Reading is Thinking: A Two-Day Reading
Comprehension Institute with Stephanie Harvey
Stephanie Harvey is a nationally known teacher, author, speaker and literacy specialist. She
worked as an elementary and special education teacher in the Jefferson Count y Schools in
Lakewood, Colorado for 15 years. She now works as a staff developer and literacy consultant
for schools and school districts across the country. The author of Nonfiction Matters and coauthor of Strategies That Work and the recently published Comprehension Toolkit, Stephanie
continues to write and has written articles for Language Arts, Instructor , and many other
education periodicals.
The workshop is scheduled from 8:00-4:00 each day. College credit will be offered at
additional cost. Details to follow.
Workshop Description
Reading comprehension is about much more than answering questions at the end of a
passage, story or chapter. Reading comprehension involves an ongoing process of evolving
thinking. When proficient readers read, they carry on an inner conversation with the text.
They respond with delight, wonder, even outrage. They question the text, argue with the
author, and nod their heads in agreement. They use research-based strategies to enhance
their understanding, acquire knowledge and achieve insight. This course will explore how we
explicitly teach reading comprehension and how kids use reading strategies to better
understand what they read and to engage more fully in their reading .
The two-day workshop will include:

A comprehension overview—Stephanie will review research in reading
comprehension and explain how her work, along with many others over the years,
has translated research into classroom practice. The research indicates that there is a
group of strategies that proficient readers use to comprehend text. Stephanie will
describe these strategies and show how they enable readers to monitor their
comprehension, make sense of their reading and expand their thinking.

A range of instructional approaches that support students as they practice
understanding what they read—Stephanie will elaborate on the Gradual Release
of Responsibility instructional framework and explain how we provide explicit strategy
instruction in reading comprehension through modeling, guided practice, independent
practice and strategy application. She will model thinking aloud, text lifting,
reasoning through the text and anchor charting as proven methods for providing
comprehension instruction.

A variety of strategy lessons in fiction, nonfiction and poetry—Stephanie will
share a number of strategy lessons for each of these genres with a particular
emphasis on nonfiction reading.

A focus on teaching with short text as well as longer books—Stephanie will
show a wide range of short text forms, picture books, magazine articles, essays,
poems, etc and demonstrate how we use these short text forms to launch and
practice reading comprehension.

A discussion of how we integrate comprehension with content—Strategy
knowledge and application allows readers to enhance their understanding and learn
more over time and across the curriculum. Examples of topic studies in science an
social studies where students use strategies to access information and learn content
over time will be shared.

Time for the participants to read and notice their own reading process and
how they make sense of text— Stephanie will provide a variety of short text
pieces for participants to read on their own to notice how they understand what they
read. As adults do their own reading, they can peel back the layers of their own
reading process and become more aware of the strategies they use to comprehend
text. In this way, they can better help kids understand what they read.

Sharing examples of children’s written responses as they read to
understand—Stephanie will hand out a range of student written responses to
reading and encourage participants to look closely at the student work and discuss
the work with each other to assess student progress and inform instruction. Together
they will develop rubrics for response writing. Examples of several that have been
used over the past few years will be shared.

Suggestions for assessment and evaluation practices—Stephanie will facilitate
a discussion of the difference between assessment and evaluation. Suggestions for
implementation will be addressed. We look at student work and listen to what they
say to inform instruction. Evaluation involves putting a value on the work (grading
the work). We will explore the difference between assessment and evaluation and
talk about both—when we assess and when we grade and possibilities for each.

Video clips of master teachers teaching comprehension in their
classrooms—Stephanie and Anne Goudvis have produced a variety of videos that
show kids at varying grade levels doing this work and teachers engaged in explicit
comprehension instruction. Snippets will be reviewed and discussed at a range of
grade levels.

Assistance in planning how to go back and explicitly teach
comprehension—Time will be spent planning for strategy instruction in classrooms
to support participants go back and teach comprehension.