C omprehension Clubs
TK Section Header Interactive R -Aloud
Deepening Comprehension With the Interactive Read-Aloud Research shows that reading aloud to children is one of the best ways to spend your instructional time with them. But reading aloud plus talking with children about the book you are reading is even better. Indeed, the research is indisputable. The most effective read-alouds are those in which children are not just sitting, passively listening, but are actively participating, absorbing the story, turning it over in their minds, asking questions, analyzing the text from multiple angles, and in all ways demonstrating their engagement. Known as dialogic or interactive , these read-alouds result in student gains in vocabulary (Hargrave & Sénéchal, 2000), comprehension strategies, story schema (Van den Broek, 1997), and concept development (Wasik et al., 2001). However, simply inviting students to talk during interactive read-alouds does not provide the needed learning boost. It’s the textual analysis —deep, intentional conversation about the text—that makes the difference. You can lead your students into this sort of analytical thinking by modeling what it looks and sounds like, by offering thoughtful comments, and by asking thought-provoking questions (Dickinson & Smith, 1994; Fountas & Pinnell, 2006, 2012; Harwayne, 2008; Serravallo, 2012). You can also model for them how to identify and cite textual evidence. As the name suggests, the read-aloud is truly interactive (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006). As you read aloud to your students, invite them to participate, make comments, extend the ideas of their peers, evaluate the author’s point of view, and ask and respond to questions. In ways that are akin to those of an orchestra conductor, help manage the conversation. This may include asking your students to turn and talk with a neighbor about their thinking; offering students opportunities to participate with safe, scaffolded support, such as the prompts suggested on the teaching cards; or simply modeling the internal questioning process of a good reader. Students quickly learn how to comment, critique, and claim their own thoughts beyond the usual “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.”
During an interactive read-aloud, students learn to: • focus on a text. • use suitable language when talking about a text. • listen actively and respect the ideas of others. • build on the comments of others. • back up their opinions with evidence from a text.
10 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
Preparing for the Read-Aloud Your read-aloud sessions will be most successful if you establish a predictable structure that your students come to anticipate. The structure also makes clear that students are to assume an active role. To that end, make sure that every student can hear the text you are reading aloud and can see any illustrations. In order to ensure that you get the most out of your read-aloud, spend time preparing before you even start reading. Keep in mind these steps to guarantee your success—and the success of your students. • Be sure to preview the book and the teaching card before you read the book aloud. • Consider the book’s content and the scaffolds you may need to provide for students’ language and conceptual development. • Slip in a few sticky notes to identify your stopping points—where you will pause to think aloud, guide a turn-and-talk, or ask questions about the text. • Have in mind the instructional points you want to make as well as the deeply thoughtful moments you want to create.
11 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
Read-Aloud Cards for In-Depth Teaching
When using the Interactive Read-Aloud Teaching Cards, take note of the following features.
Before the Interactive Read-Aloud 1 Book Summary This information has been provided as a resource so that you have an understanding of the book itself and why it was chosen for inclusion in the text set. It is not intended to be read aloud or shared with students.
2 Author
3 Genre/Text Type Remember, form and format follow function. Helping students understand the characteristics of the genre and text type is important to overall comprehension.
9
1
10
11
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
12
12 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
4 Book Themes/Ideas These tie directly to the Unit Focus, to the Key Understandings and expected learning outcomes of the particular title, and to additional titles in the unit.
5 Unit Focus This focus was first highlighted on the unit folder and should remain foremost in your thinking as you read aloud.
6 Author’s Craft In alignment with effective practices around mentor texts, Comprehension Clubs strives to point out to learners the craft behind the presentation of information.
13
15
17
14
18
16
19
13 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
7 About the Author Providing students with information about the author, where appropriate, can deepen understanding and enliven conversation.
8 Key Understandings These reveal the heart of the instruction for every title and tie directly to information on the rest of the card, including stopping points for discussion as well as a deep analysis of the author’s craft. 9 Suggested Stopping Points to Invite Thinking These stopping points reinforce the Key Understandings and can be important moments for you to model citing textual evidence to support thinking within, about, and beyond the text. 10 Introduce the Book Provide students with a very brief introduction to the story and set a purpose for reading without giving away any of the deep thinking and analysis students are about to undertake as interactive listeners. During the Read-Aloud: Reading the Text and Using the Shared Talk Routine When a read-aloud is done well, it is a performance. In our view, reading aloud is an art akin to storytelling; the telling is as crucial to the listeners as is the tale itself. When reading aloud, your voice reflects and supports the meaning of the story. 11 Use the Stopping Points and Prompts Briefly comment, ask a question, or invite your students to share their thinking. Monitor comprehension, noting possible responses. Continue reading to the end of the book. • Think about the book together, citing textual evidence to back up each observation and opinion. Your students may want to turn and talk with partners or share whole-group comments. • Connect the book to other read-alouds or book club titles you’ve read and enjoyed together; note similarities and differences as well as recurring themes, big ideas, genres, text features, language and literary features, and vocabulary reflected across the text set.
14 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
Routines to Encourage Peer Talk In shared text talk everyone is an equal partner in the meaning-making process. No one controls the conversation (although you facilitate, especially as your students are learning how to explore text analysis through an interactive read-aloud). What this means is that each member of the club must listen intently to what is being said, wait for an opening in the conversation, and slip in with his or her response. Help your students learn to use active listening and natural turn‑taking. You may feel uncomfortable allowing students to speak without first raising their hands. But try, over time, to help your students develop real conversational turn‑taking, so that you don’t need a “traffic monitor” to signal who can speak and who must wait. To help your students succeed, spend time introducing each talk routine that encourages peer-to-peer talk. We suggest three configurations: Pair Talk One of the most effective ways to spark conversation and thinking is the instructional strategy, turn and talk . Try these guidelines: • Students have an identified partner. At the signal for “turn and talk” or “turn and talk about ____,” they turn to each other (when seated on the floor or in chairs) and have time for one or two quick interchanges about the issue at hand. (If you have an uneven number of students, you can partner with a student.) • Partners talk and then turn to another pair and quickly share a summary of what they have been saying. Your students will easily learn the turn-and-talk routine with a quick share; both partners share their thoughts and always listen to each other thoughtfully and politely. After you demonstrate with a partner, turn to your students and ask: • Did you express your own ideas? • Did you share quickly? • Did you listen carefully to each other? Trio Talk After watching you demonstrate text talk with two partners, students try it themselves in a preassigned group of three. The routine is similar to pair talk, but students must be even more efficient and pace their talk so that all three can share. Circle Talk in Two Pairs Again, demonstrate this configuration yourself before guiding your students to try it on their own. Have two partners turn to each other and talk about the text. Once your students are comfortable with this arrangement, they will be ready for the small-group conversation of the book club.
15 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
After Sharing the Read-Aloud 12 Summarize Once you’ve completed the read-aloud, invite students to share their thinking. Share yours as well, but be careful not to dominate the conversation and overwhelm your students. The goal is to inspire them to talk—to engage in academic conversation about the book and topics. Acquiring the language of books and the language to talk about books is a cumulative process that builds over time, across books and discussions. Support Student Learning 13 Notable Text Features It is important for you, as the teacher, to understand the supportive and challenging features of the text. Depending on the difficulties of a given text and your knowledge of your students’ abilities, you may
We offer these guidelines to develop a shared academic language: • Talk about a concept in everyday language.
• Use examples until students understand the basic concept. • Provide the label for what students already understand (name it) and invite them to use the new vocabulary, as appropriate for the age and grade. To help focus the discussion, you may want to record students’ thoughts, ideas, and questions on chart paper, or on an interactive whiteboard. Monitor and record your observations of each student’s participation. While it is certainly not necessary—or even advisable—to extend every text, some texts call for further exploration. Take your cues from your observations of student learning.
need to reread specific passages or point out additional items to either ensure or to deepen students’ understanding.
14 Vocabulary We have distinguished between Tier 2 and Tier 3 words students will encounter during the read-aloud (Essential Words) from those that may not be in the book itself, but when understood, will enhance conversation and understanding (Related Words for Discussion). When meanings of words can be discovered through context, you can model and reinforce how to learn vocabulary from context clues. Where that isn’t possible, you can define the words aloud for students, in student-friendly language. Definitions are provided here for your convenience.
16 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
Assess Understanding 15 Analyze the Text and Cite Textual Evidence Help students discuss short, highlighted portions of the text in depth with their classmates. Help them feel confident in the skills they are building in extending their knowledge of textual analysis. Because students will not have the text in front of them for the read-alouds, it is important to read the relevant passages aloud again. 16 Connect to Book Club Books Depending on where you are in your read-aloud and student book club cycle, you may need to modify the language provided here. But it is important to model comparing and contrasting topics, ideas, treatments, themes, genres, text features, language, literary features, and vocabulary across multiple texts. 17 Write and Respond Encouraging students to write about text provides them with the opportunity to absorb content more deeply. It also provides you with an opportunity to evaluate their comprehension and their grasp of the key ideas and understandings— both of a given title and across the theme units. Scaffold and Extend 18 Supporting ELLs It is important to scaffold English Language Learners through the read-aloud process to ensure they are part of the growing learning community. Specific strategies are provided.
19 Additional Resources These resources provide additional research opportunities and offer a relevant technology connection to each read‑aloud title.
17 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Interactive Read-Aloud
Resources
Book Selection The interactive read-aloud is an ideal instructional context for studying topics, themes, genre, text types, text features, and literary elements. As you read aloud to your students, stop and address these aspects of text. Demonstrate close reading, finding and citing textual evidence, and engaging in the deep and thoughtful analysis of text. Book club discussions reinforce what students have learned through the interactive read-aloud, deepening student knowledge as they think and talk with their peers. The learning is generative. Students learn a way of looking at and thinking about texts. They become more observant and analytical, noticing the text characteristics unique to a particular genre or the way in which authors use literary elements to craft a literary text or use text features and graphics to enhance the accessibility of technical information in informational text. In our book Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency: Thinking, Talking, and Writing About Reading, K–8 (2006, p. 218), we explain the advantages of interactive read- aloud and book club discussions focused on high-quality, age-appropriate books. The text is complete, the writer’s decisions are made, and all its attributes are there for discussion. Students can ‘hold the text still,’ examine it, and think about the writer’s decisions. The texts they access, the thinking and talking they do, and the close analysis in which they engage develop a repertoire of possibilities that students can use to boost their reading and writing abilities. Regardless of their current reading level, all students need to experience high-quality, age-appropriate, grade-appropriate texts. Even though some students may not be able to read on grade level, they can think on grade level—and the interactive read- alouds and book club selections in Comprehension Clubs make that possible.
37 Comprehension Clubs Grades K–5 Implementation Guide
Book Selection
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs