Reading Aloud to Develop
Comprehension
© 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
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Intended Learning
• Review our definition of comprehension as the process
of constructing meaning at three levels.
• Consider how reading instruction can be arranged to
scaffold students to develop effective reading skills and
habits.
• Identify the critical components of Rigorous
Comprehension Lesson, the research-based approach
to reading aloud developed by Beck and McKeown.
• Discuss how reading aloud can help students to
understand more from the texts that others read to them
and to develop rigorous habits for reading on their own.
• Consider the implications of this framework for our
practice.
© 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
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Primary Literacy Standards1
Learning to Read Involves:
Cracking the print-sound code
Getting the meaning
• Accuracy
• Fluency
• Self-monitoring and self-correcting strategies
• Comprehension
Reading Habits
• Independent Reading: On their own
• Assisted Reading: With instruction and support
• Being read to: Listening to learn
• Discussing books: Sharpening thinking with Accountable Talk®
practices
• Acquiring vocabulary: Encountering new words
Accountable Talk is a registered trademark of the University of Pittsburgh.
1 New Standards Primary Literacy Committee. (1999). Reading & writing grade by grade: Primary literacy standards for kindergarten
through third grade (Illustrated by Garin Baker). Washington, DC: National Center on Education and the Economy.
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CCSS3 Definition of Reading Comprehension
College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for
Reading
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
10. Read and comprehend complex literary and
informational texts independently and proficiently.
3
From Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), & National Governors Association
Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) (2012). English language arts (pp. 8-10).
Common core state standards for English language arts & literacy in history/social
studies, science and technical subjects. Retrieved from
http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_ELA%20Standards.pdf
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CCSS Definition of Reading Comprehension
Key Features of the Standards (CCSS, p. 8.)
Reading: Text complexity and the growth of
comprehension
The Reading standards place equal emphasis on the
sophistication of what students read and the skill with which
they read. Standard 10 defines a grade-by-grade “staircase” of
increasing text complexity that rises from beginning reading to
the college and career readiness level. Whatever they are
reading, students must also show a steadily growing ability to
discern more from and make fuller use of text, including
making an increasing number of connections among ideas and
between texts, considering a wider range of textual evidence,
and becoming more sensitive to inconsistencies, ambiguities,
and poor reasoning in texts. (emphasis added)
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Comprehension:
A Complex Process of Making Meaning
Comprehension is the process of constructing
meaning at many levels across a continuum.
Three points along that continuum include:
•
Constructing the gist
•
Connecting information within the text
•
Connecting to information outside the text
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Comprehension:
A Complex Process of Making Meaning
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Comprehension:
A Complex Process of Making Meaning
How are the three levels of comprehension related?
• All three must be actively constructed (for example,
you can’t just “get” the gist - you have to construct it).
• Not sequential
• One is not better than another
• All three are needed to deeply understand a text
• The same piece of information can be used differently
at different levels.
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Comprehension:
A Complex Process of Making Meaning
How are the three levels of comprehension related?
• Interactive and interdependent:
–When you connect gist details to other gist details you
can make connections within the text and make a
claim about a character, etc.
–When you make a claim about something within the
text, you need to support it with gist details.
–When you compare across texts, you are always
working at the outside level, but you do so by
comparing the gist details or claims about something
within one text to those within another.
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Comprehension:
A Complex Process of Making Meaning
How are the three levels of comprehension related?
• Recursive:
When you are looking closely at information at one
level, you have to cycle back and look more closely at
information from another level.
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Comprehension:
A Complex Process of Making Meaning
Levels of support for
learning complex
skills or habits
Contexts for
reading instruction
Study model(s)
Reading Aloud
Shared performance
Shared Reading
Differentiated guidance
Guided Reading
Independent practice
Independent Reading
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National Reading Panel4
Why Is Reading Aloud to Children Important?
Reading aloud helps children acquire the information
and skills they need in life, such as:
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Knowledge of printed letters and words, and the
relationship between sound and print.
The meaning of many words.
How books work, and a variety of writing styles.
The world in which they live.
The difference between written language and
everyday conversation.
The pleasure of reading.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment
of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction, p
18. Washington, D.C: Author.
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Task Directions
1. As individuals: Reflect on your reading
Review your notes on the Beck and McKeown article entitled
“Text Talk: Capturing the Benefits of Read-Aloud
Experiences for Young Children.”5
•
In Table Groups: Construct the gist
Discuss questions B #1 - 10 on your task sheet at your table.
Prompt one another to participate, to use details from the
text as evidence for their claims, and to explain their
thinking.
•
As a Whole Group: Make broader connections
Combine our table thinking about each “gist” question.
Answer our broader questions - C #1 and 2.
5
Beck, I.L. and McKeown, M.G. (2001). Text talk: Capturing the benefits of read-aloud
experiences for young children. The Reading Teacher 55(1), 1-11.
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Task Directions in Table Groups:
Construct the Gist
A. Problems identified in Beck and McKeown’s review
of research and/or class observations:
1. How do students tend to use pictures?
•
How do students tend to use background
knowledge?
•
How do teachers tend to prompt student interactions
with text?
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Task Directions in Table Groups:
Construct the Gist
B. With regard to Beck and McKeown’s approach:
1. What are the goals of the Rigorous Comprehension
Lesson approach?
2. What key components of reading aloud does the
Rigorous Comprehension Lesson approach
address?
3. What kinds of texts should teachers select to read
aloud? Why?
4. What kinds of questions should teachers ask to
promote deeper comprehension?
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Task Directions in Table Groups:
Construct the Gist
B. With regard to Beck and McKeown’s approach:
5. How should teachers handle the pictures in a text?
6. How should teachers handle students’ background
knowledge?
7. What should students do to assist their
comprehension when being read to?
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Summary Points: How do students tend to use
pictures during read aloud?
• Students tend to:
• Be drawn to vivid colorful pictures
• See the familiar, here and now, in pictures
• More easily derive information from pictures than text
• Ignore linguistic content and rely on content of pictures
• Fail to examine relationship of content and pictures
• Miss opportunities to make meaning from text when
relying on pictures
•
© 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, pp. 2-3)
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Summary Points: How do students tend to use
background knowledge?
• Students tend to:
• Share background knowledge when teachers invite
them to do so
• Take a notion from text and draw a random
association from memory
• Fail to distinguish between relevant, tangential, and
irrelevant background knowledge
• Maintain ideas from background knowledge when
text tells otherwise
•
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, pp. 2-3)
•
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Summary Points: How do students tend to use
background knowledge?
• Students tend to:
• Miss or get distracted from story elements because of
prior conceptions
• Remember associations they import as part of the
story
• Fail to integrate relevant background knowledge with
content from text
•
© 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
(Beck and McKeown, p. 3)
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• “There is evidence that readers’
elaborations of knowledge and experiences
that are not integrally related to text
information can disrupt the process of
comprehension rather than enhance it.”
•
• Strang, R. (1967). Exploration of the reading process.
Reading Research Quarterly, 2, 33–45.
• and
• Trabasso, T. & Suh, S. (1993). Understanding text: Achieving
explanatory coherence through on-line inferences and mental
operations in working memory. Discourse Processes, 16, 3–
34.
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Summary Points: According to the article, how do
teachers tend to prompt student interactions with
text?
• Teachers tend to:
• Clarify particular content or unfamiliar vocabulary, e.g.,
“Does anybody know what______ means?”
• Invite children’s participation in ongoing story, e.g., “Harry
likes everything except taking a what?”
• Phrase questions that produce brief answers about a
detail.
• Inadvertently constrain children’s opportunities to make
meaning.
• Check on local facts without prompting students to put
together pieces.
• Check understanding after the fact rather than requiring
students to make meaning bit by bit.
•
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, p. 3)
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Summary Points: What are the goals of the Beck
and McKeown’s approach?
• To capture the potential of all components of the
read aloud experience
• To give students experience with decontextualized
language by requiring them to pay attention to the
words in a text
• To engage students in the active process of
constructing meaning as they read ideas in a text
rather than recalling ideas after a text has been read
• To further students’ language development
•
© 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, p. 4)
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Summary Points: What key components of
reading aloud does the Beck and McKeown
approach address?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Selection of texts
Initial questions
Follow-up questions
Pictures
Background knowledge
Vocabulary
•
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, p. 5)
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Summary Points: What kinds of texts should
teachers select to read aloud? Why?
• The best texts to read aloud contain:
• Challenging content and vocabulary
• Unfamiliar ideas and topics that students must grapple
with
• An event structure
• Complexities among events
• Subtleties in expressing ideas
• Text that carries the meaning of the story without
needing to see the pictures
•
© 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, pp. 4-5)
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Summary Points: What kinds of questions
should teachers ask to promote deep
comprehension?
• Initial questions that require grappling with a text
idea, prompt students to describe and explain ideas
rather than recall words
• Follow-up questions that use students’ own
responses as the basis of the next question and
press them for elaboration and explanation of their
ideas about the text
• Open-ended questions
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Summary Points: What kinds of questions
should teachers ask to promote deep
comprehension?
• Questions posed at strategic points in the story
• Specific questions targeted to explore ideas or
sections of text students might misunderstand
• Questions that help students examine genrespecific aspects of the text
• Generic probes that keep students making
meaning such as:
– What’s that all about?
– What does that mean?
– What’s happening here?
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, pp. 5-7)
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“Teacher-led questioning can be a
powerful vehicle in moving text
interactions toward higher levels of
thinking and critical literacy.”
Stahl, K. A. D. (2004). Proof, practice and promise:
Comprehension strategy instruction in the primary grades.
Reading Teacher, 57, 601.
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Summary Points: How should teachers handle
the pictures in a text?
• Consider whether and when to show pictures to the
students.
• Whether:
• picture matches the text
• picture conflicts with the text
• picture supplements the text
• When:
• Show pictures after students have made meaning
from text
• How:
• Prompt students to compare and integrate information
from pictures and text
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Summary Points: How should teachers handle
students’ background knowledge?
• Invite students to share and use background
knowledge very judiciously.
• Avoid invitations for students to randomly share any
background knowledge because what they share
may be only tangentially related to the text and steer
conversation away from the text.
• Help students distinguish between responding from
background knowledge and using background
knowledge to understand the text.
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Summary Points: How should teachers handle
students’ background knowledge?
• Ask students to think about how a personal
experience is and is not like that in the text so that
they do not import misconceptions.
• Examples:
•
“Monkeys do like bananas, but
let’s think about what the story told us about George.”
•
“We sometimes do hear about
food being poisoned, especially at Halloween, but let’s
think about what’s happening in this story.”
•
© 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
(Beck and McKeown, 2001, p. 3.)
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Summary Points: What should students do to
assist their comprehension when being read to?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Listen attentively to the text.
Listen attentively to others.
Hold information in their heads without the support
of pictures.
Construct complex answers to questions rather
than parrot back obvious “right” answers.
Talk about their own and others’ ideas about the
text. (Accountable Talk practices)
Connect background experiences to the text.
Ask for clarification when needed.
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Task Directions:
Whole Group—Making broader connections
1. How does reading aloud assist students to make
meaning at each level - constructing the gist,
connecting within, and connecting outside - and
connect information across levels?
2. What is the role of reading aloud in an instructional
framework that supports students to become
independent readers?
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How does reading aloud assist students to make
meaning at each level and connect information
across levels?
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Effective Reading Instruction: Scaffolding
students toward independent use of the habits of
skilled reading
Study
Model
Immersion
WITH
Shared
Performance
Demonstration
Novice/Assisted Use of Habit
of Mind
READING
Read
Aloud
Shared
Reading
BY
Guided
Differentiation
Practice
Independent
Practice
Use
Expert/Independent Use of
Habit of Mind
Guided
Reading
Student control/direction of performance
Teacher control/direction of performance
TO
Independent
Reading
Based on the gradual release of responsibility model of Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The
instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 317–344.
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Reflection
1.
Why is reading aloud an essential component of
reading instruction?
2.
How does the Rigorous Comprehension Lesson
framework help students to understand more from
the texts that others read to them and to develop
rigorous habits for reading on their own?
3.
What will you need to do in your practice to
maximize the benefits of reading aloud for your
teachers and students?
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• “Constructing meaning from the
linguistic text content is a major
feature of what prepares one for
becoming a successful reader.”
•
Beck, I.L. & McKeown, M.G, (2001). Inviting students into the
pursuit of meaning. Educational Psychology Review, 13 (3),
225-241.
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