thinking to solve a problem. If Anthony knows this strategy, he may
be able to arrive at a preliminary meaning of the word deforestation by identifying its
root, forest, and its prefix, de, which usually means “down” or “away from.”
Teaching a cognitive strategy, therefore, is a way to aid young and/or developing
readers to think like older, more experienced readers by teaching strategy “thinking
steps” that more able readers use.

Guiding Principles
of Cognitive Strategy Instruction

The research on cognitive strategy instruction was comprehensive and thorough from
the late 1970s through the 1990s (Pearson & Dole, 1987; Pressley & El-­Dinary, 1993; Press-
ley et al., 1989, 1992).
Although much of this earlier research was conducted in the context of reading
comprehension, cognitive strategy research has continued in other areas of literacy,
especially vocabulary and writing instruction (Flower et al., 1990; Gaskins & Elliot,
1991; Lubliner & Smetana, 2005). Practitioners have begun to use the cognitive strat-
egy approach to teach many thinking processes, even mathematics. However, Michael
Pressley (2000), one of the more prolific researchers in this area, has suggested that
although the research on cognitive strategy instruction has demonstrated positive
results, the instruction has not been incorporated into the schools, perhaps due to dif-
ficulty in implementation.
The reason why cognitive strategy instruction is considered a best practice is clear.
Comprehension is increased if practitioners (1) teach strategies as thinking processes,
(2) give multiple opportunities to try out those strategies in different reading contexts,
(3) teach readers to combine and manipulate strategies to each new reading situation,
and (4) provide readers with practice combining strategies.
To better understand cognitive strategy instruction, it is important to look at two
theories that have had a significant influence on our changing views about reading
comprehension: schema theory (Anderson & Pearson, 1984) and theories about metacogni-
tion (Garner, 1987).

Schema Theory
Research on schema theory has had an important impact on reading comprehension
instruction (Anderson, Spiro, & Anderson, 1978; Rumelhart, 1980). Researchers who
investigated a “schema view” of reading suggested that a reader’s prior knowledge,
including experiences and attitudes, determines the ways in which new information is
understood. Therefore, new information is learned more easily during reading when
it can be integrated into a reader’s preexisting knowledge (Anderson et al., 1978). In
regard to teaching practice, numerous studies on schema theory have validated the
importance of a teacher’s activating students’ prior knowledge before or during reading
for a better understanding of what is being read (Anderson, 1985; Anderson & Pearson,
1984; Rumelhart, 1980).
Anderson (1985) has defined a schema as an organized knowledge of the world. He
explains that comprehension occurs when a reader activates or constructs a schema that
 Preparing Strategic Readers 95

provides a framework for the message delivered in the text. He has proposed five ways
in which a reader’s schema affects learning and comprehension:

1. It allows for information to be filed in slots or niches.

2. It allows for selection of important material or main ideas, in situations where
closer attention to detail is important.
3. It enables the reader to make inferences from implied text.
4. It allows the reader to determine relevance and irrelevance of information.
5. It allows the reader to activate knowledge and to reconstruct what is missing by
combining the new material with what is previously stored.

Paris and Lindauer (1976) found that young and developing readers may not acti-
vate prior knowledge on their own and may need a teacher’s help to do this before
reading a text. Other researchers have stressed the need for teachers to build students’
schemas through broad experiences (Afflerbach, 1990; Cross & Paris, 1988; Paris, Lip-
son, & Wixson, 1983). The following scenario illustrates why this research on schema
theory is important for your teaching of reading comprehension.
Li-Ling is about to read a story about Groundhog Day to her second-grade class. She
is unsure which children, if any, have had experiences with groundhogs, and predicts
that groundhogs will be unfamiliar to most children in her urban classroom. Therefore,
before reading, Li-Ling takes a few minutes to activate her students’ schemas through
asking various questions about what groundhogs look like, where they live, and the
American legend about Groundhog Day. During this prior knowledge activation step,
Li-Ling is careful to build the students’ knowledge about groundhogs. This added teach-
ing step prepares her students for understanding the reading in a significant way.

Metacognition of Comprehension Strategy Usage

An underlying principle of cognitive strategy instruction is the reader’s development of
metacognitive knowledge about reading strategies. Metacognition literally means “think-
ing about thinking.” If readers have metacognitive knowledge about reading strategies,
they know what strategy to apply while reading, and why and when to use certain
strategies (Garner, 1987). For example, an intermediate reader who notices that he or she
does not understand a text may deliberately use a “fix-up” strategy, such as rereading
or summarizing.
Paris et al. (1983) have described three types of metacognitive knowledge: declara-
tive knowledge, procedural knowledge, and conditional knowledge. This provides us with a
useful framework for thinking about our cognitive strategy instruction. The three types
are defined as follows:

1. Declarative knowledge represents what readers know about strategy usage (Brown,
Armbruster, & Baker, 1986; Flavell, 1985; Garner, 1987).
2. Procedural knowledge represents the procedures readers use when applying a
strategy (Cross & Paris, 1988).
3. Conditional knowledge represents the understanding readers have about when
and where to apply a strategy, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the strat-
egy (Cross & Paris, 1988).
 96 TEACHING READING

In simpler terms, metacognition refers to readers’ awareness of and motivation to

use their known strategies (declarative knowledge), their systematic plans for applying
strategies in reading text (procedural knowledge), and their knowledge when and where
to use them (conditional knowledge). If the goal of our reading program is to have stu-
dents gain metacognition of reading strategies, then our task is to teach the three types
in a concise and clear way. Later in this chapter, we describe how these three types of
metacognitive knowledge can be used to structure your teaching. First, to better under-
stand the three types of metacognitive knowledge, think about some activity or process
in which you are an expert, and fill out the chart below. We have completed one entry
for you as a model.

Declarative
knowledge: What Conditional knowledge: When
A metacognitive the strategy is and Procedural knowledge: How to to use the strategy and the
strategy why it is important apply the strategy (the heuristic) conditions of success
Crossover dribble The crossover dribble 1. To start the crossover, I dribble The crossover dribbling technique
while playing is a method of with my right hand. is good to use when your defender
basketball dribbling a basketball 2. When the opposing player gets is right on top of you. My strategy
and keeping it away really close, I push the ball out in heuristic only works if there is
from your opponents front of me and switch it over only one defender in my vicinity.
at the same time. It is to my left side. More steps must be added if there
important because it 3. Just as I change the ball to is more than one defender blocking
is an essential part of my left hand, I move past the me.
the game. opposing player.
4. If the defense is close, I must
remember to keep the ball low
as I dribble.
Declarative
knowledge: What Conditional knowledge: When
A metacognitive the strategy is and Procedural knowledge: How to to use the strategy and the
strategy why it is important apply the strategy (the heuristic) conditions of success
The strategy I
have metacognitive
knowledge of is:
 Preparing Strategic Readers 97

There are many processes for which we, as adults, have clear metacognitive strate-
gies. When we consider the many daily activities in which we engage, we can provide
quite a list of strategies that we employ every day, from driving a car to carrying out a
recipe to reading with purpose. In the next section, you will learn how to use a meta-
cognitive instructional model to teach a reading strategy.

The Instructional Model

The informal learning steps we have identified at the beginning of this chapter include
modeling, verbal explanation, guided and independent practice, and other teaching
methods. You will soon understand that a strategic instructional model for all grades
and for all learners includes (1) explaining what a strategy is and why one should learn
it; (2) modeling the procedure by thinking aloud while applying the strategy; (3) pro-
viding a heuristic (a helpful procedure) of ways of thinking for applying the strategy; (4)
providing both guided and independent practice of the strategy; and (5) giving students
opportunities to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy in multiple contexts (Paris &
Winograd, 1990). Figure 5.1 (page 98) summarizes the cognitive strategy instructional
model we are advocating for direct instruction (Pasquarelli, 1997).

A Lesson Using the Instructional Model

The simplest way for you to understand the cognitive strategy instructional model (Fig-
ure 5.1, page 98) is to experience an actual lesson plan for teaching one of the basic
comprehension strategies: how to activate prior knowledge before reading. The lesson
proceeds as follows.

Lesson: Strategy for activating prior knowledge

Text: Hide and Seek Science #02: Where’s That Reptile? (Chardiet & Schwartz, 1995)
Lesson Grade Levels: 1–3
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of activating prior knowl-
edge about a text topic before reading.
Declarative Knowledge: First, the teacher tells the students that they will be learn-
ing a new strategy. The declarative knowledge segment of the lesson may proceed as
follows:

“Today, children, we are going to learn a new reading strategy called activating our
prior knowledge. This strategy will help us understand how to remember what we
know about the information we will read in the text. We know that as good read-
ers, we always think about what we know about the text topic before and during
reading. To do so helps us add new information to the information we already
know.
“The reason why this strategy is important is that it will help us to under-
stand the meaning of the text by bringing together what we already know with
what we are going to learn in the book.”
98 TEACHING READING

Declarative knowledge:
What strategy are we learning?
Why are we learning this strategy?

• Tell students what they will be learning by providing the name of the strategy and a
conceptual understanding of it.
• Tell students why they will be learning the strategy (authentic reason).

Procedural knowledge:
How do we apply the strategy?

• Teach and model the use of the strategy through a think-aloud approach.
• Provide a heuristic of the cognitive processes (thinking steps) used to carry out the
strategy.
• Provide students with both guided and independent practice in using the strategy.

Conditional knowledge
When do we use the strategy?
How effective is the strategy when applied in different texts?
Under which conditions will I be successful?

• Help students to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy (the heuristic).

• Guide students to an understanding of when to use the strategy again.
• Provide practice in a wide variety of texts (for reading instruction) and a wide
variety of genres (for writing instruction).

FIGURE 5.1. Cognitive strategy instructional model. Based on Pasquarelli (1997).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

From this script, you can see that the teacher is careful to (1) tell the students the
name of the strategy, and (2) give an authentic reason for learning the strategy. In the
case of more complex strategies, the declarative portion of the lesson plan may have to
be longer. For example, if you are teaching students how to compare and contrast text
information, you may have to spend a few minutes conceptualizing what it means to
compare and what it means to contrast.

Procedural Knowledge: Consider that when you learned to tie your shoes or ride a
bike, the person who taught you was able to model the task by showing you what to do.
Likewise when you learned any other strategy that can be seen (such as dribbling a
 Preparing Strategic Readers 99

basketball), the person modeling the task had the benefit of your ability to watch him/
her perform the strategy. Unfortunately, learners cannot “see” your thinking while
you read or write, so while you are providing procedural knowledge, you must care-
fully consider both your instructional language and your instructional actions.
Garner (1987) has suggested that explicit explanation is enhanced by the use of
think-­alouds during modeling of a specific strategy. She advocates a technique whereby
a teacher models and thinks aloud simultaneously. Thus the procedural knowledge
portion of the lesson plan requires teachers to be prepared to model the strategy for
the students in an appropriate grade-level text. Perhaps the modeling and think-aloud
portion of the lesson may sound like this:

“I am now going to model for you how to think about what you already know
about the topic before reading. While I model, I want everyone to listen to my
thinking. For this part of the lesson, I am going to ask you to be silent while I
think out loud. After I think out loud, so you can see how I read, I am going to ask
you to practice in the same way.
“[Think-aloud begins.] The first thing I am going to do is look at the pictures
on the cover of the book and read the title. On the cover of the book, I see a croco-
dile, a turtle, a few snakes, and a very scary-­looking lizard. Now I am going to
read the title of the book. I can see that it is called Where’s That Reptile?
“Now that I have looked at the cover and read the title, I know the book is
about reptiles, and some reptiles are pictured on the cover. So now I am going to
think about all the things I know about reptiles. Hmmm. . . . Well, I don’t know
much about crocodiles. I do know that there are a few in Florida, where my uncle
lives. Hmmm. I don’t really know much about them . . . But . . . I know that a snake
is a reptile, because there are many harmless snakes in my backyard, so I have
seen them and asked my dad about them. He is the one who told me a snake is
a reptile. I also know that snakes shed their skins every now and then, because I
find old snake skins in my backyard and bring them in to scare my sister.
“I really don’t know that much more about the snakes in my backyard, but
if I think about what I have read about snakes, I can think of more facts. For
example, once I read about a snake in the Amazon that is 15 feet long and can kill
large mammals. I don’t remember much about that kind of snake, other than it
wraps itself around its prey and squeezes it. So I know that there are many dif-
ferent kinds of snakes and they are all reptiles because they are ‘cold-­blooded.’
Hmmm. . . . I don’t know what that really means, other than it is different from a
human, which is ‘warm-­blooded,’ so maybe I’ll learn more about that in this text.
[Think-aloud ends.]
“Now, children, let’s record the steps of my strategy for activating prior
knowledge on this easel paper [see Figure 5.2, page 100]. The first thing I did was
look at the cover pictures and read the title of the book. The second thing I did
was ask myself questions such as these: What do I know about this topic? What
have I read about this topic? What have I seen concerning this topic? Has anyone
ever told me anything about this topic? These questions helped me to identify
everything I know about reptiles and got my mind ready to read more.” [Verbal
explanation ends.]

You can see from the example above that the think-aloud portion of the strategy
instruction includes both explicitly stating the strategy steps and applying them to the
text the teacher is using to model. The strategy demonstrated above is a simple one for
grades 1–2, and requires that students only pay attention for a few minutes.
100 TEACHING READING

1. Look at the cover pictures.

2. Look at the title.

3. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I know about this topic?
• What have I read about this topic?
• What have I seen concerning this topic?
• Has anyone ever told me anything about this topic?

FIGURE 5.2. Strategy for activating prior knowledge before reading (grades K–3).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

The next step of the process is for students to try out the strategy immediately in
another text. This aspect of gaining procedural knowledge is called guided practice, and
is initiated immediately after the modeling and think-aloud, to ensure that students
remember these. The guided practice part of the lesson may sound like this:

“Now who is ready to try out this strategy with another book? I would like you
to work with your buddies to try out the strategy with the new book I placed on
your desk earlier. First, let us review our strategy steps. . . . ”

As the teacher points to the easel chart (Figure 5.2) and reviews the strategy, he or
she can then ask the students to apply the strategy, using the cover and title of a new
book to activate their prior knowledge. As soon as the students are engaged in guided
practice, it is important for the teacher to walk around the room, assisting students
as needed. We call this assistance coaching; it is a valuable part of cognitive strategy
instruction, because it provides opportunities for children who may not have grasped
the strategy during the whole-group lesson to have the benefit of the teacher’s assis-
tance in learning the strategy during guided practice. (We discuss it further below.)
When students have completed the guided practice task, the teacher can then proceed
with the conditional knowledge section of the lesson plan.

Conditional Knowledge: The purpose of the conditional knowledge section of the

instructional model is twofold: (1) to have young readers evaluate the effectiveness
of the strategy, and (2) to be sure students know when and where to use the strategy
again. These two aspects are discussed separately.
First, to have the students evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy, the teacher
should immediately follow the guided practice with a debriefing of what the students
have learned as a result of applying the strategy. The teacher can start by asking the
students what prior knowledge they were able to activate with the book they used for
guided practice. After being assured that the students were able to activate their prior
knowledge, the teacher can then turn his/her attention to the strategy and ask the
 Preparing Strategic Readers 101

children how effective it was in the new book. This portion of the lesson may sound
like this:

“Okay, now, children, let’s look once again at our easel chart [Figure 5.2] and
review our strategy. How many of you felt that the questions you asked helped
you to think of what you already know about the topic? Can anyone add a step
to our strategy?”

Very often children will volunteer their own ways of thinking to add to the strat-
egy. For example, a student may say, “Well, this book did not have as many pictures
on the cover as the reptile book, so I decided to open the book and look at the pictures
in the text to help me remember what I know.” What actually occurred was that the
child had to alter his or her strategy to accommodate the change in the text condition.
This is a common practice during this stage of the lesson plan. Remember, conditional
knowledge is the aspect of metacognitive knowledge that tells the reader under which
conditions a procedure is useful.
The second step of the conditional knowledge portion of the lesson plan is to be
sure students understand when to use the strategy again. This next step may sound
like this:

“Okay, children, so when can we use this strategy again? [Students respond.] Yes,
that is correct; whenever we begin reading a new book, it is a good idea to think of
everything we know before reading to get our minds ready to learn new informa-
tion. Will we use this strategy with our social studies and science books? With our
picture books? As we learn more and more strategies, you will see that we use this
strategy often, both before reading and while we are reading.” [End of lesson.]

The research tells us that students will not often transfer the strategy to different
types of books and different contexts of reading, and teachers must provide multiple
practice opportunities (Garner, 1987). Therefore, we suggest that students be given
guided practice in all types of texts and reading contexts. Once students appear to
grasp this strategy, teachers must be sure to give them independent practice and assess
their progress in applying the strategy before and during reading.

Other Important Instructional Acts in the Model

As you think about the lesson presented above, you may have some questions as to why
certain parts of the model are important. As indicated in the procedural knowledge sec-
tion of the lesson plan, there are specific reasons why researchers have suggested the
importance of modeling, think-­alouds, and guided practice. There are equally impor-
tant reasons why teachers are careful to provide debriefing and guidance for future use
of the strategy during the conditional knowledge component of the lesson plan.
Roehler and Duffy (1991) have identified two further instructional acts that are
associated with the success of direct instruction: (1) gradually releasing the responsibil-
ity for strategy use to students by first modeling and thinking aloud, and then grouping
children with able peers during guided practice, and (2) coaching during both guided
and independent practice. These instructional actions are described on the following
page.
102 TEACHING READING

Gradual Release of Responsibility

Pearson and Gallagher’s (1983) model of the gradual release of responsibility is an integral
part of strategy teaching. Based on Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the zone of proximal
development, the Pearson and Gallagher model suggests that teacher support should
guide students from one level of understanding a new strategy to another, and that
gradually shifting responsibility from teacher to student is the ultimate aim. Crucial
to this process is grouping children with able peers for guided practice. In our lesson
plan on the previous pages, you may have noticed that the teacher asks the students to
listen quietly and be attentive as he or she demonstrates the strategy in a think-aloud
format. Only after the teacher has modeled the entire strategy does he or she ask the
­students to try it out with an able peer. The teacher takes the whole responsibility
for the task completion before asking students to try it out. His or her part in gradu-
ally releasing the strategy application is far from completed at this juncture, however.
One of the most important parts of strategy instruction is coaching students to suc-
cess.

Coaching
Coaching is an integral part of strategy instruction after the original modeling is accom-
plished. In order for students to learn new strategies, they must practice them often
and in multiple contexts. Roehler and Duffy (1991) have defined coaching in this way:
“Coaching requires teachers to observe students while they carry out the task and to
offer feedback, modeling, reminders, explanations and clues designed to help them suc-
cessfully complete the task” (p. 873).
Coaching also includes scaffolding students to success. Just as a construction site has
structural scaffolds as a building is being built, a reader may need a scaffold or support
from a more knowledgeable other—a teacher or an able peer (Bruner, 1975; Vygotsky,
1978).
As you can see, the demands of cognitive strategy instruction do not begin and end
with the first teaching step. Research indicates that students need multiple exposures
to strategies for ownership and continued usage (Garner, 1987). Pearson (1984) has sug-
gested that students must have continued practice with strategy applications while the
teacher provides constant coaching with verbal support and feedback.

Teaching Students to Combine Strategies

While Reading

Teaching isolated comprehension strategies is only a precursor to teaching students to

apply multiple comprehension strategies while reading. Perhaps the most best-known
model of combining reading comprehension strategies is Palincsar and Brown’s (1989)
reciprocal teaching. Reciprocal teaching requires a teacher, tutor, or other “expert” to be
responsible for providing the scaffolding necessary for students to acquire reading
comprehension strategies. The term reciprocal refers to the mutual or shared manner in
which the teacher or other “expert” and students engage.
 Preparing Strategic Readers 103

In Palincsar and Brown’s original research, students were taught four reading com-
prehension strategies: how to predict, how to seek clarification, how to ask questions of
the text, and how to summarize. Teachers modeled how to apply the strategies, and then
had groups of students work on applying the multiple strategies while reading. Recip-
rocal teaching has been researched extensively, with positive findings for its effects on
reading achievement.
Another model of cognitive strategy instruction that combines reading strategies is
called transactional strategies instruction (TSI). The name was derived from Rosenblatt’s
(1978) reader response theory, which suggests that meaning is constructed through
the reader’s making a transaction with the text. TSI is also designed to group students
together as they practice applying various transactional strategies in a wide variety of
contexts.
Like reciprocal teaching, TSI has been widely researched (Bergman, 1992; Brown
& Coy-Ogan, 1993; Pressley et al., 1992). One of the consistent findings is increased stu-
dent motivation to (1) practice the comprehension strategies, and (2) consistently use the
comprehension strategies while working alone.
In sum, as students accrue more and more comprehension strategies, it is essen-
tial that we give them multiple opportunities to combine strategies while reading for
maximum effectiveness. Naturally, as we consider the cumulative process of acquiring
comprehension strategies in grades K–6, we will need to consider instruction for the
primary grades versus the intermediate grades. In the next section of this chapter, we
discuss how to alter strategy instruction from grade to grade.

Altering the Cognitive Strategies

across Grade Levels

What to teach when is a question often asked by teachers who are learning to implement
reading comprehension instruction. Although individual districts or schools most often
decide the scope and sequence of the reading program, the cognitive strategy instruc-
tional model (Figure 5.1, p. 98) remains the same, no matter the grade level or exper-
tise of the learner. Two changes that occur from grade to grade include (1) the use of
increasingly demanding textbooks (change in text rigor), and (2) change in the strategy
heuristic. Each is explained below.

Change in Text Rigor

As readers progress, they move from simple texts to more complex texts in school-based
programs. First-grade texts, whether they are narrative or expository, present simple
topics in simple ways. It stands to reason that as the rigor of a text grows, the comprehen-
sion strategy heuristic must become increasingly complex to meet the text’s demands.
In the next few chapters, you will see that the strategies for teaching comprehension
remain the same from grade to grade, but that the strategy heuristic changes to match
the demands of the text complexity or writing style.
104 TEACHING READING

Change in the Strategy Heuristic

The demands of strategy application increase from grade to grade. For example, let
us consider how a sixth grader, as opposed to a kindergartner, performs the task of
a reader’s activating prior knowledge. First, the sixth grader probably has more prior
knowledge of school-­related reading materials than the kindergartner. The sixth grader
has also had years of practice applying this strategy to increasingly difficult texts. By
now, this older reader will have internalized the strategy for activating prior knowledge
and will apply it as a matter of course while reading. Over time, too, the strategy has
become increasingly complex to accommodate the rigors of more complex trade books
or textbooks.
Of course, there is always a chance that you will receive a new class of sixth grad-
ers who have never been taught metacognitive reading strategies. If that is the case, we
doubt you would use the same strategy heuristic as the one used during the lesson plan
presented earlier in this chapter (Figure 5.2, page 100). Instead, you may use the one
presented in Figure 5.3. As you examine the more advanced strategy heuristic in Figure
5.3, you will immediately notice that this heuristic is far more extensive than the one
designed for the primary grades and less rigorous books.

1. Look at the cover pictures and read the title.

Ask yourself the following questions:
• Have I read a book about this topic before? If so, what do I remember about this
topic?
• Have I learned about this topic or a related topic at school? If so, what do I
remember about this topic?

2. While reading the text, think about the chapter headings, the bold headings, and
subheadings.
Before you read each section, ask yourself the following questions:
• What do I know about this topic or subtopic?
• What have I read about this topic or subtopic?

3. Throughout the reading process, continue to remind yourself of what you know as
topics emerge.

REMEMBER! TO GET YOUR MIND READY TO LEARN NEW INFORMATION,

IT IS IMPORTANT TO ACTIVATE YOUR PRIOR KNOWLEDGE!

FIGURE 5.3. Strategy for activating prior knowledge before and during reading (grades 4–6).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Preparing Strategic Readers 105

As we continue our work in the area of reading comprehension in the next few chap-
ters, your conceptual understanding of strategy instruction will continue to improve.

Final Thoughts
about Cognitive Strategy Instruction

Learning to teach cognitive strategy instruction is not easy, and first-year “strategy”
teachers may need hours to prepare their cognitive strategy instruction. We hear from
our graduate students that they may spend a year understanding and implementing
this practice, and another year perfecting their practice. They do, however, report that
the payoff for their students is increased reading achievement. One graduate student
recently remarked, “Once a cognitive strategy teacher, always a strategy teacher.”
To assess your comprehension of this chapter, please refer to the Key Terms Chart
in Figure 5.4 (page 106), and try to write definitions in your own words. The chances are
great that you will find yourself using good-­reader strategies, such as looking back to
reread sections of this chapter, to complete the task.
In the next three chapters on comprehension instruction, you will see the cognitive
strategy instructional model in use. When you finish reading and understanding Chap-
ters 6, 7, and 8, the model will be more familiar, and you will have a deeper understand-
ing of how and why it works for all learners.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 5.5 (page 107) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
106 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 5

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

cognitive strategy

cognitive strategy instruction

strategy heuristic

schema theory

metacognition or metacognitive knowledge

declarative knowledge

procedural knowledge

conditional knowledge

modeling

think-aloud

guided practice

independent practice

gradual release of responsibility

coaching

scaffolding instruction

FIGURE 5.4. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 5.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 5

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

107
FIGURE 5.5. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 5.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Chapter 6

Helping Children
to Construct Meaning
“Good-­Reader” Comprehension Strategies

On a snowy day in January, Margo, an urban kindergarten teacher, was about to read
aloud a story from a big book on an easel in the front of the room. The children were all
seated on the floor, anticipating a storybook reading. Before Margo opened the book to
read the story, she said:

“Today we are going to read a story called Mrs. Wishy-Washy, by Joy Cowley. Let’s
look at the cover of our book and see if there are any clues that might tell us what
this story is about. Can anyone tell me where to look for clues?”

The children responded:

Michael: You can look at the title of the book!

Jo: Hmm . . . well, we can look at the illustration of the woman on the cover!
Alexis: We can take a picture walk!

Margo agreed with her young readers and continued with the opening of her lesson:

“Yes, children, you are all right. Good readers always take a look at the illustrations
and the title of the book to see if there are clues that will help us think about the
story before we read it. So if we think about the title and the illustration on the
cover, what can we predict the story may be about?”

The children responded:

108
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 109

Jo: Well, since the big woman on the cover is wearing an apron, I think the story
is going to be about washing clothes! And the title of the book is Mrs. Wishy-
Washy! I think she is going to wash something.
George: I think it’s going to be about cleaning the house!

Margo intervened:

“So can we figure out anything else before we read? What do we think the problem
in the story may be? Like most stories, this one has a problem. How can we predict
the problem in the story?”

The children responded:

Michael: Let’s take a picture walk!

Alexis: Yes, a picture walk may tell us what she is going to wash!

Other children agreed. Margo continued:

“Good idea! You are all thinking like good readers. Well, what do we see on the
first page of the book? [The children responded accordingly.] And this page? [The
children responded accordingly.] So, children, from the illustrations or the pictures
in this text, we already know quite a few things about the story we are going to
read, including the problem. I have written your thoughts on the easel to remind
us while we read the story. Let’s review them now.”

Mrs. Wishy-Washy by Joy Cowley

We predict:
•• The story takes place on a FARM.
•• There are many ANIMALS in the story.
•• ANIMALS like the PUDDLES of MUD.
•• Mrs. Wishy-Washy is going to give the ANIMALS a BATH!
•• The animals don’t like the bath!!!

This vignette took place in a real classroom with emergent readers. Margo, the
teacher, was reinforcing “good-­reader” strategies she had previously taught. Children
in kindergarten are not too young or inexperienced to begin learning what real readers
do. In fact, our guess is that many of these children came to school already knowing
that good readers make predictions before and during reading. We have learned that
once children are introduced to good stories, their natural curiosities are engaged, and
they begin to develop strategies for making meaning. Our job is to be sure that all read-
ers develop strategies for understanding text.
Chapter 5 has been devoted to cognitive strategy instruction—that is, how to teach
comprehension strategies. These next few chapters (Chapters 6–9) will clarify what to
teach in the comprehension/reader response curriculum, and help build your knowl-
edge about supporting the development of strategic readers.
110 TEACHING READING

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Teaching “good-­reader” strategies for before, during, and after
99
reading engagement.

Factors That Affect a Reader’s Comprehension

In the last 25–30 years, research on the reading process has characterized reading as
a socially constructive process with multiple interactive factors that affect a reader’s
comprehension of text. These factors include the learners’ interests and motivations;
the learners’ background knowledge and ability to consistently activate schemas before
and during reading; and the learners’ strategy knowledge. In addition, researchers have
concluded that the demands of the reading task and the rigors of the text affect readers’
understanding (Brown et al., 1986; Flavell, 1985; Garner, 1987; Graves et al., 2001; Press-
ley, 2000). These factors that affect reading comprehension, when considered alongside
the thinking of transactional theorists, help us to create a useful frame for our discus-
sion of reading comprehension strategies. The work of Rosenblatt (1978) tells us that
readers make a transaction with a text to create meaning. Her work helps us to think
about comprehension instruction in terms of both the reader and the text.
To begin our examination of comprehension instruction, we present a concept map
of a reader’s comprehension process. We use Figure 6.1 to guide your acquisition of the
factors that affect a reader’s ability to make meaning.

The Reader + the Text

On the left side of Figure 6.1, under the heading “The Reader,” you will see that many
reader-based factors affect comprehension in a significant way. On the right side of this
concept map, you will see many factors listed under the heading “The Text.” These
factors have to do with the readability and surface features of the text the reader is cur-
rently reading. Each of these text-based factors represents the changing natures of the
many texts you are preparing readers to read. We discuss the text-based factors first.

Text-Based Factors
On the right side of Figure 6.1, examine the categories listed under “The Text.” The
first block points to linguistic complexity as a factor that affects readers’ comprehen-
sion. ­Linguistic complexity usually refers to two features of a text: the syntax and the
semantics.

Syntax
Syntax refers to the principles and rules regarding sentence structure in a given lan-
guage. For example, in the English language, a typical simple sentence may have a
structure like this:

The cat wandered down the street.

 Major Factors Affecting Reading Comprehension

Inside THE READER Inside THE TEXT

BACKGROUND TEXT METACOGNITIVE AFFECTIVE LINGUISTIC TEXT

KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE STRATEGY COMPLEXITY STRUCTURES
KNOWLEDGE Motivation
Content Concepts Syntax Expository

111
about Print Before Reading Interest Structures
Vocabulary Semantics
Text Structures During Reading Skill vs. Will Narrative
Structures
Surface After Reading
Features Surface
Features

FIGURE 6.1. Major factors affecting reading comprehension: A concept map. Based on Samuels (1983), Flavell (1985), Garner (1987), Brown, Armbruster,
and Baker (1986), and Alexander and Jetton (2000).
112 TEACHING READING

The syntactical structure of our sample sentence is typical because it begins with an
article (The); the article is followed by a noun, which is the subject of the sentence (cat);
the noun is followed by a verb (wandered); and the verb is followed by a prepositional
phrase (down the street). This simple sentence is easy to understand. However, the syn-
tactical structure could be made more complex, as in this example:

The cat that scratched me wandered down the street.

As the syntax increases in complexity, so do the rigors of the comprehension experience.

Text representing an unfamiliar national or regional dialect can have the same effect.
For example, The Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman (1986), is a Newbery Medal-­winning
book much loved by fifth and sixth graders. The characters in this book are from a fic-
tional kingdom and the language of the text contains some tricky phrases that are syn-
tactically different from what most American English speakers and readers have come
to predict. Consider these lines from Chapter 5 of The Whipping Boy:

“The highwayman, are you?”

“Famous, he is,” put in Cutwater. “Put to song, is Billy.”

Notice the change in the syntax. Instead of “Are you the highwayman?” or “He
is famous,” Fleischman uses a dialect that is quite different from what an American
reader expects. Therefore, the complexity of the syntax affects the reader’s overall com-
prehension task.

Semantics
Whereas syntax has to do with form, semantics has to do with meaning. The term
semantics refers to the vocabulary in the text and its applied meanings, both denotative
and connotative. Consider these lines from Chapter 5 of The Whipping Boy, and spend a
few seconds determining what the underlined words mean:

“Not much of a catch—two sparrows,” said Billy. “But ain’t they trimmed up
in fancy rags, Cutwater?”

In this excerpt, Fleischman is using colloquial speech. From the story’s context,
you can figure out that Billy and Cutwater have captured two boys (sparrows) who are
dressed (trimmed up) in fancy clothes (rags). Notice how your strategies had to change
to meet the demands of the more rigorous text. Chances are you had to read the line
a few times to construct meaning, or perhaps you had to ask someone what the word
sparrows means in this context. The greater the linguistic complexity, the more complex
the text (and therefore the comprehension task) becomes.

Text Structure
Another text-based factor that affects readers’ comprehension is the structure of the
text. Text structures are the ways in which whole texts, or chapters or chunks of con-
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 113

nected text, are organized. For example, most stories have a beginning, in which the
setting and characters are described; a middle, in which complications develop; and an
end, in which the problems are resolved.
Expository texts also have text structures. Expository information is organized by
classifying or sequencing the main ideas and details, or these ideas and details are
organized by cause–­effect, comparison–­contrast, and problem–­solution (Meyer, 1987).
Researchers have found that the clearer the text structures, the easier the demands of
the text (and therefore the comprehension experience) become.
For example, consider the complexity of a book that gives information about the
sequence of how a seed becomes a tree, over six pages of text, with much descriptive
information embedded, including the causes and effects of tree diseases. Now consider
another text that neatly organizes the information of how a seed becomes a tree in a
clear sequence labeled by subheadings. Which text presents the more rigorous read-
ing experience? The former may present difficulty to young or inexperienced readers
who do not have the strategy knowledge to isolate the information into identifiable
categories. Therefore, the latter sequential text presents the less complex reading situ-
ation.
In Chapters 7 and 8, we provide more information on text structures and how to
teach readers to use them to aid comprehension. For now, our aim is simply for you to
understand that text and text difficulty play a significant role in readers’ comprehen-
sion abilities. In fact, researchers have also suggested that the surface features of a given
text all have an impact on comprehension. These surface features may include the table
of contents, chapter headings and subheadings, a glossary, an index, and various typo-
graphical features, as we discuss in Chapter 7. They also include such basic text features
as how well a text is written, whether or not it follows common rules for a specific genre,
and its overall readability (Tracey & Morrow, 2002).

Reader-Based Factors
Researchers have identified four clear factors that affect readers’ ability to construct
meaning: background content knowledge, text knowledge, strategy knowledge, and
readers’ affect (Brown et al., 1986; Flavell, 1985; Garner, 1987).

Background Content Knowledge

Not surprisingly, the first factor is the extent of readers’ background content knowledge
about the text topic, including content-­specific vocabulary. Recall our discussion in
Chapter 5 regarding schema theory and the importance of readers’ prior knowledge
within a given learning event. As noted there, numerous studies have stressed the
importance of readers’ motivation to activate their prior knowledge before and during
reading (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Rumelhart, 1980). Brown et al. (1986) have further
suggested that in order for readers to be metacognitive, they must not only have the
background knowledge; they must consistently use it, regulate it, and monitor it in an
interactive manner with the new print. Anderson (1985) has stated that “the click of
comprehension occurs only when the reader evolves a schema that explains the whole
114 TEACHING READING

message” (p. 375). Therefore, background knowledge plays a large part in a reader’s
ability to comprehend the text message.

Text Knowledge
A second factor that affects comprehension is readers’ stored text knowledge. Text knowl-
edge includes what readers already know about text features, linguistic quality, and text
structures. It also includes what readers may expect when they read different types of
texts (Garner, 1987).
For example, in kindergarten, we introduce children to simple print concepts. These
include left-to-right and top-to-­bottom progression, as well as the basic features of a
book (author, illustrator, title, pictures, etc.). In first and second grades, we may prog-
ress to teaching children to use the surface features of simple chapter books, including
the table of contents, glossary, chapter headings, and so on. By the intermediate grades,
we expect that students will understand quite a bit about implicit text features, such
as basic story structure and expository text structures. More about teaching these text
features will be found in Chapters 7–8.

Strategy Knowledge
Another major factor listed on our concept web that affects comprehension is strategy
knowledge. This factor includes the strategies readers use to make meaning from basic
decoding strategies to advanced comprehension/response strategies. In this chapter,
you will learn about general comprehension strategies that good readers use to make
meaning from text.

Affective Characteristics
Finally, under “The Reader” heading in our concept map, you will see the affective char-
acteristics that influence readers, such as their motivations, interests, and attitudes about
the reading event. Alexander and Jetton (2000) synthesize these affective traits as fol-
lows:

Learning from text is inevitably a synthesis of skill, will, and thrill. Few would argue with
the premise that readers need to be skilled. Yet, learning from text cannot take place in any
deep or meaningful fashion without the learner’s commitment (i.e., will). Nor will the pur-
suit of knowledge continue unless the reader realizes some personal gratification or internal
reward from this engagement (i.e., thrill). (p. 296)

In other words, skill is not quite enough. A reader’s will (commitment to the read-
ing event) and thrill (interest in and reward from the reading) are just as important for
a successful comprehension experience.
In the balance of this chapter, we present the basic strategies that research suggests
aid readers in the process of comprehension. What you have learned in Chapter 5 about
cognitive strategy instruction will assist you in understanding how to teach compre-
hension strategies.
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 115

Comprehension Strategies to Teach

In the late 1970s, Durkin (1978–1979) studied reading instruction in several American
classrooms. The results of her research suggested that teachers “tested” comprehension
mainly by posing text questions after reading. Although she found some comprehen-
sion instruction, she concluded that not much was really known about how to teach
reading comprehension. From the 1980s to the 1990s, researchers focused their atten-
tion on reading comprehension. This new research now informs our comprehension
instruction practice and is summarized below.
From the abundance of research on comprehension strategies conducted over the
last 25–30 years, Duke and Pearson (2002, pp. 205–206) have compiled what good read-
ers do when they read. See Figure 6.2 for their summary of reading comprehension

What Do Good Readers Do?

•• Good readers are active readers.
•• From the outset they have clear goals in mind for their reading. They constantly evaluate
whether the text, and their reading of it, is meeting their goals.
•• Good readers typically look over the text before they read, noting such things as the
structure of the text and text sections that might be most relevant to their reading goals.
•• As they read, good readers make predictions about what is to come.
•• They read selectively, continually making decisions about their reading—what to read
carefully, what to read quickly, what not to read, what to reread, and so on.
•• Good readers construct, revise, and question the meanings they make as they read.
•• Good readers try to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words and concepts in the text, and
they deal with inconsistencies or gaps as needed.
•• They draw from, compare, and integrate their prior knowledge with material in the text.
•• They think about the authors of the text—their style, beliefs, intentions, historical milieu, and
so on.
•• They monitor their understanding of the text, making adjustments in their reading as
necessary.
•• They evaluate the text’s quality and value, and react to the text in a range of ways, both
intellectually and emotionally.
•• Good readers read different kinds of text differently.
•• When reading narrative, good readers attend closely to the setting and characters.
•• When reading expository text, these readers frequently construct and revise summaries of
what they have read.
•• For good readers, text processing occurs not only during “reading” as we have traditionally
defined it, but also during short breaks taken during reading, even after the “reading” itself
has commenced, even after the “reading” has ceased.
•• Comprehension is a consuming, continuous, and complex activity, but one that, for good
readers, is both satisfying and productive.

FIGURE 6.2. What good readers do: A summary of reading comprehension strategies (Duke &
Pearson, 2002, pp. 205–206).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 116 TEACHING READING

strategies. In terms of the comprehension curriculum, we have found it helpful to group

these strategies into what good readers do before, during, and after reading.

Before-­Reading Strategies
In our visits to elementary classrooms, we often hear teachers introducing a new text
by asking students, “What strategies should we apply before we begin reading?” or
“What do good readers do before they read a new story?” Even the youngest chil-
dren suggest that they should read the title and the author, look at the cover pictures,
take a picture walk through the text, or predict what the story will be about. All of
these are strategies that good readers use before they read. Strategies can be taught
individually and then grouped together as a repertoire of strategies for greater effec-
tiveness.
For our purposes, we have gathered a short list of strategies that are useful for
younger readers to use before reading, and we present them in Figure 6.3 in a classroom-

Before reading, good readers…

Read the title of the book and the

name(s) of the author(s)
and illustrator(s).

Think about any other book they

may have read by the same
author(s) or illustrator(s).

Think about everything they already

know about the text topic or story.

Predict what the story or book will

be about.

Take a picture walk.

FIGURE 6.3. Before-reading strategies (grades K–3).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 117

ready format. If you look at the strategies in the figure, you can conclude that these
individual strategies are all ways to preview a text and set purposes for reading. We
suggest that after you teach K–3 students the individual strategies, you then model how
to cluster individual strategies, because good readers often apply a number of strategies
simultaneously.
Figure 6.4 is an adaptation of the before-­reading strategies for older students
(grades 4–6). Notice that the strategies are basically the same as in Figure 6.3, but are
more involved to match the rigors of an advanced text.

During-­Reading Strategies
During-reading strategies are more complex and require readers to manipulate several
strategies simultaneously. To remind yourself of the complexities of the strategies good
readers use to comprehend text, read the excerpt on page 118 and jot down your reading
strategies in the right-hand column. The first two are done for you.

I set purposes for reading by . . .

thinking about the title, the author, and pictures, and

determining if I have any prior knowledge of the text topic.

looking carefully at the first few pages or chapter, and

thinking about predictions I can make based on the pictures,
chapter headings, and any other clues the author provides.

using my predictions and prior knowledge of the text topic

to help me set a purpose for reading.

FIGURE 6.4. Before-reading strategies (grades 4–6).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
118 TEACHING READING

Activity 1: The Text Your Reading Strategies

Giant Pandas: •• Read title and activated prior knowledge of

Meet Mei Xiang, Tian Tian, and Tai Shan giant pandas.
•• Read first line and predicted that the text was
   Mei Xiang and Tian Tian are the National going to be about the differences between
Zoo’s second pair of giant pandas. Both were the two pandas.
born at the China Research and Conservation
Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong, Sichuan
Province. They are together for most of the day.
It can be hard to tell the adult giant pandas
apart, but Mei Xiang and Tian Tian do have a
few differences.
   Tian Tian (t-YEN t-YEN), the male, was born
on August 27, 1997. His name means “more and
more.” Tian Tian has black “knee socks.” The
black band across his shoulders narrows in the
middle. His eye patches are shaped like kidney
beans, and he has two black dots across the
bridge of his nose. In spring 2007, he weighed
about 275 pounds.
   Mei Xiang (may-SHONG), the female,
was born on July 22, 1998. Her name means
“beautiful fragrance.” She has black hip-high
“stockings” extending up her hind legs, and the
black band across her shoulders is wider in the
middle than Tian’s. Her eye patches are oval,
and a pale black band runs across the bridge of
her nose. In summer 2008, she weighed about
250 pounds.
   Tai Shan (tie-SHON) was born early in the
morning on July 9, 2005. He is Mei Xiang and
Tian Tian’s first offspring. At Tai Shan’s first
exam on August 2, we learned that the cub is a
boy. He weighed 1.82 pounds and had a total
body length of 12 inches. In March 2009, he
weighed 187 pounds.
(National Zoo, n.d.-c)

What types of strategies did you record as your during-reading strategies? Since you
are an expert reader, you may have recorded such strategies as activating prior knowledge
about the various panda characteristics mentioned, inferring that giant pandas at the
National Zoo probably need much care, and evaluating the differences among the three
pandas mentioned. Finally, you may have reread a portion of the article for fact clarifica-
tion and for answers to any other questions you may have had.
The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate how good readers have internal-
ized reading comprehension strategies and how they apply them while reading. We
call these particular reading strategies in-the-head strategies, because the reader engages
in them mentally. There are other, more involved strategies, which we call “hands-on
strategies.”
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 119

To demonstrate what good readers do when presented with a rigorous, advanced

text, we have designed another activity for you. This time, we are setting the purpose
for reading for you. We want you to read the following short excerpt and think about
what you would have to do to construct meaning from this text.
Before you read, consider this scenario: A close friend has been diagnosed with a
MRSA (methicillin-­resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection while recuperating from
surgery, and you are eager to help him with his understanding of this type of infection.
So you go online to see what you can learn about MRSA infections. Read the follow-
ing excerpt about MRSA, and record your reading strategies as you have just done in
Activity 1. As you may recall, you have completed something similar in Chapter 1 of
this text.

Activity 2: The Text Your Reading Strategies

What is MRSA (methicillin-­resistant

Staphylococcus aureus)?

   MRSA is a type of staph that is resistant

to antibiotics called beta-­lactams. Beta-
­lactam antibiotics include methicillin and other
more common antibiotics such as oxacillin,
penicillin, and amoxicillin. While 25% to 30%
of the population is colonized with staph,
approximately 1% is colonized with MRSA.
   Staph infections, including MRSA, occur
most frequently among persons in hospitals
and healthcare facilities (such as nursing
homes and dialysis centers) who have
weakened immune systems. These healthcare-
­associated staph infections include surgical
wound infections, urinary tract infections,
bloodstream infections, and pneumonia.
   Staph and MRSA can also cause illness
in persons outside of hospitals and healthcare
facilities. MRSA infections that are acquired by
persons who have not been recently (within
the past year) hospitalized or had a medical
procedure (such as dialysis, surgery, catheters)
are known as CA-MRSA infections. Staph or
MRSA infections in the community are usually
manifested as skin infections and occur in
otherwise healthy people. Most staph and
MRSA infections are treatable

with antibiotics.
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
n.d.)

You may have noticed that the demands of the text in Activity 2 are much more rig-
orous than those in Activity 1. We can presume that you must adjust your reading rate
and strategies to meet the more difficult concepts and vocabulary included in the text.
120 TEACHING READING

In addition, you must consider your purposes for reading. In Activity 1, your purpose
for reading may have simply been to appease your curiosity as you were drawn to the
headline. Nonetheless, the task was easy due to the low readability level of the text. On
the other hand, in Activity 2, since your purpose for reading has been to help a friend
understand the MRSA infection, you may have used much more complex strategies to
accomplish your goal.
When we had a group of graduate students participate in the reading of this text,
we noticed that every one of them used what we call a hands-on strategy: They took out
a pen and paper and recorded the text facts. Some used graphic organizers for their
note taking; others used simple lists. Below is a graphic organizer one student drew and
recorded to make sense of the MRSA infection information.

MRSA Definition: A type of staph infection

Name of Where do you contract Resistant to certain
infection the infection? Type of infection Treatment antibiotics

MRSA Occurs in hospital or •• Surgical wound Antibiotics “beta-­lactam”

infection healthcare facilities infections antibiotics,
Occurs more frequently •• Urinary tract including oxacillin,
in people with infections penicillin, and
weakened immune amoxicillin
•• Bloodstream
systems infections
•• Pneumonia

CA-MRSA Occurs outside •• Skin infections Antibiotics ”beta-­lactam”

Infection of hospitals and antibiotics,
healthcare facilities including oxacillin,
Can occur in healthy penicillin, and
people amoxicillin

You can clearly see why we call note taking a hands-on strategy. We can assume
that our student decided that the information in the text was far too much for her to pro-
cess mentally. In order to make sense of the unfamiliar vocabulary and text concepts,
she used what she did know from the text to make sense of what she didn’t know. This
is an example of a reader using background content knowledge and knowledge of text
to construct meaning from text.
So what during-­reading strategies do we teach in the elementary school? We find
that it is easier to teach children individual during-­reading strategies and to provide
guided and independent practice in their application. Once they are proficient in apply-
ing these strategies consistently, we then group the strategies in a meaningful way and
encourage our developing readers to select and employ those that are best for the given
task. This stage of comprehension strategy instruction takes much coaching and lots of
practice with applying strategies in a wide variety of texts. Individual during-­reading
strategies that are important to teach are presented in Figure 6.5 for grades K–3 and in
Figure 6.6 for grades 4–6.
Finally, there are during-­reading strategies called comprehension-­monitoring strate-
gies, which a reader employs to assure his or her comprehension success. Comprehen-
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 121

During reading, good readers . . .

Think about the topic or the story, and make pictures in their minds
about the text information.
Predict what might happen next.
Write down ideas if there is too much information to remember.
Ask questions to help themselves understand the information.
Define unknown vocabulary.

FIGURE 6.5. During-reading strategies (grades K–3).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCor-
mack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to
photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see
copyright page for details).

sion monitoring can be defined as a reader’s active and deliberate awareness of compre-
hension success or comprehension failure, and of how to proceed in either case. For
example, most readers can describe at least one incident in which their eyes contin-
ued to sweep the words on a page for some minutes before they realized they were
thinking of something else instead of the text. What fix-up strategy should readers use
in this case? Rereading! The most common of the fix-up strategies include rereading,
self-­questioning, summarizing, and adjusting speed for the purpose of text difficulty.

During reading, good readers . . .

Think about the topic or the story, and visualize the text information.
Predict what might happen next.
Think about what they know about the topic or story, and integrate their prior
knowledge with what they are reading.
Read actively by posing questions to help themselves understand the information.
Use context to help themselves understand unknown vocabulary.
Make inferences while they read.
Take notes or draw graphic organizers to help themselves remember the text
information.

FIGURE 6.6. During-reading strategies (grades 4–6).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to
purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
122 TEACHING READING

During reading, good readers know if their comprehension is successful.

If not, good readers . . .

Slow their reading rate to adjust to the text difficulty.

Reread sections of the text for clarity.
Look up unknown vocabulary.
Use graphic organizers to outline difficult text information.
Continue to pose questions for clarity.
Stop reading and summarize periodically to check for understanding.

FIGURE 6.7. Comprehension-monitoring strategies.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan
Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is
granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

We have placed the most common comprehension-­monitoring strategies in Figure 6.7,

ready for classroom use. As we do for all comprehension strategies, we use the cognitive
strategy instruction model to teach comprehension monitoring.

After-­Reading Strategies
After-­reading strategies, such as self-­questioning and summary writing, have been well
researched. The most important of them have been included in Figures 6.8 and 6.9,
again in classroom-ready formats for younger and older children, respectively. Sum-
mary writing is covered extensively in Chapter 7.

After reading . . .

After reading a story, good readers retell the story to themselves

or a friend.
After reading a fact book, good readers think about and retell
the important information to a friend.

FIGURE 6.8. After-reading strategies (grades K–3).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCor-
mack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permis-
sion to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use
only (see copyright page for details).
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 123

After reading, good readers . . .

Think about what they read.

Summarize what they read.
Ask themselves questions for clarification and deeper understanding.

FIGURE 6.9. After-reading strategies (grades 4–6).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack
and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photo-
copy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright
page for details).

How to Teach Comprehension Strategies

As discussed in Chapter 5, we advocate using cognitive strategy instruction to teach

reading comprehension. In our practice, we have discovered that teaching individual
strategies within the context of before, during, and after reading, and then grouping the
strategies for use before, during, or after reading, work well for K–6 populations.
In Chapter 5, we have presented a cognitive strategy lesson for teaching students
how to activate prior knowledge. Using the same format, we now present a lesson plan
that shows how to teach a “combined strategy” for the before-­reading stage of the read-
ing process.

Lesson: Combined strategy for previewing a text and setting purposes for reading
Text: The Bus Ride That Changed History: The Story of Rosa Parks (Edwards, 2005)
Lesson Grade Levels: 4–6
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of previewing a text and
setting a purpose for reading an expository text (before reading).
Declarative Knowledge:

“Today I am going to model a strategy for you to use before we read one of our
social studies or science books. The name of the strategy is previewing and set-
ting purposes for reading the text. You will recognize some of the steps of the strat-
egy, because I have been teaching you what good readers do before they read a
textbook. Can you remember what good readers do before they read?” [Students
respond.]

Ideally, your students will remember the individual strategies you have been
teaching (activating prior knowledge, predicting what the text will be about, etc.). As
they recall the individual strategies, write them on chart paper or a whiteboard and
continue:
124 TEACHING READING

“The reason why we are learning this strategy today is because we know that good
readers always combine a number of strategies to help them comprehend what
they read. Previewing the text and setting purposes for reading help make our
minds ready for the information we are going to learn. Watch me while I model
for you how to preview a text and set purposes by combining all the strategies we
have learned to use before we read.”

Procedural Knowledge: The strategy steps we are modeling are given in boldface,
so you can see how you will explicitly provide a strategy step and then apply it in the
text.

“I am going to model our strategy with this book that we will be reading together
as part of our social studies work. Listen to my thinking processes while I model
for you how to apply our previewing and purpose-­setting strategy.
“I am going to start by reading and thinking about the title, in order to
see if it helps me set a purpose for reading. The title of the text is The Bus Ride
That Changed History: The Story of Rosa Parks, by Pamela Duncan Edwards. Hmm.
That is a long title and actually reminds me of something I learned in school. I
can recall my prior knowledge and realize that I already know a little bit about
Rosa Parks, an African American, and how she refused to give up her seat in the
front of the bus. I also know that this famous incident took place before the civil
rights movement, when African Americans did not have the same rights as other
Americans. They had to sit in the back of the bus.
“Thinking about this has led me to thinking about Dr. Martin Luther King
and the civil rights movement. I know quite a bit about that, but I really don’t
know much about the Rosa Parks incident, other than that she would not give up
her seat on the bus.
“So, next, I am going to think about what I might want to know about this
incident. To help me determine this, I can look at the pictures and read all the
information on the text cover. Well, on the cover, there is a picture of a bus and
people getting onto it. There are also children on the cover who are speaking. One
girl on the cover says: ‘This is a book about a bus, a law, and people who changed
history.’ And a little boy on the cover asks, ‘How did they do that?’ Then another
boy on the cover says, ‘Open the book, and let’s find out!’
“So if I think about all of those things, I wonder if the book is going to tell us
about Rosa Parks on the bus, the law that prevented her from taking a seat, and
how she changed history. Since the little boy on the cover asks, “How did they do
that?”, I could probably assume that the book is going to tell us how Rosa Parks
changed history. So maybe I can set one of my purposes for reading: to determine
how Rosa Parks and the bus incident changed history.
“Wow, I didn’t even need to go to the first page to set my purpose for read-
ing, because the cover gave me so much information. [Think-aloud ends.]
“Now, children, let’s review the steps of the strategy I just used to help me
set a purpose for reading the text.” [Write on chart paper the strategy heuristic
as follows:]

My Purpose-­Setting Strategy
First, I read the title and the author’s name, and I think of all the things
I know about the topic.
Next, I look very carefully at the cover pictures and read the text
on the cover, and I ask myself:
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 125

• Is there any prior knowledge I have about the text information?

• Is there any way I can predict what this text may be about?
• What do I want to know about this text topic?
• Does the author give any clues to what the text will be about?

If a text cover does not have enough information, I open the book and
preview the pictures, and the chapter headings to help me set a purpose
for reading.

After you model the strategy steps and list them, it is important for students to
practice the strategy immediately. For this guided practice, have the students practice
with a new text.
Conditional Knowledge: Immediately following the guided practice, be sure to have
your students evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. Begin by debriefing the pur-
poses they have formulated for reading the new text. This will help you assess how
well they applied the new strategy. Next, debrief the strategy’s effectiveness. You can
do that by asking the children the following questions:
• “How effective was our strategy when you applied it in a different text?”
• “Did you have to go beyond the text cover to determine a purpose for reading?”
• “Did you think of other ways to help you set your purpose for reading? If so, let’s
add it to our strategy steps.”

You want the children to understand that a strategy heuristic is just a guideline,
and that it does not always work when you apply it to another text. The strategy may
need adjustment to meet the demands of a different text.
Your final step in the strategy lesson sequence is to guide students to an understand-
ing of when to use the strategy again. For example, you can tell them that they can use
this strategy for any type of expository text or narrative text that has cover pictures
and text. We do know that students will not automatically transfer the strategy to
other texts unless we give them extensive guided and independent practice in a wide
variety of texts.

Classroom Practices
to Promote Reading Comprehension

Researchers and practitioners agree that several activities promote reading comprehen-
sion development when they become aspects of regular classroom routine. The follow-
ing, compiled by Duke and Pearson (2002), are those most widely practiced.

Time Spent Reading Texts

As with any new skill, time spent practicing is extremely important for proficiency
development. Children should be given multiple opportunities to read for understand-
126 TEACHING READING

ing while applying good-­reader strategies, both in school and out of school. The most
effective teachers are relentless—­always talking about good-­reader strategies, whether
students are reading aloud, reading silently, or reading across the curriculum.

Reading Real Texts for Real Reasons

People read both for simple enjoyment and for learning new information. In your read-
ing program, include books to read for enjoyment as well as books for reading instruc-
tion. Children need to have both in-­school and out-of-­school time when they are simply
reading for the joy of reading. We have described this practice as on-your-own reading or
sustained silent reading in Chapter 2 of this text.
Children also need practice in reading for information. Having students produce
content-area projects in which they are independently learning about the world through
books is an important aspect of a meaningful literacy curriculum. We are simply giving
the children practice in doing what real readers do.

Reading a Wide Variety of Texts

A common problem with reading instruction in elementary schools is that students
regularly read narrative text in the younger grades, and expository text is introduced
much later. As we have stated in Chapter 2, even the youngest school-age children are
fond of reading expository text and enjoy learning about their world through these
experiences.

Classroom Discussion about Texts

Finally, one of the most important aspects of the comprehension curriculum, talk
about text, has also been introduced in Chapter 2. Learners are supported through
an ­environment that allows peer talk about books to take place on a daily basis. Talk
about books deepens each reader’s understanding of text and reinforces good strategy
usage.

Final Thoughts

The general comprehension strategies good readers use to comprehend text must be
explicitly taught and practiced in classrooms to assure student usage. See Figure 6.10
for a K–6 classroom-ready list of strategies good readers use throughout the reading
process. Classrooms that emphasize these strategies help students to develop the habits
of mind essential to becoming good readers.
Figure 6.11 is a photograph from one of our model second-grade classrooms. You
can see that there are many ways to reinforce children’s use of the good-­reader strate-
gies, including placing reminders around the room.
To complete our work on good-­reader strategies, we have provided in Figure 6.12
(page 128) a list of trade books for each grade level that we have found useful for teach-
ing comprehension strategies.
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 127

•• Activating prior knowledge

•• Formulating questions for setting the purpose
•• Predicting
•• Deciphering unknown vocabulary
•• Taking notes for organizing and storing information
•• Asking questions for clarification
•• Summarizing for organizing, storing, and retrieval of information

Fix-Up Strategies
•• Rereading
•• Adjusting speed
•• Visualizing the characters
•• Visualizing the events
•• Self-questioning for clarification
•• Summarizing

FIGURE 6.10. Strategies good readers use before, during, and after reading.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCor-
mack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission
to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only
(see copyright page for details).

FIGURE 6.11. Classroom bulletin board for helping second graders prepare to read.
 Book Author

Grades K–1: NARRATIVE TEXT

Sheep in a Jeep Nancy Shaw
Henry and Mudge: The First Book (and all others) Cynthia Rylant
The Last Puppy Frank Asch
A Good Day Kevin Henkes
Biscuit Finds a Friend Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Pat Schories

Grades K–1: EXPOSITORY TEXT

My Puppy Is Born Joanna Cole
The Honey Makers Gail Gibbons
Four Seasons Make a Year Anne Rockwell
Sun Up, Sun Down Gail Gibbons
Surprising Sharks: Read and Wonder Nicola Davies

Grades 2–3: NARRATIVE TEXT

Amazing Grace Mary Hoffman
Stella Luna Janell Canon
Tiki Tiki Tembo Arlene Mosel and Blair Lent
The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats
Miss Rumphius Barbara Cooney

Grades 2–3: EXPOSITORY TEXT

The Story of Ruby Bridges Robert Coles
The Great Kapok Tree Lynne Cherry
Mathematicians Are People, Too Lucetta Reimer and Wilbert Reimer
Apples Ken Robbins
Weather Forecasting Gail Gibbons

Grades 4–6: NARRATIVE TEXT

A Single Shard Linda Sue Park
The Higher Power of Lucky Susan Patron
Rules Cynthia Lord
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes Eleanor Coerr
Michelangelo Diane Stanley

Grades 4–6: EXPOSITORY TEXT

Black Stars of the Civil Rights Movement Jim Haskins
Pyramids and Mummies Seymour Simon
Mosque David Macaulay
Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust Allan Zullo and Mara Bovsun
This Is My Planet: The Kids’ Guide to Global Warming Jan Thornhill

FIGURE 6.12. Books for teaching comprehension strategies.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

128
 Helping Children to Construct Meaning 129

Before you leave this chapter, be sure to assess what you have learned by thinking
about the key terms presented in Figure 6.13 (page 130). Since you will be furthering
your knowledge about comprehension strategies in the next two chapters, you want to
be certain you understand the key terms for this chapter before moving on.
In the next chapter, we take a focused look at how to use expository text and teach
specific expository text structures in the K–6 curriculum. These expository text strate-
gies are important to your students’ development as proficient readers of nonfiction or
expository text.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 6.14 (page 131) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
130 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 6

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

good-reader strategies

linguistic complexity of a text

syntax

semantics

text structure

prior knowledge

before-reading strategies

during-reading strategies

comprehension-monitoring strategies

after-reading strategies

FIGURE 6.13. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 6.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 6

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

131
FIGURE 6.14. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 6.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Chapter 7

Teaching Expository Text

across the Curriculum

Rachael, a grade 6 literacy and social studies teacher, and Anita, a reading specialist,
began planning a series of reading comprehension lessons for Rachael’s class. Earlier
in the school year, during social studies instruction, Rachael had discovered that many
of her students could not identify main ideas and details in their social studies texts. In
her consultation with Anita about the comprehension issues, she discovered that many
of her struggling readers had already been referred to Anita for reading comprehension
difficulties.
Instead of working with the children outside the classroom, Anita and Rachael
decided to work together to meet each referred child’s needs as well as the needs of the
whole class. To determine the expository comprehension lessons they needed to pre-
pare, Rachael and Anita assessed the children and then itemized the class needs.
As a result of their class assessment, they were able to determine that the class was
distinctly divided into two groups: (1) readers with some basic knowledge of expository
reading comprehension strategies and some awareness of how to apply these strategies,
and (2) readers with little to no knowledge of expository comprehension strategies and
no awareness of how to apply them.
To prepare for their instruction, the teachers consulted the research on the most
essential expository comprehension strategies, and set out to provide their readers with
the tools they needed to comprehend their social studies textbook. After an intensive
6-week intense training program in these strategies, the teachers reported that all read-
ers had significantly improved their text comprehension abilities. Later in this chapter,
you will see artifacts from their effective instruction on expository text features.
The research makes it clear that explicit teaching of expository comprehension
strategies raises achievement in content-area reading and learning. However, as men-
tioned in Chapter 6, young children have little exposure to expository text until the later
primary grades (Duke, 2000). Of more concern is the lack of explicit teaching of expos-
itory text structures, along with little knowledge about how explicit teaching works
to increase comprehension of informational text (Pressley, 2002b; Pressley, Wharton-
McDonald, Mistretta-­Hampston, & Echevarria, 1998; Sweet & Snow, 2003).

132
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 133

Some researchers suggest that teachers are unaware of how to teach expository text
comprehension and therefore avoid it; other studies have suggested that teachers think
expository text is too difficult for children, and that this is why they emphasize story-
books (Donovan & Smolkin, 2001; Duke, 2000; Kamil & Lane, 1997). However, Kamil
(1994) found that children checked out many storybooks from school libraries, but a
much larger number of informational books from their neighborhood libraries; this
finding suggests that children have a genuine interest in expository text, but may not be
getting sufficient access to it in many schools.
Children need to be exposed to expository text and expository reading strategies
from the earliest grades. This chapter is designed to help you teach expository text com-
prehension for all elementary grades.

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Teaching expository text surface features.
99
Teaching expository text structures/patterns.
99
Using expository text to teach reading across the curriculum.
99
Teaching children to use graphic organizers.
99

Definition of Expository Text

In the previous chapters, we have used the term expository text to refer to all texts that
contain information. Expository text is sometimes referred to as nonfiction and/or infor-
mational text. The mixing of these terms is evident in the literacy research as well as in
practitioners’ vocabularies. In an article on using informational books in the classroom,
Saul and Dieckman (1995) discuss the terminology extensively. They suggest that many
researchers use the terms informational text and expository text interchangeably (Kletzien
& Dreher, 2004), while others use the terms informational text and nonfiction interchange-
ably (Alvermann, Swafford, & Montero, 2004; Freeman & Person, 1992). In this chapter
and in all the chapters that follow, we continue to use the term expository text to define
text that provides facts, gives “true” information, explains, informs, persuades, and/or
describes various topics and phenomena.
Expository text is different in a number of ways from narrative text. These include
differences in genres, surface features, and basic text structures. Figure 7.1 (page 134)
lists the specific features of both expository and narrative text for comparison.
It is also worth noting that not all expository texts are written in the same way.
First, two types of expository text—the autobiography and the biography—are written
as stories. As readers approach reading these texts, they must use their narrative text
strategies (described in Chapter 8 of this volume), as opposed to their expository text
strategies (explained in this chapter). Second, many expository texts have a mixture of
narrative and expository writing. For example, it is not uncommon to read an exposi-
tory book on cloning that also includes stories about the first cloned sheep, Dolly. The
Quicksand Book (dePaola, 1977) is also a book that interjects expository information into
a narrative plot. Finally, there are also many children’s books that present facts in a
 134 TEACHING READING

Type
of Text Also Known as . . Common Genres Surface Features Basic Text Structures
Expository Nonfiction Trade books Cover Classification
Informational Reference books Author/illustrator Sequence
Textbooks Title page Comparison–contrast
These texts have Magazine articles Table of contents Cause–effect
true information Newspaper articles Chapters Problem–solution
about real Almanac Chapter headings
things. Subheadings
Multiple structures
Illustrations
Graphs/tables
Photographs
Maps
Boldface or italics for
vocabulary
Glossary
Index
Appendix
Narrative Fiction Picture books Cover Setting (time/place)
Story Anthologies Author/illustrator Problem(s)
Short stories Title page Solution(s)
These texts Novels Story text structure Resolution
have stories that Historical fiction Photographs Consequence(s)
are made up or Science fiction Illustrations
imaginative. Realistic fiction
Fables
Fairy tales
Tall tales
Some forms of poetry

FIGURE 7.1. The differences between narrative and expository text.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

story format such as texts that describe historical information by using real people as
characters. Examples include Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? (Fritz, 1977) and
What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? (Fritz, 1976).
The sections that follow begin with our work in the area of general surface features,
and progress to expository text structures. By the end of this chapter, you will know
what the most important elements of expository text are, and how to begin your teach-
ing in this area of comprehension.

Understanding Surface Features of Expository Text

Think back to when you may have first learned about the surface features of exposi-
tory text: a table of contents, a glossary, chapter headings and subheadings, and many
others. You may have had a teacher who taught you how to use a glossary or an index,
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 135

Common Features Chapter Features Typographical Features

Cover Titles Fonts
Title page Headings Font size
Dedication Subheadings Boldface type
Table of contents Divisions Italicized type
Introduction Division headings Bullets
Chapters Chapter summaries Numbering
Graphs and charts
Illustrations
Photographs
Maps
Appendix
Glossary
Index
Bibliography

FIGURE 7.2. Expository text surface features.

or maybe you learned on your own. Current researchers have also suggested that typo-
graphical features, such as special fonts, boldface type, italicized type, and bulleted
information, signal the reader that important information is being communicated (Har-
vey, 1998). Figure 7.2 lists the important surface features of expository text that we teach
in the elementary education curriculum.

How to Teach Surface Features of Expository Text

The simplest way to teach expository text features is to model their functions. The most
important information you need to communicate to your students is how each text fea-
ture aids comprehension.
As you are reading aloud or demonstrating how to find text information, you can
point out the surface features. For example, you may want to draw attention to the
chapter headings and show how these help you to set a purpose for reading. For the
more complex surface features, such as an index or a glossary, your modeling must be
more deliberate, with perhaps an entire lesson devoted to each feature’s function and
use. Ultimately, what is important is that you demonstrate how the features help read-
ers focus on particular text information and aid their overall comprehension of the text
topic.
We dedicate many of the following pages to the teaching of expository text struc-
tures, which further aid elementary students’ comprehension.

Understanding Expository Text Structures

The term text structure can be defined as an author’s overall plan of organization to con-
vey main ideas and details (Meyer, 1987; Meyer & Rice, 1984). As mentioned in Chapter
6 most authors use five basic text structures or patterns to organize information:
136 TEACHING READING

1. Classification structures. These structures list, organize, or categorize informa-

tion.
2. Sequence structures. These structures arrange text information in a chronological
pattern or some other sequence. The information may be arranged by simple
order, by historical dates, by sequential events, or by the order of steps in a pro-
cess.
3. Cause–­effect structures. As the name indicates, these structures arrange infor-
mation to show causes and effects. Sometimes there are many causes and one
or two effects, or vice versa. Sometimes there is a sequential cause-and-­effect
structure, in which one cause leads to an effect that causes another thing to hap-
pen.
4. Comparison–­contrast structures. These structures arrange information to compare
and contrast two or more objects, facts, events, or incidents.
5. Problem–­solution structures. These structures arrange information to show prob-
lems, actions, and solutions within a certain event or an observable occurrence.

The five text structures are also detailed in Figure 7.3 (pages 138–139), along with
sample text passages illustrating them, words that signal their presence to readers, and
graphic organizers of their organizational logic. These five text structures can be used
to organize information in simple or more complex ways. Generally speaking, the more
advanced the text, the more complex the text patterns. For a complex example, in one
social studies chapter describing the Boston Tea Party, the reader may encounter the
causes of the Boston Tea Party interwoven with a description of the sequential events.
We can assume that the author, who is a history expert, has written the text for content,
not for readability. It is important to teach students how to identify the variety of text
structures so that when they encounter complex patterns, they can identify main ideas
and details.
We invite you now to participate in an activity to check your ability to identify
the individual structural patterns of text. To prepare, refer again to Figure 7.3 (pages
138–139) and spend a few minutes reviewing the text structures. In particular, examine
the last column of the figure, which shows a graphic organizer for each text structure. A
graphic organizer can be used as a note-­taking device and is a relatively simple method
for helping students summarize text material and promoting understanding of content.
Do you notice that the graphic layout indicates the relationship among ideas for that
text structure? You have already seen a graphic organizer example in Chapter 6—the
information matrix on MRSA infection. We invite you to engage in a similar activity
here with new text.

Text Structure Inquiry Activity

Directions: Read the following paragraph; determine the text structure; and, in the
box provided, draw an appropriate graphic organizer containing the main ideas and
details.
Text: “Mythological Roots of Mount Etna”

Sicily is the home of the largest active volcano in Europe, called Mount Etna. This
volcano was once called Aetna, which was derived from the Greek word that means
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 137

“to burn” (Lahanas, n.d.). The reason for Etna’s winds and violent, fiery eruptions
was often explained through classical Greek mythology (Best of Sicily, 2007). One
prevalent myth suggested that Mount Etna housed the god of fire, Vulcan, who used
the underbelly of the volcano as a forge, driving out other mythical creatures with
his flaming explosions. It was also thought that the infamous one-eyed Cyclops used
Mount Etna as a furnace to forge lightning bolts for Zeus to use as weapons against
his enemies. Apparently, the work of the Cyclops caused great volcanic disturbances
as they created and tested their weapons (Lahanas, n.d.). In one of the darker stories
surrounding Etna’s volcanic eruptions, classical Greek poets described the giant storm
god, Typhoeus. In one version of this myth, Zeus imprisoned Typhoeus in the pit of
Mount Etna where he tossed and turned, creating destructive winds and molten lava
that flowed freely from the volcano (Atsma, 2000–2008). Whatever the reason, Mount
Etna continues to erupt to this day, often creating havoc for one of Sicily’s major air-
ports and surrounding towns.

Draw your graphic organizer here:

The reasons for Mount Etna’s volcanic eruptions, according to the ancient Greeks

If we asked all of our students to do this activity for homework, the chances are
great that they would produce quite an array of different graphic organizers. They
might share some characteristics, such as type of text structure graphic, but they would
probably be quite different. This is the reason why we do not include a “correct” graphic
organizer with this exercise. Since you are an expert reader, your graphic organizer
probably portrays the information in a meaningful way.
How do you feel about this graphic organizer activity? Do you feel as if you were
able to assimilate the material better after you organized the information in the orga-
nizer? If so, you understand the benefits of text structure instruction and of teaching
children to draw their own graphic organizers. Next, we discuss how to teach exposi-
tory text structures in the elementary school.
 Words that signal
Text structure/pattern Paragraph illustrating the text pattern the text pattern Typical graphic organizer
CLASSIFICATION Three types of whales that live in the many, several, one,
In the classification pattern, main ideas and details Arctic include the orca, the beluga, each, another, still Types of Whales
are classified in categories. and the narwhal. Each has its own another; types,
For example, if the text topic is whales, the characteristics. The orca, also called one type, another
main ideas may be categorized into three types the killer whale, is a predator that type; also, among,
of whales: the orca, the narwhal, and the beluga. feeds on other marine mammals. in addition to;
Details about each are included in the text. The orca has a sophisticated social characteristics,
structure and travels in family packs. categories,
The beluga . . . classification
SEQUENCE The baleen whales feed by first first, second, third;
FIRST: SECOND:
In the sequence pattern, the main ideas are opening their mouths very wide and first, next, then; Open mouth and Close jaws and
organized in sequential order, with details included swallowing ocean water. Next, they finally; yesterday, swallow water. push out water.

138
within each step. close their jaws a little while pushing today, tomorrow;
For example, the text may describe in sequential out the water through their baleen steps, sequence;
order how a baleen whale filters its food. plates. After the water is filtered later; before, after; to
THIRD:
through their baleen plates, krill and begin with; time, the
Swallow krill and
plankton are left behind for the whale history of; in 2004, plankton.
to swallow. 2005, 2006 . . .
CAUSE–EFFECT In some areas of the world, ultraviolet cause(s), effect(s);
Sequential Cause and Effect
The cause–effect text pattern is either organized radiation is increasing in ocean as a result of,
Cause Effect Cause
by causes that lead to certain effects or by effects waters. As a result, tiny crustaceans result(s); affected
Ultraviolet Krill Baleen
that are caused by one or more phenomena. called “krill” will be reduced. Since by, consequence radiation reduction whales
There are two kinds of cause–effect patterns. krill is a major food source for baleen of, consequently; starve
One type describes the causes and/or effects in whales, the whales’ diet will be therefore, if–then; for
no particular order. For example, causes of whale greatly affected. Starvation of these this reason, due to,
extinction may be listed in a text. magnificent marine mammals may be since Descriptive Cause and Effect
Another type describes the sequential causes a devastating result.
and effects of some occurrence. For example, the Causes Effects
text may describe the sequential “domino” effects
of the dangers of increased ultraviolet radiation in
the earth’s oceans.
 COMPARISON–CONTRAST Baleen whales and toothed whales compare, Ways of
This text pattern compares and/or contrasts main use distinctly different methods to comparison, Obtaining
ideas while providing specific details about the obtain their food. Baleen whales filter contrast; same, Food Food
similarities and differences of two items. krill through their upper jaw, which is different, like,
For example, the text may compare two types of similar to a strainer or a sieve. On the as; similarities, Toothed Teeth Fish
whales and/or contrast them. other hand, toothed whales are quite differences; similarly, Whales
different because they have pointed but, also; on the one
teeth to help them prey on fish and hand; on the other Baleen Baleen Krill
Whales
squid. hand
PROBLEM–SOLUTION Problems with oil spills have forced problem(s),
This text pattern has main ideas and details many marine biologists to act on issue(s); actions, PROBLEM
Ocean oil spills
organized by problems and corresponding behalf of the many animals and to act; solution(s),
solutions. Often the text lists actions that may or birds who are affected by the spills. resolution(s), to
may not lead to the solution. Because of the famous Exxon resolve; as a result, ACTIONS
For example, the text may describe the problems Valdez oil spill, stricter regulations because of Stricter regulations:
whale populations endure after an oil spill, provide of oil tankers now include more 1. Rigorous inspection
actions scientists could take to repair the damage, rigorous inspection techniques, more 2. Intense training
and suggest final solutions that could eliminate the intensive training of oil company 3. Field drills
problem. personnel, and field drills to check on

139
preparedness in case of a spill. As a
result, fewer oil spills have occurred. SOLUTION
Fewer oil spills

FIGURE 7.3. The five text structures/patterns, together with illustrative text, signal words, and graphic organizers for each.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
140 TEACHING READING

How to Teach Expository Text Structures

You can teach expository text structures in the same way as you teach all other com-
prehension strategies: by using the cognitive strategy instruction model discussed in
Chapter 5 to design lessons for teaching children to identify all five text structures.
To make it easier for you, we have included strategy steps (heuristics) for all five text
structures in Figures 7.4, 7.5, 7.6 (page 142), 7.7 (page 143), and 7.8 (page 144). We have
designed these strategies to be taught in grades 4–6.

1. Read the title, preview the text, identify the text structure, and read the text once
through.
2. Ask yourself: What is the author’s purpose for writing? What is the main topic?
3. Draw a classification graphic organizer to begin recording your ideas.

Topic: Types of Whales Types of Whales

Main ideas and details in boxes

4. To identify the main ideas, do a close reading.

• Ask yourself: What are the main parts of the topic? Can the topic be classified
into smaller main ideas?
• These signal words may help you identify the main ideas: for example,
characteristics are, such as, generally, types, kinds, categories, in addition to.
• Use all of your good-reader strategies to help you chunk the main ideas.
5. If you still cannot identify the main ideas, try the following steps:
• Look at the boldface headings. Does that help you identify the main ideas?
• Look at the illustrations. Does that help you identify the main ideas?
• Look at the graphs and keys. Does that help you identify the main ideas?
6. Reread the text closely, line by line, to identify the supporting details:
• Ask yourself: What are the characteristics, features, and details of the main
ideas?
• Use the question leads (who, how, why, what, where, when) to help you find the
supporting details.
• Look at the subheadings to help you identify the supporting details.
• Use your good-reader strategies to help identify the details.

FIGURE 7.4. Strategy for the classification text pattern.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 141

1. Read the title, preview the text, and read the text once through.
2. Identify the signal words, such as first, second, third, then, next, and finally. These
signal words will help you identify the sequence pattern. However, some text may
not contain these exact words.
3. Reread the text closely, and ask yourself how the events or steps or details are
ordered.
4. Create your own sequence graphic organizer.
5. Record information in your graphic organizer as you ask yourself:
a. What comes first? What comes next?
b. Are they in order? Are you missing any steps?
c. Have you included all the important steps and details?
d. Have you tried using your good-reader strategies to help you find the
sequence?

First Second Third

Fourth Fifth Finally

FIGURE 7.5. Strategy for the sequence pattern.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

When teaching text patterns, you will always have to alter the strategy heuristic
to match three variables: (1) the readers’ vocabulary, (2) the text difficulty, and (3) the
readers’ prior knowledge of comprehension strategies. As an example, Figure 7.9 (page
145) presents explanations of the comparison–­contrast pattern for younger or less expe-
rienced readers and for older, more experienced readers; notice the differences in lan-
guage.
To understand the difference between teaching a general comprehension strategy
that good readers use in most situations (Chapter 6) and teaching an expository text
structure strategy, take a look at the lesson below. Of importance is the modeling/think-
aloud portion of the lesson. You will see how all the good-­reader strategies, such as
activating prior knowledge and self-­questioning, are embedded in the act of identify-
ing main ideas and details in expository text. This lesson is based on the text shown in
Figure 7.10 (page 146).
142 TEACHING READING

1. Read the title, preview the text, and read the text once through.
2. If the text appears to be listing causes and effects, draw an appropriate graphic
organizer.
Cause(s) Effect(s)

Effect

Cause

3. When you are looking for cause and effect, find something that happened as a
result of another action.
4. Reread the text closely, line by line, and investigate:
What is the cause? A cause is an action that triggers a reaction.
To find the cause, use these signal words to help you: when, because, since, if,
due to, makes, produces.
What is the effect? The effect is the reaction.
To find the effect, use these signal words to help you: then, as a result, thus,
therefore, consequently.

Use your good-reader strategies to help you find the main ideas.

FIGURE 7.6. Strategy for the cause–effect pattern.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 143

1. Read the title, preview the text, and read the text once through.
2. Identify signal words, such as compare, contrast, difference(s), similarity, different,
same. These will help you identify the comparison–contrast pattern. However,
some text may not contain these exact words.
3. Reread the text closely, and ask yourself: What is being compared?
4. Create your own comparison–contrast graphic organizer, and write in the two or
three objects, events, or things that are being compared.
5. As you record information in your organizer, ask yourself:
What are the differences? These signal words will help you find the differences:
different, differences, opposite, better than, on the other hand, rather.
What are the similarities? These signal words will help you find the similarities:
same, alike, similar, similarities, like, much as, on the one hand.
How are they being compared? Determine the category of comparison (for
example, shape, length, width).

Shape Taste Colors

Apple Round, Juicy, Red,
fat sweet green
Banana Long, Dry, Yellow,
thin sweet green

Remember that your good-reader strategies

will help you identify the main ideas and details.

FIGURE 7.7. Strategy for the comparison–contrast pattern.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
144 TEACHING READING

1. Read the title, preview the text, and read the text once through.
2. If a problem is introduced, draw an appropriate graphic organizer to organize
solutions. It is important to remember that there is not always a solution.
3. Reread the text closely, line by line, and ask yourself: What is the problem? Look
for words like problem, challenge, difficulty, trouble with, dilemma, puzzle, or
question.
4. Now ask yourself: What is a possible solution?
5. Sometimes the author gives information on ways a solution can come about.
These are called actions that may lead to a solution.
6. To help find actions or solutions, look for words such as since, therefore, if–then,
as a result, nevertheless, consequently, will have to, this will mean, will be
necessary, or must.
7. It is important to remember that occasionally solutions come before problems.

Problem(s)

Action(s)

Solution(s)

Remember that your good-reader strategies

will help you identify the main ideas and details.

FIGURE 7.8. Strategy for the problem–solution pattern.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 145

Comparison–Contrast Strategy
for Less Experienced Readers

1. Read the title of the book, take a picture walk, and read the text.
2. Think about what you are reading.
3. If the author is comparing two things, such as kinds of animals, people, countries, or other
things, draw a graphic organizer to help you record what is the same and what is different
about the two things.
4. Ask yourself: What is being compared?
5. Now ask yourself: What is the same or alike about the two things? The author may use
words such as same, alike, like, both, similar, or similarities.
Now ask yourself: What is different about the two things? The author may use words such
as different, differences, opposite, better than, different than.
6. Write what is alike and what is different in your graphic organizer.

Apple Round Fat Red

Banana Long Thin Yellow

Comparison–Contrast Strategy
for More Experienced Readers

1. Read the title, preview the text, and read the text once through.
2. Signal words such as compare, contrast, difference(s), similarity, different, and same will
help you identify the comparison pattern. However, some text may not contain these exact
words.
3. Reread the text closely, and ask yourself: What is being compared?
4. Create your own comparison–contrast graphic organizer, and write in the two or three
objects, events, or things that are being compared.
5. As you record information in your organizer, ask yourself:
What are the differences? These signal words will help you find the differences: different,
differences, opposite, better than, on the other hand, rather, but.
What are the similarities? These signal words will help you find the similarities: same, alike,
both, similar, similarities, like, much as, on the one hand.
How are they being compared? Determine the category of comparison (for example,
shape, length, width).

Height Weight Shape of Ear

African elephants 11 feet tall 14,000 pounds Irregular—like the
continent of Africa
Asian elephants 10 feet tall 11,000 pounds Regular—rounded

FIGURE 7.9. Altering strategy heuristics to accommodate readers’ skills.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
146 TEACHING READING

What Is the Difference between Predator and Prey?

A predator is an animal that hunts another animal. The prey is the animal the predator eats. An
example of a predator is a hawk. An example of a hawk’s prey is a snake. Other predator–prey
examples include cat–mouse and fox–rabbit.

Predators and prey are very different types of animals, but they share some of the same traits.
Predators are usually very fast so they are able to catch their prey. Prey can run fast, too,
because they need to run away from predators.

Both have a good sense of smell. The predator needs a good sense of smell to hunt and find
the prey, but the prey also needs to be able to smell the predator who is hunting him or her.

Both predator and prey have good eyesight. Predators’ eyes are close together so they can
see long distances to find their prey, but most prey animals’ eyes are on the sides of their
heads so they can easily look out for predators.

Although predators and prey are very different, they share some common traits.

FIGURE 7.10. “What Is the Difference between Predator and Prey?”

Lesson: Strategy for comparing and contrasting text ideas

Text: “What Is the Difference between Predator and Prey?” (Figure 7.10)
Lesson Grade Levels: 2–3
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of comparing and con-
trasting expository text information.
Declarative Knowledge:
“Today I am going to model a strategy for you to use when we read fact or informa-
tion books. The name of the strategy is comparison and contrast. The reason why
we are learning this strategy is to help us become independent readers as we read
fact and information books. Can someone tell me what it means to compare two
things?” [Students’ responses are written on the whiteboard as follows:]

To Compare:
Find what is the same about two or more things.
Find how two or more things are alike.
Example:
A cat and a dog have at least one thing in common: They are both pets.

“Yes, so we know that when we compare two or more things, we are looking for
what is the same or what is alike about them. Now, does anyone know what it
means to contrast two things?” [Students’ responses are written on the white-
board as follows:]

To Contrast:
Find what is different about two or more things.
Find how two or more things are not alike.
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 147

Example:
Dogs and cats are very different pets. One difference is that dogs like to go for
walks and cats do not. Cats are much more independent than dogs and prefer to
walk around outdoors by themselves.

Once you are sure that students have a conceptual understanding of what it means
to compare and contrast, you can then model the strategy in a text. It is important for
you to explain to students that comparing and contrasting two like or unlike things
when you can see them is very different from extracting such information from a text.
Following is the think-aloud/modeling portion of the lesson. While you read, look
at the sentences in boldface. Notice how good-­reader strategies are embedded in the
instructional language, along with the steps of applying the text structure strategy.

Procedural Knowledge:
“Watch me while I model for you how to compare and contrast text information. I
am going to model our strategy with this book that we have already read together
on predators and prey. Remember? Listen to my thinking while I show you how
to use our comparison–­contrast strategy.
“I am going to start by reading and thinking about the title, and see if it
helps me understand what the text is about. The title of the text is ‘What Is the
Difference between Predator and Prey?’ [Figure 7.10]. Well, right away I know
that the text is going to contrast or compare information about predators and
prey, because the title tells me so. It even tells me what is going to be contrasted,
because it says, ‘the Difference between Predator and Prey,’ and we have just
reviewed that differences mean contrasts between two things.
“So, next, I am going to think about everything I already know about
predators and prey. Hmmm. Well, since I have watched my cat chasing birds
and mice in the garden, I know a little bit about how predators look for and catch
their prey. I am going to read the text again and see what important informa-
tion the author is giving on predators and prey. [Read portion of the text.] Now
I’m going to go back and ask myself, ‘What is being compared?’ So I am going
to reread some of the text closely.
“Well, this line of the text, ‘Predators and prey are very different types of
animals, but they share some of the same traits,’ clearly tells me that the author is
contrasting predators and prey. I am going to draw a graphic organizer to help
me record the main ideas and details. [See graphic organizer below.] The two
main sets of ideas the author is discussing are predator traits and prey traits, so I
am going to write them in my organizer.
“Next, I am going to read the text line by line to determine what is the
same and what is different about predators and prey. Well, the next line tells me
that predators run really fast to catch their prey. So I am now going to ask myself,
‘What is the same as, or what is different from, how prey run?’ The author then
tells me that prey are also fast runners so they can run away, so I am going to
write that in my organizer. Now I have two similar traits.
“The next line says, ‘Both predator and prey have good eyesight.’ Hmm. The
word both helps me, because it is saying that the predator and prey have some-
thing that is alike . . . eyesight! So I can write that in. That signal word, both, has
really helped me to find a similar trait. So I am going to write that trait in my
organizer for both predator and prey.” [Write information on whiteboard as fol-
lows:]
148 TEACHING READING

TRAIT 1 TRAIT 2 TRAIT 3

PREDATOR Runs fast to catch Great sense of smell Good eyesight.
(HUNTER) prey. to find prey. Eyes in front to spot
prey.

PREY Runs away fast. Great sense of smell Good eyesight.

(HUNTED) to run away. Eyes on side of head
to see predator.

As the think-aloud continues, be sure to say the name of each strategy step and
then apply the step to the text. Do you see how this is done in the think-aloud above?
You do this in order to be sure that the steps of the strategy are emphasized along
with the text information. Once you identify the important main ideas and details, it
is important to tell the children how you know that. This is the challenging part of
conducting a think-aloud. It is important to say everything you are thinking.
After the think-aloud is completed, as you have seen before, it is essential to place
the strategy heuristic on an easel pad or the whiteboard. Thus the lesson continues as
follows:

“Now, children, let’s review the steps of the strategy I just used to help me com-
pare and contrast text information.” [Write the strategy heuristic on chart paper
as you verbally review the strategy as follows:]

Comparison–­Contrast Strategy
1. Read the title of the book, take a picture walk, and read the text.
2. Think about what you are reading.
3. If the author is comparing two things, such as kinds of animals, people, countries,
or other things, draw a graphic organizer to help you record what is the same
and what is different about the two things.
4. Ask yourself: What is being compared?
5. Now ask yourself: What is the same or alike about the two things? The author
may use such words as same, alike, like, both, similar, or similarities.
6. Now ask yourself: What is different about the two things? The author may use
such words as different, differences, opposite, better than, different than, or but.
7. Write what is alike and what is different in your graphic organizer.

After you provide the modeling and strategy steps, it is essential that students
immediately practice the strategy. You can have them practice it in the same text if you
still have information to add to your graphic organizer, or you can choose a new text
for them to use as guided practice. Just remember that guided practice is guided. You
can conduct a guided practice in a whole-group or small-group format, depending
upon the amount of coaching you predict the students may need.

Conditional Knowledge: Immediately following the guided practice, you want to be

sure to have the students evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. You can do this by
asking the children the following questions:
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 149

• “How effective was our strategy?”

• “Did you think of other ways of thinking to help you identify the similarities and
differences? If so, let’s add it to our strategy steps.”
• “Did you find new signal words that help us to identify the main ideas being com-
pared and contrasted?”

You want the children to understand that a strategy is just a guideline, and that
it does not always work when you apply it to a variety of texts. In essence, the strategy
may need adjustment to meet the demands of a different text or type of text.
Your final step in the strategy lesson sequence is to guide students to the under-
standing of when to use the strategy again. This is accomplished by telling them about
all the types of texts to which they can apply the new strategy. For example, you can
tell them that they can use this strategy for any type of expository text that has infor-
mation being compared or contrasted. It is also important to give students multiple
opportunities to transfer their strategy to other texts in the curriculum.

Choosing Texts for Teaching

Expository Text Structures

When you are teaching expository text structures, it is important to consider which
books to use for the initial modeling and which to use for further practice. For introduc-
ing and modeling each text pattern, you must use text that the children have already
read and understood. This allows the children to focus on the strategy process instead
of trying to learn new content at the same time. You will also want to look for books that
have signal words for the patterns, as well as a relatively easy structure to determine.
After students have had considerable practice with each pattern, then you can begin to
choose books with more complex patterns and have them practice in these more dif-
ficult texts.
There is one more important point: Most textbooks do not present information in
simple text structures. In such a case, readers may have to impose a text structure to
extract the necessary information from the text. Imposing a text structure is more dif-
ficult for students, but you can coach them to success by having them practice on a wide
range of text selections written in a wide range of text structures.

Encouraging Student Usage of Text Structures

for Comprehension

Do you remember our opening scenario in Rachael’s sixth-grade classroom? To follow

up with her text structure instruction, she had students construct simple flip books
after she and Anita taught all five patterns of text organization. On each page of the
flip book, the children included the strategy graphic organizer, the signal words, and a
sample text written in the text pattern, to remind them how to identify the main ideas
and details in expository text. Whenever children read expository text in Rachael’s class
150 TEACHING READING

FIGURE 7.11. Expository text structure bulletin board.

now, they always have their flip books handy for easy reference. In addition, they can
refer to Rachael’s carefully designed bulletin board (Figure 7.11) to help with their strat-
egy application.
Crucial to the process of learning all comprehension strategies is repeated practice.
In the following section, we present a very common model for a comprehension lesson
to emphasize reading across the curriculum. This lesson model is one that you can use to
introduce new books or portions of text and have your students practice the strategies
they have learned. You will notice that the structure of the model itself emphasizes
the good-­reader strategies, but that its focus is on content. Figure 7.12 summarizes the
model; below, we explain each part.

A Lesson Model for Reading across the Curriculum

The purpose of this before-, during-, and after-­reading lesson model (Figure 7.12) is to
have your students practice their good-­reader strategies while they read expository con-
tent. You will notice that each step of the lesson plan consists of a good-­reader strategy.
After we explain each component of the model, we present a sample expository text
lesson.

Before Reading: Activating Prior Knowledge

To introduce your book and topic, it is best practice to activate students’ prior knowl-
edge of the text topic and “connect” the readers to the text. As you have learned in
Chapters 5 and 6, it is important for readers to access their prior knowledge and activate
their schemas before and during reading. To do this efficiently and easily, we have dis-
covered that the combination of free recall and structured questions works well.
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 151

BEFORE-READING LESSON ACTIVITIES:

STUDENTS FOCUS THEIR ATTENTION
• Build, access, and activate students’ prior knowledge of text concept.
• Review vocabulary words that might interfere with students’ comprehension.
• Formulate questions to set a purpose for reading the text.

DURING-READING LESSON ACTIVITIES:

STUDENTS STORE INFORMATION
• Have students design a graphic organizer, or provide one for them to record text
ideas.

AFTER-READING LESSON ACTIVITIES:

STUDENTS RETRIEVE INFORMATION
• Have students talk about the ideas they recorded on the graphic organizer.
• Ask questions to drive students to a deeper meaning of the text.
• Optional: Ask students to write a summary, using the graphic organizer as a
template.
• Optional: Have the group engage in a cooperative, culminating content-area task.

FIGURE 7.12. A lesson model for reading across the curriculum. Use with a content-area book to
emphasize content and reinforce known reading strategies.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

Whenever you introduce a new text or a new text topic, you can begin with a simple
open-ended question: “What do you know about predators and prey?” “What do you
know about dinosaurs?” “What do we mean by the term domestic animals?” These free-
­recall questions are open-ended and serve well to stimulate a discussion about the text
topic.
Once students provide prior knowledge of the text topic, you can ask specific struc-
tured questions to facilitate the discussion, or you can take the students to an area of
the topic you would like to review before they read the text. For example, if you are
accessing prior knowledge about dinosaurs, and students tell you the names of a few
dinosaurs and some general facts, you can ask more structured questions to elicit more
specific details. You may ask, “What do you know about the theories surrounding dino-
saur extinction?” “What do you think dinosaurs ate?” “What specific traits made dino-
saurs so different from animals that are free to roam the earth today?” The questions
and subsequent discussion not only activate prior knowledge, but also help build prior
knowledge for those students who may not know much about the topic.
152 TEACHING READING

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FIGURE 7.13. Activating prior knowledge about dinosaurs.

One word of caution about structured questions, however, is that the opening of
this lesson should not cover all the points of the text. You want to leave the comprehen-
sion of the text topic to your able readers. Your lesson opening may look like Figure 7.13
when you are finished with it.

Before Reading: Vocabulary Instruction

As discussed in Chapter 4, vocabulary instruction is a crucial before-­reading lesson
component. Since your young readers’ comprehension might be interrupted by encoun-
ters with unfamiliar vocabulary, it is best to choose approximately five words and teach
them before reading.

Before Reading: Setting Purposes

Before you ask your students to read the text, it is important to set a purpose for read-
ing. You can set a purpose or ask students to set their own purposes. For most content
lessons, it is easy to impose a purpose that has to do with the main ideas in the text.
For example, in regard to the predator–prey text (Figure 7.10), you may want to say to
the children, “While you read, I want you to identify the differences and similarities of
predators and prey.”

During Reading: Encouraging Note Taking

For the during-­reading section of the lesson plan, you can either provide a graphic orga-
nizer for your students or have them draw one once they become proficient at doing so.
As you have learned earlier, a graphic organizer is a note-­taking device that helps stu-
dents summarize text material to promote understanding. Moreover, the graphic layout
of the organizer indicates the types of relationships among ideas that the text presents
or the reader imposes.
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 153

If you design a graphic organizer for your students to record information from the
text during reading, it must match the purpose for reading. For example, if the students
are reading the predator–prey text and have set the purpose for reading as identify-
ing the similarities and differences, then the graphic organizer should be designed for
students to record that information. Go back and look through the expository graphic
organizers in Figure 7.3 to see the range of possibilities you can use for expository text.

After Reading: Free Recall

The next portion of the lesson takes place after students have read and recorded ideas
in their graphic organizers. This is a perfect time to engage students in meaningful
talk. Perhaps you have grouped students for the reading and note-­taking portion of the
lesson; if so, now is the time to bring them back to the whole group and debrief what
they have learned. You can do this by asking students to present the information they
learned by verbal recall, while you record the text information on a class-sized graphic
organizer.
This portion of the lesson is designed to give students opportunities to share what
they have learned. It also provides you with opportunities to examine their graphic
organizers for accuracy and to assess their strategy usage. The after-­reading discussion
can continue with the aid of comprehension questions designed to help students think
critically about the text information.

After Reading: Questioning

A common practice after students have shared the main ideas and details of the text is
to invite them to have deeper discussions about the text material. We do this with ques-
tions designed to encourage readers to explore the deeper meaning of the text.
We can use the question–­answer relationships (QAR) approach (Raphael, 1982, 1984,
1986) both to guide our understanding of what kind of questions to ask in an after-
­reading activity and to teach our readers how to find the sources of the questions to
answer them correctly. The QAR strategy includes four types of questions divided into
two categories of information—in the text and in your head—as shown in Figure 7.14.

In the Text In Your Head

Right There Think and Search Author and You On My Own
Explicit questions Implicit questions Implicit questions Implicit questions
The answer is right The answer requires The answer requires The answer relates to
there on the page. readers to search readers to fit together the text, but could be
Often the words used for an answer or put their understanding answered if the text
to form the question together an answer of the text and has not even been
and the words that from different parts of their background read.
answer the question the text. knowledge.
are the same.

FIGURE 7.14. The question–answer relationships (QAR) strategy. Based on Raphael (1982, 1984,
1986).
154 TEACHING READING

The QAR approach to categorizing questions can be used to ask questions with
answers that are explicit in the text, as well as those in which a reader must make an
inference. For example, here are some categorized questions based on the predator–
prey text in Figure 7.10.

Right There (reader uses explicit text information to answer)

1. What is a predator?
2. What is a prey?

Think and Search (reader searches for answer)

1. What defenses do prey use to get away from predators?
2. What traits do predators have to help them catch their prey?

Author and Me (reader uses the text plus prior knowledge to answer)
1. If predators and prey are both fast, how do you think a predator outruns a
prey?
2. If prey have a good sense of smell, how can a predator catch them?

On My Own (reader uses prior knowledge to answer)

1. Would you rather be a predator or a prey? Why?
2. Have you ever seen a predator catch a prey? If so, what happened?

You can see that by using the simple guidelines in Figure 7.14, you can easily cre-
ate questions that ask readers to think about text-­explicit and text-­implicit information.
After you have mastered the QAR strategy yourself, you can then teach it to your stu-
dents.
Vacca and Vacca (2005) describe a simple method for teaching young readers how
to answer questions by discovering their sources. They suggest that first you introduce
the four types of questions and the two categories of information sources: in the text and
in your head. After you review the questions and the types of answers, give children
several short text passages to read, followed by one type of question per passage. After
answering each question, you and your young readers should only discuss what kind
of question it is and why.
On a subsequent day, have the children practice again, except this time ask the
children to identify the question type as well as to answer the question. As the children
grow in proficiency of identifying both the answer to the question and the question
type, you can raise the difficulty of the text passages as well as the length. You also want
to be sure that each type of QAR is addressed. Finally, you can have the students apply
the QAR strategy to actual content-area assignments.
What we have discovered is that you may need to repeat this routine several times
before students are able to use it independently. When students are comfortable with
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 155

identifying and answering the four types of questions, they can begin to generate their
own questions and exchange with their peers for more practice.
Using the QAR strategy in the classroom can provide a useful framework for both
students and teachers. It builds confidence among students in both question-­asking
and question-­answering situations. As students become more aware of the different
sources of information used to answer questions, they become more strategic in their
reading and thinking, and their comprehension improves. Raphael and Au (2005) fur-
ther researched the QAR approach and discovered that children who were taught how
to answer text questions by understanding the sources of the questions were able to
answer text questions with more clarity across grades and content areas, both in the
classroom and on high-­stakes tests.

After Reading: Summary Writing

Summary writing is an authentic task used in all disciplines across a wide variety of
contexts. Although we continually ask students in the upper elementary grades to sum-
marize text, there is little evidence that we are teaching them how to compose a sum-
mary.
Reading research has suggested that summary writing is an exemplary reading
comprehension strategy for enhancing students’ abilities to identify and recall specific
text information (Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981; Brown & Day, 1983; Kintsch & van
Dijk, 1978). Brown and Day (1983) developed the practice of using the following set of
rules to guide the written summary:

1. Select a topic sentence from the text, or impose one.

2. Delete trivial information that is unnecessary for understanding.
3. Delete redundant information.
4. Replace subordinate terms with superordinate terms for a list of items. For
example, use the word animals instead of tigers, lions, and bears.
5. Replace subordinate terms with superordinate terms for a list of actions. For
example, use the word exercising instead of lifting weights, running, and jumping
rope.

When you are teaching summary writing, it is important to communicate to stu-

dents that the act of writing summaries actually consists of two separate literacy events:
(1) reading for meaning and understanding, and (2) writing the summary itself. Over
the years, we have taught students to write summaries as early as in first and second
grades. First, we guide them in collecting the main ideas and details for their sum-
maries by recording the salient information in graphic organizers. This assures that
they are reading for meaning and understanding—the first step in writing a summary.
Second, we model for them how to use the graphic as a “blueprint” for composing the
summary. Finally, we model for them how to delete trivial and redundant information,
and, depending upon the grade level, how to substitute superordinate terms for subor-
dinate ones.
156 TEACHING READING

Reading across the Curriculum: A Sample Lesson

Now that we have reviewed the components of a best-­practice before-, during-, and
after-­reading lesson, it is time to take a look at what one looks like. Remember that the
purpose of this lesson model is to focus on the content of the text topic, while simultane-
ously reinforcing good-­reader strategies and providing practice in applying them. This
lesson is based on the text shown in Figure 7.15.

Lesson: African and Asian elephants

Text: “What Do Asian and African Elephants Have in Common?” (Figure 7.15)
Lesson Grade Level: 3
Content Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of the differences and
similarities between African and Asian elephants.
Strategy Objective (reinforcement): Students will demonstrate understanding of the
comparison–­contrast text structure.
Before Reading: Activating Prior Knowledge:
“Today we are going to continue reading about indigenous animals in our science
book and focus on elephants. Can you tell me what you know about African or
Asian elephants?” [Write responses on chalkboard as shown on page 157.]

What Do Asian and African Elephants

Have in Common?

Elephants are the largest land animals on earth. There are two kinds of
elephants: African elephants and Asian elephants. Although they share similar
traits, these elephants are actually quite different. African elephants are slightly
larger than Asian elephants (National Geographic Society, 1996). They can grow
to 25 feet long and 11 feet tall. A male African elephant can weigh up to 14,000
pounds (National Zoo, n.d.-a). Asian elephants, on the other hand, are smaller.
They can be about 21 feet long and 10 feet tall, and can weigh up to 11,000
pounds (National Zoo, n.d.-b).
   African elephants and Asian elephants have large but different-shaped ears.
The African elephant has ears that look like the shape of the continent of Africa.
Asian elephants have smaller, round ears (National Geographic Society, 1996).
   Elephants use their trunks for breathing, eating, and just about everything
else. Their trunks also work like our hands. African elephants have two finger-like
features on the ends of their trunks that they can use to grasp small items, but
Asian elephants only have one. Both African and Asian elephants like to play
with water. They take water into their trunks and spray it all over themselves and
others (National Geographic Society, 1996).
   People use elephants for different things, like carrying water or lumber out
of the forest. Asian elephants are better at this task, because African elephants
are too difficult to train (National Zoo, n.d.-a, n.d.-b).

FIGURE 7.15. “What Do Asian and African Elephants Have in Common?”

 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 157

What do you know about . . .

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“Well, we do know quite a bit about elephants, but I can see that we don’t know
much about the difference between African and Asian elephants. Today we are
going to read about both types of elephants, but first we need to review one
vocabulary word that is important in the text.”

Before Reading: Vocabulary Instruction:

“The text says, ‘Although they share similar traits, these elephants are actually
quite different.’ What do you think the word traits means in this text? What
kind of information about elephants do you think the author may talk about in
describing how different types of elephants are alike and different?” [In order to
integrate the word trait into students’ prior knowledge, it is important to be sure
students understand that trait means a physical feature of an elephant. Your fin-
ished vocabulary web may look like the one shown in Figure 7.16.]

Before Reading: Setting Purposes for Reading:

“Children, now you are going to work with your reading partner to read and
understand the differences between African and Asian elephants. To help you
do that, I want you to record the important main ideas and details in a graphic
organizer. Remember how we learned the strategy to organize information that
is being compared? Today you are going to practice that strategy while you learn
about the differences between African and Asian elephants. First, I will pass out
the texts and graphic organizers you will use for your note taking.”

During Reading: Encouraging Note Taking:

“Now that you have your text and graphic organizer, let’s review our comparison–­
contrast strategy and what information you should record in your graphic orga-
nizer.” [Review the strategy and the use of the graphic organizer before students
begin reading and working. A sample graphic organizer is shown on page 158.]

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158 TEACHING READING

Height Weight Length Ears Trunk

African Elephants

Asian Elephants

After Reading: Free Recall:

“Now, children, let’s see what you learned about the differences between African
and Asian elephants. I will ask each pair of students to supply information to
fill in this enlarged graphic organizer I have placed on the overhead projector.”
[Allow students to have free recall of the text information and check their own
graphic organizers as you write on the overhead transparency.]

After Reading: Questioning: To conclude the lesson, you can ask the following ques-
tions, to guide students to a deeper meaning of the text or identify further information
that students may want to know.
• “If Asian elephants only have one finger-like structure and African elephants have
two, do you think the African elephants can do more with their trunks?”
• “What other tasks do you suppose people have trained elephants to do?”
• “Why do you suppose African elephants are more difficult to train than Asian ele-
phants?”
• “Which elephants, African or Asian, do you think are more commonly used to build
houses?”
• “How long do elephants live? Does anyone know, or shall we look it up online?”
• “The text also did not give any information on what elephants eat. Can anyone guess
what they eat? Then we can look that information up in our animal book as well.”

This type of lesson focuses on the content of the text, but is structured to have
students practice good-­reader strategies. Following is another common lesson model
designed to accomplish the same goal.

The K-W-L Instructional Model

The know, what to know, learned (K-W-L) instructional model, designed by Ogle (1986),
has become common classroom practice. This instructional strategy prepares students
for reading, guides their purpose for reading, and helps them comprehend text by clari-
fying details and extending their interest in the text topic. The K-W-L model is a three-
step integrated instructional model that engages students in active reading. The title
refers to three basic cognitive steps:

1. Accessing what I KNOW about the topic before reading. This step involves brain-
storming what the group knows; it is similar to activating prior knowledge, as discussed
in this and earlier chapters. The teacher’s role is to record whatever students volunteer
 Teaching Expository Text across the Curriculum 159

about the topic before the students read. The critical component is to select a key concept
for the brainstorming that is specific enough to generate the kinds of information that
will be important to the reading.
A second type of brainstorming involves asking students to think of more general
categories of information likely to be encountered when they read. This step requires
much modeling and coaching if students are not used to thinking about the material
they might learn in certain types of texts.
2. Determining what I WANT TO KNOW and to learn during reading. This brainstorm-
ing requires the teacher in a whole-group session to ask students before reading what
they want to learn while reading about the text topic. This brainstorming encourages
readers to set purposes for reading. As students read, they read purposefully, focusing
on what they want to learn.
3. Recalling what I have LEARNED as a result of the reading. This step takes place
after reading. Either individually or in the whole group, readers record what they have
learned. They can talk about whether their questions were answered or whether they
need to do further reading or research. This step helps readers to understand that they
can actively pursue their own knowledge.

You can see that the K-W-L instructional model includes before-, during-, and after-
­reading instructional elements. Both of the lesson models presented in these last few
pages are highly useful for helping students investigate expository text topics and learn
from text while applying good-­reader strategies.

Final Thoughts on Expository Text Comprehension

We have started this chapter by defining expository text and briefly discussing surface
text features, such as headings and boldface type. Surface features are basic elements
that we take for granted, but they must be part of the comprehension curriculum in
grades K–6. Most of this chapter has been devoted to text structure instruction. We
hope we have impressed upon you the importance of teaching children to tap into an
author’s pattern of organization for comprehension success. Finally, we have presented
two lesson models—the reading-­across-the-­curriculum model and the K-W-L model—
that are useful in teaching science, social studies, health, music, or any other subject that
uses expository text. These lesson models can be easily adapted for very young readers
(grades K–1) in either a whole-group or small-group context.
In the next two chapters, we present ways of teaching children’s literature or nar-
rative text in K–6 classrooms.
To add to your self-study artifacts, try designing a text structure or a reading-
­across-the-­curriculum lesson. Also, remember to check your knowledge of key terms in
Figure 7.17 (page 160).

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 7.18 (page 161) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
160 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 7

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

expository text

surface features of expository text

expository text structures

classification text structure

sequence text structure

cause–effect text structure

comparison–contrast text structure

problem–solution text structure

graphic organizer

reading across the curriculum

free recall/structured questions

question–answer relationships (QAR) approach

summary writing

know, what to know, learned (K-W-L) model

FIGURE 7.17. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 7.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 7

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

161
FIGURE 7.18. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 7.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Chapter 8

Appreciating Children’s Literature

Teaching the Language of Narrative Text

The following small-group discussion took place in a real second-grade classroom after
students had finished reading a number of African trickster tales. While you read the
transcript of the discussion, think about what these young children already knew about
the elements of genre.

Kevin: Well, usually in African trickster tales, there are animals for characters.
Andrea: And it’s usually a folk tale.
Peter: They usually have yams, too.
Michelle: Yup!
Melissa: There usually is a trick or outwitting.
Anthony: You’re right!
Rachael: I love the tricking part.
Melanie: And there is always a lesson to be learned.
Andrea: And sometimes—and mostly every story is like someone is telling the
story—you are not telling the story—­someone else is telling the story . . .
Melanie: So you mean it is usually retold.
Erik: Usually there is a villain, too. But there is one thing I don’t like about vil-
lains—is that—they always have to be women! I think they should be men a
lot of times too.
Michelle: Yeah, I agree!
Andrea: Yeah, both of them!
Peter: We should check. Are we sure the villains are always women?

162
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 163

Debriefing the Transcript

These second graders were talking about books. If you noticed, there was no teacher
intervention. The children were charged with talking about a literature genre by them-
selves—and what a good job they did!
In the transcript, the children were talking about the genre of African trickster
tales. In African trickster tales or similar folk tales from other cultures, the stories are
about the specific country or region from which the tale originates, and all of the char-
acters are animals. The animals always exhibit human traits, such as wisdom, foolish-
ness, jealousy, and/or greed, and the stories teach valuable lessons through the animals’
behaviors. The children in our transcript had just completed reading a series of African
trickster tales, and their teacher had asked them to identify the most important ele-
ments of the genre. You can see that the children were quite adept at the task.
In this chapter, you will learn about teaching children’s literature, including invit-
ing children to read, think about, talk, and write about books in meaningful ways.

Best practices You Will See in This Chapter

Teaching literature genre by genre.
99
Providing explicit instruction in story structure, oral retelling,
99
and summary writing.
Teaching narrative comprehension/response strategies.
99
Guiding students in learning how to write book reviews.
99

Using Children’s Literature in the Reading Program

In their literature review, Galda, Ash, and Cullinan (2000) grouped the children’s lit-
erature research into categories, including using (1) children’s literature as text for the
reading program, (2) children’s own reading interests and preferences for book choices,
(3) varying contexts to support children’s engagement with literature, and (4) children’s
literature as read-aloud material in primary classrooms. Research has also examined
best practices for teaching children the basic structures of narrative text, as well as read-
ing strategies useful for navigating one’s way to deep understanding of a story (Press-
ley, 2002a).
This substantial research base has helped us to understand the nature of children’s
engagement with good literature and has informed the ways in which we think about
literature instruction. This chapter and the next are devoted to best practices in teach-
ing narrative text or children’s literature. We have divided the children’s literature cur-
riculum into two chapters, to scaffold your knowledge from the simple pedagogy to the
more complex. Chapter 9 focuses on reader response, primarily through writing. This
chapter presents practical suggestions to help children do the following:

1. Distinguish one genre of literature from another.

2. Identify basic story structure (setting, characters, and plot events).
164 TEACHING READING

3. Use cognitive strategies to understand elements of fiction/literature.

4. Write about favorite pieces of literature.

Teaching Genre by Genre

As our opening transcript of children’s talk about African trickster tales suggests, our
literature curriculum includes teaching children how to distinguish one genre from
another. In the transcript, the children were quite aptly discussing the characteristics or
elements of African trickster tales.
In the elementary school, we teach children about all literature genres, including
picture books, short stories, novels, fables, biographies, all forms of poetry, and histori-
cal fiction. (See Figure 8.1 for a more inclusive list.) An essential part of our teaching
includes teaching children to identify the elements of genre.
The elements of genre refer to the nature of the piece or the characteristics that make
one genre different from another. For example, what makes a fable a fable? We can iden-
tify four elements of a fable:

1. It is a short, action-­packed story.

2. It illustrates a moral or a lesson.
3. It features animals or forces of nature as characters.
4. It engages a universal (cross-­cultural) audience.

Consider the famous fable “The Hare and the Tortoise.” Hare challenges all the
animals to a race. Tortoise accepts, and the race begins. Tortoise, having very short legs,
heads for the finish line in his slow and steady way. Hare, on the other hand, runs very

•• Autobiographies
•• Biographies
•• Drama (plays)
•• Fables from around the world
•• Fairy tales from around the world
•• Fantasy
•• Newspaper feature stories
•• Folk tales from around the world
•• Historical fiction
•• Memoirs
•• Myths and legends
•• Picture books
•• Poetry: Free verse, haiku, cinquain, sonnet, ballad,
monologue, limerick, etc.
•• Science fiction
•• Short stories
•• Realistic fiction
•• Trickster tales from around the world

FIGURE 8.1. Common narrative genres for the elementary school reading curriculum.
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 165

fast almost all the way to the finish line, but gets so tired that he lies down to take a
nap, knowing that he has plenty of time to be victorious. Meanwhile, Tortoise just plods
along at his customary pace and passes the sleeping Hare. When Hare finally wakes
up, he sees that Tortoise is just about to cross the finish line and win the race. The moral
is “Slow and steady wins the race.” As we introduce fables to children, we are careful
to point out these elements for two purposes: (1) to boost their general comprehension
of the genre, and (2) to help them understand what makes one genre different from
another.
In Figure 8.2 (pages 166–167), we have highlighted the elements of the most com-
mon children’s literature genres. The following section is devoted to the elements of
basic story structure, as well as how to introduce these elements to your students.

Defining Story Structure

In Chapter 7, you have learned about expository text structures. Similarly, narrative text
(short stories or novels) has a basic structure. This text structure is sometimes referred
to as story grammar, story structure, or narrative text structure. For our purposes, we refer
to this text structure as story structure.
Stein and Glenn (1979) suggest that most conventional stories follow a typical story
structure with the following elements: a setting, an initiating event, an internal response
from a character, an attempt at resolution, consequences, and character reactions. This
somewhat complex story structure can be taught in grades 4–6 and is described below.
We have used the fairy tale “Cinderella” to illustrate each structural element.

Complex Story Structure (Grades 4–6)

•• Setting. The setting introduces the time and place of the story, and usually intro-
duces the main characters (protagonists). Sometimes the story begins with the support-
ing characters or with characters who are in conflict (antagonists) with the main char-
acters. Illustration: Cinderella (protagonist) is a beautiful young woman forced to be a
maid by her mean stepmother and her two ugly stepsisters (antagonists).
•• Initiating event. Usually something happens that initiates trouble or a problem in
the story. Illustration: One day the Prince announces that he is giving a ball. Cinderella
cannot attend, because her stepmother and stepsisters will not allow her to go.
•• Internal response. Usually the protagonist and other supporting characters have
some sort of response or reaction to the event. Illustration: Cinderella is heartbroken
that she cannot go to the ball. When her stepsisters leave in their handsome gowns, she
cries.
•• Attempt at resolution. The protagonist or other supporting characters make a plan
or take actions to resolve the dilemma or problem. Usually there is a sequence of events
that ends with a resolution. Illustration: A fairy godmother appears to Cinderella. The
fairy uses her magic and creates a beautiful gown and tiny glass slippers for Cinderella.
When Cinderella enters the ballroom looking so beautiful, the Prince falls in love with
her. She falls in love with the Prince in return, but she has to leave the ball by midnight,
or her magic dress and coach will disappear. As the clock strikes midnight, Cinderella
 166 TEACHING READING

Genre Plot Elements Setting Elements Character Elements

Autobiography 1. Story of the author’s life. 1. Vivid descriptions 1. Strong physical and
2. Usually written in sequential of settings with mental picture of main
order. sensory details to character.
3. Is true to the life of the writer. create sense of 2. Strong physical and
place and time. mental picture of
supporting characters.
Biography 1. Story of a person’s life written 1. Real setting and 1. Strong physical and
by another person. time period of the mental picture of main
2. Usually written in sequential person who is character.
order. the subject of the 2. Strong physical and
3. Is true to the life of the text. mental picture of
subject of the text. supporting characters.
Fable 1. Simple plot that reflects 1. Place is 1. Very few characters.
human weaknesses or anywhere. 2. Usually characters are
strengths. 2. Time is real time. animals with human traits.
2. Story teaches a moral about
life.
Fairy tale 1. There is always a problem 1. Place usually has 1. The main characters
and a solution. to do with castles include a “good” and an
2. The “good” character usually and/or royalty. “evil” character.
“wins” or is triumphant in 2. Time is “Once 2. Both of these characters
some way. upon a time . . . ” are well defined.
3. There is usually magic. 3. There are many
4. Things happen in threes or supporting characters
sevens. helping the main
characters.
Fantasy 1. Plot involves elements that 1. Place is 1. Characters do not have
are not part of ordinary imaginary. to be realistic. They can
reality, with surprising turns 2. Time is any time. have powers or special
and unusual developments. gifts.
2. Usually the plot has a theme 2. Animals or inanimate
of good versus evil. objects can act like
3. Magic and imaginary humans.
inventions are often
included.
Memoir 1. Captures meaningful 1. Place is real. 1. Character (the writer) has
moments in life of writer. 2. Focus is on a a strong voice.
2. Invokes emotion. specific period in 2. Contains important
3. May just be one event or a time. supporting characters.
series of events about one
subject in the author’s life.
4. Usually centers around a
problem, its resolution, and
the meaning derived from
this experience.
(cont.)

FIGURE 8.2. Elements of children’s literature genres.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).
  Appreciating Children’s Literature 167

Genre Plot Elements Setting Elements Character Elements

Historical 1. Plot is believable and 1. Place is a particular 1. Characters are normal
Fiction shaped by the historical setting in history. people who could have
setting. 2. Time is specific to lived in the setting.
2. There is usually a problem historical setting. 2. Characters usually
for characters to resolve. experience some
change.
Mystery 1. Suspenseful action. 1. Vivid descriptions of 1. Strong physical and
2. Problem, usually involving settings with sensory mental picture of main
a murder or other crime, details to create character.
with believable solution. sense of mystery. 2. Victim described to
3. Possible “twist” to surprise gain sympathy from
reader. audience.
Realistic 1. Plot has problem for 1. Place can be real or 1. Characters are realistic.
fiction character to resolve, with imaginary. 2. Characters change as
hopeful theme. 2. Time is any time, but a result of what occurs
2. The plot must be it is usually within 25 in plot.
believable and years of the present
demonstrate real life. day.
3. Events can be imaginary,
but have to be plausible.
Science fiction 1. Plot usually is woven 1. Place can be 1. Main characters can
around current or future anywhere—fictional be real or imaginary
science or technology. or nonfictional. (humans, animals,
2. Plot contains some feature 2. Time is real time, past, robots, aliens, etc.).
that is totally different or future.
from the reality of the
audience.
3. Plot is similar to that in the
genre of fantasy.

FIGURE 8.2. (cont.)

runs away from the Prince because she does not want to turn back into a maid in front
of his eyes. As she is running away, she loses one of her glass slippers on the steps of
the palace.
•• Consequence. This is the effect of the protagonist’s actions. Illustration: The Prince
finds Cinderella’s slipper and sends his men to every household in the land to find the
beautiful girl to whom it belongs. He eventually finds Cinderella and asks her to marry
him.
•• Reaction. This is the protagonist’s response to the consequence, and it ends the
story. Illustration: Cinderella marries the Prince, and they live happily ever after.

After examining this complex story structure, you will notice that it is more compli-
cated than that which is traditionally taught in the early primary grades. If you examine
books written for young and inexperienced readers, the plot, characters, and themes
presented are fairly simple. Therefore, the basic structural elements we teach in the K–3
classroom include the setting, problem, solution, and consequence. Below, we illustrate
simple story structure with the fairy tale “Goldilocks.”
168 TEACHING READING

Simple Story Grammar for Young Children (Grades K–3)

•• Setting. Time, place, characters. Illustration: “Once upon a time,” three bears live
in the woods. They leave their lovely home one day and go out to forage for food.
•• Problem. The major problem, trouble, or dilemma in the story. Illustration: While
they are out, a young girl named Goldilocks enters the bears’ home. Goldilocks is hun-
gry, so she eats the bears’ porridge. She is tired, so first she sits in Baby Bear’s chair and
breaks it. Then she tries out the beds and falls asleep in Baby Bear’s bed.
•• Solution. The solution to the trouble, problem, or dilemma. Illustration: The bears
come home and are surprised to find that their food has been eaten and Baby Bear’s
chair is broken, so they look around. They find Goldilocks asleep in Baby Bear’s bed and
wake her up. Goldilocks runs away when she sees the family of bears.
•• Consequence. What happens to the characters after the problems are solved. Illus-
tration: The bears live happily ever after, and no one really knows what happens to
Goldilocks.

Teaching Story Structure

How do we teach children to identify these parts of a story? Researchers suggest that
more able readers will eventually develop this knowledge on their own, while less able
readers benefit from direct instruction (Mandler, 1984; Short & Ryan, 1984). We suggest
that children as young as kindergarten age be introduced to the basic elements of story
structure.

Teaching Story Structure in the K–3 Classroom

In kindergarten through grade 3, story structure instruction can be accomplished
through many contexts of storybook reading in your classroom. We have observed
effective teachers of emergent readers pointing out the various story structure elements
during read-­alouds, shared reading, readers’ theatre, small-group instruction, and the
many other contexts you have read about in this book.
For example, while reading a story aloud to the class, you can read the opening of
the story, which usually contains the setting and character introductions. Then pause
and point out how you identify the aspects of the setting. On the whiteboard, you can
write:

Stories Have Settings and Characters

Setting = Time + Place
Time = When does the story take place?
Place = Where does the story take place?
Characters = Who are the people in the story?

As demonstrated above, we suggest providing questions for young readers to ask

themselves. This makes this simple teaching act a form of cognitive strategy instruc-
tion (see Chapter 5). Young children can come to “own” this strategy through constant
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 169

teacher repetition during storybook reading. For example, in subsequent lessons you
can read the opening, pause, and ask the children where and when the story takes
place. You can also go on to model how to identify the characters, the problems, the
solutions, and the consequences. With repetition and explicit teaching, you will be sur-
prised at how quickly young children learn the language of stories.

Teaching Story Structure in the 4–6 Classroom

For children in grades 4–6, we suggest you use cognitive strategy instruction to model
how to identify elements of the more complex story structure. When teaching older chil-
dren, we build on what they know. For example, if your fourth graders already know
how to identify the simple story structure, teach them the more complex structure to
match the more sophisticated books they are reading in fourth grade.
You can also teach a more complex strategy for identifying each element of struc-
ture. For example, the following is a strategy for identifying the setting. Notice how
much more detailed it is than the one presented above for younger children.

Identifying the Setting of a Story

Place
Read through the opening and see if the author tells you where the story takes place.
If the author does not tell you, look for clues as to where the story might take place.
Ask yourself:

• Where are the main characters?

• Are they in a country? In a town? Is the place named?
• Is the place just a general environment, such as a school, a beach, or a city?
• Does the setting change often in each chapter? If so, note the setting each time it
changes.
Time
Read through the opening of the story again, searching for clues about where the story
takes place. Does the author tell you directly?
If the author does not tell you, look for clues as to when the story takes place. Ask
yourself:

• Can I figure out what season it is by how the characters are dressed or the way
the scenes are described?
• Can I find out what time of year it is by what the characters are doing? For
example, are they in school?
• Is the time not listed because it is not important?
Characters
To find the main character, ask yourself who is described most often, or who is the
narrator. The main character is called the protagonist.
Then find the character who opposes the main character. This character is called the
antagonist.
170 TEACHING READING

Story Structure Identification Strategies

One of the most common ways to have students practice their story structure identifica-
tion is to have them give an oral retelling of a story or write a summary of the main ele-
ments of the story. To prepare for an oral retelling or a summary, we teach children to
record the main elements of a story in a story map.

The Story Map Graphic Organizer

A story map is a graphic organizer that allows a reader to record the basic elements of
a story to aid comprehension. The story map was first introduced in the elementary
reading curriculum in the early 1990s as a result of research conducted on using story
maps with children who were both experienced and inexperienced readers, to deter-
mine whether identifying and recording elements of story aided comprehension (Idol,
1987; Idol & Croll, 1987). Figure 8.3 shows a story map that we have used in many K–3
classrooms or with inexperienced older readers. Figure 8.4 (page 172) is a story map for
readers in grades 4–6 or for more experienced younger children. Once children record
the elements of a story, either map can then be used as a source of information for dis-
cussing stories in book clubs, literature circles, and other literacy contexts. In addition,
you can use either map as a blueprint for teaching children to retell a story orally or
write a summary.

Oral Retelling
Morrow (1984, 1985, 1986) describes oral retelling as an ideal means of improving chil-
dren’s concept of story structure and overall story comprehension. We highly advocate
the use of oral retelling as part of the K–3 reading program. Once you have taught chil-
dren how to record the setting, characters, problems, solutions, and consequences in a
story map, we find it is relatively simple to teach them to retell a story, using the story
map as their guide. Here is our recommended procedure for teaching children to retell
a story:

1. Place a completed story map on an easel, and tell children you are going to
model retelling a story.
2. Model telling the story in your own words in proper sequence, while pointing
to the various story elements on the story map. It is important to be very explicit.
For example, when identifying the setting, you might say, “The setting of the
story is at the lake at sunrise.”
3. Debrief the retelling by asking children to tell you the steps you have used for
retelling the story. Be sure they understand that the story needs to be told in
sequential order.
4. Write the strategy steps for a retelling on a second easel chart, and review the
steps with the children orally. Your strategy chart may look like Figure 8.5 (page
173) when you are finished writing.
5. Review the strategy steps, and then ask children to partner with another child
to retell a story for which they have already made a story map (guided prac-
tice).
 PROBLEM
SETTING SOLUTION

CHARACTERS CONSEQUENCES

EVENTS LEADING
TO SOLUTION

171
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

FIGURE 8.3. Simple story map.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Setting

Place

Time

Characters

INITIATING EVENT INTERNAL RESPONSE ATTEMPT AT RESOLUTION

172
SECOND ATTEMPT CONSEQUENCES REACTIONS
AT RESOLUTION

FIGURE 8.4. Complex story map.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 173

1. Hold your story map to guide your storytelling.

2. Start at the beginning of the story, and tell in your own words what
happened at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story.

3. Tell the story in sequence.

4. Don’t forget to tell about:

• The setting and each of the characters.
• What the trouble or problem was in the story.
• What happened to the characters at the end of the story.

FIGURE 8.5. How to retell a story.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and
Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy
this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page
for details).

6. Walk around the room, coaching individual partners to success.

7. Debrief the students’ experiences, and give them multiple opportunities for
guided and independent practice.

We have had much success with oral retelling in grades K–2 with our emergent
readers. Not only do children love retelling stories in their own words, but we find that
it helps them focus on important story elements while reading, and subsequently raises
their comprehension of the overall story. You will read about the use of oral retelling as
a comprehension assessment strategy in Chapter 12.

Written Summaries
Writing summaries of narrative text is a good way for readers in grades 1–6 to record
their understanding of major story elements. We teach children to write story summa-
ries by using the same cognitive strategy instruction framework described in Chapter
5. For this task, they use a story map as a blueprint to write the summary. Summary
writing is an advanced skill, and it requires much teaching and practice for children
to produce a complete summary. Figure 8.6 is a second grader’s summary of the story
“The Ugly Duckling,” by Hans Christian Andersen. You will see that even children
as young as second grade or younger can be taught to write clear, concise summaries
of stories. Again, you will see more examples of writing story summaries as a way of
assessing comprehension in Chapter 12.
We have often found that in primary classrooms, the literature curriculum revolves
solely around story structure and story maps. In the following section, we present ways
to teach other story comprehension strategies that lead children to a deeper understand-
ing of plot, characterization, and theme.
174 TEACHING READING

“The Ugly Duckling” by Hans Christian Andersen

A SUMMARY
By Matt, 2nd grade

“The Ugly Duckling” is a story about a mother duck and her six eggs. One morning she
saw another egg. All the eggs hatched and most of the ducklings were yellow. The last
egg hatched and the duck was UGLY. It was gray and large. All the animals on the farm
made fun of it so the ugly duckling went away. He was so sad. One day he saw beautiful
swans swimming. They all loved him and called him beautiful. So he wasn’t a duck all
along! He was a swan! Now he is one of the most beautifullest birds in the pond and he
is happy.

FIGURE 8.6. Summary of “The Ugly Duckling.”

Teaching Elements of Plot, Characterization,

and Theme

Strategies leading to the deeper meaning of literature are often implicitly taught through
literature discussions, small-group work, and written responses to literature. We advo-
cate the explicit teaching of literature strategies that allow children to examine (1) charac-
ters’ cultures, motivations, and subsequent behaviors; (2) more complex plots and story
lines; and (3) complex themes. Figure 8.7 lists several strategies we have found useful
to teach for these purposes; the list is by no means a complete list of the strategies good
readers use while reading literature. We advocate the teaching of these strategies in
K–6 classrooms as children encounter stories with more complex plots, characters, and
themes.
Teaching students to interpret these more complex plots, characters, and themes is
considered to be part of the reader response curriculum, which is described in detail
in the next chapter. For now, we provide a lesson to illustrate how to teach a literature
strategy, using the book The Royal Bee (Park & Park, 2000). It is meant to be a model to
follow as you design lessons to teach other narrative text strategies, such as those listed
in Figure 8.7. You will recognize how the cognitive strategy instructional model frames
this lesson.

A Sample Lesson

Lesson: Strategy for identifying a character’s personality traits

Lesson Grade Levels: 4–6
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of how to identify a
character’s personality traits.
Text: The Royal Bee (Park & Park, 2000)
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 175

Plot
• Identifying story structure
• Identifying sequence of events
• Identifying how events lead to characters’ actions, behaviors, or
attitudes

Characterization
• Identifying personality traits of characters
• Identifying physical descriptions of characters
• Identifying how main character’s personality leads to outcome of story
• Identifying feelings and emotions of characters
• Identifying problems main character has throughout book
• Identifying how a character’s motivations lead to actions

Setting
• Identifying setting
• Comparing settings of chapters
• Comparing book settings

Theme
• Identifying the theme of the story
• Identifying how characters’ actions, behaviors, and/or attitudes lead
to the theme of the story
• Identifying how characters’ cultures affect the theme or the outcome
of the story

FIGURE 8.7. Selected reading strategies for literature.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

Declarative Knowledge:
“Today I am going to model a strategy for you to use while we are reading a story.
The name of the strategy is identifying a character’s personality traits. Can anyone
tell me what a personality trait is?”

Keep in mind that during the declarative knowledge portion of the lesson, it is your
responsibility as the teacher to conceptualize the strategy. Some children may know
what a personality or character trait is; many will not. Therefore, the lesson starts with
a vocabulary activity designed to prepare students for identifying character traits of
storybook characters.
The question above invites children to brainstorm their understanding of per-
sonality traits. However, in the course of the discussion, it is essential to bring out and
record two distinct sets of ideas: (1) a list of character traits, so children can have the
list to use later when thinking about characters; and (2) a list of ways they know these
176 TEACHING READING

things about people in their lives. You can use a visual structure like the one shown in
Figure 8.8 to record the children’s ideas.
Once you establish what a character trait is, and the children understand how
“people” traits can be determined in real life, you can continue with the strategy
teaching.

“The reason why we are learning this strategy on how to identify character traits is
so it will help us gain a deeper understanding of characters in our books. Watch
me while I model for you how to preview a text and identify a character’s per-
sonality.”

Procedural Knowledge: The strategy steps you will be modeling are given in bold-
face, so you can see how to provide each strategy step explicitly and then apply it to
the book. As illustrated below and in Figure 8.9, a graphic organizer is used as part of
this modeling process.

“I am going to model our strategy with the book The Royal Bee, by Frances Park
and Ginger Park, since we have already read and enjoyed the book. I am going
to begin by rereading parts of the book and thinking about the main character,
Song-ho. It is his personality that we are going to try to identify. You remember
that this book takes place a very long time ago in Korea, when only the privileged
children were allowed to go to school. Now I am going to begin my think-aloud,
so I want all of you to pay close attention to my thinking. Then I will let you try
out our strategy.
[Think-aloud begins.] “In the opening of the book, the author tells us that
Song-ho is a poor boy who is not allowed to go to school, but who very much
wants to read books and write poetry. So right away, the narrator tells us that
Song-ho is interested in reading and writing, so I am going to write that down in
my graphic organizer under the heading ‘What do others say about the charac-
ter?’ In this case, the narrator has told us about Song-ho’s hopes and dreams.

TRAITS HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS

ABOUT SOMEONE?
• Kind • Things they do.
• Brave • Things they say.
• Happy • The way they talk to people.
• Sad • Things other people tell you
• Positive about them.
• Negative
• Shy
• Coward
• Considerate
• Thoughtful
• Pleasant
• Honest
• Clever
• Smart

FIGURE 8.8. Personality traits.

  Appreciating Children’s Literature 177

Character: Song-ho
How does Think about all
the character this information
What do others react to and see if it helps
What does the What does the say about the events or you identify a
Event character say? character do? character? people? character trait.
Page 1: Interested in Smart
Setting reading and Motivated
writing.

Pages Tells his mother Sneaks to the Respectful

2–3: he will do all his school to listen to Crafty
Morning chores. the lessons outside Brave
Asks the teacher if the door.
he can stay outside
the door and learn
the lessons.

FIGURE 8.9. Graphic organizer with Song-ho’s personality traits.

“Then I will continue reading. [Read aloud the next event in the book.]
Hmmm. The second event in the story takes us to Song-ho’s home, where Song-
ho tells his mother that he will do all his chores while she is in the fields working.
I am going to write that down in my graphic organizer under the heading ‘What
does the character say?’
“Also in this morning event, Song-ho hears the school bell and runs to stand
outside the door and listen to the lessons, even though he is not allowed to go
inside the school. Well, that tells us more about Song-ho, so I am going to write
that information down under the heading ‘What does the character do?’
“As I continue to read, I learn that the teacher hears Song-ho outside the door.
When the teacher comes out, Song-ho asks him if he can come to school, even
though he is not one of the rich children. This is important too, so I am going
to write that down in my graphic organizer under the heading ‘What does the
character say?’
“Now, children, you can see that by just reading a few pages of text, I have
found out quite a bit about Song-ho’s character. Let’s take a look at our graphic
organizer and see what we’ve learned so far. Well, we’ve learned that Song-ho
wants to learn to read and write. From that information, we can maybe infer that
Song-ho is a smart boy, and that he is motivated, because he wishes to be educated.
So I am going to write smart and motivated in my graphic organizer under the last
heading.
“Then I am going to look at what I have listed under the second story event.
First, I wrote that Song-ho tells his mother that he will do all his chores. So from
that, I can determine that Song-ho is a respectful boy, because that is how he acts
with his mother. I’ll write respectful in my graphic organizer.
“Next, we see that Song-ho decides to sneak to the school to listen to lessons
outside the door. Hmm. Well, we can infer that Song-ho is crafty to figure out a
178 TEACHING READING

way to learn lessons, even though he is not allowed in the school. I am going to
write crafty in my graphic organizer.
“Finally, when the teacher hears Song-ho outside the door and asks Song-ho
what he is doing there, Song-ho asks the teacher if he can stay outside the door
and learn lessons. I think he’s very brave to do that, don’t you? Considering that
by the law of the land, only the privileged can go to school, Song-ho must have a
lot of courage to address the teacher that way. I’ll write brave in my graphic orga-
nizer. [Think-aloud ends.]
“Now, girls and boys, I am going to give you an opportunity to try out this
strategy in this same book. Let’s review our strategy before you work with your
partner trying out the strategy.” [Write on chart paper the following strategy
steps.]

Strategy for Identifying a Character’s Personality

1. Read the story once through to identify the setting, characters, events, and problems.
2. Skim the story again, paying attention to just one character.
3. While skimming, ask yourself these questions:
What does the character think about?
What does the character say?
What does the character do?
What do others say/think about the character?
How does the character react to events or people?
4. As you answer these questions, record your answers on a graphic organizer. Once you
have the character actions and thoughts recorded, think about words you can use to
describe your character’s traits.
Examples of character traits:
Positive Negative
Determined Lazy
Thoughtful Impulsive
Kind Mean
Considerate Inconsiderate
Outgoing Shy
Honest Devious
Pleasant Unpleasant
Sweet Hurtful
Brave Coward
5. Once you come up with a list of character traits, try combining them to describe your
character’s personality.

After you provide the modeling and strategy steps, it is important that students
immediately practice the strategy. While the students are engaged in guided practice,
you can coach small groups or individuals to success in strategy application.

Conditional Knowledge: Immediately following the guided practice, you want to be

sure to have students evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy.
First, it will be important to debrief the information they have included in their
graphic organizers. The difficult part of this strategy is evaluating a character’s words,
actions, and motivations to determine his or her character traits. This requires inter-
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 179

pretation and so will require much coaching. The children’s responses at this point of
the lesson will aid your assessment of how well they have applied the strategy.
Next, you must debrief the effectiveness of the strategy. You can do that by asking
the children the following questions:

1. “How effective was our strategy?”

2. “Did you think of other ways of determining a character’s personality traits? If
so, we will add it to our strategy steps.”

You want the children to understand that a strategy is just a guideline and that it does
not always work when you apply it to every text. The strategy may need adjustment to
meet the demands of a different story.
Your final step in the strategy lesson sequence is to guide students to the under-
standing of when to use the strategy again. You can accomplish this by having chil-
dren practice the strategy in a wide variety of narrative text and debriefing how the
strategy might change for each.

The lesson presented above is a reader response strategy lesson, because it requires
interpretation by the reader. In the next chapter, we provide extensive information on
reader response theories and practices as we continue our work in the area of literature
strategy instruction.

Contexts for Literature Discussions

Class discussions and peer talk are important contexts for the teaching of literature.
Chapters 2 and 4 provide information on literature circles, book talks, and other con-
texts for talk about books. These contexts provide a framework for children’s practice of
reading strategies while providing opportunities to drive them to the deeper meanings
of text. Refer back to these chapters to think about ways you can design your reading
curriculum to include both comprehension strategy instruction and multiple opportu-
nities for talk about good books.

Teaching Figurative Language

and Other Literary Devices

Teaching children about figurative language and other literary devices is another impor-
tant part of the literature curriculum. Figure 8.10 is a comprehensive list of such lan-
guage and devices, as well as their definitions.
You can use the vocabulary-­teaching strategies from Chapter 4 to teach figura-
tive language terms. Choose one of the strategies that helps to illustrate a concept. For
example, when teaching a simile, you can use a feature matrix to identify the parts of
a simile, and then have children practice finding similes in text and add them to the
matrix. Learning about figurative language gives children more of the tools they need
to understand literature.
180 TEACHING READING

Type of
figurative
language/device Definition Example
Alliteration The use of two or more sequential Peter Piper picked a peck of
words with the same consonant pickled peppers.
sound.
Foreshadowing The use of hints or clues to The boy continued on his way,
suggest what will happen later in wary of strangers who might be
a story. lurking in the shadows.
Hyperbole An exaggeration that helps to Juan’s eyesight was so good, he
create an image for the reader. could see around corners.
Idiom An expression or word usage that I have a bee in my bonnet.
is common in one language but A stitch in time saves nine.
cannot be literally translated into
another language.
Images Words or phrases that appeal to During the storm, thunder
the senses: smell, taste, touch, crashed, the surf pounded the
sight, or sound. beach, and lightning brightened
the sky.
Metaphor An implied comparison of two He is a lamb.
things that have at least one trait
in common.
Onomatopoeia Words that imitate a sound. The bees were buzzing around
the child’s ears.
Personification The assignment of human The wind whispered its secrets
characteristics to nonhuman to me.
things.
Simile An explicit comparison of two He is as gentle as a lamb.
similar things, using the word like
or as.

FIGURE 8.10. Figurative language and other literary devices.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 181

Writing Book Reviews

Over the last several years, we have experimented with teaching children to write book
reviews of good literature. We have discovered that book reviews are far more rigorous
and certainly more academically challenging than the old-­fashioned book report.
A comprehensive book review contains two clear components: a short summary of
the book and an analysis of the book. If the review is to entice other readers to read the
book, then the summary should not give away the end of the story.
Book review formats are not standardized. You can design one that is specific to
the skills of your students or to your school’s curriculum. We offer three book review
formats below, to demonstrate the difference of what to expect across skill and grade
levels.

Book Review Format (Emergent)

Tell what the story is about.
Tell whom the story was about.
Tell your friends why they should read this book.

Book Review Format (Primary)

• A short summary of the story.
• A short description of the main character and his or her
goals and problems.
• Personal reflection—­include:
• How you liked the book, including your favorite parts.
• What you did not like about the book.
• Who should read this book?

Book Review Format (Intermediate)

Summary: Include a detailed setting, a description of the main
characters, and enough plot details to entice readers to read the book.
Character Analysis: Choose one main character, identify his or her
character traits, and include text evidence to support your points.
Theme: Describe the theme of the story, and include text evidence to
support your thinking.
Reflection: Give your personal opinion of the book. Tell why you think
it is a good piece of literature (or the opposite).
Recommendation: End with a strong recommendation that will either
entice your classmates to read the book or dissuade them from doing so.

As you can see from the three formats above, the expectations for book reviews
increase as we traverse grade levels. Employing a rigorous reading comprehension cur-
riculum in each grade will ensure that our readers are progressing to meet the demands
of more complex texts.
We have suggested to classroom teachers that children will be more likely to spend
time on writing good book reviews if it is an authentic task—that is, if they know that
182 TEACHING READING

their reviews will be enjoyed by many readers. Try placing the book reviews in your
classroom library, your school library, or even your town library if the children’s librar-
ian agrees. In one district, we were able to talk a local independent bookseller into using
the children’s book reviews to “sell” her books. We helped her place the book reviews
right on the bookshelf where the books were displayed. She was delighted, as were the
townspeople who read the reviews and considered purchasing the reviewed books for
friends or family members. In addition to libraries, classrooms, and bookstores, you
always have the option of having students download their reviews onto Amazon.com
or a similar website, to be considered for online publication.

The most prevalent types of writing about literature being taught in elementary
school include reader response journals and written responses to literature. We devote
the next chapter to these aspects of the literature curriculum. Also in Chapter 9, we
describe reader response theory and present ways to help your students make personal
connections to the literature they read.
Before you leave this chapter, think about the key terms we present in Figure 8.11,
and jot down definitions in your own words. Also, you may want to design a literature
lesson with your favorite children’s book, using the information you have learned in
this chapter while it is fresh in your mind.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 8.12 (page 184) the artifacts you created while or
after you read this chapter.
 Appreciating Children’s Literature 183

Key Terms for Chapter 8

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

elements of genre

story structure

setting

characters: protagonist, antagonist

problem, solution, consequence

story map graphic organizer

oral retelling

figurative language

FIGURE 8.11. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 8.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 8

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

184
FIGURE 8.12. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 8.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Chapter 9

Supporting Children’s Voices

Response to Literature through Writing

We, the authors of this text, are readers. Since we are literacy professors, there is no
guilt associated with our leisure reading activities. We easily justify time spent reading
as time spent working. We read everything—adult books or children’s books, fiction
or nonfiction, contemporary or classic—but our great love is modern fiction. We are
always searching for new authors and savor new books by our old favorites. At the top
of our list of contemporary American authors is John Irving. We wait for Irving to com-
pose his next novel the minute we finish his last. As soon as the prepublication hype
for a new Irving book hits the mass media, we arrange to pick it up from our favorite
independent bookseller on the day of release. In short, we act like Harry Potter fans, and
we cannot understand the lack of similar fanfare for Irving as for J. K. Rowling. The
following is a true story about our reading of one of Irving’s new books. This story will
illustrate for you the importance of supporting readers’ voices as they read and respond
to literature.
Over a decade and several books ago, Irving (1998) wrote A Widow for One Year. I
(SLP) remember waiting impatiently for the release date, and I cleared the following
weekend to devour his latest work. As I began savoring the first few chapters, I was
not disappointed. In fact, I was so enraptured with Irving’s latest story and storytelling
style, I uncharacteristically found myself placing sticky notes in the margins as I pas-
sionately responded to the work. I believe I was experiencing what Rosenblatt (1995), a
legendary reader response theorist, has called “living through” a text (p. 33).
After I finished reading the last page, I experienced a feeling of deep loss, as all
good readers who have greatly enjoyed a book do. I missed the characters! What were
they doing today? How would they continue to transform their lives? How would the
remainder of their lives unfold? Again, as any good reader does, I speculated on the
answers to my questions and came to my own conclusions.
To assuage my feelings of loss, I went back to investigate what I had written on
my sticky notes, and discovered that my notes were of two types. One type recorded
my responses to the story, such as disenchantment with a character’s action, elation
over another’s good fortune, or deep feelings of empathy with a scene or a character’s
dilemma. Another type of response was a reaction to Irving’s writing style. For exam-

185
186 TEACHING READING

ple, the last sticky note I placed in the book said, “Wow! 350 pages into the story, Irving
changed his point of view and addressed the reader with a question I am more than
willing to answer.” As I reflected on my own responses that occurred during the text
reading, I added more sticky notes. These responses recorded after reading were more
reflective in nature, since I now knew the end of the story and the characters’ resolu-
tions to their troubles. These written responses were more critical and more thought-
fully composed, since I did not have a good story to hurry back to.
The next day, I gave my Irving book to a good friend, the coauthor of this book
(RLM). She was about to take a vacation and I tucked the book into her carry-on lug-
gage, with a written message: “It’s one of his best!” Unbeknownst to her, I had left my
sticky notes in situ for her to read as she enjoyed the novel. Three or four days later,
I was not surprised to receive a phone call from a distant Caribbean island with her
exclamations of pleasure at finding my responses in the book. She elaborated that my
sticky notes were like having a friend reading side by side, sharing reactions and reflec-
tions. We talked a bit more about the novel, and closed the conversation by making a
date to talk in depth about the novel’s exceptional characters, events, and credible turn
of events. She also added a caveat: Her text interpretations did not all agree with mine.
Such a satisfying conversation! We both delighted in sharing our thoughts and
reflections with someone else who had read the novel. Not surprisingly, investigators
of reader response classroom practice suggest that real readers gather to discuss and
take pleasure in each other’s personal responses. Sometimes disagreement ensues,
which makes the interchange all the more enjoyable, as readers take opportunities to
reinforce their own interpretations or even transform them as a result of talking about
books (Beck, McKeown, Hamilton, & Kucan, 1997; Chinn, Anderson, & Waggoner, 2001;
Evans, 2002; Maloch, 2002; Sipe, 2000).
In this chapter, we hope that our Irving tale will inspire you to learn about reader
response theory and how to support children’s voices, oral and written, while reading
good literature. You may also refer back to Chapter 2 for more specific information on
student talk about literature.

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Teaching reader response.
99
Teaching children to write a “free” response to literature.
99
Designing prompts for written responses to literature.
99

Rosenblatt’s Reader Response Theory

Our current understanding of reader response theory is drawn from the work of Rosen­
blatt, as originally set forth in the first edition of her classic text, Literature as Exploration
(Rosenblatt, 1938). More recently, Rosenblatt (2004) has suggested that “the reading of
any work of literature is, of necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving
the mind and emotions of some particular reader and a particular text at a particu-
lar time under particular circumstances” (p. 1363). Rosenblatt (1995) has further pos-
 Supporting Children’s Voices 187

ited that readers make a unique transaction with the text when they interpret the text
through their own unique experiences and prior knowledge. In these words, Rosenblatt
(2005) helps us conceptualize reader response theory:

A story or poem or play is merely ink spots on paper until a reader transforms them into a
set of meaningful symbols. When these symbols lead us to live through some moment of
feeling, to enter into some human personality, or to participate imaginatively in some situa-
tion or event, we have evoked a work of literary art. Literature provides a living through, not
simply knowledge about: not information that lovers have died young and fair, but a living-
­through of Romeo and Juliet . . . (pp. 62–63)

To further understand Rosenblatt’s interpretation of readers’ engagement with lit-

erature, let us consider a few tenets from her work:

1. “The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, pres-
ent needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment, and a particular physi-
cal condition” (Rosenblatt, 1995, p. 30). As Rosenblatt makes clear, readers bring to the
text their own prior knowledge and experiences, and make a transaction with the text to
create personal meaning and interpretations. Reader connections may be something as
simple as sharing a feeling with a story character or reacting to an event experienced
by the character. As readers respond to literature in a personal way, they are creating a
private transaction with the text. Rosenblatt (1978, p. 24) further explains that readers
can take either an aesthetic stance or an efferent stance while reading.
An aesthetic stance is reading for appreciation of the text and occurs during read-
ing. Rosenblatt and other theorists suggest that in this type of stance, the primary focus
is on private aspects of meaning. During aesthetic reading, “the reader’s attention is
centered directly on what he is living through during his relationship with that particu-
lar text” (Rosenblatt, 1978, p. 25).
An efferent stance is information-­driven and also occurs during reading. In this
case, the reader is reading for information, and the focus is on public aspects of mean-
ing. In this type of stance, Rosenblatt (1978) suggests that the reader is not engaged
with personal or qualitative responses, but is only focused on information gathering.
This type of stance is often used with nonfiction or expository text, although Rosen­
blatt (1978) argues that it is possible for readers to take this type of stance while reading
literature. She further argues that readers who take an efferent stance with poetry or
other literature often miss the personal connections and enjoyment of the literary work.
In her words, such readers will not be able to “savor the images, the sounds, the smells,
the actions, the associations, and the feelings that the words point to” (Rosenblatt, 1991,
p. 447).
2. “An intense response to a work will have its roots in capacities and experiences
already present in the personality and mind of the reader. This principle is an impor-
tant one to remember in the selection of literary materials to be presented to students”
(Rosenblatt, 1995, p. 41). Over the last 30 years, a substantial amount of research has
been conducted on reader response theory, children’s literature, and classroom-based
literature instruction (Beach, 2000; Enciso, 1997; Galda, 1982; Gee, 2000; Many & Wise-
man, 1992; Martinez, Roser, Hoffman, & Battle, 1992; McGee, 1992; Pappas & Pettegrew,
1998). Some of this research suggests that readers will make personal connections to
188 TEACHING READING

literature because they see similarities between their own lives and plot events, charac-
ters’ personalities, cultural backgrounds, and/or themes. These are all important points
to consider when you are choosing literature for your elementary curriculum.
3. “The same text will have a very different meaning and value at different times
or under different circumstances” (Rosenblatt, 1995, p. 35). As a reader’s prior knowl-
edge and experience changes, so too does the reader’s interpretation of text. This tenet
is best understood through your own personal experience with a piece of good litera-
ture. All of us have reread a favorite book and thought that someone had rewritten it
between readings. Obviously, the text did not change; we changed! Rosenblatt suggests
that readers’ interpretations and appreciation of literature change as they change, there-
fore creating new meanings during different times in their lives.
4. “Awareness that others have had different experiences with it [the text] will lead
the reader back to the text for a closer look. The young reader points to what in the
text explains his response. He may discover, however, that he has overreacted to some
elements and ignored others” (Rosenblatt, 1983, p. 286). Rosenblatt and other reader
response theorists (Probst, 1981; Purves & Beach, 1972) have suggested that readers’
sharing literary interpretations in a classroom or other social forum is just as important
as readers’ taking time for reflection on their own personal responses. As readers share
their interpretations in a social context, they have opportunities to accept or reject the
many different interpretations of text meaning.

The body of research and best practice on reader response in elementary class-
rooms is vast and is still growing. In this chapter, we suggest practical ways in which
effective teachers can connect readers to the rich experiences the world of literature has
to offer.

Reader Response Classroom Activities

For the last 15–20 years, K–6 teachers have been implementing reader response theories
and practice into their classrooms by having children respond to literature in many dif-
ferent ways. We have experimented with reader response instruction over the years and
have found that the following activities are easily implemented in K–6 classrooms.

Time for Personal Reflection

Rosenblatt (1995) suggests that readers need time to think about their own responses
and reflect on them before sharing. For example, following an initial reading of litera-
ture, you can ask children to think about the parts of the story that were meaning-
ful to them—those with which they could make a personal connection. This can be
accomplished by providing an open-ended prompt, such as “Think about the story
we have just read before we have a class discussion,” or a more structured prompt,
such as “If you were the main character, would you have responded to the situation
differently or in the same way?” We have found this opportunity for simple reflection
to be invaluable. If children do not have the time or opportunity to form their own
personal meanings before class discussions, some students, especially young children,
will simply parrot what other children say. To that end, we always follow the initial text
 Supporting Children’s Voices 189

reading with time for personal reflection before we ask children to talk or write about
literature.

Classroom Discussion
One of the most important reader response activities is classroom talk. In Chapters 2 and
4 of this book, we have described contexts for talking about literature, and have stressed
the importance of such talk for vocabulary and language development. It is impor-
tant for you to remember that book clubs, literature circles, whole-class exchanges, and
small-group discussions are vital contributions to the literature curriculum. We have
found that in discussion groups, children will ground their own personal interpreta-
tions in the text, as well as alter them as others enter the conversation. These discussion
groups give the readers opportunities to arrive at deeper meanings of the literature. In
many of her publications, Rosenblatt (1938, 1978) has suggested that readers confirm
and/or deepen their responses by sharing and comparing their interpretations with
others.
An essential guideline for leading literature discussion groups is that children
must have a safe environment to talk about personal feelings, attitudes, and interpreta-
tions without fear of mockery from peers. You can support students’ questioning and
open reflection by offering a supportive environment within which to talk about books.
Creating this respectful environment is vital to the success of your reader response
instruction. Refer back to Chapter 2 for guidelines on how to create a supportive envi-
ronment for student talk.
Finally, reader response practitioners make it clear that the teacher is not to be the
“arbiter” of meaning while children are discussing works of literature. Children are
to be encouraged to make personal responses, as long as they are able to provide text
evidence to support their interpretations. Teaching children how to find text support is
discussed later in this chapter, when we suggest pedagogy for teaching reader response
principles.

Personal Response Journals

Perhaps the most prevalent reader response activity in the elementary classroom today
is asking children to write in personal response journals after reading and discussing
a story. There are two basic types of responses you can ask children to write in such
journals.
The first type consists of “free” responses after discussions of stories. A free
response means that a child is free to respond to any aspect of the text without con-
straints or a prompt from the teacher. Figure 9.1 provides examples of “free” journal
responses from a third-grade classroom, and Figure 9.2 contains an older child’s “free”
journal entry in response to the book Stone Fox (Gardiner, 1980).
The second type of response is a more structured one. That is, children are asked to
answer prompts, such as “What did the main character say or do in this story to make
you like or dislike him or her?” This type of response to literature can be written in an
ongoing journal or as a separate entity.
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to this second type of children’s written
responses to literature. Teaching children how to respond to a prompt is an important
190 TEACHING READING

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

The boy went on a big adventure. I like going on adventures.

Sometimes I get afraid of monsters like the boy in the story.

The Napping House by Audrey Woods

The boy left his bike out in the rain. I got into trouble
for doing that one time.

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

I liked Wilbur because he is shy like me.

Charlotte is my favorite character because she is helpful.
I like Charlotte because she uses big words like my mom.

FIGURE 9.1. “Free” response journal entries by younger children.

Stone Fox
by John Reynolds Gardiner

   I have just finished reading that Searchlight exerted himself so much during the
race that his heart burst. Searchlight knew how important it was that he and Little Willy
win the race so Searchlight sacrificed his own life. My heart hurt when I read the lines.
My own dog died last year of old age. It wasn’t the same kind of death as Searchlight, but
I am sure that Little Willy felt the same way as I did. In the next chapter, I will see how
Little Willy is. I am sure I am going to understand his feelings because they are probably
very close to my own when I lost my dog.

Feelings when my dog died:

sa d Lonely
gloomy spair
De
A ng
ry/Mad

FIGURE 9.2. “Free” response entry about Stone Fox (Gardiner, 1980) from an older child’s jour-
nal.
 Supporting Children’s Voices 191

skill to teach in the primary grades, for two reasons: (1) it provides an opportunity for
children to lend their voices to literary interpretation, and (2) it allows opportunities to
assess children’s abilities to interpret and make personal connections to literature. You
can read more about using journal writing to assess comprehension in Chapter 12.
We present a cognitive strategy and a model of a good written response on the fol-
lowing pages, to help guide your acquisition of the pedagogy associated with written
responses to literature.

Teaching Children to Construct Written Responses

to Literature: Prompts

In the last few years, many teachers have come to us for advice on how to teach chil-
dren to construct a good written response to literature when presented with a specific
prompt. State and national assessments now ask children to respond to a prompt in a
written format. Here are some examples of common prompts:

As I read the story, I was reminded of . . . Because . . .

Compare the main character to yourself. How are you alike? Different?
What are the problems that the character     faced in the story, and how did he
[or she] solve them?

We have experimented with teaching children to respond to prompts with a cogni-

tive strategy that we have designed for this purpose. Although the strategy is helpful
for children to remember the components of a good written response, it is not a sub-
stitute for teacher coaching and student practice. In our forays into written response
composition, we have discovered that much can be accomplished through individual
conferences with students. Following is a step-by-step outline for teaching children in
grades 3–6 how to compose a written response. Later we demonstrate how to decrease
the level of difficulty for younger or less experienced readers and writers.

Teaching the Elements of the Written Response Genre

We begin lessons in writing a specific genre by having children understand the nature
of the piece they are about to write, or the elements that make up the genre. In this case,
the genre we are teaching is the written response to literature. We always introduce the
genre’s elements and show children a model of the genre before we teach them how to
write one.
The most important elements of a written response to literature include answer-
ing the prompt with details from the story; showing rather than telling; supporting
the answer with evidence from the text; and using first- or third-­person point of view.
These elements are listed in Figure 9.3 in a classroom-ready format.
Perhaps you are puzzled as to why we suggest that young readers and writers must
have text evidence to support their interpretations. Most response practitioners suggest
that although readers should be allowed to freely express their reactions to text, we
must also teach that subjective responses must be grounded in the text. As Rosenblatt
(1995) has pointed out,
192 TEACHING READING

A good written response . . .

• Answers the prompt with details from the story.

• “Shows” the reader, instead of “telling.”
• Provides clear evidence from the text that supports the answer.
The evidence can be a quotation or a paraphrase of the text
information.


• Uses first-person or third-person point of view consistently.

FIGURE 9.3. Elements of a good written response to literature.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

When the focus of our teaching is the transaction between reader and book, such concerns
do not lead away from the work into sheer emotionality and theorizing. The student scru-
tinizes the two-way circuit set up between himself and the literary work. He tests whether
his particular personal response is justified, whether it has incorporated as adequately as
possible what the printed page offers. (p. 70)

Asking children to tell how they arrived at an interpretation or a personal response

is essential in teaching the act of responding. We can ask children, “How do you know
that? Point to a line in the text that supports your idea.” As Rosenblatt recommends in
the passage quoted above, we must ask children to take a look at the “two-way circuit”
between the text and their responses, and express that connection in their written com-
positions.
Our list of genre elements also includes writing a good response from either the
first or the third person. Often children will start off writing in first person and switch
to the second (e.g., “you understood”). This switching back and forth confuses the audi-
ence and children should be taught to fix this in the revision process. We believe chil-
dren should be taught these writing techniques early in their development.
We also believe that elaboration in a written response helps students to deliver
their message with detail and clarity. We teach elaboration as part of the process of
showing the reader, as opposed to telling the reader. Often children will just put the main
ideas down on paper. They need to be coached to elaborate with detail, as well as to
provide evidence suggesting the connections between their interpretations and the text.
Following is an example of a classroom chart we have used to illustrate the difference
between showing and telling.

Show Your Reader, Don’t Tell!

Telling: Tells the reader with no detail
Miyuki and Sophia planted a garden. Miyuki was a good gardener. Sophia was
not. I am a good gardener, like Miyuki.
 Supporting Children’s Voices 193

Showing: Shows the reader with much detail

Miyuki and Sophia planted a beautiful garden in their backyard with many
different flowers and plants. They planted lilies and roses, as well as lettuce and
beans. Miyuki spent long hours caring for the plants by watering and weeding. Sophia
was not such a good gardener and let the weeds grow around her plants. I am like
Miyuki in the garden. I also plant string beans and lettuce. I water and weed the
plants to help them grow.

Other elements of a good written response to literature may depend upon your
school’s literacy curriculum. We have not included such obvious elements as a strong
organizational structure or grade-level application of the English language conventions,
which we require for all written compositions.

Showing a Written Response Model

As suggested earlier, once children understand the elements of a response, we then
show them a model. Figure 9.4 shows the composition of a third grader that contains all
the elements of a good response to literature. The response is based on The Last Puppy
(Asch, 1980), which is an enchanting tale about the runt of a large litter of puppies. The
story is told from the point of view of this puppy, who ruins every opportunity to be
adopted by being too eager with the families who come to the farm seeking a puppy.
For example, when a beautiful woman comes to adopt one of the puppies, the runt gets
so excited that when she picks him up, he bites her on the nose. After many trials, our
puppy is the “last puppy” of the litter and is heartbroken. Finally, a family with a little
boy comes to the farm and adopts the puppy. In the car on the way home, the little boy
kisses the “last puppy” and says, “You know what? You are my first puppy!”
Now that you know the gist of the story, turn to Figure 9.4 and read the prompt and
the sample response. While you read the response, keep an eye out for the elements of

The prompt:

The story The Last Puppy, by Frank Asch, is about a puppy who wants to be
adopted. Can you think of an event in your life when you felt left out?

The response from a third grader:

   The Last Puppy, by Frank Asch, was about a puppy who was so sad
because no one wanted him. He tried and tried to be adopted. When
someone came to adopt a puppy, he would act silly and the people picked
a different puppy. I can think of one time when I felt like the last puppy.
My friends and I were playing baseball. Sara and Billy took turns choosing
teams. I was just like the puppy and acted silly. I jumped up and down and
said, “Pick me! Pick me!” They did not pick me. I felt sad like the last puppy.
They picked other kids to play first. I was just like the last puppy because
they picked me last.

FIGURE 9.4. Prompt for, and model response to, The Last Puppy (Asch, 1980).
194 TEACHING READING

a good response that we have presented above. Notice that our third grader’s composi-
tion has a personal connection backed up with text evidence; is written in consistent
first person; and shows the reader (through elaboration of the event in the writer’s life),
as opposed to simply telling the reader that the event happened. These elements are
essential to the success of a good response.

Components of a Written Response

Next, we need to take a look at the components of a response. Examine the response to
The Last Puppy as we have annotated it for you in Figure 9.5, and notice that there are
four clear parts:

1. Summary of the part of the story to which the personal connection is made.
2. The personal connection, or the answer to the prompt.
3. Direct evidence—tying the personal connection (answer) to the text by using a
quote from the text.
4. More direct evidence—tying the personal connection (answer) to the text by
paraphrasing the text.

The response format shown above and in Figure 9.5 is one that we prefer, but you
can make up your own format, depending upon the age and skill of the readers and

The Last Puppy, by Frank Asch, Summary of the

was about a puppy who was so part of the story to
sad because no one wanted him. which the personal
He tried and tried to be connection is made.
adopted. When someone came to
adopt a puppy, he would act
silly and the people picked a
different puppy.
I can think of one time when I Making the personal
felt like the last puppy. My connection.
friends and I were playing
baseball. Sara and Billy took
turns choosing teams.
I was just like the puppy and Providing direct
acted silly. I jumped up and evidence: Quoting
down and said, “Pick me! Pick the text.
me!”
They did not pick me. I felt
Providing more
sad like the last puppy. They
direct evidence:
picked other kids to play
Paraphrasing the text.
first. I was just like the last
puppy because they picked me
last.

FIGURE 9.5. Identification of elements of a good written response.

 Supporting Children’s Voices 195

writers in your classroom. Your school or district officials may even suggest a format
that they prefer. As we have mentioned in previous chapters, the way in which you
teach any literacy lesson to your class will depend upon three variables: (1) the grade
level of your class; (2) your class’s current skill level; and (3) the text difficulty, including
plot rigor and the characters’ level of sophistication. To accommodate these variables,
you will find it necessary to experiment with your teaching strategies.
Once children understand the genre’s elements and the format of a good response,
it is time to teach them how to gather information to compose their own responses.

Gathering Information for the Response

We teach the steps for gathering information for the response with tools you have
become familiar with in previous chapters of this text: a graphic organizer and a cogni-
tive strategy. Figure 9.6 (page 196) outlines a cognitive strategy that we have used suc-
cessfully for older children in grades 5–6. While you investigate this overall strategy,
direct your attention to two areas. First, note that we ask children to do a second close
reading of the text, to help identify their answer to the prompt. Second, notice that we
ask our writers to use a graphic organizer as a “planning step” in their writing. Once
students have recorded the ideas in the graphic organizer, they have a blueprint for
writing their responses. Our final teaching steps involve modeling how to compose a
response, using the graphic organizer as a support.

Modeling How to Compose the Written Response

At the bottom of Figure 9.6, you will find the final three strategy steps for the act of
composing the response. We ask children to summarize the part of the story that led
to their answer to the prompt; next, we ask them to describe their answer or personal
connection with elaboration and detail; finally, we ask them to provide text evidence to
support their response. Remember that a strategy is a heuristic, or a guideline, to help
readers or writers with their thinking processes as they engage in a new skill. The strat-
egy steps we have provided for you may need to be adapted to fit the type of response
you are asking children to write.
The lesson proceeds with modeling and providing a think-aloud of your strat-
egy application. As in all strategies, the essential ingredient is the explicitness of
your ­explanation during modeling, followed by multiple guided practices as children
attempt to acquire the new skill. Be patient, provide solid feedback to each of your writ-
ers, and encourage revision. As your students’ skill in writing responses grows, so too
will their confidence in writing responses in the classroom and on state and national
tests.

Teaching Written Responses to Younger Children

For emergent readers and writers, much of the reader response curriculum can be deliv-
ered orally. In particular, kindergartners may be inexperienced writers, so you can use
a prompt to elicit oral responses after a read-aloud. For example, you can ask the fol-
lowing questions:
 Steps for Gathering Information for a Written Response to Literature

1. Read the story for enjoyment and basic understanding.

2. Read the prompt, and think about what the prompt is asking you to do.
3. Think about your answer to the prompt. Can you think of an answer off the top of your
head?
4. Do a “close reading” of the text, searching for your answer and/or evidence from the
text that supports your answer.
While rereading, remember to use your good-reader strategies.
You can highlight the text, use sticky notes, or write in the margins of the text to mark
the important information you need to answer the prompt.
5. During the close reading, continue to ask yourself the questions pertaining to the
prompt, and record your direct answers to the prompt in a graphic organizer similar to
the one below. You may have multiple answers to the prompt.

Evidence from the text

My answer(s) in my own words Page number/line

6. Choose the answer that has the most—or the best—text evidence to support it.
7. Compose your written response from information you have included in the graphic
organizer.

Steps for Composing a Written Response

1. Summarize the part of the story that leads to your answer to the prompt.
2. Describe your answer with elaboration and detail.
3. Provide text evidence, either by paraphrasing the part of the text that supports your
answer or by quoting from the text.

FIGURE 9.6. Steps of the strategy for gathering information and composing a written response.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

196
 Supporting Children’s Voices 197

•• “Has anyone ever felt left out of an event, the way the last puppy does?”
•• “Has anyone had a dog that had a litter of puppies? If so, do you think one of the
puppies may have felt like the last puppy?”

When you are determining prompts appropriate for your young readers and writers, try
to create prompts that are easily tied back or connected to the text. It is never too early
to teach children to think about responses that are grounded in the text. For example, if
you ask children to tell you whether they have ever felt like the puppy in the book The
Last Puppy, they may begin to relate many types of unhappy events, such as “I felt sad
when my grandmother died,” or “I felt sad when my friend went away.” Such responses
are not necessarily grounded in the text. A more appropriate response to the prompt
might be “I felt like the last puppy when I was the last to be chosen to play baseball at
recess.” In order to help younger readers make the two-way transaction, you should
always encourage them to connect their responses to the text events.

Designing Prompts and Guiding Responses

Using Graphic Organizers to Guide Responses
We have found that the ways in which we ask readers to connect to text can help keep
their responses grounded in text or can have the opposite effect. For example, consider
the graphic organizers we have designed for response activities in Figures 9.7 (page 198)
and 9.8 (page 199). Notice that we have set up the graphic organizers to help readers
stay within the text boundaries by guiding their responses. Instead of asking students
simply to respond to an open prompt, we also provide them with practice in designing
graphic organizers to respond to specific plot elements, maybe first as a book character
and then as themselves. In other words, we ask them to make a response from the text
and then to make a parallel response themselves. As you experiment with designing
reader response activities, you will learn how best to lead your students to a good oral
or written response to literature.

More Ideas for Prompts

We have used the following prompts in classroom settings with positive results, depend-
ing upon students’ ability levels.

Personal Connections
•• What feelings did you experience while reading what took place in the following
event:           ?
•• During the text reading, did you recall a memory? What was it? Why did the text
help you to remember it?
•• What confused you in the text?
•• Is there an event in the text that you have experienced in your life?
•• How are you like the character        ?
•• How are you unlike the character        ?
 Thinking about how I am similar to and different from the book characters

Characters in

              How I am different from

Book name How I am like this character this character

             
Character name

             
Character name

Thinking about how my school is the same as or different from the school in the story

The school in the story My school

My classroom

Our special subjects

Sports

FIGURE 9.7. Reader response graphic organizers for young readers and writers.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

198
 Comparing Book Setting with Readers’ Setting

Place Time
BOOK/CHAPTER:

MY LIFE

Comparing Characters’ Problems with Readers’ Problems

Character Problem(s) shared Solution(s) shared

BOOK/CHAPTER:

MY LIFE

FIGURE 9.8. Reader response graphic organizers for older readers and writers.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

199
200 TEACHING READING

Comparing Responses with Friends

•• What meaning did your peers see in the story? Do you agree with them?
•• Did the class discussion today cause you to change your understanding of the
text? If so, how? And why?

Elements of Setting
•• Why do you suppose the author created the setting for the book the way he or
she did?
•• What impact did the setting have on the story?
•• What is the influence of the setting on the mood of the story?

Elements of Plot
•• If you were a character in the book, what event would have been different?
•• What events do you think were most important to the story?
•• Did you ever see a movie version of this text? If so, how was it different? Which
version did you like better, and why?

Elements of Character
•• Were you especially interested in a specific character in the story? Why?
•• Do you share a particular culture with a character? Describe the connection
between you and the character.
•• Is your culture very different from that of the main characters? If so, describe the
differences.
•• What is a specific character’s motivation to do what he or she does in
          scene? How would you have acted in his or her place?
•• What is the conflict between two characters? Have you ever experienced the
same conflict with a friend or family member?

Elements of Theme
•• The character        made choices in this story that created problems
for him or her. How would this story have been different if you were the main
character?
•• What message about life did the story suggest?

This chapter has provided only a glimpse of the possibilities for literature instruc-
tion in your elementary classroom. We hope you will investigate further such possibili-
ties, as well as possibilities for your own growth as a reader and literacy instructor. It
only takes one enthusiastic teacher to entice a whole host of children to become lifelong
readers and writers.
 Supporting Children’s Voices 201

Final Thoughts

Remember our Irving tale at the beginning of this chapter? It has an epilogue. Ten years
after we read the Irving book, while we were sitting in a café in Siracusa, Sicily, on a
January afternoon, I (SLP) narrated my Irving story to my coauthor (RLM), who was
sitting by my side working on Chapter 2 of this book. We were once again reminded
of the importance of providing opportunities for young readers to “live through” an
engaging story, reflect and write personal responses, share those responses with others,
and finally confirm or transform their own personal interpretations.
In the following chapter, we consider using multicultural literature to explore
diverse themes and topics. The chapter also helps us to think about how to create a
classroom context that supports a culturally responsive community of learners.
Now we invite you to assess your knowledge of key terms from this chapter, which
we present in Figure 9.9 (page 202).

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 9.10 (page 203) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
202 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 9

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

reader response theory

aesthetic stance

efferent stance

personal connections

personal response journals

written responses to literature

text evidence

FIGURE 9.9. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 9.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 9

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

203
FIGURE 9.10. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 9

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Ch a p te r 10

Creating a Culturally Responsive

Classroom Community

Aaron, a third-grade urban teacher, was preparing a reading lesson using the book A
Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie “Peanut” Johnson (Green, 2002). Mamie was one
of three African American women who played professional baseball for the so-­called
“Negro Leagues” in the 1950s. The book chronicles her life, from growing up with an
absent mother to her experiences in attempting to gain access to male baseball leagues.
As Aaron prepared his lesson, he considered how best to teach his reading lesson while
considering the book’s themes of racial segregation, gender inequality, and poverty.
The lesson he designed began with a shared reading of the first few chapters. As
he read aloud to the whole class, Aaron taught his students how to identify a character’s
goal. He did this by asking them how they might set goals for themselves. He then
asked students to work in small groups to identify Mamie’s goal, which was to become
a professional baseball player.
In a subsequent lesson, again in a shared reading format, Aaron asked his students
to read with the purpose of identifying cultural obstacles that potentially prevented
Mamie from accomplishing her goal. Together, students identified the following obsta-
cles: poverty, gender, race, size, age, and a few other cultural elements. As students
identified each obstacle, Aaron wrote each on a paper brick wall he had created on his
whiteboard (see Figure 10.1). As they continued to read chapters, Aaron focused the
reading purpose on identifying ways that Mamie was able to overcome her obstacles
and “break down her wall.” As the students pointed out each obstacle that Mamie man-
aged to overcome, Aaron cut away the corresponding brick from the paper wall. Finally,
he probed further by asking his students to identify how Mamie was able to overcome
these obstacles.
Once the book was completed, as a culminating activity, Aaron asked the students
to identify their own goals and build a “wall” of the obstacles (bricks) they would have
to overcome to achieve their goals. As students completed their own “walls,” he was
not surprised to find that the conversations quickly turned toward whole-class prob-
lem solving for each other’s cultural obstacles. Aaron was hopeful that the simple act
of embedding cultural elements in his reading program would help the children in his
classroom become sensitive to and respect each other’s cultural diversity.

204
 Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom Community 205

FIGURE 10.1. Mamie’s “wall” of obstacles.

As Aaron experimented with building a culturally responsive classroom commu-

nity, he understood that he could simultaneously maintain his rigorous academic read-
ing program. This chapter describes a classroom context that is culturally responsive,
works toward building a community of learners, and is suitable for the teaching of best-
­practice reading instruction.

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Creating a culturally responsive classroom by:
Building parent involvement in the reading program.
99
Using multicultural books in the reading program.
99
Creating lessons for teaching children about their own
99
cultural identities and those of others.

What Is Culturally Responsive Teaching?

Culturally responsive teaching has been defined and described by many multicultural
educators and practitioners. We like the following definition: “Culturally Responsive
Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students’ cultural
references in all aspects of learning” (Ladson-­Billings, 1994, p. 29). This broad, uncom-
plicated definition identifies the most important principle underlying culturally respon-
sive pedagogy: It encompasses “all aspects of learning” (our emphasis).
So what do culturally responsive teaching and learning look like in a reading
curriculum? Most researchers and practitioners agree that classrooms meeting the
206 TEACHING READING

Ladson-­Billings definition share several characteristics. We have chosen to focus on a

few of these characteristics that can be included in the reading curriculum. A culturally
responsive reading curriculum does the following:

1. Builds positive home–­school experiences (Gay, 2000; Nieto, 1996).

2. Incorporates multicultural text, information, and resources (Gay, 2000; Ladson-
­Billings, 1994; Nieto, 1996).
3. Teaches students about other students’ cultural heritages, and shows them how
to respect differences (Gay, 2000; Ladson-­Billings, 1994; Nieto, 1996).

In the rest of this chapter, we define each of these characteristics, and we provide con-
crete ideas and activities to help you establish a culturally responsive reading curricu-
lum.

Building Positive Home–­School Experiences

Research suggests that families from all cultural backgrounds, education levels, and
income levels encourage and talk to their children about school and keep them focused
on learning and homework (Bowen & Bowen, 1998). Researchers have also investi-
gated home–­school partnership programs and similar interventions that engage fami-
lies in supporting their children’s learning at home (Melzi, Paratore, & Krol-­Sinclair,
2000; Paratore, Melzi, & Krol-­Sinclair, 2003). The overall results from these programs or
interventions are clear. Home–­school partnerships are linked to the following:

1. Higher student achievement (Dearing, McCartney, Weiss, Kreider, & Simpkins,

2004; Henderson, 1987).
2. Improved teacher, parent, and child attitudes (Ensle, 1996; Epstein, 1986).
3. Reduced dropout rates (Henderson & Berla, 1994).
4. Increased attendance (Henderson, 1987).
5. Improved student self-­esteem, motivation, and behavior (Haynes, Comer, &
Hamilton-Lee, 1989).

The Harvard Family Research Project has disseminated research on parent involve-
ment programs (www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp) and is a wealth of information for classroom
teachers. Practitioners within the project suggest that effective parent involvement
programs that engage diverse families must recognize, respect, and address cultural
and class differences (Bouffard & Weiss, 2008). Following is a list of routines you can
establish in your classroom to support home–­school partnerships that promote reading
engagement.

Conducting Parent Workshops

Effective practices for home–­school partnerships include parent workshops in which
teachers model for parents the type of talk used during reading instruction. For exam-
ple, you can conduct an after-­school or evening workshop for parents in which you
 Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom Community 207

model how to do a read-aloud. You can demonstrate how to read with expression, how
to ask questions, and how to encourage children to predict what may come next. Parents
can then have a “guided practice” by reading aloud to each other. You can conduct par-
ent workshops on many other topics, including these:

•• How to assist children with reading homework.

•• How to help children with independent reading.
•• How to help children choose appropriate books in the library.
•• How to model fluency during parent–child storybook reading.

Sharing Assessment Tips

At open-house events, home visits, and parent information sessions during or outside
of the school day, you can organize events to assist parents in learning how to use and
interpret the results of the informal classroom assessment instruments. You can share
key tools, rubrics, grading criteria, or strategies to help family members determine
whether a child is successful in learning. You can also encourage parents to ask you
how their children are doing and whether or not they need more help at home.

Engaging Family Members and Students in Reading Activities

You can invite parents and children for a special evening devoted to promoting read-
ing. For this event, you can design new interactive activity centers or use those you
have already created for daily instruction. Parents enjoy participating in phonics and
comprehension activities, readers’ theatre activities, and any other centers designed to
reinforce the good-­reader strategies. In turn, children are proud to show their parents
what they can do, and enjoy working with them in the centers. Your goal for this type of
home–­school program is to thoughtfully connect the evening’s activities to your daily
classroom instruction, and ultimately to the home.

Creating Special Learning Kits to Lend to Students for Home Use

Family project kits can be made of inexpensive materials and organized for students to
“check out.” Following are some of the more successful kits we have designed:

•• Family storybook reading kit—contains books to share with the whole family
through readers’ theatre activities.
•• Cultural history project kit—contains instructions for writing a simple family cul-
tural history, including a family tree.
•• Supermarket scavenger hunt kit—contains instructions for parents to assist chil-
dren in using reading skills in the supermarket.

Parents, family–­school organizations, or community service organizations can help you

assemble and maintain these kits. To be most useful, kits should include clear directions
and should be tied to key learning events in the classroom.
208 TEACHING READING

Informing Parents of Activities in Your Classroom

Invite parents to attend oral presentations, class plays, author’s chair, or any other “shar-
ing” activities in your classroom. Parents enjoy seeing their children participate, and
your whole class will love having a family audience. Invite parents to be volunteers in
your classroom to help with book selection, a writing workshop publishing center, daily
read-­alouds, or just the management of school tasks.

Integrating Family Culture and Experiences into the Curriculum

Finally, you can expand your reading curriculum to include books by and about
members of the many different cultures represented in your classroom. Parents can
be involved by suggesting and sharing culturally specific books, presenting various
aspects of their culture to your class, or just spending a half hour in your classroom
reading aloud a book that represents their culture. This is an easy way to identify and
share resources on students’ family cultural identities.

Incorporating Multicultural Literature

into Your Classroom
Defining Multicultural Literature
Multicultural literature refers to literature by and about members of groups considered to
be outside the sociopolitical mainstream of the United States (Harris, 1992). This defini-
tion includes books written by and about members of ethnic minorities and/or non-
mainstream ethnic groups, as well as by members of various other cultures—­including
persons with mental and physical challenges, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender popu-
lations, and alternative families. We take the position that every classroom in America
should be well stocked with multicultural literature, so children have opportunities
to read about themselves and the many cultures prevalent in our society. We do not
advocate excluding books by and about mainstream Americans, including European
Americans and other nonminorities; rather, we support a balance. It is our experience
that American classrooms primarily use books featuring nonminorities throughout the
reading program. Therefore, the following section of this chapter includes information
on how to balance your classroom libraries and reading curriculum with multicultural
literature.

Choosing Multicultural Literature

When you are choosing multicultural literature for your classroom, we advocate find-
ing and choosing culturally specific literature and expository text (Harris, 1992). Cultur-
ally specific texts describe a particular culture with detail and elaboration. The details
make the characters, events, or facts compelling and interesting. The specific details
can include the names of characters; the forms of address for parents; the values and
attitudes of the characters; and clear physical descriptions, either through the text or
through the illustrations (Harris, 1992). According to Harris, culturally specific litera-
ture may include some or all of the following particulars:
 Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom Community 209

1. Family relationships, interactions, and values.

2. Social interactions, customs, and interests.
3. Attitudes and behaviors.
4. Religious beliefs and practices.
5. Language dialects and participation structures.
6. Art and music preferences.
7. Geographic backgrounds and ways of life.

An example of a very popular culturally specific book is Amazing Grace (Hoffman,

1991). The story is about a young African American girl who loves to read, act, and make
up stories. When her school plans to put on a production of Peter Pan, Grace wants to try
out for the leading role. Trouble ensues once Grace makes her intentions known to her
classmates. One of her friends says that she cannot be Peter Pan because she is a girl.
Another classmate tells her that she cannot do this because she is Black.
When Grace goes home and tells her mother and grandmother what the other chil-
dren have said, her family is displeased and tells Grace that she can be anything she
wants to be. Then her grandmother proves her point by taking Grace to a production of
Romeo and Juliet featuring a Trinidadian dancer. That gives Grace all the confidence she
needs. She tries out for the part, and, of course, she becomes Peter Pan in the school’s
production.
We categorize this book as culturally specific because it gives readers an inside
view of Grace’s culture. The story contains details about Grace’s family life, values, and
attitudes, as well as a glimpse into how children are encouraged to pursue their dreams
in her culture. Grace is a strong character with intelligence and drive, who is beginning
to understand her own cultural identity.
Another point to consider when choosing multicultural literature is to read widely
and investigate the authors’ sources of information. Many multicultural educators sug-
gest that books written by authors from the ethnicity or culture represented provide a
helpful first-hand look at the cultural norms. Reading multicultural literature by “insid-
ers” helps you and your students to recognize recurring themes that distinguish the
body of literature from specific cultural groups. In addition, wide reading makes the
differences between typical “insider” and “outsider” perspectives clear (Harris, 1992).
Remember that when you are choosing multicultural literature, a book of fiction
should be well written, with strong characters and a compelling, meaningful theme.
Good nonfiction should be up to date and accurate, with interesting illustrations, pho-
tographs, and other graphics. To help you choose multicultural literature for your class-
room, refer to Figure 10.2 (page 210) for multicultural selection guidelines suggested by
Harris (1992). In Figure 10.3 (page 211), we provide lists of our favorite culturally specific
books for the K–6 reading program.

Teaching Students about Each Other’s Cultural

Heritages and Ways to Respect Differences

Whether you teach in an urban, suburban, or rural environment, all students will ben-
efit from reading and thinking about people from diverse cultures. In our work with
(and as) teachers in schools, we have discovered that there are two clear components
210 TEACHING READING

Category Information to evaluate

Author’s attitude •• The ways in which nonmainstream characters are depicted as part of a
and language larger society. Be sure that nonmainstream characters’ contributions are as
significant as those of the mainstream characters.
•• The ways in which nonmainstream characters are depicted as part of
their own group. Be sure the author presents each character as a unique
individual.
•• Descriptions of characters’ actions and behaviors. Be sure the
characters’ actions and behaviors are not stereotypical in nature.
•• Overall language. Be sure that there are no historically racist terms that
suggest a negative connotation, or terms that might offend a member of the
culture.
Characters’ •• Overall language. Be sure the characters’ language is appropriate to
language the historical time and place as well as the social situation in which the
characters are placed.
•• Characters’ speech patterns. If characters use the vernacular, check for
accuracy and authenticity.
Illustrations •• Accuracy. Examine pictures for stereotypical images of characters.
•• Authenticity. Be sure the illustrations do not make every character look
alike.

FIGURE 10.2. Multicultural literature selection guidelines. Based on Harris (1992).

to using multicultural literature. First, we must have students think about their own
cultural identities. In order to understand differences and similarities, students must
understand the elements that make up their own cultural backgrounds. Once students
have a basic understanding of their own cultural identities, we can then have them read
and engage with characters from different backgrounds. We examine each component
below.

Exploring Students’ Own Cultural Identities

With children in grades 3–6, we have been successful in using the frame for organizing
cultural identity that was originally developed by Banks (2007). Banks is considered
the “father” of multicultural education. Using this frame for what constitutes a culture,
we engage the children in three separate inquiry lessons designed to help them exam-
ine culture and think about their own cultural identities. The following lessons set the
stage for intriguing reading and conversations about diverse cultures.

Lesson 1: Helping Children Define Culture

Lesson: What is culture?

Lesson Text: None
Lesson Grade Levels: 3–6
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the definition of
culture.
Books for Grades K–3 Books for Grades 3–4 Books for Grades 4–6
The Other Side Teammates The Magic Paintbrush
Author: Woodson, Jacqueline Author: Golenbock, Peter Author: Yep, Lawrence
Show Way Baseball Saved Us Felita
Author: Woodson, Jacqueline Author: Mochizuki, Ken Author: Mohr, Nicholasa
Amazing Grace A Strong Right Arm: The Story of A Single Shard
Author: Hoffman, Mary Mamie “Peanut” Johnson Author: Park, Linda Sue
Starring Grace Author: Green, Michelle The Land I Lost
Author: Hoffman, Mary Coming to America Author: Nhuong, Huynh Quang
Sam and the Lucky Money Author: Maestro, Betsy Julie of the Wolves
Author: Chinn, Karen Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Author: George, Jean Craighead
Abuela’s Weave March on Washington Locomotion
Author: Casteneda, Omar S. Author: Ruffin, Frances E. Author: Woodson, Jacqueline
Butterflies for Kiri Julian, Dream Doctor Walk Two Moons
Author: Falwell, Cathryn Author: Cameron, Ann Author: Creech, Sharon
The Pot That Juan Built The Ghost Dance Mulberry Project
Author: Andrews-Goebel, Nancy Author: McLerran, Alice Author: Park, Linda Sue
Sweet Potato Pie Sadako and the Thousand Paper Esperanza Rising
Author: Lindsey, Kathleen D. Cranes Author: Ryan, Pam Munoz
Author: Coerr, Eleanor
Goldfish and Chrysanthemums Bad Boy
Author: Cheng, Andrea Peace Begins with You Author: Myers, Walter Dean
Author: Scholes, Katherine
Abuela The Story of Muhammad Ali
Author: Dorros, Arthur The Royal Bee Author: Garrett, Leslie
Authors: Park, Frances, and Park,
A Birthday Basket for Tia Pablo Remembers
Ginger
Author: Mora, Pat Author: Ancona, George
Borreguita and the Coyote: A Tale
Too Many Tamales A Suitcase of Seaweed
from Ayutla, Mexico
Author: Soto, Gary Author: Wong, Janet
Author: Retold by Aardema, Verna
Yolanda’s Genius
Fire Race: A Karuk Coyote Tale
Author: Fenner, Carol
about How Fire Came to the People
Author: Retold by London, Kira-Kira
Jonathan Author: Kadohata, Cynthia
Yang the Eldest and His Odd Jobs
Author: Namioka, Lensey
Dia’s Story Cloth
Author: Cha, Dia
The Devil’s Arithmetic
Author: Yolen, Jane
Talking Walls
Author: Knight, Margy Burns
The Old African
Author: Lester, Julius
Going Home
Author: Mohr, Nicholasa
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Author: Taylor, Mildred
The Kite Fighter
Author: Park, Linda Sue

FIGURE 10.3. Culturally specific books for your reading program.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

211
212 TEACHING READING

Procedure: To begin the lesson, start drawing a web on the whiteboard and ask chil-
dren to help you to complete the web. The center of the web should look like this:

What is culture?
— or —
What makes us who we are?

Then say:

“Today, children, we are going to think about what makes us who we are. Does
anyone know what the word culture means?”

Older children may respond, but younger children may not have a response. With
both older and younger children, continue with a general definition and more prompt-
ing questions:

“Culture has to do with our family background and traditions, such as where we
come from and where we live. It describes the things that make us who we are.
For example, I know that my family is from Italy. So that is my family’s country of
origin, or ethnic background, or ethnicity. I am going to add ethnicity to my web.
Can you think of other things that make us who we are?”

Continue to fill in the web with students’ responses until your web looks like that
in Figure 10.4. The vocabulary in your web will obviously reflect your students’ ages
and ability levels. Once you have exhausted all possible responses, your goal is for
the students to understand that people’s cultures help to shape their beliefs, values,
attitudes, and ways of life.

Nationality
Ethnicity Religion

Race Gender
What is culture?
— or —
What makes us who we are?
Language
Education

Family

Special interests Profession Geographic

Special needs location
Sports Hobbies

FIGURE 10.4. What is culture? Based on Banks (2007).

 Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom Community 213

Lessons 2 and 3: Helping Children Think about

Their Cultural Identities

Lesson: Making my own cultural pie

Lesson Text: None
Lesson Grade Levels: 3–6
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of their own cultural
identities.
Procedure: This lesson is designed for students to explore their own cultural identities
by making cultural pies (Barton, 2001). Figure 10.5 shows a completed cultural pie. We
suggest that you model making your own cultural pie while you think aloud about
what makes you who you are. Creating the pie is a two-step process. First, using the
categories from the “What is culture?” web (Figure 10.4), identify the categories that
define you best. Second, think about each category, and identify what percentage of
“you” is invested in each category. Then guide students in creating their own pies.
When they have made their pies, encourage them to share them with each other. We
know that children love this activity—­especially the final segment, the “share,” as stu-
dents get to know more about themselves and each other. An extension of this activity
is to have students make cultural pies for book characters and compare the characters’
cultures to their own. (For more information on using cultural pies with children’s
literature, see Barton, 2001.)

Lesson: Making my culture box

Lesson Text: None
Lesson Grade Levels: K–6
Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understanding of their own cultural
identity.

Cuban School
American
family

Soccer

Girl
Friends

Reading Catholic
and computer
games

FIGURE 10.5. An example of a cultural pie.

214 TEACHING READING

Procedure: This lesson is an extension of the previous two lessons, but it can be used
as a stand-alone cultural identity lesson for very young children. One of our graduate
students extended the cultural pie activity to create this follow-up lesson. We have
found that students reach a deeper understanding of their own cultural identities and
appreciate them more after they create these culture boxes.
This three-step activity is simple to implement and to share. For the first step, ask your
students to find five objects at home that best represent who they are, and to place
them in a box that they decorate. Older children who have experienced Lessons 1 and
2 can be instructed to use their cultural pies as guidelines for what they should place
in their culture boxes. You will have to give younger children (those in grades K–2)
ideas about what to put in their culture boxes, since this is their first introduction to
culture and cultural identity. For example, you can encourage them to choose a favor-
ite book if they are avid readers, or a favorite pen if they love to write. You can suggest
that to represent their families or their ethnicities, they can bring in photographs of
their families or a symbol of traditions they share. Here are some of the items we have
seen in culture boxes:
• Photographs of favorite activities, families, friends, and club activities
• Computer games
• Sports memorabilia (pennants, clothing, etc.)
• Wooden spoons or other kitchen tools to represent their cooking traditions
• Favorite games or toys
• An ethnic piece of clothing
• Religious objects

Encourage the children to decorate their culture boxes as symbols of their cul-
tural identities. Figure 10.6 is a photograph of a few completed culture boxes.
The second step of the activity takes place once students have assembled their culture
boxes. Ask them to fill out a matrix such as the one below to explain their objects. The
last box, entitled “Classmates who shared a similar object,” is left blank until the third
step of this activity.

MY CULTURE BOX
Classmates
who shared a
Object Culture category Why it is important to me similar object
Computer game Hobby and This is my favorite computer | | | |
special interests game. I play it with many
friends after school.
Yarmulke Religion and Symbol of my Jewish |
gender heritage and being a boy.
 Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom Community 215

FIGURE 10.6. Examples of culture boxes.

The third step of the activity, “the sharing,” begins by having each child share
one object and tell why the object is a symbol of who he or she is. As children share,
have them place a tally mark in the last box to identify classmates who have similar
cultural objects. Since it takes a long time for children to share their five objects, you
can follow up by placing the culture boxes in a learning center where students can
share with smaller groups of children.

Through these activities, children investigate their own cultural identities and
those of their classmates, and they will be in a better position to compare their identi-
ties to those of book characters. By exploring friends and book characters from diverse
cultures, children will better understand the diverse world in which they live.
In the following section, we present suggestions for lessons based on multicul-
tural literature. Each lesson is easily adapted to different grade levels and multicultural
books.

Identifying and Comparing Book Characters’ Cultural Characteristics

We have been experimenting very successfully with developing cultural lessons in
K–6 classrooms. Through this work, we have come to know that once children start to
understand culture, they engage in discussions about race, ethnicity, religion, and gen-
der with remarkable maturity. We only need to give them the context and the vocabu-
lary for doing so.
Following are some of the graphic organizers that we have used to initiate dis-
cussions about culture. From these cultural graphic organizers, you can see that we
ask children to use their reading comprehension strategies to extract information about
book events, characters, and themes, and then compare them to their own cultural
information. These culturally responsive lessons are easily embedded in our reading
programs and do not detract from our focus of teaching the reading curriculum.
For each of the following suggested lessons, we present only the graphic organizer
that is the focus of the during-reading portion of a lesson. We leave it up to you to deter-
mine the before- and after-reading activities, because these will depend upon the multi-
cultural book you are using and the grade level you are teaching.
The first lesson idea is a simple matrix (see Figure 10.7), similar to one we have
presented in Chapter 4, asking students to gather information about a character’s cul-
 Ethnicity Gender Hobbies Family Traditions Religious Beliefs
Book:

Character:

Me

216
FIGURE 10.7. Matrix for a lesson on comparing a book character’s cultural identity to your own. Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate under-
standing of a character’s cultural identity and how it is different from their own.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom Community 217

tural identity. You can see that students will have to use their good-­reader strategies to
extract the information needed. Students complete the activity by recording the same
information for themselves. The fully recorded matrix provides high-­quality informa-
tion for cultural comparisons, which can be explored further in literature circles or
whole-group discussions.
The second lesson (see Figure 10.8 on page 218) gives students opportunities to
compare book characters’ cultural identities. This lesson is best implemented after the
students have read two to three multicultural books with very different characters.
The third lesson (see Figure 10.9 on page 219) is designed to encourage students to
be thoughtful about a book character’s cultural characteristics. We successfully used
this lesson idea with students as young as second grade, working in a whole-class for-
mat. However, older children are more able to work individually or in small cooperative
groups to complete the task.

Final Thoughts

This chapter is meant to be a short introduction to culturally responsive teaching and

using multicultural literature to teach children about cultural diversity. We hope that it
will be a catalyst for further exploration of how you can become a culturally responsive
teacher. We end this chapter with questions to help you self-­assess your introduction to
creating a culturally responsive classroom community. Take a few minutes to jot down
the answers to the questions. This too can be an artifact for your self-study. In addition,
as always, we suggest that you assess your knowledge of key terms by using the chart
designed for that purpose (Figure 10.10 on page 220).

Culturally Responsive Teaching Reflection Questions

•• What are some effective ways for teachers to learn about their students’ cultural
backgrounds and experiences?
•• How can teachers have students explore their own cultural identities?
•• What are effective ways to explore diverse cultures, using multicultural chil-
dren’s books?

At this point, we have presented a great deal of research and practice on the ele-
mentary reading curriculum, including creating contexts and literate environments for
your reading program. The next two chapters are about assessing your students’ moti-
vation and their reading abilities in all areas of the curriculum: phonological/phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and reader response.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 10.11 (page 221) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
 Character/Book Race/ethnicity Traditions Daily activities
Grace

Boundless Grace by
Mary Hoffman

Tree-Ear

A Single Shard by
Linda Sue Park

Esperanza

218
Esperanza Rising by
Pam Munoz Ryan

Character from
Independent
Reading Book:

FIGURE 10.8. Matrix for a lesson on comparing cultural backgrounds of book characters. Lesson Objective: Students will compare the cultural back-
grounds of characters from diverse cultures.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Given your culture, how
would your solution have
Character’s Problem: Character’s Solution: been different? Why?
Book Event:

Book Event:

219
Book Event:

FIGURE 10.9. Matrix for a lesson on the influence of culture on a character’s problem solving. Lesson Objective: Students will demonstrate understand-
ing of how a character’s problem solving is influenced by culture.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
220 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 10

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

culturally responsive classroom

home–school experiences

multicultural literature

culturally specific literature

cultural identity

cultural pie

culture box

FIGURE 10.10. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 10.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 10

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

221
FIGURE 10.11. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 10.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 C h a p t e r 11

Assessing Children’s
Reading Development
Part 1. Motivation, Phonological/Phonemic
Awareness, Word Identification, and Fluency

I have noodles in my nostrils.

I have noodles on my nose.
There are noodles on my cheeks and chin
and dripping down my clothes.

I’ve got more upon my forehead.

Some are sticking to my neck.
It’s completely disconcerting.
I’m a noodle-­covered wreck.

These playful, silly, engaging verses are the first two stanzas of the poem “I Have Noo-
dles in My Nostrils” (Nesbitt, 2007, p. 12).* When students read poems such as this one,
skillful teachers gain lots of information about how their students read and feel about
reading. If you listen (and watch) very, very carefully as a student reads this, you can
learn about the student’s attitudes, phonological/phonemic awareness, accuracy, and
fluency. In this chapter, we describe ways to look very carefully at your students to
learn as much as you can about their reading development. (And you will see this poem
again.)

What Is Assessment?

Caldwell (2002, p. 213) defines assessment as a four-step process:

1. Identifying what to assess.

2. Collecting evidence.

* Copyright
2007 by Kenn Nesbitt. Reprinted from Revenge of the Lunch Ladies with the permission of
Meadowbrook Press.

222
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 223

3. Analyzing the evidence.

4. Making decisions based on the analysis.

Let us apply this process to a common situation. Suppose you want to try out a
new diet in order to lose a few pounds. Using the four steps of assessment suggested by
Caldwell, you might approach it like this:

1. Identifying what to assess: Ability to lose weight on new diet.

2. Collecting evidence: Before: A friend has asked if you are putting on

weight.
The number on the scale is increasing.
Your jeans are tight.
You avoid mirrors.
During: You are losing weight each week.
People ask you if you are losing weight.
Your clothes fit better.
You are always hungry.
You start looking in the mirror periodically.
After: You have lost 15 pounds.
Your “skinny jeans” fit.
You are getting compliments about looking
great.
You cannot wait to start eating normally
again.

3. Analyzing the evidence: The diet seemed to do what it said it would do.
You were too hungry all the time.

4. Making decisions based on Eat sensibly, monitor your weight, and follow the diet
the analysis: again if necessary.

In real life, we are continually going through the process of assessment. We collect
data, analyze them, and make decisions based on what we have found. In classrooms,
teachers follow the same process. We are keen observers of our students’ reading behav-
iors; we collect evidence of what they know and can do; we analyze this evidence; and
then we adjust our instruction to match the needs of the learners.
In this chapter, we use the same framework for thinking about what, how, and
why to assess our students as we learn about them as developing readers. We think that
Caldwell’s four-step process helps demystify assessment by organizing it into a sensible
structure. More importantly, it reminds us that classroom-based assessment has a pur-
pose: to inform us about the kinds of instruction we need to use to meet the needs of all
our students. Assessing students without using the information as a driving force for
224 TEACHING READING

teaching minimizes the efficacy of the task. If we do not act on the information, then all
we are doing is collecting information and not using it.
We offer an overview of several types of assessments that are easily implemented
in a classroom setting. However, the ones we suggest by no means exhaust the range
of assessments available to teachers; rather, they represent and highlight some types of
assessments we see in many excellent classrooms.
Before we can begin to describe good assessment practices, we need to remind you
about a few key terms: reliability, validity, summative assessment, and formative assessment.

What Do We Mean by Reliability?

Reliability is the degree to which a test’s results yield consistent scores from time to time
and from one set of conditions to another. Standardized tests are considered to have a
high degree of reliability.

What Is Validity?
Validity is the degree to which an assessment measures or evaluates what it says it mea-
sures. Classroom-based literacy assessments, such as the ones we describe in this chap-
ter, have a high degree of validity.

What Is Summative Assessment?

Summative assessment is a final assessment. The purpose of a summative assessment is
to assign a grade or score at the end of a unit or marking period.

What Do We Mean by Formative Assessment?

Formative assessment, or ongoing assessment, is assessment we use to make instructional
or curricular decisions. The main goal of formative assessment is “to inform teachers of
the active knowledge, skills, and strategies that their students have under their control”
(Blachowicz, Buhle, Frost, & Bates, 2007, p. 246). Most of our suggestions in this chapter
focus on formative assessments.

Principles of Good Formative Assessment Practice

We follow Winograd, Flores-­Duenas, and Arrington (2003) in presenting a summary
of five of the best practices in literacy assessment. We agree that reading assessments
should do the following:

1. Draw from the classroom experiences and the expertise of excellent teachers.
2. Begin with what the students currently know, with a clear eye on the endpoint.
3. Promote trust and cooperation between teachers and students.
4. Make seamless connections to instruction.
5. Include multiple measures over time and in a variety of meaningful contexts.
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 225

In the remainder of this chapter, we focus our attention on those assessments that
give us the best information about our developing readers’ attitudes about reading,
phonological and phonemic awareness, ability to decode words, and fluency.

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Assessing motivation.
99
Assessing phonological and phonemic awareness.
99
Assessing word identification.
99
Assessing reading fluency.
99

Assessing Motivation
Identifying What to Assess
In Chapters 2 and 3, we have discussed the importance of establishing a motivating
environment. We have suggested that a print-rich classroom with consistent and well-
­designed routines will promote literacy learning. We have also noted that there is no
guarantee that our students will be as engaged as we would like them to be. We can
never really know whether all our hard work has paid off unless we assess how our
students feel about reading and how our efforts contribute to their willingness to read.
When we assess our students’ motivation, in other words, we are really assessing two
things: (1) their attitudes about learning while they are in our classrooms, and (2) how well
we provide and sustain a motivating environment for our students.

Collecting Evidence
You can collect the evidence, or data, for assessing motivation through observation,
surveys, and book logs.

Observation
You can collect evidence of your students’ attitudes about reading in many ways. One
way is informally through observation. If your students are speaking or acting enthu-
siastically about your independent reading program, you can get a general sense that
they like the time of day when they are allowed to choose their own texts and read on
their own. You can have class discussions about the kinds of books they like to read and
the titles they would like to see in the classroom library. Unsolicited comments, such
as “I love when you do a read-aloud right before we go home! It gives me good ideas
about the kinds of books I want to read,” provide important and genuine information.
You can jot down notes and collect the observations you make about what motivates
your students about reading and learning in a daily log or notebook. These are called
anecdotal records.
226 TEACHING READING

Interest and Attitude Surveys

Surveys given at the beginning of the school year—and at other times—can help you
learn about your students’ reading habits and interests. We present two examples of
such surveys here. The one in Figure 11.1 can be adapted for any grade; it questions
students about their interests in a multiple-­choice format. The one in Figure 11.2 (page
228) asks students many of the same questions, but the format encourages elaboration.
(A slightly different version of this second survey is included as part of our second-
grade sample reading performance assessment in Appendix B.)
When you are designing and using surveys such as these, remember that you are
assessing students’ interests and attitudes, not the processes they use to read. We dis-
cuss assessing those processes in Chapter 12. Keep the survey simple, and focus on the
things you want to learn about your students. You might want to know, for example,
how much they read at home, or whether they like reading at all. If so, what kinds of
things do they like to read about? Each class of students you teach is different, and
surveys yield very different information from year to year. You may want to repeat the
same survey at the end of the year. That way, you and your students can compare the
ways their attitudes and interests have changed.
We offer the following suggestions for designing and scoring reading surveys.

Step 1: What Kind of a Survey Would You Like to Make?

The first step in making a survey is to decide whether you would like a survey that
invites students to answer open-ended questions, such as “Do you like to go to the
library to take out books?”, or rate statements on a scale of 1–4, such as “I like to go to the
library to check out books.” We know from experience that the type of survey depends
on the age and literacy abilities of the children in your classroom. For example, open-
ended questions are best for older students who have the stamina to elaborate, as well
as the writing skill to respond.

Step 2: What Do You Want to Know about Your Students?

Second, make a list of questions or statements about your students’ reading habits. Your
questions/statements can range from school to home and ask students to think about
their attitudes toward reading, their motivations for succeeding in reading endeavors,
and maybe even their likes and dislikes in regard to reading multicultural books. Do
you want to know their independent reading habits at home? Do you want to know if
they go to the library to take out books? Do you want to know how they feel in your
classroom during reading groups or whole-group instruction? Every survey is different
and should reflect what you need to know to carry out your reading curriculum.

Step 3: How Do You Design the Survey Instrument?

The answer to the third question depends upon the answer to the first question above.
If you have written a list of questions to which students must respond, the questions
should just be typed on a page, with lots of room for students to respond with elabora-
tion.
1. I like to read in class . . .
†† Yes
†† No
†† Sometimes
2. I read at home . . .
†† Every day.
†† About three times a week.
†† Less than once a week.
†† Never.
3. The books I like to read the most are . . .
†† Fantasy stories.
†† Adventure stories.
†† Mysteries.
†† Stories about real people.
†† Stories about history.
†† Other:
4. Every week I try to read    books.
†† One
†† Two
†† Five
†† More than five
5. I think reading is . . .
†† Fun.
†† Hard.
†† Easy.
†† Boring.
6. I have . . .
†† Many books at home.
†† Some books at home.
†† No books at home.
7. Most of the books I read come from . . .
†† Home.
†† Library.
†† School/classroom.
†† Friends or relatives.
†† Other:
8. I would read more if our class had . . .
†† More interesting books.
†† More time for reading in class.
†† Easier books.
†† Other:

FIGURE 11.1. Reading survey.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

227
Write the answers to the following questions in the space provided. You can use the back.

1. How would you describe yourself as a reader?

2. What would you like to be able to read?

3. What makes reading hard?

4. What makes reading easy?

5. How often do you read?

6. What kinds of things do you like to read or read about?

7. How can you improve as a reader?

8. What is the title of one of your favorite books?

9. What is the title of the last book you read on your own?

10. What do you think teachers can do to motivate their students to read?

FIGURE 11.2. Open-ended survey.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

228
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 229

If you have chosen to make a survey with a rating scale, it is best to design your sur-
vey so that the rating system is next to each statement. Be sure the students can easily
recognize what the numbers on the scale mean—for example, 1 = “not at all,” 2 = “some-
times,” 3 = “often,” and 4 = “always.” If you use a rating scale, it is important to note that
you always want the #4 option to be the most positive answer, and the #1 option to be
the least positive answer. For example, the following statements ask the same thing, but
the #4 option gives very different results:

“I don’t like going to the library.” In this case, 4 = “always” is a negative answer.
“I love going to the library.” In this case, 4 = “always” is a positive answer.

You can see that if your statements are skewed incorrectly, you will not be able to use a
quantitative scoring system to evaluate your students’ responses.
You also want to include directions for your students on the survey. Perhaps you
may explain your purpose in administering the survey, as well as either an explanation
of the rating system or directions for elaborating responses to open-ended questions.
When you are administering the survey, be sure to tell students that there is no grade
attached to the survey, and encourage them to answer truthfully.

Step 4: How Do You Evaluate the Surveys?

If you are using statements with a numbering system, add up the students’ responses.
For example, if a student circles 4, 4, and 3 for the first three statements, you can add up
those numbers to 11 (out of a possible 12) and know that the child feels positive about
those items. If the child scores 7 on those three items, then you know that the child
feels negative about those items. Of course, you also want to do a qualitative analysis of
the results, being sure to record when individual students are extremely negative. For
example, if a student is negative about reading at home, you might follow up to find out
why and see what you can do to intervene.

Book Logs
Another way to assess your students’ motivation and interests is through having them
keep a book log. Figure 11.3 is a very simple sample form for a book log. For each book,
the students log the book title, author, date finished, and genre, and give a few com-
ments. This log helps students keep track of the books they read on their own and can
give you the information they need to monitor the kinds of books their students read.
You should model the process of filling out a book log, so that the students write more
thoughtful comments than just “Good,” “Bad,” or “I liked it.”
This type of book log does not interfere with the amount of reading we want our
students to do and the amount of reading they must do to be competent and skillful
readers. Following up each self-­selected text with a traditional book report does not
motivate children to read more. A student once said to us, “The whole time I was writ-
ing this book report, I could have been reading another book!”
 Date
Book title Author finished Genre Comments

230
FIGURE 11.3. Sample book log.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 231

Analyzing the Evidence

The next step is to ask yourself, “What have I learned about my students’ reading inter-
ests and motivation to read?” You may want to aggregate the results by making a chart
of their responses, or follow up with a class discussion. If you have used an open-ended
survey, you can read the students’ responses and look for themes among their answers.
For example, if some students respond that they do not like to read in school during
sustained silent reading, do not like to go to the library, and do not read at home, you
can safely deduce that these children do not read unless reading is assigned. You can
also make notes about the reading habits and attitudes specific to each student as well
as the overall class, and make appropriate interventions for your classroom.

Making Decisions Based on the Analysis

After collecting data on their students’ attitudes and interests, many teachers learn that
they do not have nearly the number of books or the types of titles they need to keep
their students happy. Fifth- and sixth-grade teachers also often report that their stu-
dents say that they hardly ever read at home. If that is the case in your class, you will
need to make the most of the classroom time by providing rich reading experiences for
your reluctant readers.
If many of your students indicate that they want to read books that are not cur-
rently part of your classroom library, you may want to follow up with the survey in
Chapter 2, Figure 2.6 (page 17), called “How Does Your Classroom Library Rate?” This
will give you more information about the kinds of books needed in the classroom and
whether there are basic gaps you need to fill. Even so, the data you have collected are the
main indicators of what is needed to satisfy the needs of your classroom. Based on the
responses you get from your students, you may have to do the following:

•• Add more books to your classroom library.

•• Schedule additional time to visit the school library.
•• Showcase more books that match the interests of the students.
•• Allow more time for independent reading in school.
•• Read aloud more books in the genres they like, to keep them interested in read-
ing.

The most important point is to use the results to make your classroom fit your students’
interests and help make your students a classroom of motivated readers.

T ry T his
Design a survey you can use with your students to assess reading attitudes and inter-
ests. First, choose a grade level. Then use the tips described previously for designing
surveys. You may combine the types of questions and examples shown in Figures 11.1
and 11.2 (pages 227 and 228). After you design your survey, try it on a child to see what
kind of information the survey gives you. Write your survey in the space on the follow-
ing page:
232 TEACHING READING

Assessing Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Identifying What to Assess
In Chapter 3, we have discussed the importance of phonological and phonemic aware-
ness—that is, awareness that spoken words are divided into parts: syllables, onsets–
rimes, and phonemes. It makes sense to assess this awareness orally. The oral assess-
ment can determine the students’ performance at rhyming, counting words in sentences,
counting syllables, segmenting and blending syllables, segmenting and blending onsets
and rimes, segmenting and blending phonemes, and substituting one phoneme with
another. In our oral speech, these features are not always apparent to younger children.
Giving them deliberate attention helps children develop it; the assessment determines
whether they have gained this awareness.

Collecting Evidence
To assess how well your students can orally segment words into individual phonemes,
you can use the Yopp–­Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation (Yopp, 1995). The assess-
ment is available online and can be downloaded from many websites. This oral assess-
ment takes only a few minutes, and is administered on a one-on-one basis.
You can also design an assessment yourself. Take a look back at Figure 3.1 (page 39)
in Chapter 3, which lists the phonological and phonemic awareness tasks suggested by
Yopp (1993). As you can see, the order in which the tasks are listed there reflects their
increasing difficulty. You can use Figure 3.1 as the basis for a checklist for recording the
performance of each student. Figure 11.4 is an example of such a checklist.
 Segments
Counts Counts Segments and blends Segments
words in syllables in and blends onsets and and blends Substitutes
Name of student Rhymes sentence words syllables rimes phonemes phonemes

233
FIGURE 11.4. A checklist for assessing phonological and phonemic awareness.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
234 TEACHING READING

Analyzing the Evidence

Once you have assessed your students’ performance, you can then target skills in need
of instruction and make a plan for teaching them. Remember that distinguishing indi-
vidual sounds within words or syllables is much harder than being aware that words
and syllables are separate units, so it is best to start with the easier tasks.

Making Decisions Based on the Analysis

In Chapter 3, we have also presented Yopp’s (1993) recommendations for the instruc-
tion of phonological and phonemic awareness. We have stated there that although the
instruction should be deliberate and planned, it should also be playful, be developmen-
tally appropriate, and take place within real literacy-­learning tasks (Yopp, 1993). Teach-
ing and assessing phonological and phonemic awareness should not be stressful for you
or your students. Oral word play can easily be integrated into your literacy curriculum.
All developing readers can benefit from oral word play and reading poems. Students
who already have a strong foundation in phonological awareness will still benefit from
the songs, stories, and poems that you recite together.

Assessing Word Identification

Identifying What to Assess
Once students begin reading in kindergarten (or before), we need to assess many aspects
about the way they read words. What, for example, do they do when they encounter
unknown words? How do they use meaning to give them clues as they read? What
instruction do we need to provide to help them feel competent in decoding words?

Collecting Evidence
Listening to your students read orally, one on one, is an authentic way to assess how
your students are reading. If your students are accustomed to sitting with you to read,
it is also a low-risk and low-­stress experience for them. You can learn a great deal about
what your students do when they read silently by listening to them read with you orally,
and you can begin this assessment practice in kindergarten.

Running Records
Most teachers use some type of coding system to record how their students are read-
ing. The most common way we have seen classroom teachers collect information about
their students’ oral reading is the use of running records (Clay, 1979). A running record
is a record of a student’s oral reading that can be analyzed and used for instruction.
To take a running record, you need only a blank sheet of paper, a pencil, and a student
with a real text. You then record what you see and hear, using a series of symbols. Clay’s
running records measure accuracy, not grade level. In other words, a running record
will help a teacher determine how difficult a particular text is for a particular child under
a particular condition. For instance, a student reading a text that is familiar or has been
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 235

read many times will perform very differently than when the student reads a new text
for the first time. Taking into account all the conditions of the reading makes it a more
valid assessment.
Taking a running record is a way to collect data—both qualitative and quantita-
tive—about a student’s oral reading. In addition to calculating a score of the words
read accurately (quantitative information), it also allows you to take notes on the ways
in which the student makes attempts at unknown words, fixes his or her own errors
while reading, and thinks out loud (qualitative information). That is why Clay strongly
recommends using a blank sheet of paper and not using a prepared text to record
your observations. She also discourages working from a tape. You can learn more
from recording the information when you are watching students as well as listening
to them.
Assessing a student’s reading performance by taking a running record requires
good instruction and sufficient time and practice. Watching knowledgeable and expe-
rienced teachers perform the assessment is a must. Sitting with the teachers afterward
to analyze the records is also essential. Then you should go through a period of guided
practice as you perform the assessment on several students and analyze the results with
another teacher.
We also suggest using Johnston’s (2000) self-­tutorial on running records. This valu-
able resource walks you through the process gradually and gives you ample practice
in taking running records. It also gives detailed descriptions of the coding system and
other procedures related to the assessment.

Informal Reading Inventories

Some teachers and many reading specialists use an informal reading inventory (IRI)
instead of, or in addition to, running records. IRIs are published assessment instru-
ments that contain many narrative and expository passages in a variety of reading lev-
els, typically from preprimer to 12th grade. They are organized according to reading
levels, and they include the coding systems and all the directions for administrating
and analyzing the assessments.
Many teachers like IRIs because the information they collect is recorded directly on
the prepared passages, and the instrument determines the approximate grade level of
an individual student’s reading ability. They are convenient and require little prepara-
tion. However, as it does for running records, learning to administer and analyze IRIs
well takes practice and patience. To learn more about using IRIs, see Caldwell (2002,
2008).

Analyzing the Evidence

The assessment methods just described provide an abundance of information to be ana-
lyzed. You can start by asking a few questions to guide your analysis. For example, as
you look at the record of the student’s reading, what have you learned about the way
the student approached the task? Do you see a pattern of behaviors or errors? Did the
student read for meaning? Did the substitutions make sense? Was the student just read-
ing words? What strategies did the student use to decode unfamiliar words? Did the
passage seem easy, hard, or appropriate?
236 TEACHING READING

McKenna and Stahl (2003, pp. 59–60) suggest the following series of questions to
guide teachers as they review and analyze the word identification errors or miscues
their students make:

•• Meaning: Did the reader choose a substitution or phrasing that made sense in the
passage, sentence, or part of the sentence?
•• Structure : Did the reading sound like language that follows a grammatical form?
Did the reader follow the structure of the text?
•• Visual: Did the child read a word that had graphic similarity to the word in the
text? Was the graphophonic system being used?
•• Self-­correction: What cueing system did the reader use to fix incorrectly read
words?

By answering these questions about a student’s reading, you can then make decisions
about types of interventions and subsequent instruction. In most cases, the errors stu-
dents make fall into two categories: Either the students did not read for meaning, or
the students were not decoding the unfamiliar words correctly. Often you will see a
combination of both. By looking for a pattern of errors, you can plan instruction based
on your analysis.
Let us use a real text to take a look at examples of different types of errors. In a ver-
sion of the Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Stork” that we use for second-grade assess-
ment (see Appendix B), the first sentence reads, “On a summer day, Fox went for a walk
in the forest and met Stork.” If a student reads the sentence like this: “On a summer day,
Fox went for a walk in the woods and met Stork,” substituting the word woods for forest,
the meaning of the sentence does not really change; nor does the substitution affect the
overall understanding of the fable. There is a chance that the student, if asked to reread
the sentence slowly, will self-­correct and say “forest.”
Now imagine that a different student reads the same sentence this way: “On a
summer day, Fox went for a walk in the first and met Stork.” In this case, the word first
looks very similar to the word forest, but it does not make any sense syntactically or
semantically. If the student is asked to reread the sentence slowly, and self-­corrects and
says “forest,” you may say that the student used his or her knowledge of letter–sound
relationships to a certain degree at first. If, when asked to reread the sentence slowly,
the student does not self-­correct, you have received very different information about the
student. This student is not attending to the meaning of the sentence in the same way
that the first student did.

Making Decisions Based on the Analysis

Making decisions about what to teach after taking oral reading records also requires
experience and a good deal of knowledge about teaching phonics and comprehension.
If you find students making a pattern of errors that does not interfere with the meaning
of the text, you can share the oral reading records with the students—­showing them
substitutions they made that did not interrupt the meaning, and leading them to look
more closely at the words.
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 237

If you find that your students are making patterns of errors that interfere with
the meaning of the text, teaching (and reteaching) comprehension-­monitoring strate-
gies will be beneficial. All students will continue to encounter unknown words as they
become more experienced and expert readers.
If the record shows a student’s pattern of unsuccessful attempts at decoding unfa-
miliar words, then the instructional decisions should lead to improving the student’s
ability to decode words through explicit phonics instruction. In previous chapters, we
have provided examples of instruction in both decoding and comprehension. You can
refer to these when making decisions on how to improve your students’ oral reading
performance.

Assessing Fluency
Identifying What to Assess
A fluent reader is a joy to listen to. When fluency is accompanied by excellent compre-
hension, the reader exemplifies the kind of strategic reader that we all aspire to develop.
As we have cautioned in Chapter 3, fluency does not guarantee comprehension; how-
ever, it does free a reader’s cognitive resources enough so he or she can focus on the real
task of reading—­constructing meaning from text.
When we assess fluency, we take a look at the three important characteristics iden-
tified by Rasinski (2003) and discussed in Chapter 3: accuracy, automaticity, and prosody.
We explain how to assess these aspects of fluency next.

Collecting Evidence
According to Kuhn (2007), determining the number of correct words per minute (cwpm) is
the easiest and most commonly used method to assess your students’ reading accuracy
and automaticity. She suggests three variations, which are described below. (In Appen-
dix B, we use the first one for our second-grade sample assessment.)

Procedure 1
•• Choose a 100- to 200-word passage from a text in the literacy curriculum. Ask the
student to read aloud for 1 minute from the beginning of the text.
•• As the student is reading, count the number of correct words. Stop after 1 min-
ute.
•• Calculate the score as cwpm.

Procedure 2
•• Choose a selection from a text in the literacy curriculum. Ask the student to read
aloud for several minutes.
•• After the student is comfortable with the text, begin timing for 1 minute. Count
the number of correct words.
•• Calculate the score as cwpm.
238 TEACHING READING

Procedure 3
•• Choose three passages of approximately 100–200 words each from the same text
from the literacy curriculum.
•• Ask the student to read each one aloud for 1 minute.
•• As the student is reading, count the number of correct words.
•• Calculate the score as cwpm for each passage.
•• Average the three scores to determine the student’s cwpm.

After we assess a reader’s accuracy and automaticity, we must also collect informa-
tion about the student’s prosody. This simple assessment includes listening to a student
read a piece of short connected text (approximately 200 words) while collecting infor-
mation on the student’s ability to use natural speech and expression, proper phrasing,
smoothness, and appropriate volume.
Kuhn (2007) suggests using texts from the literacy curriculum when you are assess-
ing fluency, so that you can determine how the students are performing when using the
day-to-day instructional materials. Knowing how easy or difficult the classroom texts
are is important; it helps you to determine how much support to give students who
are reading them. If you decide to use a text for fluency assessment that is also being
used for teaching reading in small ability groups, the results can help you determine
whether that text is appropriate for the students. If not, you can adjust the level of the
texts accordingly.
Rasinski (2003) suggests administering fluency assessments several times a year as
needed, to keep track of your students’ growth over time. Because these assessments
are easy to administer, they can be conveniently worked into your repertoire of assess-
ment strategies.

Analyzing the Evidence

Many grade-level norms and guidelines are available in texts about fluency (see, e.g.,
Moskal & Blachowicz, 2006). Many are derived from a common chart used to analyze
the results of oral reading fluency assessment (Figure 11.5; this chart is also included in
the second-grade sample assessment in Appendix B). This chart represents the average
and should be used carefully when you are making decisions about your students’ abil-
ity to read fluently. The norms chart shows fluency target rate norms that correlate with
fall, winter, and spring in grades 1–8. You can easily determine whether a student falls
within the norms indicated on the chart.
To analyze a student’s prosody, you can use a Likert scale, such as the one we have
likewise included in Appendix B. This scale covers the following criteria:

•• Student uses consistent and appropriate volume.

•• Student uses punctuation for effective phrasing.
•• Student reads easily and efficiently, making more self-­corrections than errors.
•• Student reads at a steady conversational pace.
•• Student uses expression while reading aloud. For example, student changes tone
for dialogue or to differentiate among characters.
•• Student reads with the appropriate tone for the mood of the story or to exemplify
the emotions of the character.
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 239

Spring
Grade Fall (WCPM) Winter (WCPM) (WCPM)
1 10–30 30–60
2 30–60 50–80 70–100
3 50–90 70–100 80–110
4 70–110 80–120 100–140
5 80–120 100–140 110–150
6 100–140 110–150 120–160
7 110–150 120–160 130–170
8 120–160 130–170 140–180

FIGURE 11.5. Oral reading fluency target rate norms.

WCPM (words correct per minute) is the same as cwpm
(correct words per minute) as described in the text.
Retrieved February 20, 2008, from www.prel.org/products/
re_ /assessingfluency.htm. Reprinted by courtesy of Pacific
Resources for Education and Learning.

Making Decisions Based on the Analysis

Once you have determined where a student falls within the accuracy/automaticity
norms, the next step is to make decisions on the appropriate support and interventions. .

As mentioned above, the cwpm fluency assessment is a good general method for deter-
mining the difficulty of a text you use for your instructional materials.
If the text you used is the grade-level core text—such as a literary anthology, sci-
ence text, or social studies text—and the student has performed within or above the
norms, you can reasonably expect that the student can read this text independently
without too much support (after the selection has been introduced by you). However,
taking a reading from a science text will only inform you of what to expect when the
student is reading from that science text. The same is true for any other text you use in
the classroom. You should continue to monitor these students as texts change and the
level of difficulty increases.
Students who can read the grade-level text with relative ease should read the text
independently. If the text appears to be too difficult, as determined by the fluency scale
and your informal assessments of the students’ performance, you will need to put some
interventions in place. For example, when you are using the instructional materials
that are too difficult for some students, you may want to use Paratore’s (2000) flexible
multiple-­grouping model (described in Chapter 2). The community reading component
of this model provides for varying levels of support when your students are reading
grade-level text. You may designate reading buddies to give support to the students
who cannot contend with the text independently. Chapter 3 describes additional ways
to support students who are not yet fluent readers.
To design appropriate interventions for prosody, you can refer back to Chapter 3 to
refresh your memory of fluency instructional methods. Children who do not use natu-
ral expression or proper phrasing will benefit greatly from your modeling of the various
aspects of prosodic reading. After modeling the various aspects of prosody, you can
240 TEACHING READING

decide whether individuals or groups of students would benefit from partner reading,
echo reading, choral reading, or readers’ theatre to practice being fluent readers.

Student Literacy Portfolios

A literacy portfolio is an assessment system that enables you to systematically collect and
analyze performance-based evidence over time. However, literacy portfolios are also con-
tainers used to collect artifacts that demonstrate students’ growth over time. Literacy
portfolios provide one way for us as teachers to work together with our students to
make sense of the information we collect during classroom-based assessments (Para-
tore & McCormack, 2005), and they help us to manage all the assessment information.
Portfolios can include work samples and other evidence that are both formative and
summative. You can include anything that demonstrates what students know and are
able to do. If you decide to use literacy portfolios, you can assess your students’ devel-
opment as readers in several ways. Some of these types of assessments are described in
this chapter:

•• Attitude and interest surveys

•• Book logs
•• Writing samples that show development of word knowledge
•• Scoring rubrics and checklists
•• Running records that have been shared with the students
•• Results from IRIs
•• Fluency assessments

Glazer (2007) offers suggestions for a portfolio system, based on over 25 years of
development.

•• The data in the portfolios should demonstrate each child’s learning needs and
strengths, as well as the kind of instruction that is most beneficial to the learner.
•• Students should be involved in using the portfolios to monitor their own prog-
ress.
•• The routines you establish should be consistent with other literacy routines that
promote independence.
•• The portfolios should be easy to handle, retrieve, store, and refer to.

Literacy portfolios provide excellent evidence when you are reporting progress to par-
ents or participating in meetings about students with whom you have concerns.

Final Words

Making thoughtful choices about the classroom-based assessments you use and the
instruction you give takes a great deal of experience. Whenever you can, consult with
other teachers who have more experience and training in administering and analyzing
reading assessments. Likewise, share your knowledge with others.
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 1 241

We have started this chapter with two stanzas from the poem “I Have Noodles in
My Nostrils.” Here now is the last stanza. There are a few more stanzas, but you will
have to read Nesbitt’s (2007) hilarious book of poems to read the whole thing.

So try not to do what I did:

I’m a total nincompoop,
and I fell asleep at lunch
while eating chicken noodle soup.

With what you now know about assessment, what could you learn by listening very
carefully to a child read the poem?

Record your ideas here.

Before you read the next chapter, please review the Key Terms Chart in Figure 11.6
(page 242) and write definitions in your own words. In Chapter 12, we continue with
assessment of vocabulary, comprehension, and response.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 11.7 (page 243) the artifacts you created while or
after you read this chapter.
242 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 11

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

validity

reliability

summative assessment

formative assessment

book logs

running records

informal reading inventories (IRIs)

correct words per minute (cwpm)

literacy portfolios

FIGURE 11.6. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 11.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 11

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

243
FIGURE 11.7. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 11.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 C h a p t e r 12

Assessing Children’s
Reading Development
Part 2. Vocabulary, Comprehension,
and Reader Response

A student wrote the following piece after reading the text Coming to America (Maestro,
1996).

Johnston (1997) often asks his readers to look carefully at a student’s writing while
asking the following questions: What does the student know? What does the student
almost know? What does the student still need to learn? He guides his readers to con-
sider the writing from more than one perspective, but always asks his readers to focus
on what their students know and are learning. We have learned a great deal from John-

244
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 245

ston’s work about looking at how well children perform in reading tasks. We have
learned to focus on what students know, instead of what they do not know.
Using Johnston’s framework, take a careful look at the student’s writing above.
Imagine that Stephanie, the author of this sample, is a fifth grader. How would you
assess her performance? Would you say that she has good ideas, but her writing is
unsophisticated? Would you focus on the spelling and mechanics, and overlook her
demonstration of text comprehension? Jot your ideas below.

What does she know?

What does she almost know?

What does she still need to learn?

What if we told you that Stephanie is not a fifth grader, but is actually a second
grader? Now how would you assess her performance? Would your assessment of her
performance change, or would it stay the same? Jot down your ideas below.

What does she know?

What does she almost know?

What does she still need to learn?

246 TEACHING READING

In fact, Stephanie is a second grader. We hope that you noticed, as we did, how
sophisticated her writing is, how she has woven her own background knowledge into
the piece, and how she strongly demonstrates her reactions to the information in the
text. You were probably not as distracted by the mechanics, because she is a second
grader who is, undoubtedly, still learning the standard conventions for writing.
In this chapter, we investigate ways to assess your students’ understanding of texts
by collecting evidence of comprehension and reader response strategy knowledge. In
Chapters 5–9, we have discussed how to teach these strategies in terms of when they are
best used: before, during, and after reading. As we have explained in Chapter 11, assess-
ment has a very important purpose: to guide us as we make decisions about what our
students need to learn as they become competent readers. After we collect evidence, we
need to make very deliberate plans about what to teach, and then reassess the effective-
ness of our instruction.
The assessment tools we describe in this chapter are grouped in a similar before,
during, and after sequence. They cover the wide range of assessment strategies.

Best Practices You Will See in This Chapter

Assessing metacognition: Strategy knowledge.
99
Assessing vocabulary knowledge.
99
Assessing reading comprehension.
99

Assessing Metacognition: Strategy Knowledge

Why Assess Metacognition?
In Chapter 5, we have discussed metacognition and cognitive strategy instruction.
Cognitive strategy instruction involves explicitly teaching our students expert reading
behaviors that will be performed mostly in their heads. Expert readers are aware of the
strategies they use to construct meaning, and they know why, how, and when to use
them. This can make for very difficult reading assessment in a traditional sense. How do
we know, for example, what our students think about before they read? What processes
do they use to construct meaning while reading? What strategies do they employ after
reading to help them clarify or extend their understanding?
Some strategies are obvious and visible. We may observe our students talking to
each other while reading as a way to get a definition for an unknown word. We may see
them consult a dictionary. Some students may highlight text or consult a website on a
computer. Some students may rely on us for answers to their questions while reading.
Other processes are far less simple to observe. For example, we cannot see what is
going on in our students’ heads as they encounter unknown words or come across a
passage that is syntactically complex and difficult to understand. Of course, if we ask
our students to read a text, and then we ask them to tell us about what they read—and
they can—we can suspect that they are using strategies, even though we cannot see them
or hear them. However, the extent to which they use strategies and the ease in which
they perform them is unknown to us. Moreover, we know that all students sometimes
run into some trouble with understanding text. What about those times when the text
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 247

becomes very difficult? We know that the more difficult the text is, the more purposeful
the strategies need to be. But what if students do not have a good grasp on the strategies
they need? How would we know?
As is true of many informal assessments administered in the classroom, assess-
ing metacognition is more of an art than a science. It lacks a bit of the reliability that we
would like to see when considering the kinds of informal assessments to use in our
classrooms, because it leaves a great deal of the interpretation up to us as we are doing
the assessment. The act of “getting inside the heads” of our students is complex, and
we can never be quite sure whether we are really finding what we are looking for. This
is especially the case with younger children, whose oral language skills may not be
adequate to explain what is going on inside their heads. Nonetheless, these drawbacks
do not diminish the importance of assessing metacognition. Done well, assessing our
students’ metacognition—their knowledge about what they do, how they do it, and why
they do it—gives us an abundance of information about their thought processes, their
reading processes, and ultimately our own instruction.

How to Assess Metacognition

Metacognition is typically assessed in the form of an interview and/or an observation.
An interview is better for encouraging a student to elaborate; an observation allows us
to take notes about what we see and hear. We recommend a combination of both. Why?
We cannot rely on students to report accurately what they do to make sense of text. We
may ask, “What do you do before you read?”, and they may report that they look at the
front and back of the book, do a picture walk, and write predictions in their reading
journals. Then, as we observe them before reading, we may see them pick up a book and
begin reading. A combination of an interview and an observation thus gives us more
information.
We have designed and used many instruments to informally assess strategy knowl-
edge. Figure 12.1 (page 248) and Figure 12.2 (page 249) are examples of interviews you
can use to assess before-, during-, and after- reading strategy knowledge. (The Metacog-
nitive Process Interview, Figure 12.2, also appears as part of our second-grade sample
reading performance assessment in Appendix B.) Figures 12.3 (page 250) and 12.4 (page
251) provide observation assessments for before- and during-­reading strategies, respec-
tively.

Before Reading: Assessing Vocabulary,

Comprehension, and Response
Why Assess before Reading?
If we ask our students to tell us what they know about the Cold War before reading
about it, they can reasonably expect that the social studies lesson that day will have
something to do with the Cold War. If we ask them what they know about biofuels,
they may recall hearing about them on the news or reading about them on the Internet.
Assessing our students before asking them to read has many benefits both for them
and for us. For students, it gives them a preview of what they will learn that day; it
helps them get their minds ready to read. For us as teachers, it can help drive the type
 1. What do you do before you begin reading a book
or book chapter?

2. While you are reading, what do you do to remember

what you read?

3. While you are reading, what do you do when you find

you do not understand what you are reading?

4. After you read, what do you do to remember

what you have read?

5. What is a story?

FIGURE 12.1. Assessing metacognition: Eliciting declarative knowledge of comprehension strategies.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

248
1. What is reading?

2. If someone asked you how to read, what would you say?

3. What’s hard about reading?

4. What’s easy about reading?

5. What do you do before you start reading? (You want students to explain the process.)

6. What do you do when you come to a word you don’t know? (You want students to explain
the process.)

7. What do you do to help you remember what you have read? (You want students to explain
the process.)

8. What do you do when you finish reading? (You want students to explain the process.)

9. What is a story? (You want students to tell you specific information, such as “It has
characters and a plot.”)

FIGURE 12.2. Metacognitive Process Interview.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

249
Ask the child, “Show me what you do before you read a story.” As the child demonstrates,
check off responses. Remember that the child must show how to apply these strategies.

Before-Reading Strategies ü Notes

Look/read the title

Take a picture walk

Acknowledge author

Examine front cover/

illustration

Activate prior knowledge

Read back cover/inside flap

summary

Make predictions

Make connections

Other:

FIGURE 12.3. A metacognitive observation checklist to elicit procedural knowledge of before-reading

comprehension strategies.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

250
Ask the child, “Show me what you do while you read a story.” As the child demonstrates, check
off responses. Remember that the child must show how to apply these strategies.

During-Reading
Strategies ü Notes
Make connections

Take notes/use
graphic organizer

Look at pictures

Make predictions

Visualize

Reread

Draw a picture

Talk to someone/
discuss

Ask questions

Use key words

Think about story

elements

Other:

FIGURE 12.4. A metacognitive observation checklist to elicit procedural knowledge of during-reading

comprehension strategies.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

251
252 TEACHING READING

and depth of the instruction that day, especially if it is a new topic. The wide range
of background knowledge and experiences that our students bring to lessons greatly
affects what and how we teach them. By assessing students before reading, we gain
insight about their background knowledge, vocabulary, and attitudes about the topic
and the texts. Below, we describe several examples of informal techniques to use as
before-­reading assessments.

Brainstorming through Webbing

We have described brainstorming through webbing in Chapter 4 as a vocabulary-
­learning event. But you can also use this technique as an informal assessment of your
students’ prior knowledge about a topic. Figure 12.5 shows a brainstormed web on
mammals. Its creation gave the teacher insight into how much the students already
knew about mammals. This type of informal “checking in” helped her make decisions
about how to adjust instruction based on what the students already knew.

Self-­Assessing Vocabulary Knowledge

Many content-area texts are so heavily laden with new terms and concepts that it is
difficult to decide which words and concepts are the most important ones to teach.
Figure 12.6 is a chart you can use to assess your students’ prior knowledge about words
by engaging them in a self-­assessment of the words they already know or think they
know.
For this assessment, you need to select the words your students will encounter
during a unit of study. Then list the words on a chart and distribute a copy of the chart
to each student. As the students read the words, they ask themselves, “Do I know this
word?” If they do (or think they do), they check it off and define it. Then they ask them-

#SFBUIFT
"
EFWFMPQFE BJS $BSFE
GPS
CSBJO CZ
QBSFOUT

8IBU
JT
B
NBNNBM
8BSN )BJS
CMPPEFE PS
GVS

(FUT
NJML
7FSUFCSBUF GSPN
NPUIFS

FIGURE 12.5. “What Is a Mammal?”: Before-reading assessment web.

 Directions: Check each word you know. Define it. Then use it in a sentence.

I can use
it in a
Word I Know it Definition sentence Sentence

253
FIGURE 12.6. A chart for assessing students’ prior word knowledge.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
254 TEACHING READING

selves, “Can I use the word in a sentence?” If they indicate that they can, they provide
a sentence for the word.
This type of assessment can give you multiple layers of information. For example,
it can give you a general sense, as you look over all the students’ charts, of which words
and terms need the most attention during whole-class instruction. It can also inform
you of the degree to which each student knows the words. Knowing the definition of
a word is not the same as knowing how to use the word meaningfully. Although this
method of assessing vocabulary before teaching is not perfect, it does have the potential
for narrowing down the sets of words and terms you teach in the content areas.

Assessing Strategies: “My Best Guess”

In Chapter 4, we have described the importance of developing vocabulary by teach-
ing strategies to decipher the meanings of unknown words. A way to assess this abil-
ity could be through an activity similar to the one provided in Figure 12.7: “My Best
Guess.” Students are given this recording sheet with new, unknown words or terms
listed (Figure 12.7 provides one example). The form asks them not only to guess the
word meanings, but also to describe the strategy behind each guess. Because the form
provides no context for the words, this activity is useful for assessing whether or not
students are using word parts to figure out new words.
This assessment can also be used during reading or after reading to assess differ-
ent knowledge. Used while reading, it can help you determine whether or not the stu-
dents are gathering the clues given by the author. In the case of a content-area text, it lets
you know whether or not the students are using the text features—words in boldface
or italics; deliberate definitions within the sentence or sentences; graphic clues, such as
illustrations or charts; or glossaries.
We caution you not to overuse this and similar assessment tools, or to use them
as worksheets. We urge you to use them judiciously. These are meant to be assessment
tools that ultimately provide information about your performance as a teacher and
things you may need to teach or reteach later.

Journal Writing
Journal writing before reading—that is, doing a “quick write” before starting a selec-
tion—is a good way to get your students thinking about a text before they read it, and it
is an efficient way for you to assess their background knowledge and prior experiences.
Asking students to respond before reading results in writing that is more reader-based
than text-based, because there is no threat that the text will influence their responses.
For example, before reading Hatchet (Paulsen, 1987), a fifth-grade teacher might
want to get his or her students thinking about what it might feel like if they were lost
for a certain amount of time. Many children may have experienced becoming lost or
separated from their parents—even for just a few minutes. It is not an experience they
easily forget. Writing about it can bring their feelings to the surface and help them show
empathy for the character.
Figures 12.8 and 12.9 (page 256) show a first grader’s journal entry (drawing and
text) before reading the book Grandpa and Me (Gauch, 1972). The students were asked
to write about the things they do with their grandparents. This student chose to write
 Word or Term My Best Guess Strategy Meaning
Water cycle Water is used over and over. I related it to the word recycle. I
know recycle means to use again.

255
FIGURE 12.7. An activity for assessing vocabulary strategy: “My Best Guess.”

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
256 TEACHING READING

FIGURE 12.8. First grader’s journal entry.

about the times his grandmother and grandfather babysat him and the fun they had.
After reading the text, the students were able to make connections between their own
experiences with their grandparents and the experiences the character in the text had
with his grandfather.
We have used journal writing as a before-­reading assessment many times. We give
a very short time limit (5 minutes) for writing, and then ask the students to pair up and
share their journal entries. We have found that this short journal activity gives them just
the right amount of experience of getting ready to read. You can follow up by asking
two or three students to share their entries with the whole class. That way you can get a

FIGURE 12.9. First grader’s journal entry. “Ian. This is a picture of my grandma and me. Grandma
takes care of the crossword puzzle and I take care of the food and TV.”
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 257

general sense of how the students are responding, and, by doing so, you may generate
more discussion.

Anticipation Guides
An anticipation guide is a before-­reading self-­assessment activity that contains a list of
true or false statements related to the topic or the text your students will be reading
(Duffelmeyer, 1994; Wood, Taylor, Drye, & Brigman, 2007). Anticipation guides can
include statements that trigger disagreement among students and challenge their own
beliefs about something they will be reading. Using an anticipation guide is an effective
way to determine the level of background knowledge your students have.
Anticipation guides foster collaborative thinking and learning, so this activity
should not be done by students individually. As in many of the activities involving
peer-led grouping that we have described, the talk around the task should be highly
encouraged and highly valued. During the interaction, small groups of students are
expected to read the statements and discuss their opinions, merging their ideas, beliefs,
and understanding about the topic.
Anticipation guides are typically used in older grades; however, we advocate using
versions of them in any grade, beginning in kindergarten. Figure 12.10 (page 258) shows
an anticipation guide designed for kindergartners and used before reading the text Ani-
mals Born Alive and Well (Heller, 1982). The students worked at their tables in groups of
four, while the teacher moved around the classroom. Figure 12.11 (page 258) shows an
anticipation guide designed for sixth graders who were about to read the book Out of
the Dust (Hesse, 1997), a fictional account in free verse of a family’s experiences during
the Dust Bowl era.
Here are some suggestions for using anticipation guides:

•• Group your students in pairs or in small heterogeneous groups of four or five.

•• Choose—or let them choose—roles for each person (e.g., group leader, reader,
scribe, and reporter).
•• Give each student a copy of the anticipation guide.
•• Ask the reader to read each statement; the leader should lead the discussion.
•• Ask the scribe to record what the group says. The group does not need to reach
consensus.
•• At the end of the session, read each statement aloud. After each one, elicit a report
from the reporter in each group.
•• Revisit the anticipation guide after the reading of the text, and compare the stu-
dents’ thoughts and ideas before and after the reading.

Now try designing an anticipation guide on your own:

1. Choose a grade level.

2. Select an expository text or a trade book that you might use to teach a concept in
social studies or science.
3. Think of broad concepts that the students may learn as they read this text.
4. Write statements that either support or oppose each concept.
 Do you agree? Put an X next to the one you think is true.

Before After
Reading Reading
All mammals live on land.

A whale is a mammal.

All mammals have fur.

All mammals have four legs.

A dog is a mammal.

All mammals have live birth.

Mammals cannot fly.

FIGURE 12.10. Anticipation guide before reading the text Animals Born Alive and Well (Heller, 1982).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

In your groups, read each statement about the Dust Bowl, and decide whether you think each
statement is true or false. Feel free to talk about anything else you know about the conditions
during the time of the Dust Bowl.

Statement Agree Disagree

1. The Dust Bowl was a series of dust storms.
2. The Dust Bowl spanned the period from 1930 to 1940.
3. The Dust Bowl took place in Central Florida.
4. The dust blew eastward in large black clouds.
5. Much of the soil was deposited in the Atlantic Ocean.
6. About 500,000 Americans were left homeless.
7. The Dust Bowl was caused by severe drought.
8. The Dust Bowl was caused by lack of crop rotation.
9. Skies were blackened all the way to Chicago.
10. People died from dust pneumonia.
11. The Dust Bowl could happen again.

FIGURE 12.11. Anticipation guide before reading Out of the Dust (Hesse, 1997).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

258
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 259

When you have completed your guide, you can use it as an artifact for your self-study
(see Figure 12.28 at the end of this chapter).

During Reading: Assessing Vocabulary,

Comprehension, and Response

During the reading process, you can assess your students with some of the same tools
and strategies as you would use before reading and after reading. We have already
mentioned some such tools and strategies in the preceding section. In addition, some
of the teaching activities described in Chapters 6–9 can also function as assessments, as
described below.

Asking Questions
Using the question–­answer relationships (QAR) protocol described in Chapter 7, you
can help guide your students through the text by giving them questions to think about
or write about while they are reading.

Keeping Journals
Journal writing while reading helps keep some students on track. Prompts to respond
to while reading can help students interact with text. An assessment of those inter-
actions can provide valuable information about the kinds of connections students are
making.

Organizing Text
You can ask students to design a story map while they read narrative text, or to design
another kind of graphic organizer while they read either narrative or expository text.
This learning activity requires repeated reading of the text. Then the students can use
their graphic organizers to write a summary or practice an oral retelling—two ways
students can demonstrate their comprehension after reading.

A Practice Activity: Assessing Strategy Knowledge through Think-­Alouds

In Chapters 5–9, we have walked you through explicit instruction of comprehension
and reader response strategies that all readers must have to understand the many kinds
of texts they will be reading. Included in the scripted lessons are transcripts demon-
strating the ways in which expert readers think while interacting with different texts.
These teacher think-­alouds enable students to “hear” a teacher’s thought processes. You
can use this same process to “hear” what your students are thinking about while they
are negotiating a difficult text. Reflecting on what you know about assessment so far,
and using what you know about cognitive strategy instruction, how would you assess a
student’s think-aloud? What would you have to listen for? How would you record your
observations? How would it inform your instruction? (See the box on the following
page.)
260 TEACHING READING

Record a procedure for eliciting a think-aloud here.

After Reading: Assessing Vocabulary,

Comprehension, and Response
Assessing Story Structure
Oral Retelling
As Johnston (1997) reminds us, oral story retelling, although it is a “straightforward”
assessment of comprehension, is not entirely authentic. In other words, retelling the
stories we read with the amount of detail and elaboration that we want our students to
do is not something that we ordinarily do in real life. For example, if a friend asked you,
“What did you do last Saturday?”, you would not begin with the moment you woke up
and relate every detail of the day. The question implies, “What did you do last Saturday
that is interesting or important or worth mentioning?” A reply such as “I went to the Red
Sox double-­header,” would be an appropriate—and very coveted—­response. Similarly,
if you are reading a book and a person sitting next to you on the bus says, “Tell me about
that book you’re reading,” you would not begin by saying, “Well, it starts off by . . . ” and
then continue to retell every detail.
However, this is precisely what we expect from our students when we ask them to
retell. We expect them to skip the implied version and go right to the detailed, sequential
version. We have tried using a prompt such as “Tell me what you remember about the
story you just read,” and we do not get the same results as when we use a prompt such
as “Tell me everything you remember about the story you just read, from the beginning,
in order, in your own words.” This is a valid difference. The same student retelling
the same story using the two different prompts performs much better with the second
prompt than with the first prompt. The only difference is that the second question asks
them for the elaborated, inauthentic version. For example, we have asked students after
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 261

reading Martha Speaks (Meddaugh, 1992) to tell us about the story, and we have received
this for a retelling: “Oh, the dog wouldn’t stop talking because she ate the alphabet
soup and the family got mad.” Although this is the gist of the story, it is not even close
to resembling a complete story retelling. After using the second prompt, we have heard
the same child say, “Oh, you want the whole thing!” and retell it in detail.
Although we agree with Johnston that story retelling is not very authentic, we find
it an effective way to assess comprehension. To elicit a retelling from your students as
a means of assessing comprehension, we make the following suggestions, based on a
procedure described by Rhodes and Shanklin (1993):

1. Select a story that has a clear story structure. The student should be able to eas-
ily identify the story parts.
2. Ask the student to read it silently. Tell the student that you will be asking him
or her to retell the story from beginning to end after the reading. This gives the
student a purpose for reading, as well as opportunities to reread sections of the
story to prepare for the oral assessment.
3. After the student reads silently, say, “Now tell me everything you remem-
ber about the story you just read, from the beginning, in order, in your own
words.”
4. When the student is finished, ask if there is anything else he or she would like
to add to the retelling.
5. Analyze the retelling.

Analyzing the Retelling

To analyze the retelling, you can use a retelling checklist similar to the one in Fig-
ure 12.12 (page 262). This checklist (which also forms part of our sample second-grade
assessment in Appendix B) is a version of an intervention assessment (Paratore & McCor-
mack, 2005). It gives specific criteria to be met for a successful retelling. When a student
is not completely successful, the assessment is then used to determine under which
conditions the student can become successful at retelling. The assessment calls for you
to administer interventions until the student is successful. Interventions range from
giving prompts to calling for a complete rereading. The “Narrative” column in Figure
12.12 is used for jotting down the story parts before the assessment (it is filled out for
“The Fox and the Stork” in Appendix B). To guide your assessment, use the following
steps:

1. Follow the procedure for eliciting a story retelling.

2. As the student retells, check the details the student gives in the “NI” (no inter-
vention) column.
3. If the retelling is complete and you are satisfied with the student’s performance,
you can stop. The student was successful without any interventions. If not, begin
administering the following interventions, in this order (check off the ones you
use in the corresponding columns of Figure 12.12):
a. “P” = Prompt. Give a prompt, such as “Every story has a problem.”
b. “Q” = Questioning. Ask, “What else can you tell me about the way the prob-
lem was solved?”
 Interventions
Narrative NI P Q V R
Setting
Names main
character(s)

Names other
characters

Time and place

Problem/Goal
Refers to problem
and/or primary
goal
Major Events
Relates event(s)
leading to solution

Resolution
States how
problem is solved
or goal is attained
Consequence
Ends retelling
with a concluding
statement
Sequence
Retells the story in
structural order

Key
NI = No intervention V= Visual cues
P= Prompt R= Reread
Q= Questioning

FIGURE 12.12. Story-retelling assessment and analysis: Oral response. Adapted from Paratore and
McCormack (2005). Copyright 2005 by The Guilford Press. Adapted by permission.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

262
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 263

c. “V” = Visual cues. Say, “Take a look at the picture. Does that give you a clue
about why the character was unhappy?”
d. “R” = Reread. Say, “Let’s reread this section of the story to see if we can fig-
ure out what happened at the end.”
4. Write a summary of what you have learned about the student. How well did the
student perform? What were the conditions of success? What further instruc-
tion is needed?

We like using this intervention assessment procedure for assessing story retelling,
because we think it gives us far more information about what students know and under
which conditions they are successful.

Story Maps and Story Frames

In Chapter 8, we have described story maps, which provide effective frameworks for
practicing retelling stories and writing summaries. Another strategy for writing story
summaries is a story frame. An example of a simple story frame is provided in Figure
12.13 (page 264).
As with all graphic organizers, it is what the students do with the story maps or
frames that is important; in other words, the graphic organizers are means to an end.
Their purpose is to help students organize their thinking before writing or speaking. If
a student writes a good summary from a simply drawn story map or graphic organizer,
it is the summary that should be assessed, not the graphic organizer. This way, we value
the way our students think—as each child thinks differently—and intervene only if the
thinking does not produce the outcomes we expect.

Assessing Vocabulary Knowledge through Word Banks

Whenever we ask teachers how they assess the vocabulary their students learn while
reading new texts, we invariably get the same answers: (1) matching, (2) filling in the
blanks, and (3) writing each definition and using each word in a sentence. Instead of
employing these decontextualized assessment formats, we have had success in asking
students to demonstrate their understanding of new words by using vocabulary from
a word bank to answer a question or prompt about a text. In this type of assessment,
the word bank is derived from the vocabulary words and terms the students have pre-
viously encountered in the text. Look at Figure 12.14 (page 265), which illustrates an
assessment used by a second-grade teacher after using the book Ruby the Copycat (Rath-
mann, 1991) to teach a reading lesson. In order to assess her students’ knowledge of the
vocabulary words they encountered in the text, she provided a bank of the words they
had discussed before, during, and after reading, and asked them to answer the fol-
lowing question: “How do you know Ruby and Angela are friends?” This assessment
was challenging, but it gave the second-grade teacher important information about how
well the students knew the meanings of the words they encountered in the story. This
is an effective way to give your students practice using the words meaningfully, while
assessing their understanding of the vocabulary in context.
 At the beginning of the story

The trouble began when

Things got better when

Then the story came to an end when

FIGURE 12.13. Story frame.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

264
 Use at least five of these words when you answer
this question: How do you know Ruby and Angela
are friends?

Ruby whispered Angela coincidence

copied serious scribbled modeled

FIGURE 12.14. Using a word bank to assess vocabulary: Ruby the Copycat (Rathmann, 1991).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

265
266 TEACHING READING

Using Journal Writing

We have already mentioned journal writing as a valuable form of before-­reading assess-
ment. When done well, it can also help you assess your students’ understanding of text
and provide a meaningful (and private) way for students to respond to text.
You can use journals to ask students to record written summaries of what they
have read. In Chapter 7, we have described the rules for summary writing and indicated
that we have seen first graders successfully write story summaries. Recall that story
summaries need to contain the main parts of a story:

•• Setting
•• Characters
•• Problem or goal
•• Events leading to solving the problem or attaining the goal
•• Consequence or conclusion

Using Summary Writing: Trying It Out

In Figures 12.15 and 12.16, you will find two story summaries. In the first one (Fig-
ure 12.15), the student was asked to write a summary for the story The Doorbell Rang
(Hutchins, 1986). The second one (Figure 12.16) is a summary of the story The Teeny-Tiny
Woman (Galdone, 1984). How do you think these first graders performed on this assess-
ment? Did they follow the rules for writing story summaries? Can you recognize the
story parts? If you wish, you can follow up your assessments of these summaries by
using the grade K–1 story summary rubric in Figure 12.17.

FIGURE 12.15. First grader’s summary of The Doorbell Rang (Hutchins, 1986). “One day a mother
made cookies for her two children. The doorbell kept ringing. It was their friends. Everyone had
a cookie. The doorbell rang again. It was Grandma with another batch of cookies.”
FIGURE 12.16. First grader’s summary of The Teeny Tiny Woman (Galdone, 1984). “Once there
was a teeny tiny woman. who went into a churchyard. And picked up a bone. And went back
home. And went to bed. And woke up from a voice, that kept getting louder. So finally she said,
‘Take it.’ ”

Score each bulleted item separately.

Score Organization/story structure Mechanics
4 • Accurately writes events in sequence. • Includes a majority of
• Frequently incorporates detailed drawings or other sight words and some
graphics. invented spelling.
• Throughout the piece, the child includes
sophisticated storybook/literary language, such
as “The message in the story . . . ,” “The main
character is . . ,” “The plot is . . . ,” “Once upon a
time . . . ,” etc.
3 • Most of the events are in sequence. • Includes some sight
• Frequently incorporates drawings or other words but is mostly
graphics. invented spelling.
• Frequently includes important storybook/literary
language (see examples above).
2 • Some events are in sequence. • Mostly invented
• Incorporates some drawings or other graphics. spelling and random
• Some storybook/literary language is used (see letters.
examples above).
1–0 • No sequence is evident. • Includes little or
• Incorporates few or no drawings or other graphics. no use of invented
• Does not use storybook/literary language at this spelling and sight
time. words (scribbles).

FIGURE 12.17. Grade K–1 story summary rubric.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

267
268 TEACHING READING

Other Written Responses to Writing

As described in Chapters 8 and 9, we have seen highly effective teachers teach writing
genre by genre (Pasquarelli, 2006a), and then ask their students to respond to reading
through a repertoire of writing formats. In this way, the students can demonstrate their
ability to think through text, and they can show how they have acquired flexibility
in their purposes and forms of writing. We advocate this process, as long as the pur-
poses for the assessment are very clear. Are you assessing the students’ understand-
ing of the text? (That is text comprehension.) Are you assessing their responses to see
how they integrate what they know with what they read? (That is personal response.)
Or are you assessing their ability to write several drafts with grade-­appropriate gram-
mar, mechanics, and other conventions? (That is writing—both process and product.)
Students have a right to know what you are assessing. Each task is different, so each
task needs to be assessed in a way that explicitly takes into account its intended pur-
pose.
From kindergarten to grade 6, we have seen students masterfully crafting effer-
ent responses to literature through aesthetic means. At times, while it is hard to deci-
pher the difference between efferent and aesthetic responses, we are reminded that
Rosenblatt (1978) has stated that we should not require only efferent responses from
students. Look at Figures 12.18 and 12.19, which depict kindergartners’ responses to the
book, Officer Buckle and Gloria (Rathmann, 1995). In this book, readers are introduced
to Officer Buckle, a safety officer who is not quite taken seriously by the students until
he decides to bring along his dog, Gloria. After this kindergarten class had read the
text, the kindergarten teacher asked the students to draw and label what they felt to be
important safety rules. The kindergartners could not help putting their own ideas into
the writing task the teacher assigned. They tapped into their prior knowledge as they
wrote and illustrated some of the safety rules they had previously learned.
In the next set of figures, Figures 12.20 and 12.21 (page 270), you can see that the
voices of students can be loud and clear if we change the audience from ourselves to

FIGURE 12.18. Kindergartner’s response to Officer Buckle and Gloria (Rathmann, 1995).
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 269

FIGURE 12.19. Kindergartner’s response to Officer Buckle and Gloria (Rathmann, 1995).

others when we ask students to respond to text. In these samples, second-grade students
who had read The Quicksand Book (dePaola, 1977) were asked to write letters to family
members warning them about the dangers of quicksand. You can see in these pieces of
writing that they combined both efferent and aesthetic responses. They demonstrated
their knowledge of the main ideas, responding in ways consistent with second graders’
understanding of an unlikely yet horrifying event.
In the next example, Figure 12.22 (page 271), a fifth grader was learning how to
write a narrative account. She asked if she could write about the book she was reading,
War Comes to Willy Freeman (Collier & Collier, 1983). When the teacher agreed, she wrote
a well-­developed narrative, trying to convince someone living in the 1750s to visit Sam
Fraunces’s Tavern in New York.
All of these examples show us creative and enjoyable ways students can demon-
strate their understanding of text. These types of authentic writings are viable means
for you to assess their comprehension abilities.

Assessing Comprehension and Response through Literature Circles

We have emphasized the importance of peer talk throughout this book. In Chapter 2,
we have discussed literature circles ranging from highly structured contexts for teach-
ing reading to informal ones in which students talk about their self-­selected books for
independent reading. We have observed students in kindergarten through grade 6 par-
ticipating in peer-led discussions in such circles, when participation is well scaffolded
and the responsibility of the teacher is gradually diminished until the students can take
over the discussions themselves. Younger children may always need a prompt; older
students can respond to what they have read when given some guidance by the teacher
or a group leader.
270 TEACHING READING

FIGURE 12.20. Second grader’s response to The Quicksand Book (dePaola, 1977).

Dear David, I know you’re sort of young to understand

what quicksand is. So…I will try to make it simple to
understand. Quicksand is dangerous. That means I am going
to warn you about it.
If you ever go near the pond and see mushy sand that
looks like dry sand read my lips, Do not go near it. It is
quicksand! Do this if you fall in. Stay put. If you move you will
sink faster. You should put a stick in it first.

From Rick
p.s. Watch out!

FIGURE 12.21. Response to The Quicksand Book (dePaola, 1977).

 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 271

FIGURE 12.22. Fifth grader’s persuasive composition: Response to War Comes to Willy Freeman
(Collier & Collier, 1983).

Literature circles provide an authentic context for talking about literature, and you
will learn a great deal about how your students use oral language to demonstrate their
knowledge about the literary elements of stories and other texts. You can assess their
ability to make personal connections; you will learn how they understand plot or text
structure; you can observe the kinds of connections they make between texts; you will
learn how they make sense of their world.
Figure 12.23 is a form you can use to record your observations while students are
engaging in a peer-led discussion. During the discussion, your role is to observe. Set
the boundaries and limits with your students beforehand, so they will understand your
 Name of text: Date:

Builds on
Makes Supports Demonstrates Makes ideas of
personal ideas through knowledge of intertextual other group Uses words
Group member connections text plot or text connections members from text

272
FIGURE 12.23. Teacher observation form for literature circles.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 273

role as an observer. In the process, you will also gain knowledge about your own teach-
ing. You may hear your voice echoed in the voices of the children. After listening to
a discussion, you might ask yourself: “Am I putting too much emphasis on the literal
elements of the text? How can I help them to make more connections to themselves?
In what ways can I help them provide text support when offering an idea or stating an
opinion?”
Talking about books is a meaningful way for your students to learn—and practice—
the give and take of conversations: participating in appropriate turn taking, challeng-
ing each other’s ideas politely, listening to others, and taking risks with new words.

Designing Rubrics

You have seen throughout this chapter different tools for assessing your students in
vocabulary, comprehension, and response. We have offered you examples of checklists,
observation charts, and other informal assessments to give you an idea of the wide
range of ways to assess your students’ reading performance. You have no doubt noticed
that we have included scoring rubrics as a way to collect information and analyze your
students’ performance. A rubric can be defined as “a scoring system that uses a pre-
scribed set of criteria to evaluate student work” (Bell & McCallum, 2008, p. 305). The
system can include samples of responses at varying degrees. Ideally, rubrics should be
developed in collaboration with your students.
We summarize the guidelines suggested by Cooper and Kiger (2006, pp. 46–47) for
using rubrics to assess student performance:

1. Identify the strategies, skills, and knowledge the task will demand.
2. Devise a task that requires the use of these strategies, skills, and knowledge.
3. Develop a rubric to evaluate the performance task.
4. Share the rubric with all students as the task begins.
5. Invite the students to use the rubric to evaluate themselves independently.

We have devised a strategy to help you design a rubric; it is described in Figure 12.24
(page 274). Some examples of teacher-made rubrics can be found in Figures 12.25 (page
275) and 12.26 (pages 276–277).

Putting Together
a Performance Assessment Design

By now, we have described almost every aspect of your students’ reading knowledge,
from the word levels they recognize to the processes they use to understand and respond
to text. Several years ago, we designed many performance assessments that encompass all
those aspects. A performance assessment we have used with second graders is included
in Appendix B. The information we have received from this assessment and others like
it has been very valuable; we are very satisfied with the amount and quality of informa-
tion we learn about our students and the evidence that we collect.
To design each of our performance assessments, we did the following:
274 TEACHING READING

1. Identified a particular grade level.

2. Chose a text for the identified grade level. We found that every grade level
included a short selection such as a fable, which served us well because the text
is a complete story and is typically short (less than 300 words). In addition, we
knew that each student would be able to read from a real text if we did not want
to use a typed version.
3. Prepared a retelling sheet to record and analyze the retelling.
4. Devised a set of follow-up questions about the story. We followed the QAR pro-
tocol described in Chapter 7.
5. Designed an interview to assess metacognition.

1. Begin gathering evaluation criteria by taking a look at the nature of the task.
In other words, what are the elements of the task? List them. For example, if
the assessment is to write a summary, you have to determine first what a good
summary looks like, and your list may begin to look like this:
• Contains mostly main ideas.
• Contains all salient details.
• etc.

2. Look up the elements of that task in your standards manual to see if there are any
additional criteria. If so, add them to your list.

3. Take your list of elements and turn them into evaluation criteria—for example,
“The writing demonstrates clear, accurate identification of main ideas.”

4. After you have determined all of your evaluation criteria, try to group them in some
way for rubric categories. Your original evaluation criteria then become the criteria
for the highest score on the rubric. For example:
Organization Content Grammar
4 points • Writing demonstrates
clear, accurate
identification of main
ideas.
• All main ideas are
included.

5. Reduce the rubric categories by using different qualifiers to determine lower

scores. For example, if you give 4 points for identification of all main ideas, then
you would give 3 points for identification of most main ideas.

FIGURE 12.24. Strategy for developing a rubric to match standards.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Score each bulleted item separately.

4 3 2 1–0
Exceeds standard Meets standard Nearly meets standard Below standard
Content • Summary contains accurate • Summary contains some • Summary contains significant • Summary contains so much
information that matches the inaccurate information that does inaccurate information that does inaccurate information that a new
original text. not match the original text. not match the original text. graphic organizer must be completed
• Summary contains concise • Summary contains all story • Summary contains most story and the summary must be rewritten.
inclusion of all story elements. elements. elements. • Summary is missing too many story
• Summary contains concise • Summary contains all important • Summary contains most important elements and must be rewritten.
inclusion of all important plot plot details. plot details. • Summary is missing too many
details. • Summary contains one idea that is • Summary contains a few ideas important plot details and must be
• Summary contains no redundant or trivial. that are redundant or trivial. rewritten.
redundant or trivial ideas. • Summary needs a full revision to
delete redundant or trivial details.

Organization • Very well organized; text • Organized, text structure • Weak organization or text • Poorly organized or no text structure.
structure appropriate for topic. appropriate for topic. structure does not match topic. • The summary needs complete
• Clear transitions are used to • Some transitions are used to make • The summary needs revision to revision for cohesiveness.
make the summary cohesive. the summary cohesive. include transitions to help with
cohesiveness.

275
Sentence • Well-developed sentences • Most sentences are well • Some run-on or incomplete • Many run-ons or incomplete
structure with good variety of sentence developed with some variety in sentences with little variety in sentences with no variety in sentence
and beginnings. sentence beginnings. sentence beginnings. beginnings.
conventions • Few or no errors in spelling, • Some grammatical errors, but they • Several grammar errors that make • Grammatical errors interfere with
grammar, or punctuation. do not interfere with meaning. writing unclear. readers’ understanding.

Writing • All stages of the process are • Most stages of the process are • Some stages of the process are • No stages of the process are
process included. included. included. included.
• Graphic organizers are • Graphic organizers are complete • Incomplete graphic organizers • No graphic organizers included.
complete and detailed. but not detailed. that led to lack of information in • There is only one draft.
• Significant growth from draft • Shows adequate growth from draft the summary.
to draft. to draft. • Shows little or no growth from
draft to draft.

FIGURE 12.25. Narrative summary rubric.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 Score each bulleted item separately.
4 3 2 1
Proficient Developing Beginning to develop Not yet
Writing •• All graphic organizers are •• All graphic organizers are •• Incomplete graphic organizers. •• No graphic organizers.
process detailed and complete. complete. •• Some stages of the writing •• No stages of the writing process
•• All stages of the writing process •• Most stages of the writing process are included. are included.
are included. process are included. •• Some growth from draft to draft. •• Little or no growth from draft to
draft.

276
•• Significant growth from draft to •• Adequate growth from draft to
draft. draft.
Book review •• The introduction paragraph has •• The introduction paragraph is •• The introduction paragraph is •• The introduction paragraph
elements a captivating lead and states the missing one of the following: missing two of the following: doesn’t have a captivating lead,
title and author of the book. captivating lead, title, or author. captivating lead, title, or author. title, or author.
•• The summary of the story line •• The summary of the story line is •• There are too many details in •• There is no summary, or the
is brief and leaves the reader brief and doesn’t give away the the summary, but it doesn’t give summary gives away the ending.
wanting to know more. ending. away the ending. •• Character analysis is unclear,
•• Character analysis is clear, with •• Character analysis is clear, with •• Character analysis is unclear, with no examples.
detailed examples. some examples. with few examples. •• Setting analysis is unclear, with
•• Setting analysis is clear, with •• Setting analysis is clear, with •• Setting analysis is unclear, with no examples.
detailed examples. some examples. few examples. •• Plot analysis is unclear, with no
•• Plot analysis is clear, with •• Plot analysis is clear, with some •• Plot analysis is unclear, with few examples.
detailed examples. examples. examples. •• Theme analysis is unclear, with
•• Theme analysis is clear, with •• Theme analysis is clear, with •• Theme analysis is unclear, with no examples.
detailed examples. some examples. few examples. •• There is no reflection.
•• Reflection expresses opinion •• Reflection expresses opinion but •• Reflection does not express
and leaves the reader in is not suspenseful. opinion and is not suspenseful.
suspense.
 Writing style •• Writing is fluent and uses clear •• Writing is generally fluent and •• Writing is not fluent and uses few •• Writing is not fluent and doesn’t
transitions. uses some transitions. transitions. use transitions.
•• All ideas and opinions are •• Most ideas and opinions are •• Some ideas and opinions are •• Ideas and opinions are not
clearly expressed. clearly expressed. clearly expressed. clearly expressed.
Content •• All details from the story are •• Most details from the story are •• Some details from the story are •• Details are not accurate.
accuracy accurate. accurate. accurate.
Sentence •• All sentences are complete •• There are some fragments and •• There are many fragments and •• Sentence structure inhibits
structure sentences. There are no run-ons. run-ons. readers’ understanding.
and fragments or run-ons. •• Some errors in spelling, •• Several errors in spelling, •• Errors in spelling, capitalization,
conventions •• Few or no errors in spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. capitalization, or punctuation. and/or punctuation make writing
capitalization, or punctuation. •• Some errors in grammar. •• Several grammatical errors. unclear.
•• Few or no errors in grammar. •• Grammatical errors make writing
unclear.

FIGURE 12.26. Book review assessment.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

277
278 TEACHING READING

When we administered the performance assessments to the students at the begin-

ning of the school year, it gave us information about (1) approximately how well the
students could access the core reading text, and the level of support we might need to
give each student; (2) how well the students could retell a story and answer questions;
(3) the amount of explicit instruction in comprehension the students might need; and (4)
the amount of knowledge they had about the processes they used as developing read-
ers (i.e., the extent of their metacognition). We were able to take the components of the
trustworthy assessments we typically used in classrooms to assess literacy (Paratore &
McCormack, 2005) and combine them with the district-­adopted reading text that the
students would be reading that year.

Collecting Evidence for Student Portfolios

In Chapter 11, we have described how you can collect evidence of your students’ per-
formance and put it together with your students as part of a portfolio process. You have
learned about various types of assessment in phonological/phonemic awareness, pho-
nics, and fluency, and about the evidence for students’ performance and growth in these
aspects of reading that you can collect in the portfolios.
In this chapter, you have learned about methods for assessing students’ metacog-
nition, vocabulary knowledge, comprehension, strategy use, and response and about
ways you and your students can collect evidence in these areas. You are now ready to
add to your list of artifacts that you and your students can include in their portfolios.

Make a list of the artifacts you can collect about your students to learn what they know
and can do.
 Assessing Children’s Reading Development: Part 2 279

Final Words about Assessing Reading

In the last two chapters, we have described ways to assess your students in the class-
room context. Whenever you assess your own students in the context of a real class-
room, you have a great deal of data to analyze and to use in making decisions about
your pedagogy. This is why learning about new assessments, trying them out, and shar-
ing the results with others are important: Doing these things can only make you better
at assessing.
If you are a teacher, you will be asked to assess your students in ways that are not
always as authentic as the ones described in this book. This is all the more reason why
you should be diligent about collecting as much evidence as you can about the things
that your students know and can do well.
One last word of caution: Although instruction and assessment go hand in hand,
please do not confuse assessment with instruction or with assigning. Assigning students
to write in response to reading without teaching them how to do it is an ineffective
practice. Assigning them to answer questions after reading a text is not teaching them
how to think while they are reading and negotiating text so that it makes sense to them.
We would like to see far more teaching of comprehension than we see on a day-to-day
basis in the classrooms we observe. We hope that our explanations of explicit instruc-
tion and our suggestions for authentic assessment will inspire you to take a good look
at your own pedagogy and motivate you to align your practices with what we know as
excellent teaching of reading.
Before you read the next chapter, take a few moments to assess your comprehen-
sion of this chapter by referring to the Key Terms Chart in Figure 12.27 (page 280). Write
definitions for these terms in your own words to assess your own understanding. In
Chapter 13, we present ways to demonstrate your professionalism through self-study,
inservices, and other professional development activities.

Reflection on Artifacts for Your Self-Study

For your self-study, record on Figure 12.28 (page 281) the artifacts you created while you
read this chapter.
280 TEACHING READING

Key Terms for Chapter 12

In this chapter, the following key terms are essential to your understanding of reading
instruction. Think about what they mean, and try to define them in your own words.

anticipation guide

intervention assessment

story frame

word bank

rubric

performance assessment

FIGURE 12.27. Key Terms Chart for Chapter 12.

 Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 12

Teacher Instructional Provisions for Variety of Modes Critical Thinking and Opportunities
Name of Artifact Actions and Language Individual Differences of Communication Active Engagement for Assessment

281
FIGURE 12.28. Self-Study Review Chart for Chapter 12.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to pho-
tocopy this figure is granted to purchasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).
 C h a p t e r 13

Viewing Ourselves as Professional

Teachers of Reading

Recently at a local gym, I (RLM) noticed a young woman, Thea, whom I instantly rec-
ognized as a student I had taught in second grade. I approached her and introduced
myself. She said, “Of course I remember you, but I didn’t think you would recognize
me.” During the conversation, Thea told me that she had just cleaned out a closet at her
mother’s house. In a box at the bottom of the closet, she found a dog-eared paperback
copy of Frog and Toad All Year (Lobel, 1976). When she opened the book, there was a
handwritten inscription from her mother: “Thea, I’m so proud of you! You are a great
reader! Always remember your second-grade teacher, who taught you how to read.” I
wondered if Thea had struggled as an early reader, and I told her that I did not remem-
ber her struggling. She replied that she had had a very unsuccessful first-grade experi-
ence, but that she’d finally learned to read when she was a student in my second-grade
class. “I have always been grateful to you,” she said. She then told me, her voice swelling
with pride, that she had just graduated from college and had been on the dean’s list all
4 years.
Anyone who has been teaching children to read for a long time can tell many sto-
ries like this one. It is not unusual. We have chosen to include it here to illustrate the
importance and impact of teaching children to read. Our students’ early experiences
with learning to read affect the rest of their lives. There is no job more difficult; there is
no job more rewarding.
As good teachers of reading, we put great demands on our students. We must also
put demands on ourselves as teachers of reading. Sometimes that means stepping out
of our own comfort zones, trying new things, and being open to new ideas. We know
that being a good teacher means more than receiving good training in a teacher educa-
tion program. Learning to be an effective teacher of reading is ongoing and hard work.
Members of other professions, such as medicine, law, and architecture, are required
to engage in ongoing professional development throughout their careers as methods

282
 Viewing Ourselves as Professional Teachers of Reading 283

change, technologies advance, and research is conducted and disseminated. The same
is true for the teaching profession. Fortunately, most school districts offer teachers
many opportunities to update their skills and engage in professional development in
the teaching of reading. But we have seen teachers go far beyond what their school dis-
tricts require and expect.

Meeting Professional Standards

In Rhode Island, the state in which we prepare our teachers, we have the following
professional standard: “Teachers reflect on their practice and assume responsibility for
their own professional development by actively seeking and participating in oppor-
tunities to learn and grow as professionals” (Rhode Island Department of Education,
p. 17). We know that similar teaching standards exist in many other states we have
investigated.
When you collect artifacts and engage in self-study, you are engaging in an impor-
tant aspect of professional development. This is one way to investigate how to improve
your practice of teaching reading. Read more about the research-based activities sug-
gested in the text, try them out, and discuss them with others. Then, as suggested in the
Preface, gather and organize your artifacts into a physical or electronic portfolio. We
encourage you to make this process a consistent element of your practice. Our intention
is to help you get started on a habit that can only lead to your becoming a better profes-
sional and a better teacher of reading.
There are many other ways to become involved in your own professional develop-
ment activities. Ten important ones are listed in Figure 13.1 and are described in the
rest of this chapter. Figure 13.2 contains links, websites, and online resources for your
further investigation. We suggest that you participate in some or all of the professional
activities and find the ones that suit you best. Choose the ones that provide you with the
appropriate experiences to be the best professional you can be.

1. Become a member of professional organizations, and take advantage of their benefits.

2. Learn about and read award-winning literature for children.
3. Form or join a professional study group with other teachers of reading.
4. Start or join a professional book group.
5. Conduct action research, and share the results with your colleagues.
6. Keep a journal of your reflections about yourself as a teacher of reading.
7. Subscribe to online professional journals, to stay current with the latest research in the
teaching of reading.
8. Visit other classrooms to learn new strategies for teaching reading.
9. Invite other teachers to your classroom to show them new strategies you have learned;
ask them to model strategies for you.
10. Attend workshops, conferences, or courses in teaching reading, and share what you have
learned with your colleagues.

FIGURE 13.1. Ten ways to show professionalism.

284 TEACHING READING

Professional Portfolios
www.eduscapes.com/tap/topic82.htm
content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4148
hagar.up.ac.za/catts/ole/oro1999/resources/portfolio/Professional.PDF

Professional Organizations
International Reading Association: www.reading.org
National Council of Teachers of English: www.ncte.org
National Reading Conference: www.nrconline.org

Children’s Literature
American Library Association: www.ala.org
Multicultural Children’s Literature: www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/multicultural.htm

Professional Study Groups and Book Clubs

teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/jointheclub.htm
teachers.net/gazette/AUG00/fisher.html
www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department29.cfm

Action Research
gse.gmu.edu/research/tr
www.madison.k12.wi.us/sod/car/carhomepage.html

Online Journals
www.readingonline.org
aera-cr.asu.edu/ejournals

FIGURE 13.2. Websites and links for engaging in professional activities.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee
Pasquarelli. Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this figure is granted to pur-
chasers of this book for personal use only (see copyright page for details).

Become a Member of Professional Organizations

Becoming a member of one or more professional organizations opens the doors to a
number of benefits and opportunities. Complete access to these organizations’ websites
is among the most advantageous. Members can access online journals, contribute to
discussions forums, join committees, vote on officers and issues, and receive reduced
rates for annual and regional conference fees. In addition, membership often provides
discounts on professional books published by these organizations.
National organizations often have regional, state, or local affiliates. Become actively
involved in these affiliates, and you can meet with other professionals who live and
work near you.
 Viewing Ourselves as Professional Teachers of Reading 285

Learn about and Read Award-­Winning Literature for Children

If you love teaching children to read, you no doubt love to read yourself. Modeling a
love for reading makes reading contagious for many children. Knowing good books is
beneficial; being an avid reader is a must. Lapp, Fisher, and Flood (2008) suggest that
teachers use authentic children’s literature as a significant part of their reading pro-
grams, for three reasons. The first reason is that using real literature (both narrative
and expository) models for children the language structures they will encounter as they
become more competent readers. Second, reading real literature helps students connect
what they are reading to their prior knowledge. Third, reading real literature is more
motivating.
Each January, the American Library Association announces the winners of its
awards for children’s and young adults’ books on its website (www.ala.org). Bookmark
the site as a “favorite,” because it is frequently updated. Figure 13.3 lists these awards
and provides a short description of each.
The number of new books published each year can be overwhelming, especially
for new teachers or for teachers who change grade levels. We suggest that you start by
reading as many of the award winners and honor books as you can. Multicultural pic-
ture books and selections for older children are wonderful for reading aloud. Keeping
up with the latest popular and recognized titles demonstrates to the students that you
know about and care about the books they will read. Teacher endorsement is critical.
Students and parents rely on teachers to recommend good literature, and contemporary
titles are among the most popular ones with students.

•• John Newbery Medal, for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature.
•• Randolph Caldecott Medal, for the most distinguished American picture book for children.
•• Michael L. Printz Award, for excellence in literature written for young adults.
•• Coretta Scott King Book Award, recognizing an African American author and illustrator of
outstanding books for children and young adults.
•• Schneider Family Book Award, for books that embody the artistic expression of the
disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.
•• Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, for the most distinguished book for beginning readers.
•• Margaret A. Edwards Award, for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.
•• The Pura Belpré Award, honoring Latino/Latina authors and illustrators whose work best
portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino/Latina cultural experience in children’s books.
•• Robert F. Sibert Medal, for most distinguished informational book for children.
•• Andrew Carnegie Medal, for excellence in children’s video.
•• Mildred L. Batchelder Award, for the most outstanding children’s book translated from a
foreign language and subsequently published in the United States.
•• Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production.
•• Alex Awards, for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences.
•• May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, recognizing an individual of distinction in the field of
children’s literature, who then presents a lecture at a winning host site.

FIGURE 13.3. The annual American Library Association youth media awards (www.ala.org).
286 TEACHING READING

There are many other professionals who can help you select books to read and use
with students: your school librarian, the children’s librarians at public libraries, and
owners of independent booksellers. They know the books that are frequently requested,
checked out, and purchased by students and their parents.

Form or Join a Professional Study Group

Participating in a study group is an interactive way to engage in professional develop-
ment. Study groups can investigate topics in reading, pilot-test new programs, look at
student work, and discuss teaching methods. They are flexible and allow for different
ways of investigating topics in literacy, ranging from reading books to downloading
online journal articles. The possibilities are endless. Participants can try out different
techniques they read about. Later, they can bring student work and artifacts to the group
for analysis and discussion by the group members. Bean (2004) states that when teachers
are participants in study groups, “they become more engaged in the process and are gen-
erally more willing to apply what they are learning to their classroom practices” (p. 91).
In some districts, study groups meet during the school day, and the participants are
released from their classrooms for an hour or so every month for the meetings. Teachers
have told us that this structure works well for them, and it sends them a message that
the study group meeting is an integral part of a teacher’s working life.
Because study groups are gaining popularity, we have suggested some websites in
Figure 13.2 (page 284) that contain information and guidelines for participating in such
a group.

Form or Join a Professional Book Group

Professional book groups or clubs are increasing in many school districts. Teachers have
informed us that they can meet as often as once a week, but they usually meet once a
month after a professional book is read. This format is effective for several reasons. First,
professional books should be discussed with other professionals. According to Walpole
and McKenna (2008), professional book clubs “foster collaborative discussion of texts
that have been selected for their match to the goals of the building” (p. 52). It is through
reading and responding to the books that members can share their understanding and
can seek clarification from each other. Second, the social aspect of a book group makes
reading the texts more enjoyable. Moreover, in many districts and states, participating
in a professional book club is considered valid professional development, and the hours
can be collated or logged for recertification purposes.

Conduct Action Research

Action research is a systematic process for investigating a method, a program, or an
authentic school or classroom situation. Its overarching purpose is to improve instruc-
tional actions (Johnson, 2002).
We would argue that good teachers are always conducting research; it is impos-
sible to teach effectively without making ongoing assessments of your students’ perfor-
mance and then making the necessary adjustments. But, in our busy and hectic sched-
ules, we often do the data analysis in our heads and keep going. What is different in
 Viewing Ourselves as Professional Teachers of Reading 287

•• The data collected in action research can be used to provide a more complete picture
of your students and the students in your school or district.
•• Your colleagues are often interested in hearing about the findings of your research
project.
•• Action research can be used to make a case for a particular methodology or program,
or to evaluate new programs.
•• Professional conferences, academic journals, and online journals are possible venues
for sharing your action research projects.
•• Local community organizations are often interested in hearing about the latest trends
in education.

FIGURE 13.4. Why present your action research? Based on Johnson (2002).

action research is that the data collection and analysis are more systematic and often
more purposeful. In addition, the results lend themselves to being shared with others.
Mraz, Vacca, and Vintinner (2008) have found three trends when investigating
teachers as researchers. First, they have found that teachers who do action research feel
more involved in their own practice of teaching. Moreover, teacher action researcher
teams exhibit increased collegiality as a result of working closely with each other on
their shared goals, investigations, and practice. Furthermore, the studies they conduct
can produce data that are focused and measurable.
Johnson’s (2002) work has guided us through well-­structured action research proj-
ects with teachers from many districts. Figure 13.4 summarizes Johnson’s rationale
for engaging in action research and sharing the results. Your colleagues, your school
administration, and the community are truly interested in hearing about the findings
of your research project.

Keep a Journal
If you have been gathering evidence for your self-study, you already know the impor-
tance of reflection for pedagogy. Keeping a teaching journal has similar results. It is
perhaps the easiest way to engage in professional development.
Yinger and Clark (1981) have suggested that keeping a journal of feelings, thoughts,
and reflections provides teachers with the means to learn more about themselves in
four important ways. First, it enhances what they know. When teachers write about
their prior knowledge in a journal, things that may have become routine are once again
made explicit in their minds. This act enables teachers to construct new meaning as
they make connections with newly acquired knowledge. Yinger and Clark add that this
process also allows teachers to identify gaps or inconsistencies in their thinking.
Second, the act of journal writing provides teachers with connections to their emo-
tions and feelings. Yinger and Clark have suggested that by making symbolic repre-
sentations of affective knowledge, teachers can examine their emotional conflicts and
resolve personal issues related to their classrooms.
Third, Yinger and Clark believe that journal writing is an opportunity for teachers
to explore what they do and how they do it. Journal writers who produce written records
of their actions have opportunities to reflect outside the classroom and to evaluate their
actions and procedures in quiet moments separate from the demands of teaching.
288 TEACHING READING

Finally, Yinger and Clark have suggested that through journal writing, teachers
have occasions to reflect on “why” or the reasons for their actions. They state that this
process provides teachers with knowledge that results from evaluating and judging
personal motives and making changes to their rationales accordingly. These four provi-
sions of classroom journal writing give teachers opportunities for systematic reflection
on their teaching.
Journal entries can be structured around a series of questions, such as “What did I
learn about myself today?”, “What were the strengths of my lesson?”, or “How could I
have differentiated my instruction to meet the needs of all the students?” Responding
to such questions in writing, learning from them, and making the changes or revisions
to instruction can make a journal valuable.
Many teachers require their students to keep journals; your own journal is a per-
fect complement to their activity. It can model for students the importance of maintain-
ing a written log as a self-­evaluation tool. One of our professors once said, “Never ask
your students to write anything you haven’t written yourself.” We agree.

Subscribe to Online Professional Journals

Reading professional journals is the best way to stay current. Many online versions of
professional journals and publications are now offered as alternatives to paper copies.
Figure 13.2 (page 284) provides links to two journals that are available online; there are
many others. Many of these journals are peer-­reviewed research journals. Reading the
research often validates the good practice that excellent teachers use. More importantly,
it helps teachers stay on the cutting edge of the latest research in reading. We feel that
professional development should include a fair amount of reading the research. As pre-
viously mentioned, if you belong to professional organizations, you will have increased
access to online journals and other publications. These websites are frequently updated,
and they include summaries of research and the organizations’ position papers.

Visit Classrooms of Other Excellent Teachers

Teaching can be a solitary experience, even with a classroom full of energetic children.
Classroom teachers are seldom able to work outside their own classrooms. When we
were reading specialists, we spent time in many classrooms while providing services
to students, modeling lessons, and consulting with teachers. We were surprised at how
different teachers were, and how reading methods varied from teacher to teacher. Not
everything we saw was best practice, but many things were. We remember thinking
as we saw terrific lessons, “Everyone should see this!” If you are able to take a profes-
sional day from your job or class to visit the classroom of an excellent teacher or to
shadow one, it will be well worth your while. The classroom you want to visit may be in
your own school, or it may be outside your district. An exemplary lesson modeled by a
teacher is far easier to replicate than one that is only described to you. In addition, you
will find that excellent teachers have well-­designed classroom spaces and routines that
support literacy learning.
If you decide to visit, arrive prepared. Equip yourself with a notebook to take field
notes and write questions. Bring a camera to take photos of classroom spaces. Imme-
diately afterward, be sure to record all your thoughts and observations, so you do not
 Viewing Ourselves as Professional Teachers of Reading 289

forget anything: “What can I try tomorrow? What is going to involve more study? What
will require follow-up with the teacher or teachers I observed?” Visiting other class-
rooms or shadowing an excellent teacher is a powerful way to engage in professional
development.

Attend Workshops, Conferences, or Courses in Teaching Reading

Be thoughtful in your choices for workshops, conferences, or courses. Do not choose
them just because they are convenient or inexpensive (or free), or because they are a
quick and easy way to gather professional development points. Rather, make decisions
based upon your needs and upon the credentials and reputations of the instructors or
presenters. Be sure the information and methods are current and research-based. Talk
to others who have attended similar events or who have experience working with the
presenters.
After attending a workshop or conference, it is a good idea to talk with others about
what you have learned. Once again, this requires a process of deep reflection as you
decide which aspects of the conference or workshop are beneficial to share with oth-
ers and what format in which to present them. We once had a principal who was very
generous in granting professional days to attend workshops and conferences, provided
that the attendees would share what was learned with the rest of the faculty at a faculty
meeting or at an after-­school workshop. We got lots of practice in making presentations
to our peers, because we never passed up an opportunity to attend an outstanding
workshop or a national conference. By offering up front to present to your faculty what
you have learned at a workshop, you may increase your chances of getting permission
to take professional days to attend conferences and workshops.

A Final Thought

Recently we came across this letter from a second grader to his parents:

Dear Mom and Dad

   Evrething has ben fin
   we just finisht tomie Depaola
      I thingk my techer has a crush on him
      Becas we have ben stodeing
him for a month.

We cannot emphasize enough the effects that our knowledge, actions, and enthusiasm
about reading have on our students. We are convinced that teaching children to read is
the most important job in the world. We applaud all teachers who choose to take on—
and excel at—this profession.
 Appendix A

The Most Common Phonetic Elements

and the Most Common Onsets and Rimes

291
 The Most Common Phonetic Elements
Consonants
Name What you hear Examples
Single The sound of the individual cat
consonants letter is heard. b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z
Consonants— The sound of each of the stop
two-letter two letters is heard. r family: br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr, wr
blends l family: bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl
s family: sc, sk, sm, sn, sp, st, sw
t family: tr, tw
Consonants— The sound of each of the strip
three-letter three letters is heard. scr, squ, str, spr, spl
blends
Consonant Two letters combine to make choose
digraphs a whole new sound. sheet
the
who

Vowels
Name What you hear Examples
Single The short sound. cat
vowels—short a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y
Single The long sound (the vowel says its go
vowels—long name). a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y
Silent vowels No sound. face
R-controlled The vowel combines with the r to car
vowels make a new sound. short
fir
fur
after
Vowel Only one vowel sound is heard. The Long a: bait
digraphs first vowel is long and the second is      hay
not sounded. Long e: sheep
     eat
Long o: boat
     toe
Vowel Two vowels come together to make a oo: look, moon
diphthongs whole new sound. oi: oil
oy: boy
ou: out
au: taught
ow: own, snow

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

293
 The Most Common Onsets and Rimes
Onsets—
single letter Examples
b b/ig = big
c c/at = cat
d d/og = dog
f f/an = fan
g g/et = get
h h/at = hat
j j/am = jam
k k/eep = keep
l l/og = log
m m/an = man
n n/ap = nap
p p/en = pen
r r/ag = rag
s s/ad = sad
t t/ap = tap
w w/et = wet

Onsets—
double letter Examples
bl bl/og = blog
br br/at = brat
ch ch/at = chat
cl cl/ap = clap
cr cr/ab = crab
dr dr/op = drop
fl fl/ag = flag
fr fr/og = frog
gl gl/ad = glad
pl pl/um = plum
sh sh/op = shop
sk sk/unk = skunk

(cont.)

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

294
The Most Common Onsets and Rimes (page 2 of 3)
Onsets—
double letter
(cont.) Examples
sl sl/ip = slip
sm sm/all = small
sp sp/ot = spot
st st/op = stop
sw sw/eat = sweat
th th/ing = thing
tr tr/am = tram
tw tw/in = twin

Onsets—
triple letter Examples
scr scr/ap = scrap
shr shr/ink = shrink
spr spr/ing = spring
squ squ/id = squid
str str/ap = strap

Rimes—
double-letter
endings Examples
ad bad, sad, mad
ag sag, brag, tag
am clam, spam, cram
an pan, plan, tan
ap tap, scrap, map
at cat, fat, hat, sat
ed bed, fed, led
eg beg, leg, peg
en den, hen, then
et pet, met, jet
ig big, fig, pig
in bin, fin, tin
ip dip, hip, lip
it bit, fit, hit

(cont.)

295
The Most Common Onsets and Rimes (page 3 of 3)
Rimes—
double-letter
endings (cont.) Examples
ob job, mob, slob
og frog, hog, flog
ot jot, slot, plot
ud mud, bud, spud
un fun, nun, sun

Rimes—
triple-letter
endings Examples
ace face, trace, grace
ake bake, make, lake
amp damp, cramp, lamp
and band, hand, land
ang bang, gang, sang
eat meat, treat, pleat
eep keep, sheep, jeep
eet greet, feet, meet
end bend, fend, lend
ent bent, cent, dent
est best, nest, pest
ilk milk, silk
ing king, spring, thing
ink pink, mink, sink
int lint, tint, print
ist fist, gist, twist
ond bond, pond, frond
uck pluck, truck (be careful with this rime)
ump dump, lump, pump
unk bunk, punk, sunk
usk dusk, tusk, musk

296
 Appendix B

Second-Grade Sample
Reading Performance Assessment

Affective Survey 299

Second-Grade Text: “The Fox and the Stork” 300
Running Record Sheet 301
Fluency Assessment and Analysis (Three Parts) 302
Story-Retelling Assessment and Analysis 304
Probe Questions Assessment and Analysis 305
Metacognitive Process Interview and Qualitative Analysis 306
Reading Performance Assessment and Intervention Reporting Form 307

297
 Affective Survey

Ask students these questions and record their responses.

1. How would you describe yourself as a reader?

2. What would you like to be able to read?

3. Do you like to read aloud? Read silently?

4. What kinds of things do you like to read or read about?

5. How can you improve as a reader?

6. What is the title of the last book you read on your own?

7. What do you think teachers can do to motivate their students to read?

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

299
 Second-Grade Text:

“The Fox and the Stork”

On a summer day, Fox went for a walk in the forest and met Stork.
Stork was happy to meet Fox and said,
“Hello, Fox!”
“Hello,” replied Fox. As Fox bowed deeply, he added, “I was just
thinking of you, Stork. Would you like to have dinner with me tonight at
my house?”
Stork was delighted and said, “I would love to have dinner with you
tonight! What time would you like me to come?”
“At sundown,” Fox replied.
Now I hope you do not think that Fox was being a good friend. Fox
really thought a lot of himself and liked others to know how smart he was,
too. He was planning to play a trick on Stork so he could brag about it to
his other animal friends. So when Stork arrived for dinner that night, Fox
outwitted her and put the soup into two shallow bowls.
Well, you can imagine what happened! Because Stork’s beak was so
long, she was not able to eat any of the soup. Fox, of course, knew Stork
could not eat out of the shallow bowl, but asked Stork anyway, “Why
aren’t you eating your soup?”
Stork replied that she wasn’t very hungry even though the soup was
quite delicious. Stork wanted to be polite so she asked Fox to come to
her nest for dinner the next night. Fox said he would like to come and the
two made plans to meet again.
The next night, when Fox approached Stork’s nest, he smelled a
delicious dinner being prepared. He was very hungry and could not wait
to eat the porridge that Stork had prepared. Well, Stork was also very
clever and served the porridge in two very tall vases that had very narrow
necks. Of course Fox’s snout could not fit in the vase so he could not eat
a thing! Fox realized right then and there that Stork was smarter than he
was because she tricked him back!
Moral: If you trick others, they may trick you back!
Based on LaFontaine’s version of Aesop’s fable (1989).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

300
 Running Record Sheet
Child’s name:
Date: Grade:

Uses
meaning?
structure?
Put running record here: visual?

Based on Clay (1979).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

301
 Fluency Assessment and Analysis (Three Parts)

Calculate Accuracy

100 words – number of incorrectly read words = accuracy percentage

Calculate Automaticity

• Choose a 100- to 200-word passage from a text in the literacy curriculum. Ask the student to
read aloud for 1 minute from the beginning of the text.
• As the student is reading, count the number of correct words. Stop after 1 minute.
• Calculate the score as correct words per minute (cwpm; WCPM, or words correct per
minute, in the chart below).
• Find child’s rate in the chart below.

Oral Reading Fluency Target Rate Norms

Winter Spring
Grade Fall (WCPM) (WCPM) (WCPM)

1 10–30 30–60

2 30–60 50–80 70–100

3 50–90 70–100 80–110

4 70–110 80–120 100–140

5 80–120 100–140 110–150

6 100–140 110–150 120–160

7 110–150 120–160 130–170

8 120–160 130–170 140–180

(cont.)

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

302
 Fluency Assessment and Analysis (Three Parts) (page 2 of 2)

Determine Prosody

While you are listening to the student’s oral reading, use the following Likert scale we designed
to score the elements of prosody.

All of the Some of None of

time the time the time
Elements of prosody Score = 3 Score = 2 Score = 1
Student uses consistent and appropriate volume.

Student uses punctuation for effective phrasing.

Student reads easily and efficiently, making more self-

corrections than errors.

Student reads at a steady conversational pace.

Student uses expression while reading aloud. For

example, student changes tone for dialogue or to
differentiate among characters.

Student reads with the appropriate tone for the mood of

the story or to exemplify the emotions of the character.

Score tally.

Procedure for calculating automaticity is based on Kuhn (2007). Oral reading fluency norms chart was retrieved
February 20, 2008, from www.prel.org/products/re_/assessingfluency.htm; reprinted by courtesy of Pacific
Resources for Education and Learning. Prosody information is based on Rasinski (2003).

Final score:

Interpretation of prosody score:

18–15: Prosody is exemplary for level of text read.

15–6: Prosody needs intervention according to area(s) of need.

303
 Story-Retelling Assessment and Analysis

Interventions
Narrative NI P Q V R
Setting
Names main • Fox and Stork
character(s)

Names other • None

characters

Time and place • Forest during a summer day

Problem/Goal
Refers to problem • Fox asks Stork to dinner
and/or primary • Stork accepts
goal • Fox plans on tricking Stork so he can brag to other
animals
• Fox serves soup in shallow bowls
• Stork can’t eat soup because her beak is too long
Major Events
Relates event(s) • Before leaving, Stork invites Fox to dinner
leading to solution • Fox says yes

Resolution
States how • Stork serves porridge in tall jars with narrow necks
problem is solved • Fox can’t eat and goes home hungry
or goal is attained
Consequence
Ends retelling • Fox realizes he can’t brag to other animals
with a concluding • Stork has tricked him as well
statement • Moral: If you trick others, they may trick you back!

Sequence
Retells the story in
structural order

Key
NI = No intervention V= Visual cues
P= Prompt R= Reread
Q= Questioning

Adapted from Paratore and McCormack (2005). Copyright 2005 by The Guilford Press. Adapted by permission.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

304
 Probe Questions Assessment and Analysis

1. In which season did the Fox meet the Stork in the forest?
(Right There question)

2. Why did Fox want to trick Stork?

(Right There question)

3. What was Fox’s plan?

(Think and Search question)

4. When Stork was eating at Fox’s house, why do you think Fox asked Stork, “Why aren’t you
eating your soup?”
(Author and Me question)

5. How did Fox feel at the end of the story?

(Author and Me question)

6. If you were Stork, how would you feel at the end of the story?
(Author and Me question)

7. Tell about a time that you tricked someone or someone tricked you.
(On My Own question)

Percentage correct:
Types of question–answer relationships student answers well:

Interventions needed for question–answer relationships:

Question–answer relationships based on Raphael (1982, 1984, 1986).

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

305
 Metacognitive Process Interview and Qualitative Analysis
Interview
1. What is reading?

2. If someone asked you how to read, what would you say?

3. What’s hard about reading?

4. What’s easy about reading?

5. What do you do before you start reading? (You want students to explain the process.)

6. What do you do when you come to a word you don’t know? (You want students to explain
the process.)

7. What do you do to help you remember what you have read? (You want students to explain
the process.)

8. What do you do when you finish reading? (You want students to explain the process.)

9. What is a story? (You want students to tell you specific information, such as “It has
characters and a plot.”)

Analysis
Based on a student’s answers to the questions, design appropriate interventions.

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

306
 Reading Performance Assessment and Intervention Report Form

Affective Survey

Summarize what you have learned about the student’s interests and motivations. Write an
intervention plan to help him or her improve in this area or maintain positive attitudes.
Summary:

Intervention plan:

Running Record
Accuracy percentage:
Self-correction rate:
Check one: Independent    Instructional    Frustrational   
What did the student use to help him or her decode the difficult words? Meaning? Structure?
Visual? A combination? Explain.

Error analysis: List any phonemes or strategies with which the student had difficulty.

Intervention plan: Make a list of strategies and/or list of phonemes the student needs to learn/
review to improve decoding ability.

(cont.)

From Teaching Reading: Strategies and Resources for Grades K–6 by Rachel L. McCormack and Susan Lee Pasquarelli.
Copyright 2010 by The Guilford Press. Permission to photocopy this form is granted to purchasers of this book for
personal use only (see copyright page for details).

307
 Reading Performance Assessment and Intervention Report Form
(page 2 of 3)
Fluency Assessment
Accuracy percentage:
Automaticity percentage:
Prosody score: 
Fluency intervention plan: Make a list of strategies the student needs to learn/review to improve
his/her fluency.

Story-Retelling Assessment and Analysis

Rate the following as NI, P, Q, V, or R.

Names main character(s):

Names other characters:
Time and place:
Refers to problem and/or primary goal:
Relates event(s) leading to solution:
States how problem is solved or goal is attained:
Ends retelling with a concluding statement:
Retells the story in structural order:

Retelling intervention plan: Make a list of strategies the student needs to learn/review
to improve his/her understanding of retelling a story.

(cont.)

308
 Reading Performance Assessment and Intervention Report Form
(page 3 of 3)

Probe Questions Assessment and Analysis

Percentage correct:
Analysis: What kinds of questions did the student get right? Get wrong?

Probe questions intervention plan: Make a list of strategies the student needs to learn/review to
improve comprehension ability.

Metacognitive Process Interview and Qualitative Analysis

Results: Summarize what strategies the student knows and doesn’t know.

Intervention plan: Make a list of strategies the student needs to learn/review to improve
comprehension ability.

309
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Hutchins, P. (1986). The doorbell rang. New York: Greenwillow Books.
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Martin, B. (1967). Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
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Park, F., & Park, G. (2000). The royal bee. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mill Press.
Park, L. S. (2001). A single shard. New York: Clarion Books.
Patron, S. (2006). The higher power of Lucky. New York: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books.
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Rathmann, P. (1995). Officer Buckle and Gloria. New York: Putnam.
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Say, A. (1993). Grandfather’s journey. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Shaw, N. (1986). Sheep in a jeep. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Taback, S. (1977). Joseph had a little overcoat. New York: Random House.
Wheeler, L. (2007). Jazz baby. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
White, E. B. (1952). Charlotte’s web. New York: Harper & Row.
Willems, M. (2007). There is a bird on your head! New York: Hyperion.
Woods, A. (1984). The napping house. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
 Index

Accuracy Analysis. See Decision making based on

calculating, 302 analysis
collecting evidence on, 237 Analytic approach to teaching phonics,
definition of, 54 45–46, 48–49
instructional methods for, 239 Analyzing evidence from assessment
Action research, 286–287 of fluency, 238–239
Activating prior knowledge of motivation, 231
combining strategies and, 104 of phonological and phonemic awareness,
comprehension strategies and, 118 234
instructional model and, 97, 100 of story retelling, 261–263
reading across curriculum and, 150–152, of word identification, 235–236
156–157 Animals Born Alive and Well (Heller), 257,
Active listening skills, modeling, 28 258
Aesthetic stance, 187 Antagonists, 165
Affective characteristics, and comprehension, Anthologies, narrative text in, and teaching
114 vocabulary, 75
Affective surveys, 299 Anticipation guides, 257–259
African trickster tales, 162–163 Artifacts, collecting, 278, 283
After-reading assessment of story structure, Assessment
260–263, 264 affective surveys, 299
After-reading comprehension strategies after reading, 260–273
description of, 122–123 before reading, 247, 252–259
in K-W-L instructional model, 159 of comprehension, 269, 271–273
in reading across curriculum, 153–155, 158 during reading, 259–260
Amazing Grace (Hoffman), 209 of fluency, 237–240, 302–303
American Library Association formative, 224–225
Theodor Geisel Award, 63 literacy portfolios, 240, 278
youth media awards, 285 of metacognition, 246–247, 248–251
Analogies, and teaching vocabulary, 76 metacognitive process interviews, 249,
Analogy-based approach to teaching 306
phonics, 46, 49–50 of motivation, 225–231

321
322 Index

Assessment (cont.) Book reviews

of performance, designing, 273–274, 278 assessment and, 276–277
of phonological and phonemic awareness, writing, 181–182
232–234 Books
probe questions, 305 about words, 87
process of, 222–223 big, and contextualized phonics
purpose of, 223–224 instruction, 43–44
report form for, 307–309 to build fluency, selecting, 63–64
of story retelling, 304 content-area, 2, 74. See also Expository text
of story structure, 260–263, 264 culturally specific, 211
summative, 224 easy readers, 53–54, 63
terminology of, 224–225 expository trade, and teaching vocabulary,
tips for, sharing with parents, 207 74–75
of vocabulary knowledge, 263, 265 with high-frequency words, selecting,
of word identification, 234–237 53–54
of writing, 244–246 narrative trade, and teaching vocabulary,
written response and, 268–269, 270, 271 75
See also Analyzing evidence from for teaching comprehension strategies,
assessment; Collecting evidence for 128
assessment See also Text
Assigning tasks, 279 Brainstorming
Attitude surveys, 226–229 in K-W-L instructional model, 158–159
Author’s chair, 31, 32, 33 through webbing, 76, 77, 79–80, 252
Automaticity Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
calculating, 302 (Martin), 43–44
collecting evidence on, 237 Buddy reading, 57–58
definition of, 54 The Bus Ride That Changed History: The Story
instructional methods for, 239 of Rosa Parks (Edwards), 123–124
Award-winning literature, 285–286

C
B
Cause–effect structures of text
Background content knowledge, and description of, 136
comprehension, 113–114 example of, 138
Before-reading assessment, 247, 252–259 strategy for, 142
Before-reading comprehension strategies Characterization
description of, 116–117 cultural, identifying and comparing,
in K-W-L instructional model, 158–159 215–217, 218, 219
metacognitive observation checklist for, teaching, 174–179
250 Charlotte’s Web (White), 80
reading across curriculum, 150–152, Child–adult reading, 58
156–157 Children’s literature. See Literature
Benefits of reading, 2–4 Choral reading, 57
Big books, and contextualized phonics Classification structures of text
instruction, 43–44 description of, 136
Book circles or clubs, 29–30 example of, 138
Book discussions, supporting, 28–29 strategy for, 140
Book groups, professional, forming or Classroom activities, informing parents of,
joining, 286 208
Book logs, 229–230 Classroom assessment. See Assessment
 Index 323

Classroom discussion, and comprehension, reader experience and, 145

126. See also Peer talk strategy for, 143
Classroom environment Comprehension
characteristics of, 10 assessment of, 269, 271–273
common meeting area, 14 factors affecting, 110, 111
computer center, 16, 18 fluency and, 54–55
dedicated spaces in, 14–19 reader-based factors, 113–114
library, 14–16, 17 reader + text, 110, 111
motivation and, 10 schema theory and, 94–95
navigating, 21 teaching of, compared to assigning tasks,
observing, 19–20 279
print-rich, 55, 56 text-based factors, 110, 112–113
quiet reading space, 16, 18 See also Comprehension strategies;
resource center, 19 Expository text comprehension
seating, 11, 29 strategies
through eyes of student, 34 Comprehension-monitoring strategies,
through eyes of teacher, 9 120–122
wall space, 11–14 Comprehension strategies
writing center, 18–19 after-reading, 122–123
Classroom visits, 288–289 before-reading, 116–117
Coaching books for teaching, 128
importance of, 92 bulletin board for, 126, 127
in instructional model, 100, 101, 102 classroom-ready, 126, 127
Cognitive, definition of, 93 during-reading, 117–122
Cognitive strategy instruction example of, in classroom, 108–109
altering across grade levels, 103–105 practice reading and, 125–126
combining strategies while reading, real texts, reading, 126
102–103 summary of, 115–116
description of, 93–94, 246 teaching, 123–125
for expository text structures, 140–149 variety of texts, reading, 126
instructional model, 97 Comprehension tasks, choosing, 24
learning to teach, 105 Computer centers, in classrooms, 16, 18
lesson using, 97–101 Conditional knowledge
metacognitive knowledge and, 95–97 before-reading comprehension strategy
methods of, 92 and, 125
for reading comprehension, 123–125 definition of, 95–96
schema theory and, 94–95 expository text comprehension strategy,
for story structure instruction, 169 148–149
Collecting evidence for assessment in instructional model, 98, 100–101
of fluency, 237–238 in teaching plot, characterization, and
of motivation, 225–230 theme, 178–179
of phonological and phonemic awareness, Consequence, in story structure, 167, 168
232–234 Content-area texts
portfolios, 278 approaches to, 2
of word identification, 234–235 vocabulary teaching and, 74
Comfort zone, stepping outside, 6–7 Contextualized instruction
Common meeting areas, 14 in phonics, 43–44, 45
Community reading, 22–24, 34 in vocabulary, 78–80
Comparison–contrast structures of text Continuing education, participating in, 289
description of, 136 Correct words per minute, 237–238
example of, 139 Cultural history project kit, 207
324 Index

Culturally responsive teaching During-reading assessment, 259–260

characteristics of, 205–206 During-reading comprehension strategies
cultural heritage and respect for description of, 117–122
differences, 209–210 in K-W-L instructional model, 159
definition of, 205 metacognitive observation checklist for,
example of, 204–205 251
identifying and comparing characters, reading across curriculum, 152–153,
215–217, 218, 219 157–158
lesson plans, 210, 212–215
multicultural literature and, 208–209, 210, 211
positive home–school experiences, 206–208 E
reflection questions, 217
Culturally specific literature, 208–209, 211 Easy readers, 53–54, 63
Cultural pies, 213 Echo reading, 57
Culture boxes, 214–215 Educational activities, participating in, 289
Curiosity about words, satisfying, 87–88 Efferent stance, 187
Elements of genre, 164–165, 166–167
Emergent literacy, 37
D Evaluating. See Rating
Evidence for assessment
Debriefing, 100–101 analyzing, 231, 234, 238–239
Decision making based on analysis collecting, 225–230, 232–233, 234–235,
of fluency, 239–240 237–238
of motivation, 231 decision making based on, 231, 234,
of phonological and phonemic awareness, 239–240
234 Explicit teaching of literature strategies, 174,
of word identification, 236–237 175
Declarative knowledge Expository text
before-reading comprehension strategy choosing, 149
and, 123–124 definition of, 133
definition of, 95–96 structures of, 135–139
eliciting, 248 surface features of, 134–135
expository text comprehension strategy, teaching vocabulary and, 47, 74–75
146–147 text structures of, 113
in instructional model, 97–98 types of, 133–134
in teaching plot, characterization, and Expository text comprehension strategies
theme, 175–176 bulletin board, 150
Decontextualized phonics instruction, 43, encouraging use of text structures, 149–150
44–45 K-W-L instructional model, 158–159
Dedicated spaces in classrooms, 14–19 overview of, 159
Deductive phonics, 45–46 preparing to teach, 132–133
Demonstration, importance of, 92. See also teaching text structures, 140–149
Modeling See also Reading across curriculum
Designing
anticipation guides, 257, 259
performance assessments, 273–274, 278 F
prompts, 197, 200
reading surveys, 226, 229, 231 Fables, 164–165, 300
rubrics, 273, 274, 275, 276–277 Family storybook reading kit, 207
Discussion groups, as reader response Feature matrix, 83–84, 85
activities, 189 Figurative language, teaching, 179–180
The Doorbell Rang (Hutchins), 266 Fix-up comprehension strategies, 121, 127
 Index 325

Fluency High-quality texts, 63–64

activities for, 59–62 Home–school experiences, building positive,
assessment of, 237–240, 302–303 206–208
building, 55–59 Hoot (Hiaasen), 82
choosing books to build, 63–64 The House of Dies Drear (Hamilton), 78–79
definition of, 54
importance of, 54–55
Fluency chart, 60 I
Fluency development lesson, 60, 62
Folk tales, 162–163 “I Have Noodles in My Nostrils” (Nesbitt),
Formative assessment, 224–225 222, 241
“The Fox and the Stork” fable, 300 Inductive phonics, 45
“Free” journal response, 189, 190 Inference, and comprehension, 118
Free recall, 150–151, 153, 158 Informal reading inventories, 235
Frog and Toad series (Lobel), 52, 63 Informational text, definition of, 133
Frog and Toad Together (Lobel), 52–53 Initiating events, in story structure, 165
“Frustration-level” material, intervention Integration of new words, 70–71
strategies for, 24 Interactive wall displays, 11–12
Interest surveys, 226–229
Internal response, in story structure, 165
G International Reading Association
position statement of, 7
Genre, elements of, 164–165, 166–167 recommendations for classroom libraries,
Gradable antonyms, 82–83 15
Gradual release of responsibility, 101–102 Intervention assessment, 261
Grandpa and Me (Gauch), 254, 256 Interview to assess metacognition, 247,
Graphic organizers 248–249, 306
assessment after reading and, 263 In-the-head comprehension strategies, 118
assessment during reading and, 259 I-R-E participation structure, 25, 27
characterization, 177
comprehension and, 120
to guide written responses, 197, 198, 199 J
to initiate discussions about culture,
215–217, 218, 219 Journals, professional
story map, 170, 171, 172 keeping, 287–288
for text structures, 136, 137 subscribing to online, 288
Grouping students Journals, student
multiple grouping, 21–25, 239 assessment after reading and, 266
options for, 22, 33 assessment during reading and, 259
types of, 21 personal response, 189–191
Guided practice, 100 ”quick write” in before reading, 254, 256–257
Just-right reading, 25

H
K
Hands-on comprehension strategies, 118,
120 Know, want to know, learned (K-W-L)
Heuristic instructional model, 158–159
altering across grade levels, 104–105 Knowledge
definition of, 93–94 background content, and comprehension,
The Higher Power of Lucky (Patron), 75 113–114
High-frequency words, 52–54 metacognitive, 95–97
326 Index

Knowledge (cont.) Literature circles, 29–30, 269, 271–273

of students, focus on, 244–245 “Living through” text, 185, 187, 201
to teach phonics, 40–41
word, 69–70
See also Activating prior knowledge; M
Conditional knowledge; Declarative
knowledge; Procedural knowledge; Matching standards rubric, 274
Vocabulary knowledge Matthew effects in reading, 2–3
Meaningful use of new words, 71
Metacognition, assessment of, 246–247, 248–251
L Metacognitive knowledge, 95–97
Metacognitive Process Interview, 249, 306
The Last Puppy (Asch), 193 Modeling
Learning, evaluating own, 91–92 composition of written response, 195, 196
Learning kits for home use, 207 discussion behaviors, 28–29
Learning to read, as hard to do, 6, 37 importance of, 92
Lesson plans in instructional model, 98–99
for comprehension, 123–125 Motivation
for defining culture, 210, 212 assessment of, 225–231
for expository text structure, 141, 146–149 comprehension and, 114
for phonics, 47–52 fostering, 10
for plot, characterization, and theme, Mrs. Wishy-Washy (Cowley), 108–109
174–179 Multicultural literature, 208–209, 210, 211
for reading across curriculum, 156–158 Multiple grouping model of reading
for thinking about cultural identities, instruction, 21–25, 239
213–215 “My Best Guess” strategy, 254, 255
using instructional model, 97–101
Libraries, in classrooms, 14–16, 17
Linguistic complexity of text, 110, 112–113 N
Listening skills, modeling, 28
Literacy plans Narrative summary rubric, 275
designing, 25, 26 Narrative text
integrating oral reading practice into, 59, book reviews, writing, 181–182
60, 61 discussions of, 179
Literacy portfolios, 240, 278 elements of genre, 164–165, 166–167
Literary devices, teaching, 179–180 expository text compared to, 133, 134
Literature figurative language, teaching, 179–180
award-winning, 285–286 plot, characterization, and theme, teaching,
book reviews, writing, 181–182 174–179
discussions of, 179 in published anthologies, and teaching
elements of genre, 164–165, 166–167 vocabulary, 75
figurative language, teaching, 179–180 in reading program, 163–164
multicultural, 208–209, 210, 211 small-group discussion of, 162–163
plot, characterization, and theme, teaching, story structure, teaching, 168–174
174–179 teaching vocabulary and, 75
in reading program, 163–164 text structure, 165, 167–168
small-group discussion of, 162–163 Navigating through literacy spaces, 21
story structure, teaching, 168–174 Nonfiction, definition of, 133
text structure, 165, 167–168 Note taking
See also Reader response; Written response comprehension and, 120
genre in reading across curriculum, 152–153, 157–158
 Index 327

O decontextualized instruction in, 43, 44

definition of, 40
Observation knowledge required to teach, 40–41
to assess motivation, 225 lessons plans for teaching, 47–52
of effective classrooms, 19–20 methods for teaching, 42, 45–46
of literature circles, 271–273 planning instruction in, 42–50
Officer Buckle and Gloria (Rathmann), 268–269 Phonograms, 46
Onsets Phonological awareness
definition of, 38 assessment of, 232–234
most common, 294–295 definition of, 38
On-your-own reading teaching, 38–40
comprehension and, 126 Phonology, definition of, 40
in daily routine, 25 A Picture Book of Thomas Alva Edison (Adler),
fluency and, 55 34
Open-ended surveys, 228 Plot, teaching, 174–179
Oral reading practice, 55–59 Portfolios, collecting evidence for, 240, 278
Oral story retelling Predictable texts, 63
as assessment strategy, 260–263 Predicting
form for, 304 meaning of work, 78–80
as story structure identification strategy, what story is about, classroom example of,
170, 173 108–109
Out of the Dust (Hesse), 257, 258 Previewing and setting purposes for reading
text strategy, 123–124
Probe questions, 305
P Problem, in story structure, 168
Problem–solution structures of text
Paired reading, 57–58 description of, 136
Parent workshops, 206–207 example of, 139
Participation structure, 25, 27, 30 strategy for, 144
Peer talk Procedural knowledge
literature circles, 269, 271–273 before-reading comprehension strategy
promoting, 25, 27–30 and, 124–125
talk around the edges, 86–87 definition of, 95–96
talk around the task, 85–86 eliciting, 250, 251
Performance assessments, designing, expository text comprehension strategy,
273–274, 278 147–148
Personality traits, 176, 177 in instructional model, 98–100
Personal response journals, 189–191 in teaching plot, characterization, and
Phonemes, definition of, 38 theme, 176–178
Phonemic awareness Professional development activities, 289
assessment of, 232–234 Professionalism, showing, 283
definition of, 38 Professional organizations, joining, 284
teaching, 38–40 Professional standards, meeting, 283–289
Phonetic elements Prompts, designing, 197, 200
definition of, 40 Prompts, responding to
most common, 293 components of written response, 194–195
types of, 41 elements of written response genre,
Phonics teaching, 191–193
combining contextualized and gathering information for response, 195,
decontextualized instruction in, 45 196
contextualized instruction in, 43–44 graphic organizers, 197, 198, 199
328 Index

Prompts, responding to (cont.) question–answer relationships strategy,

modeling composition of written response, 153–155
195, 196 setting purpose for reading, 152, 157
overview of, 191 summary writing, 155
written response model, showing, 193–194 vocabulary instruction, 152, 157
younger children and, 195, 197 Reading activities, engaging family in, 207
Prosody Reading aloud, 1–2
assessment of, 303 Reading comprehension. See
collecting evidence on, 238 Comprehension
definition of, 54 Reading surveys, 226–229
instructional methods for, 239–240 Real texts, reading for real reasons. See
Protagonists, 165 On-your-own reading
Purposes for reading Reciprocal teaching, 102–103
comprehension and, 120, 123–124 Reflection, time for, in classrooms, 188–189
setting, in reading across curriculum, 152, Reliability of assessment, 224
157 Repetition of new words, 71
variety of, 4–6 Report form, assessment, 307–309
Rereading, and comprehension, 118, 121
Resolution, attempt at, in story structure, 165,
Q 167
Resource centers, in classrooms, 19
Question–answer relationships (QAR) Retelling story
approach as assessment strategy, 260–263
assessment and, 259 form for, 304
in reading across curriculum, 153–155 as story structure identification strategy,
Questions 170, 173
probe, 305 Rigor of text
reflection, 217 altering across grade levels, 103
structured, 150–152 comprehension and, 110
The Quicksand Book (dePaola), 269, 270 Rimes
Quiet reading spaces, in classrooms, 16, 18 definition of, 38
most common, 295–296
Rosa (Giovanni), 81
R Round-robin reading, 56
Routines, daily, 21–25
Rating The Royal Bee (Park & Park), 174–179
books for developing readers, 64 Rubrics, designing, 273, 274, 275, 276–277
classroom library, 16, 17 Ruby the Copycat (Rathmann), 263, 265
Reaction, in story structure, 167 Running records, 234–235, 301
Reader response
classroom activities, 188–191
example of, 185–186 S
theory of, 186–188
See also Written response genre Scaffolding
Readers’ theatre, 58, 59 coaching and, 102
Reading across curriculum importance of, 92
activating prior knowledge, 150–152, Schema theory, 94–95
156–157 Sea Critters (Earle), 74–75
free recall, 153, 158 Seating in classrooms, 11, 29
lesson plan, 156–158 Seesaw reading, 57
note taking, 152–153, 157–158 Self-assessment of vocabulary knowledge,
overview of, 150, 151 252–254
 Index 329

Self-questioning, and comprehension, 121, Summative assessment, 224

122 Supermarket scavenger hunt kit, 207
Self-study, engaging in, 283 Surface features of text
Semantics, and comprehension, 112 comprehension and, 113
Sequence structures of text of expository text, 134–135
description of, 136 Sustained silent reading. See On-your-own
example of, 138 reading; Silent reading
strategy for, 141 Syntax of text, and comprehension, 110, 112
Setting, in story structure, 165, 168 Synthetic approach to teaching phonics, 45,
Shared reading format, 204 47–48
Sheep in a Jeep (Shaw), 47–50
Showing reader process, 192–193
Sight words, 52–54 T
Silent reading
comprehension and, 126 Talk around the edges, 86–87
importance of, 1–2 Talk around the task, 85–86
See also On-your-own reading Teachers of reading
Small-group formats, 29–30 importance and impact of, 282
Solution, in story structure, 168 professional standards, meeting, 283–289
Speaking behaviors, modeling, 29 The Teeny-Tiny Woman (Galdone), 266, 267
Speed, adjusting, and comprehension, 121 Text
Storage in classroom library, 15 high-quality, 63–64
Story frames, 263, 264 informational, 133
Story map graphic organizers linguistic complexity of, 110, 112–113
as assessment strategy, 259, 263 ”living through,” 185, 187, 201
as structure identification strategy, 170, 171, predictable, 63
172 syntax of, and comprehension, 110, 112
Story structure transaction with, 187
assessment of, 260–263, 264 types of, and purposes for reading, 4–6
complex, 165, 167 words essential to meaning of, 74–78
identification strategies, 170–174 See also Books; Expository text; Narrative
simple, 168 text
teaching, 168–169 Text evidence, 191
Strategy, definition of, 93 Text knowledge, and comprehension, 114
Strategy knowledge, and comprehension, 114 Text rigor
A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie altering across grade levels, 103
“Peanut” Johnson (Green), 204 comprehension and, 110
Structural analysis strategy, 80–81 Text structures
Structured questions, 150–152 comprehension and, 112–113
Students encouraging use of, 149–150
classroom environment through eyes of, expository text, 135–139
34 expository text, teaching, 140–149
grouping, 21–25, 33, 239 imposing, 149
knowledge of, focus on, 244–245 inquiry activity for, 136–137
as readers, preparation of, 1–7 narrative text, 165, 167–168
Study groups, professional, forming or See also specific structures
joining, 286 Theme, teaching, 174–179
Summarizing, and comprehension, 121, 122 Think-alouds, 99, 259–260
Summary writing Transactional strategies instruction, 103
assessment after reading and, 266–267 Transaction with text, 187
in reading across curriculum, 155 Turn taking, modeling, 28
story structure and, 173–174 Types of text, and purposes for reading, 4–6
330 Index

U high-frequency, 52–54
integration of new, 70–71
Unlocking meaning of unknown words, 93 unlocking meaning of unknown, 93
See also Vocabulary, teaching; Vocabulary
knowledge; Words to teach
V Words correct per minute, 239
Words to teach
Validity of assessment, 224 essential to meaning of text, 74–78
Visual aids, and teaching vocabulary, 76 important any time, 82
Vocabulary, teaching presenting opportunities to teach strategy,
classroom example, 68 78–81
in context, 78–81 See also Vocabulary, teaching
effective instruction, 69, 70–72 Word study
feature matrix, 83–84, 85 as decontextualized phonics instruction, 44
gradable antonyms, 82–83 for teaching high-frequency words, 53
peer talk and, 85–87 Word walls
in reading across curriculum, 152, 157 description of, 12–13
by satisfying natural curiosity, 87–88 for teaching high-frequency words, 53
selecting words taught, 73–84 Work, displaying, 14
structural analysis strategy, 80–81 Writing
wide reading, 69–70, 72–73 assessment of, 244–246
as words are encountered, 82 book reviews, 181–182
words essential to meaning of text, 74–78 prompts, responding to, 191–200
Vocabulary knowledge written responses to, 268–269, 270, 271
assessment of, using word banks, 263, 265 See also Journals, student
self-assessment of, 252–254 Writing centers, in classrooms, 18–19
Vowel generalizations, 46 Writing workshops, 30–33
Written response genre
assessment and, 268–269, 270, 271
W components of, 194–195
composition of, modeling, 195, 196
Wall space in classroom, 11–14 elements of, teaching, 191–193
War Comes to Willy Freeman (Collier & gathering information for, 195, 196
Collier), 269, 271 graphic organizers to guide responses, 197,
Webbing, and teaching vocabulary, 76, 77, 198, 199
79–80, 252 model, showing, 193–194
Websites for professional activities, 284 prompts, designing, 197, 200
The Whipping Boy (Fleischman), 112 for younger children, 195, 197
Wide reading Written summaries. See Summary writing
benefits of, 3–4
promoting, 72–73
in vocabulary instruction, 69–70 Y
A Widow for One Year (Irving), 185–186
Word banks, 263, 265 Yopp–Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation,
Word detective strategy, 80 232
Word identification, assessment of, 234–237
Word knowledge, 69–70
Words Z
books about, 87
curiosity about, satisfying, 87–88 Zone of proximal development, 6, 102