Content Area Reading
Chapter 10
The ability to read well in a basal
does not guarantee comprehension in
content areas.
Why?
• Content area reading has more specific and
more difficult vocabulary.
• Narrative reading (stories) are easier to read
that expository text.
• Students may lack background knowledge.
• Teachers should supply a number of books
on different levels dealing with a topic.
Summary writing of content
material is helpful.
• Writing everything you know about the
topic and any questions you have about the
topic helps to “establish set.”
• Turn each heading into a question. Then
read to find the answer to that question and
write it also.
• Write about inferences to be drawn from the
text and creative reactions to the text.
Teaching reading during social
studies, science, or math:
• Reading comprehension, studying strategies
and specific reading study skills also must
be taught.
• Graphic aids such as timelines, maps,
flowcharts, graphs, and Venn diagrams help
build and review difficult concepts.
Teaching content reading in
primary grades:
• Use concrete manipulatives, require
retellings, develop summaries, use visual
imagery.
• Reflect the stages of reading defined by
Jeanne Chall
Readability
• Approximate reading difficulty of material.
• Should match child with text readability.
• Sentence structure, organizational pattern,
interest level, background knowledge of the
students all determines readability.
• It is measured based on number of words in
a sentence and number of syllables in a
word.
Informal readability checklist:
• Teachers should use the formula, personal
knowledge of the child, and informal check
of the text:
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understandability
learnability
reinforcement
motivation
More about predicting text
difficulty.
• Collect outside the head information: word
difficulty, sentence length, chapter headings
and questions.
• Collect in the head information: word
recognition ability and background
knowledge.
Goal: Make students more
independent readers
• Content reading is one skill needed to
become an independent learner.
– Specific skills and strategies
– study skill instruction
– knowing how to collect, organize and criticize
facts
5 Components to content reading:
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Vocabulary development
studying strategies
reading and study skills
location skills
critical reading skills
Vocabulary
• Crucial for comprehension (usually
unfamiliar)
• Content area words are interrelated. If you
don’t understand the primary words, the
secondary words are impossible.
• Idiomatic and figurative expressions
increase the difficulty.
• Understanding requires planned systematic
instruction.
Making vocabulary stick:
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1. Must be connected to known words.
2. Must be repeated. 6xs
3. Meaningful use.
Visual aids: diagrams, flowcharts, outlines,
maps and timelines.
• Examples of familiar words used in more
difficult connotation: “A belt of irrigated
land stretches almost all the way around the
coast.”
Studying strategies
• Metacognition: knowing when it doesn’t
make sense and making adjustments.
• Poor readers do not skim, scan, reread, plan
ahead, take notes, or make inferences.
• Pre-reading strategies: review prior
knowledge, relate it to the last chapter,
discuss key vocabulary, predict what the
chapter is about, see the patterns, set a
purpose.
Know. . .Want to Know . . .
Learned
• (Ogle, 1986) Keep in reading journal. Have
students write individual responses and
compare.
• Turn bold face heading into questions, read
and answer these questions.
• If you can’t remember, reread that part.
• Find the author’s pattern
After reading:
• Check comprehension with questions at
chapter’s end.
• Summarize key points.
• Study guides with key points.
• DRA After silent reading, answer the
purpose questions.
• Semantic mapping
• Reciprocal teaching.
Reciprocal teaching
• Students focus on
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summarizing
use different levels of thinking
clarify answers to questions
predict what comes next.
KWL: write what you learned and still need to
know.
– Cooperative groups. End of the chapter
activities together.
Writing to learn:
• Writing helps the student to understand
ideas better and enlarge schemata.
(Holbrook, 1984) (Anderson, 1987)
• Model this activity with student dictated
ideas that the teacher writes on the board.
• Use compare and contrast assignments for
student to do independently.
Smith and Bean 1980
• 1. Students write 2 paragraphs after prereading discussion.
• 2. After silent reading, make revisions.
•
• Have student interview historical figures in
social studies.
How to reach the extremes in
reading ability:
• Use multi-level text. Provide taped oral
reading of text. Use videos, audio tapes,
and computer programs with content
information, assign different level library
books, incorporate the arts in instruction.
SQ3R
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Read the introduction
Survey all visual aids
Read the summary
Study the questions
Return to the beginning and read the text.
New basal readers:
• Include content area reading with
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strategies
skills
content knowledge
Practice materials with both narrative and
expository writing.
Meaningful practice
• Teachers must provide practice time to
promote transfer of a particular skill.
• Interesting, varied practice is need for
transfer of a skill to content materials.
• Location skills: Index, contents, glossary,
and appendix. Use a book mining exercise
to quickly get information.
Library
• Research techniques are taught here.
• Reference materials:
– Encyclopedia: ABC order, cross listings and
key words.
– Map reading skills are necessary.
Critical reading skills:
• Analyzing and evaluating information is
necessary after you have found the
information.
• Interpreting and evaluating requires
systematic practice.
Critical reading involves:
• 1. Knowing what the author said.
• 2. Knowing when and how to verify the
information.
• 3. Deciding facts from opinions.
• 4. Identifying Inferences
• 5. Detect author bias; satire, humor, irony.
• 6. Understanding your own bias.
• 7. Criteria for judging author’s competence.
Instructional activities:
• Identifying propaganda techniques
• Analyzing editorials, political cartoons,
• Distinguishing between fact and opinion.