Strategies That Work, Second Edition - Chapter 7

Chapter 7 in Strategies That Work is about teaching students to activate their background knowledge and think about their connections to text so that they can read in a way that allows them to discover deeper insights. The authors suggest that teachers should begin teaching the strategy of making connections by using texts about issues that are highly relevant to students’ lives. This will make this strategy easy to use and teach. In time, students will be able to apply this strategy to texts that describe very different cultures and viewpoints and be able to expand their thinking and understanding beyond the comforts of their homes, schools and local communities. Not only will students have deeper levels of text comprehension, but they will also learn compassion and respect for various cultures and world views. 

In this chapter the authors present a wide-range of lessons for teaching activation of background knowledge and making connections at every grade and ability level. I will focus my summaries and reflections on the lessons that I think would be most applicable to secondary reading classes. 

1. Beginning to Make Connections: It Reminds Me Of… 

To introduce students to connection-making during reading, teachers can model the connections they make as they read aloud to the class and vocalize the connections they make to the text. They can code the text with an “R” for remind, and/or list connections on a two-column chart like the following: 

What the Text Is About	What It Reminds Me Of

What the Text Is About What It Reminds Me Of Teachers may start out with just their own connections, then ask students to contribute their own as they become comfortable doing so. 

2. Distracting Connections 

Teach students to identify distracting connections so that they can redirect their focus on the text. Sometimes a detail from the text reminds us of something that causes our thinking to stray. This can be a problem, especially if your mind is straying but you continue to read. Most likely you will not recall much of what is being read. Teachers can share an example of a text that they have read and a detail that led to such a distraction. Students can probably think of topics that would distract them as well. Remind students that it is important to recognize that they are distracted, pause and refocus their reading. This relates to monitoring comprehension, which was also the topic of the last chapter in Strategies That Work. 

3. Noticing and Thinking About New Learning Recording thoughts about new information learned while reading nonfiction helps students merge their thinking with the text. Students can mark a sticky note with the letter “L” for learn, and then write their reaction to the new information. When students interact with the text while they read, they are much more likely to retain the new information they are learning. 

4. Rethinking Misconceptions: New Information Changes Thinking Often times, students have some background knowledge about a subject, but some of that information may be inaccurate. This is the perfect opportunity to relate background knowledge to new learning while at the same time clearing up misconceptions. Have students create a three-column chart like the following:  

Questions	What We Think We Know	New Learning

This may seem similar to a KWL, but there are a few key differences. Primarily, the difference is that the teacher will provide the questions. Also, the questions will be geared towards topics about which students often have misconceptions. The learning that students gain from this will be more significant because not only are they linking it to previous knowledge, but they are seeing how they are continuing to grow in their knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. I can see this activity being very useful in many content areas and I plan to share this with the teachers at my school. 

5. Building Background Knowledge Based on Personal and Text-to-World Connections Having background knowledge is an important advantage to readers because they can connect the new information they encounter to what they know, and that enhances what they learn and remember from a lesson. After introducing a topic to students, allow them to share their personal background knowledge and connections with the class. Even students who do not have their own previous experience with something can benefit from hearing about their classmates’ experiences. 

6. Building Background Knowledge for Literary Elements Recognizing literary elements can be a challenge for struggling readers. They are often confused by the terminology and struggle to identify various literary devices within texts without significant help from their teacher. Harvey and Goudvis recommend designing instruction around specific elements so that students learn to recognize these features as they make connections across texts. Some suggested groupings include: 

• Genre (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) 
• Format (picture books, novels, nonfiction trade books) 
• Author 
• Text structure (narrative, expository) 
• Signal words 
• Writing style 
• Literary Features (themes, conflicts, settings) 

Chapter 7 also explained what to do when students make connections that do not enhance understanding. Sometimes connections can be purely superficial. For example, students may point out that a character has the same name as them or that a setting is a city that they have visited. Rather than telling students that their thinking “doesn’t matter”, empower them to value their thinking and decide on their own if a connection will actually enhance understanding by having them complete a chart like the following: 

My Connection	Important to Me	Important to Understanding the Text

Remind students that the purpose of making connections to texts is to enhance understanding. Remind students to reflect on the connections they make and to focus on the connections that deepen their comprehension and engagement. 

My Application 

A lesson I used in class last week incorporates several of the strategies that I learned in Chapter 7. It is part of a unit in the Edge textbook on reading short stories. The short stories are also all related by a similar theme – a moment of truth. This allows for students to make connections across texts to better understand literary elements such as theme and the genre of short stories. I begin the lesson by asking students to activate their background knowledge of flashbacks, because that will be one element that will be used in the next story we will read. Students can brainstorm how to recognize flashbacks in movies or television shows, and then we make the connection to the ways authors indicate that a flashback is occurring in a short story. Students enjoyed sharing examples of flashbacks from their favorite shows, and those who were unsure if they were familiar with flashbacks had a much clearer understanding after hearing their classmates’ examples. By the end of the unit I hope that students will be comfortable recognizing the elements of short stories as they are able to make connections between the three short stories that we read.

A Lesson Implementing the Use of a Double-Entry Journal

Strategies That Work, Second Edition - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is the first within the section of Strategies That Work entitled “Strategy Lessons”.  The lessons in Chapter 6 are on monitoring comprehension.  The importance of monitoring comprehension has been discussed in the previous five chapters, so it is natural that the strategy lessons would begin with this.  Students won’t know that they need a comprehension strategy, after all, unless they realize when they are not understanding the text as well as they should.  The five strategies introduced in this chapter all deal with building metacognition during reading.

Following the Inner Conversation

This strategy is all about “leaving tracks of thinking” (p. 78).  The authors suggest that teachers first model recording thoughts on sticky notes during reading.  These thoughts can be connections, questions or reactions to the text.  Next is guided practice, students read with a partner and stop to discuss their thoughts with the person next to them.  Students then record their thoughts on sticky notes, and at the end of class they share some of their thoughts with the group.  I do this sort of thing frequently with students, but I find the actual sticky-note part challenging to implement at the high school level.  With 25 students in a class that is expected to be actively engaged from bell to bell, it is difficult to check that every student has utilized the stick notes effectively and get them out of the way in time for the next group to come in (all of our books are class sets, so post it notes cannot be left in the books).  I prefer to implement this strategy through margin notes when texts can be written on, or by having students keep notes on a “side journal,” a page in their notebooks that they keep open next to their textbooks.

Noticing When We Stray from the Inner Conversation

Let students know that everyone’s attention drifts off sometimes when they are reading, and everyone encounters texts that they find challenging.  The authors suggest bringing in an example of a text that I find challenging to demonstrate a text that I might have trouble with and the strategies that I might implement in order to remedy the problem.  Then guide students through the creation of an Anchor Chart on monitoring comprehension.  The chart could look like this:

Why Meaning Breaks Down	What to Do About It
Fatigue Not enough background knowledge Don’t like the book	Reread to Construct Meaning Put the book down when too tired to read Focus and read words more carefully than usual Choose another book

(Harvey and Goudvis, p. 80)

Knowing When you Know and Knowing When You Don’t Know

This strategy basically is to label text that is confusing, with a code such as “huh?”, then code text with a light bulb symbol if the confusion is cleared up.  It is simply an explicit way to demonstrate that students should be monitoring their comprehension and clearing up confusion as they read.

Noticing and Exploring Thinking

Unlike most reading strategies in this book, this one asks that students DO NOT write anything down or say anything while they read.  After reading, have students jot down their thoughts and reactions to the text.  Afterwards they get with a partner to share their thoughts and reactions, and some pairs can share their thoughts with the rest of the class.  The purpose is to simply remind students to focus on their reading as they read, not just on the setting, plot, characters, etc.

Read, Write, and Talk

When introducing this strategy, emphasize the importance of merging your thinking with the text by stopping, thinking, and reacting.  This can be modeled first to give a clear demonstration of the thinking process that occurs during reading.  Then, stop periodically during guided reading and ask students to write down and then discuss their thinking.  After reading ask students to flip over their papers and answer three questions on the back:

1.       What is one thing you learned that you think is important to remember?

2.       How did talking to your partner help you understand what you read?

3.       What are any lingering questions you still have?

Encourage students to implement the strategy on their own by reading on their own, then stopping to discuss thoughts with someone else who has read the same article.

Implementation in my Classroom

Everything I have read in chapters 1-6 have made me think more about being explicit about the purpose of the reading strategies that we use in class.  I need to let students know that these strategies are being used to help them better understand the text, and that they should be used even when they are not “assigned”.  Before beginning a lesson from Edge (our school’s required reading textbook) that incorporates the use of double-entry journals, I shared a personal story with students.  I told them that the reading strategies that we use in class are not just for high school students struggling to pass the FCAT, but that they can be beneficial to anyone and that anyone can be a struggling reader.  I then showed them the following excerpt from a textbook I had to read during my master’s program:

I said that it was then that I knew what it was like to be a struggling reader.  My professor had required that we submit a double-entry journal for each chapter.  I had thought it was just a way for her to confirm that we had completed the required readings, but I truly benefitted from the journals because they helped me stay focused on the text and to monitor my own comprehension.

We saw an example of a double-entry journal in the textbook and I had students fold their papers in half to make one on their own.  We read the first two pages of the story out loud, and then I modeled how to complete the first entry in the double-entry journal.  I asked students to copy a significant quote on the right, then to write their reaction to the quote, why they thought it was significant, or a clarification of what it meant on the left.  After modeling the first one, all I did the rest of the time was stop and ask them to record something in their double-entry journals.  Afterwards, I had them write a reflection of how the strategy helped their comprehension and asked them to pair and share with classmates.

Even though this is not an exact reproduction of one of the five strategies described in Chapter 6, it incorporated many of the suggestions from everything I have read so far in chapters 1-6.  I have used double-entry journals before, but I had never taken the time to explain their purpose (monitoring comprehension) or shared how they have helped me when I struggled with comprehension.  I had also never shared a text that I had struggled with before.  Following Harvey and Goudvis’s advice that “readers get better at reading and thinking by doing the reading and thinking” (p. 44) I also adjusted my tendency to do too much of the thinking for my students.  In the past I have guided students through every double-entry journal entry rather than asking them to come up with their own thoughts and ideas.  I had also never bothered to have students reflect on how the strategy helped them to comprehend.  I am very happy that I made these adjustments, because my students reacted very positively to the lesson.  I even had a student that very day tell my assistant principal that I am the “best reading teacher he has ever had”.  I guess it is working…

Here is the presentation I created to implement this lesson in class:

Edge Unit 5 - Cluster 2

Strategies That Work, Second Edition - Chapters 4 & 5

Chapter 4 began with another seemingly simple, yet profound quote, “readers get better at reading and thinking by doing the reading and thinking” (p. 44).  It seems obvious, but I think too often teachers do all of the thinking for their students!  Or they might allow a few students to participate in class discussions, but let many others hide in the background.  “Active participation in the discussion is essential if students are to construct meaning” Harvey and Goudvis state a few pages later (p. 49).  One way that I have found to make participation in class discussions less intimidating is to use the think-pair-share format.  That way, every student talks, but they may only have to talk directly to one partner.  Then, when I call on pairs to share, the braver of the two can vocalize their thoughts with the rest of the class.

Chapter 5 discusses the importance of selecting a variety of types of text to include in class assignments.  “Read widely and wildly” as Shelley Harwayne put it (p. 60).  Harvey and Goudvis emphasize the importance of short texts, since this is what the majority of non-school related texts are.  Examples include news articles, letters, brochures and magazine articles.  In general, my classes read a great deal of short texts.  The majority of reading selections we read are shorter – articles on Empower, short stories, excerpts, etc.  I would, however, like to include more practice with “real life” reading materials, such as brochures, tax forms, leases, manuals, etc.  I think that experience with reading these types of text would be valuable practice for students and would remind them of the importance of reading for general success and well-being in life (not just for the FCAT!!).

Strategies That Work, Second Edition - Chapters 1-3

It is interesting that I find myself reading the second edition of Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis as I complete the final semester of my masters in reading program.  The first edition  was actually one of the first books I read when I began my teaching career and, as an English education major, had to learn how to teach reading to high school students.  I found this book to be an invaluable resource then, and now I look forward to seeing what new insights the second edition can offer.

In chapter one, Harvey and Goudvis made a profound, yet seemingly obvious statement, “If the purpose for reading is anything other than understanding, why read at all? (p. 20)”  This was a response to a teacher’s complaint that teaching comprehension is just one more thing they have to teach (in addition to fluency, vocabulary, etc).  I think that this statement clarifies the importance of teaching comprehension strategies within all subject areas, not just reading and language arts.  After all, if a teacher wants their students to read and understand to information in their science, social studies or health textbooks, they might need to teach them how to do so.  In fact, showing students how to utilize comprehension strategies to enhance understanding was also emphasized in this chapter.  A teacher must “make what is implicit, explicit” (p. 21).  Good teaching never assumes that students know how to perform tasks, that is why modeling, thinking aloud, and providing examples is critical to any effective instruction.  Can you imagine a baseball coach stating a list of steps for holding a bat without showing students what that looks like?  It is equally unreasonable to assign reading without demonstrating how a specific text can be read and understood.

Ch. 2 discussed metacognition, moving readers to the level of understanding how to think while they read.  That is the purpose of the reading comprehension strategies in this book.  Readers should be able to monitor their understanding as they read.  Strategies for comprehension become necessary when the reader recognizes that something they are reading is not making sense – but they must learn to recognize that comprehension has broken down before they can be expected to fix it.

I had a “lightbulb” moment when, in Chapter 3, the authors pointed out that students don’t always realize that the purpose of the strategy is to help them comprehend the text.  I realized that I need to make this clear to my students.  They may think that the graphic organizer or text annotation that I am requiring is just “work” rather than a tool that I am providing to help them and that they should consider using even when it is not “assigned”.