Bonnie Blood: Reading Strategies in the High School Curriculum

Reading Strategies in the High School Curriculum

Bonnie Blood

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Site Outline:

*Needs Assessment

Needs Assessment

*Intent:

Too often in educational settings educators and support personnel assume that students are actively engaging and interacting with a text when reading. When educators search further into student understanding, however, many have concluded that students do not understand the text that they read. Students who may be able to read on, or even above grade level still may be missing the entire point of the text they read simply because they are not able to connect with it enough to transfer information into their own minds. It is believed that incorporating practice reading and reading strategies into everyday curriculum in would result in an improvement of understanding in nearly every academic discipline. By completing regular practice reading exercises from a variety of disciplines and applying active reading strategies to each problem, students will be able to better solve problems involving written text.

*Information Gathering:

Several educators have been surveyed to gain insight into their student’s success with written text based problems or information. Observation was also used to test a controlled group of grade level reader’s success with finding meaning in written text. Based on the researcher’s observations, many students had substantial difficulty finding pertinent information in written text. As an educator, I have also observed students in nearly every academic discipline to gain insight into why students are experiencing difficulty with text based information and problems. All academic disciplines, from my experience seem to hold some correlation betweeen what students are reading, and what they actually gain from the information.

*Goals:

• • Educators will discover the many advantages that incorporating active reading strategies will have in their academic discipline.
  • Eductors will work with other collegues to discover what gaps thier students are having in reading the texts of thier curriculum.
  • Educators will learn strategies to incorporate active reading strategies into their daily classroom activities.
  • Educators will effectively develop curriculum units that stress active reading strategies as a way to improve student comprehension.

• Revised Assessment:

Based on the information gathered throughout the survery, students seem to be lacking more than even a literal sense of what they are reading. Students missed much of the main content of the text, and even missed the key point of one of the texts that they were asked to read. Students also could not interprate the reading on more than a very elementary and literal level. While these students show grade-level reading competency, they do not have the skills necessary to use information in text form to gain more than a general meaning. Students will need to be taught how to organize the information they read, and apply active reading strategies to assist in meaning development.

• Participant Analysis:

This course is primarily designed for high school, and middle school educators, however, elementary teachers may gain from the material as well. Educators from all academic disciplines are encouraged to complete each unit to aid students in utalizing active reading strategies in all areas of education. All lessons incorporate educator encouragement and classroom skills to produce confident educators who are ready to incorporate reading strategies into their daily curriculum.

Course Objectives

This online course provides modules for educators to interactively learn from. By each unit's end educators will be able to apply the skill learned to their own classroom, thereby improving their students individual reading comprehension. Educators will learn how students make meaning out of written text, and will learn and be able to demonstrate key strategies for developing comprehension through reading.

• Objective One:

Educators will be able to identify the need for reading for context, and be able to understand what thier own students are lacking in this area.

• Objective Two:

Educators will destinguish between types of text used in different academic disiplines, and will note wich active reading strategies are best employed when decoding each type of text.

• Objective Three:

Educators will master strategies to incourage students to use active reading strategies to help decipher challenging text.

• Objective Four:

Educators will design learning activities to assist students in working with active reading strategies, and becoming confident in using them on their own.

Prerequisite skills

• Educators must possess the ability to appreciate the value of written text in all content areas.
  • Educators must be able to take an objective analysis of their own reading strategies and be able to pinpoint areas of difficulty.
    • Educators must be able to distinguish between texts in three academic disciplines.
      • Educators must have a basic knowledge of curriculum design, as well as an understanding about how design affects instruction.
        • Educators must have a knowledge of the learning standards for their academic discipline.

Curriculum Map

Please see the following link for a complete map of the content of this course:

File:Curriculum Map2.doc

Instructional Units

Module 1 Informational vs. Narrative Text

Module 2 Reading Strategies and Decoding Instructional Text

Module 3 Incorporating Active Reading Strategies in the Multidisciplinary Curriculum

References

Fritz, M. Using a Reading Strategy to Foster Active Learning in Content Area Courses. Journal of College Reading and Learning. (Spring, 2002) vol. 32, no. 2. (pg. 189-94)

Szabo, S. KWHHL: A Student-Driven Evolution of the KWL. American Secondary Education.(Summer, 2006) vol. 34, no. 3.