A HANDBOOK OF EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION IN LITERACY 
Timothy Rasinski and Nancy Padak
Kent State University
Effective Instruction in Literacy

This work is supported by a grant from the Ohio Department of Education, Division of Federal Assistance, Contract 062976-EV-ST-95.

Introduction 
  
  In the final analysis literacy education programs are only effective to the extent that they promote positive and enduring learning among participants.  One of the main learning objectives of Even Start and other similar programs is the literacy development of all participants.  Thus, effective instruction in literacy must be a key component of quality Even Start programs.
  
  This monograph is intended as a brief overview of effective literacy instructional practices that can be employed in nearly all phases and with all participants of Even Start programs that deal with literacy education.  The primary audience for this handbook is teachers who work with children and adults on literacy.  A secondary audience, however, is parents who wish to promote literacy learning among their children.  Although parents may not read this handbook firsthand, parent educators may wish to share appropriate information from the book with parents so that they may engage in effective literacy education activities with their children.  Although we do not present comprehensive evidence of the effectiveness of these practices in this paper, the practices described herein have extensive documentation in instructional and classroom-based research.
  
  The practices described here are not meant to be prescriptive; that is, we do not intend for teachers to attempt to use all or as many activities as possible.  Rather, we hope that teachers will determine what they need to focus on in their instruction based on informal assessments of their students and design coherent and consistent instructional "packages" that include activities designed to meet students' identified instructional needs.  This handbook is meant as a resource to be used in planning instruction, not as a plan itself.  
  
  We have divided the handbook into major sections that focus on important aspects of literacy development.  The first section deals with general suggestions that are appropriate for any age level or any specific literacy need.  These suggestions are applicable to you as your work with literacy learners and to parents as they attempt to foster the literacy development of their children.

General Suggestions 

1.  Share your own enthusiasm for reading and writing/Be a model of literate behavior.  
  
  One of the best ways to convince students that reading and writing are important and worth pursuing is to be enthusiastic about literacy and to share that enthusiasm with your students.  Let students see that you are a reader and writer.  Talk with students extensively and authentically about what you are reading and writing about in your own life.  Allow them to see you reading and writing.  When a teacher is enthusiastic about a particular subject, the chances are that students themselves will also be enthusiastic and  become more deeply engaged in the subject and learn it with greater ease.

2.  Read to Students.   
  
  One way to share your enthusiasm for reading and to model fluent reading for students is to read to student every day you provide instruction.  Research has demonstrate that reading to students has a number of positive effects on reading: students who are read to have better comprehension and more extensive vocabularies than students not read to.  In addition, reading to students is associated with successful early reading, with positive attitudes toward reading, and with greater awareness of what fluent reading is like.
  
  Reading to students is relatively  easy.  However, there are a few points worth mentioning.  First, be sure you share with students the very best literature and reading material available.  You need to become aware of the many great books that are available for students, the ones that will turn students on to reading and keep them turned on.  Among the best ways to learn about good books are to ask experts such as school and public librarians, read children's books extensively yourself, be aware of award-winning books, and share your knowledge with others and learn about books from your professional colleagues.  When you read to students it is important to read with fluency -- remember, you are a model of what good reading is supposed to be like.  Thus, be sure to practice the text you intend to read before performing it to a group.  Make sure your audience is comfortable when listening to you read -- no need for them to be stuck in an uncomfortable seat if they don't need to be there.  And finally, after reading talk about the story with your audience.  What do they think about the story?  What did they like, dislike, find unusual or confusing?  
  
  Above all dedicate yourself to become a "seller" of reading to your students.  Students cannot be enthusiastic about stories and reading unless they have been made aware of those treasures by a caring and enthusiastic teacher.

3.  Make it real reading. 
  
  Growth in reading is fostered best when literacy learners are engaged in real, authentic reading activities -- read real books, magazines, articles, etc for real purposes.  Unfortunately, literacy instruction is defined by some curriculum materials makers, teachers, and administrators in terms of workbooks, worksheets, oral unrehearsed round robin reading for no specific purpose, using "engineered" texts that are supposed to written at a particular level of difficulty but in reality are dreadfully boring for any level reader.  Moreover, engaging in these artificial literacy tasks runs the risk of promoting the notion that reading is some mechanistic word reproduction activity that has little to do with meaning making, inquiry, and enjoyment.  It is this very artificial approach to reading and writing education that many experts argue is the primary reason why students' attitude toward reading goes into a consistent and precipitous tailspin beginning as early as second grade.
  
  We urge teachers of literacy and parents to always keep their instructional compass pointed toward what reading is all about: reading good stories and articles in order to satisfy the real purposes we have for reading -- to enjoy a story, to learn about something we have an interest in, to communicate with others, to express our feelings.  These are the kinds of things that learners should be engaging in and if they do they will no doubt discover the value of literacy and make it a priority in their lives.

4.  Provide time for reading/Increase students' reading. 
  
  It's really quite simple, people learn to read by reading.  People who read the most tend to be our best readers.  Yet, if students don't have time for reading they can't read.  Some studies have shown that upper elementary grade readers read books for less than five minutes each day on average outside of school.  We need to create time for our students to read, whether that time is at home alone or built into time set aside for actual instruction.  We need to help students develop the reading habit and one of the best ways we know is to foster it during our time with students.
  
  In addition to providing time for reading, we need to encourage students' reading at all times and levels.  Emphasis during instruction should be taken from doing worksheets and answering questions to real reading and talking about what was read.  Outside of instruction we should make every effort to encourage students to read on their own for their own purposes.

5.  Provide literacy rich environments for students. 
  
  Research has found that environment for reading play an important role in students' growth in literacy.  We send a subtle yet powerful message to students by the kinds of environments we create for reading and writing.  Dark and barren environments suggest that literacy is neither important nor honored.  Light and comfortable environments, on the other hand, with plenty of books and other reading materials on display as well as writing materials welcomes students to read and write.

6.  Have high expectations for literacy learners. 
  
  When a learner believes that someone believes in them and that they can be successful, the learner is more likely to accomplish his or her objectives.  Teachers and parents need to learn to believe in and have high expectations for their students and to communicate these feelings honestly, openly, enthusiastically, and often to their students and children.  In one study from England, simply training parents to listen to their children read and respond to the reading with vigorous and heartfelt praise resulted in students making greater gains in reading than a comparison group of children who were receiving special and additional tutoring in reading at school.

7.  Provide interesting language experiences for literacy learners. 
  
  It is important that literacy learners develop a good background for the things about which they will read.  Moreover, they need to have facility in oral language before they can master reading the written word.  Thus, it is critical for parents and teachers to talk with their children and students often and in depth, and provide learners with interesting and varied experiences which can be talked and written about later during instructional time.  These activities form the basis for developing the schema or background knowledge that is required for high level comprehension and for developing language skill and flexibility that is also needed for reading.

8.  Connect reading and writing.   
  
  Although it may be seem obvious to most of us, many teachers still fail to make the connection in instruction between reading and writing.  Reading provides writers with interesting ideas and models of good expression to use in their writing.  Writing forces readers to get inside words and ideas in ways that require greater analysis and depth than when reading.  This results in deeper learning of the writing/spelling systems in our language and greater consideration and organization of one's own ideas.  Good writing activities include journal writing, copy change activities in which students write their own version of exemplary pieces of writing, story writing using writers' workshop in which students work on pieces of writing over extended periods of time, and functional writing such as letters, lists, notes, etc.

9.  Tap into students' interests .
  
  Readers are more likely to read, and read successfully, those texts that are about things in which they have an interest.  It behooves us as teachers and parents to learn our students' and children's interests and then help them find texts that satisfy or match those interests.  Interests can be determined simply by asking and carefully observing learners.  Finding books and other reading materials that match specific interests can be accomplished by asking the children's librarian at the local library or some other expert in children's literature.  Providing students with material that allows them to extend their interests and that are written at the appropriate level of difficulty will help keep students' reading which, in turn, will extend their proficiency and skill in reading.

10.  Establish instructional routines.

Routines are blocks of time during which certain predictable types of activities occur. To some, the word "routine" connotes boredom. Not so. The routines we describe below -- read aloud, sustained silent reading, and choice time -- are anything but.

Read Aloud. Story time is a staple in most classrooms, as well it should be. Read aloud should be an instructional routine in the classrooms. The benefits are many. Listening to a text well read is a pleasure for all of us. IN addition, students encounter new ideas, characters, situations, and places through the literature read to them. Another advantage of reading aloud, especially for those who find reading difficult, is that it familiarizes students with the style and form of written language. Finally, a special time for daily reading alouds demonstrates that reading is a worthwhile activity, important enough to include in the busy instructional schedule.

Virtually any interesting material can be read aloud --  fiction or nonfiction picture books or "chapter books", poetry, informational articles, letters, and so on. And read alouds need not be restricted to "story time".

Students can learn a great deal about the nature of reading by listening to good books, poems, articles, or other types f text read aloud. They can also experience the rewards that reading can offer.

Sustained Silent Reading. Just as time is devoted to the teacher's reading aloud every day, so too should students have daily opportunities to read material of their own choice for their own purposes. To develop feelings of comfort and success as readers, students need consistent opportunities to behave as readers -- to read. Toward this end, we recommend sustained silent reading (SSR) as another instructional routine. SSR is simply a period of time when everyone, including the teacher, reads. (Two other strategies, DEAR -- drop everything and read -- and SQUIRT -- sustained, quiet, independent reading time, follow essentially the same procedures.)

Most teachers introduce SSR to students by beginning with brief time periods (e.g. 5 minutes) so that everyone can be successful in sustaining their reading. Later, SSR time can be extended.  The only rule for SSR is that everyone reads. The SSR periods sometimes conclude with brief sharing sessions so that the students can read interesting parts of their books aloud or talk about what they have read.

Choice Time.  A third block of daily time should be devoted to choice, a time when students can make their own decisions about what they wish to do as readers or writers. Choice time is fun to observe in classrooms because students are so productively busy with such a variety of tasks. Some read or write alone, and others read and write together. Some share their work, and others prepare to do so.

Some teachers and students establish informal rules for choice time. They might decide to reserve certain portions of the classroom for people who need silence, for example, or establish a procedure for seeking the teacher's assistance. (In this regard, students may simply write their names in a list on the chalkboard and the teacher can work down the list in "first come - first served" fashion.) Other teachers prefer less initial regulation, opting to wait and see if problems arise and inviting students to develop solutions if they do.

Together these three routines could constitute "reading time", or teachers could develop others, such as time for whole group instruction. Either way, planning instruction in terms of routines helps teachers focus on what's important and ensures that classroom time will be well spent. Routines are helpful for students, as well, because a predictable environment allows independence. Students can get about the business of reading and writing, rather than always waiting for the teacher's directions.

Summary

Learning involves conceptual change. To teach for conceptual change, we need to establish instructional frameworks that stress relevance, involve lots of predicting and confirming, and offer consistent opportunities to talk things through with others. Of course, this takes time. But many teachers have decided that the time spent in these ways is worth it, because such accommodations allow students to use what they already know to make sense out of what's new.

We have introduced several key instructional principles in this chapter that can help you think about curriculum and instruction in your Even Start program. None of these guidelines is particularly new or revolutionary; all just make good common sense. We invite students to read, write and talk about issues that interest them. We look for ways to challenge students, to offer them opportunities to stretch and grow in an atmosphere that promotes collaboration and success. And, of course, we stand ready to support learners in their quest to grow as literate people.

  The Instructional Framework
  
  Sarah, a seven year old, finds reading difficult.  Yet 
  when we chatted with her about reading, here's what she said:  
  "Well, it's hard sometimes, but it's not boring.  Reading is fun 
  mostly.  It's sort of like taking a vacation in your mind."  Her 
  difficulties with reading notwithstanding, Sarah's comments make 
  it clear that she views reading as a personally meaningful and 
  satisfying activity.  When we visited her classroom, we found out 
  why.  Every day, Sarah reads and writes in an instructional 
  atmosphere that reflects the principles about literacy learning 
  that we outlined in Chapter 1.

  Betsy, a reading resource teacher, also shared her 
  views about reading and learning to read with us:  "When I have 
  a student who appears to be at risk, my questions to myself are 
  simple:  What does the child know?  What can the child do?  
  Given the answers to these questions, how can I adjust my 
  teaching to support the child's learning?  I no longer focus on 
  what's wrong with the child.  Instead, I examine my instructional 
  program, the strategies and materials I use."  Betsy adapts her 
  instruction to respond to her students' interests and needs, 
  rather than expecting them to adapt or adjust.  The framework 
  that guides her instruction provides students with daily 
  opportunities to experience reading and writing and to experience 
  success as readers and writers.

  In this chapter we explore some of the issues that 
  Betsy and other teachers like her examine in order to ensure
  that instruction and classroom interactions foster literacy 
  learning rather than hindering it.  First we address several 
  general aspects of instruction that have an impact on what and 
  how students learn.  Then we describe several more concrete 
  aspects of the instructional environment, such as the creation 
  of predictable routines.  Together, these ideas and activities 
  provide a conceptual and practical framework that allows 
  principles about literacy learning to be realized instructionally.
 
   Accommodation 

  Betsy's comments about her interactions with students 
  who find reading difficult focus on a concept that is critical to 
  developing an effective framework for instruction:  accommodation 
  or environmental responsiveness to students' needs.  
  Accommodation does not involve "letting kids off the hook," 
  lowering standards, or anything of the sort.  It's simply a way 
  to acknowledge that students  do  have needs and to create 
  learning environments based upon them.  Suppose you're 
  interested in developing an accommodating instructional 
  environment.  What can you think about?  What can you do?

  The first step, and it's a big one, is to think about how 
   you  think about the teaching-learning process.  Some years ago, 
  we were pretty sure that teaching was simply a matter of 
  transmitting knowledge from someone who had it to someone who 
  didn't.  As we argued in Chapter 1, however, we have learned that 
  this concept of teaching and learning is inaccurate.  Learning 
  involves the construction of knowledge, not its transmission.  
  Learning is something we do  with  students, not to them.  If we think
  of teaching and learning in this way, then accommodations 
  (or environmental responsiveness) should address students' 
  conceptual and academic needs and beliefs.  Let's take a closer 
  look at these two areas.

   Conceptual Needs and Beliefs.   Over the past two 
  decades, we have done a lot of talking, thinking, and research 
  about the importance of students' conceptual schema.  We know 
  that effective teaching-learning environments must accommodate 
  and build upon the background knowledge that students bring with 
  them to the classroom.  So here, the question isn't  if  
  accommodations are necessary, but rather  how  to accommodate 
  and  what  implications such accommodations have for larger 
  curricular issues.  Probably the biggest concern here is for 
  time.  It takes time to teach from a constructivist perspective, 
  time for students to think about and talk about what they 
  already know and time for them to embed new learning in their 
  already established network of ideas.  As teachers, we have to 
  decide if the time spent is worth it.  

  Deb struggles with the issues of accommodation and time 
  in her fourth grade classroom (Watson & Konicek, 1990).  Not too 
  long ago, for example, she began a science unit about heat by 
  asking her students to brainstorm a list of things that give off 
  heat.  In addition to things like the sun, stoves, and their 
  bodies, the children mentioned sweaters, hats, and rugs.  (After 
  all, they had been hearing "Put your warm clothes on" for years.)  
  So Deb, sensing a need to address students' conceptual beliefs, 
  said to the children, "What could we do to find out?"  

  The children decided to wrap thermometers with sweaters 
  and scarves.  After 15 minutes, the thermometer readings hadn't 
  changed.  But rather than changing their beliefs, the children 
  decided that they hadn't been wrapped up long enough.  They 
  resolved to keep the thermometers wrapped up over night and 
  predicted three-digit temperatures by morning.

  Next morning, nothing had changed.  Deb asked students 
  to write about the experiment in their science journals.  They 
  wrote things like "we just didn't leave them in there long 
  enough" and "maybe some cold air got in them somehow."  So the 
  testing went on, with children hypothesizing, designing ways to 
  find out (which included sealing the items in large baggies so 
  cold air couldn't seep in) and reflecting about the results of 
  their experiments.

  After three days, Deb realized that children had given 
  up their old beliefs but had yet to replace them with new ones.  
  So she wrote two statements on the chalkboard:  "Heat can come 
  from almost anything, even sweaters and hats.  We are fooled 
  when we measure heat because cold air can get inside" and "Heat 
  comes mostly from the sun and our bodies.  Heat is trapped 
  inside winter clothes that keep our body heat in and cold air 
  out."  The children decided which theory made sense to them and 
  wrote reasons for their choices in their science journals.  Some 
  were still puzzled, so Deb again said, "What could we do to find 
  out?"  And the children went out to recess with thermometers in 
  their hats to teat this new hypothesis.

    In their commentary about Deb's experience, Watson and Konicek (1990)
	note that if she had begun the unit in the usual way, she might never
	have known how nine long Massachusetts winters had skewed her students' 
thinking....  [Students] would have learned a little about 
the sources of heat, a little about friction, and how to 
read a thermometer.  By the end of two weeks, they 
would have been able to pass a simple test... but their 
preconceptions, never having been put on the table, 
would have continued, coexisting in a morass of 
conflicting ideas about heat and its behavior.  (p. 680)
 
  By viewing teaching and learning as the construction of 
  knowledge, rather than its transmission, Deb enabled her 
  students to learn about sources of heat.  And she was satisfied 
  with her decision to accommodate children's conceptual needs, but 
  she worried a bit about the time it took to do so.  In her 
  journal, she noted: "The kids are holding on to and putting 
  together pieces of what they know of the world.  But the  time  
  we are taking to explore what kids think is much longer than if I 
  just told them the facts" (Watson & Konicek, 1990, p. 682).  

  Learning involves conceptual change.  To teach for 
  conceptual change, we need to establish instructional frameworks 
  that stress relevance, involve lots of predicting and confirming, 
  and offer consistent opportunities to talk things through with 
  others.  Of course, this takes time.  But teachers like Deb have 
  decided that the time spent is worth it, because such 
  accommodations allow students to use what they already know to 
  make sense out of what's new.

   Academic Needs and Beliefs .  Surely, creating an 
  instructional environment that accommodates students' academic 
  needs makes sense.  We invite students to read and write and 
  observe them carefully as they do.  We look for ways to support 
  students' growth as literacy learners.  We also look for ways to 
  challenge students, to offer them the opportunity to stretch and 
  grow in an atmosphere that promotes success.  These two 
  notions, challenge and support, describe instructional frameworks 
  that effectively accommodate students' academic needs.

  Students' academic beliefs, their assumptions about how 
  one "does school," are equally important to the creation of 
  supportive and successful instructional frameworks.  The 
  educational anthropologist James Heap calls these academic 
  beliefs "cultural logic."  He says we develop expectations, based 
  on our experiences, about what to do and how to behave in 
  certain cultures (like classrooms) and that we use these beliefs 
  to guide future actions.  We think he's quite right.  Consider, 
  for example, the story of Johnny.

  Johnny came to our summer reading program at the end 
  of second grade because his parents and teachers were 
  concerned about his reading.   He wasn't making any progress, 
  they said;  he wasn't an independent reader.  Johnny's tutor 
  Janine verified his lack of independence.  He knew what he knew, 
  but he didn't have any strategies for solving problems in 
  reading.  For example, his only word recognition strategy was to 
  make a wild guess based on the first letter of the unknown word.  

  So Johnny and Janine spent some time working on word recognition
  strategies that summer.  She taught him how to use 
  context by asking questions like, "What word would make sense 
  there?"  And she encouraged him to "say blank" when he 
  encountered an unknown word and then to reread the sentence.  
  At the end of the summer program, Janine suggested that Johnny 
  dictate a list of things to try when he encountered an unknown 
  word.  She hoped that the list would remind him of his options 
  as a reader.  Here's his dictation:

   When I Get Stuck 
 
  1. 
 	t  
  
  You can say blank and then go back to it.
 
  2. 
 	8  
  
  You can think about what's happened so far.
 
  3. 
 	8  
  
  You can look at the pictures.
 
  4. 
 	8  
  
  You can sound it out.

  After Johnny had completed the dictation and Janine had 
  read it back to him, they had the following conversation: 
 
  Johnny:  [points to items 1-3]  Did you know about these before?
 
  Janine:  Yes.
 
  Johnny:  Where did you learn about them?
 
  Janine:  At school.
 
  Johnny:  You know, [my teacher last year] only knew about how to 
  sound it out.
 
  Janine:  Oh.
 
  Johnny:  Well, she should learn about them.  They work better, 
  and they're easier, too.

  We don't know how Johnny drew the conclusion about his 
  teacher, but we suspect that he came by it honestly by 
  constructing knowledge based on his classroom experiences.  We
  have known others like him, students who think that their goal 
  as readers is to answer the teacher's questions properly or 
  that their goal as writers is to produce "pretty" copy with neat 
  handwriting and no surface errors.  And although both reading 
  and writing may at times involve these issues, focusing on 
  either as a solitary goal is a mistake.  The point here is that 
  students' experiences in school cause them to draw conclusions 
  about "doing school," about what they should do as readers and 
  writers.  And, depending on their nature, these conclusions can 
  hinder learning, as they did for Johnny.

  Classrooms based on the principles outlined in Chapter 1 
  and this chapter will reduce the possibility of students drawing 
  potentially harmful conclusions about what reading and writing 
  are and what readers and writers do.  Teachers and students 
  must share assumptions about the purposes and goals of literacy 
  activities and individual literacy lessons.  If a student believes 
  his or her responsibility to be completing an assignment or 
  answering the teacher's questions, for example, the intended 
  learning may or may not take place.  "Teachers might see quite 
  clearly that a certain exercise will improve a child's useful 
  knowledge or skills, but unless the child can see some sense in 
  the exercise, the instruction is a waste of time" (Smith, 1978, p. 
  97).

  Instructional responsiveness to students' needs, or 
  accommodation, involves conceiving of learning as the 
  construction of knowledge.  We must pay attention to and be 
  sensitive to how students construct knowledge-- knowledge about 
  
content and knowledge about what to do as learners.  Our 
  instructional frameworks, both explicitly and implicitly, must send 
  valid messages about both.
 
   Developing Communities of Learners 

  
  As adults, we may perceive reading as a solitary 
  activity.  This is not so in classrooms: Reading is "a very 
  social activity, deeply embedded in interactions with teacher and 
  peers" (Cazden, 1981, p. 118).  We know that literacy instruction 
  should foster meaningful interactions with texts and among 
  participants.  But we also know that students determine what 
  they should do and how they should participate in lessons by 
  drawing conclusions about the tasks they are asked to perform.  
  As Johnny's story illustrates, they may sometimes draw 
  conclusions that we do not intend. 

  One conclusion we  do  want students to draw is that 
  they're engaged in cooperative, rather than competitive, learning 
  situations.  In competitive situations, difficulties are cause for 
  distress, particularly if everyone else seems to be coping well.  
  This may lead students who find reading difficult to "believe 
  that reading is a contest they will never win" and to "become 
  more concerned about avoiding failure and embarrassment than 
  with learning to read" (Winograd & Smith, 1987, p. 308, p. 307).  
  Moreover, in competitive situations scores, numbers of stories 
  read, or other products of having read often become more 
  important in students' minds than the process they engage in as 
  they read, their reactions to reading, or what they are learning.

  A competitive classroom atmosphere can actually cause 
  
students to make counterproductive decisions about participating 
  in lessons.  For example, students whose "comprehension 
  instruction" consists of providing the right answers to the 
  teacher's questions may decide that silence or "I don't know" 
  responses are safer than risking failure, particularly in 
  competitive rather than cooperative situations.  Having chosen 
  this route, students' minds are free to wander, and little 
  further learning can take place.  Over time, all these decisions 
  become part of students' academic beliefs about "being a 
  student."

  Activities that foster cooperative involvement and joint 
  problem-solving are a better alternative.  In cooperative  
  situations, students are more likely to view problems as 
  challenges for the group to consider instead of indications of 
  their own inability.  In addition, cooperation leads to better 
  learning (Spurlin et al., 1984).  Instruction that is based on 
  active, cooperative participation among all students can support 
  the development of a community of learners within classrooms.  

  What is a community of learners?  Dictionaries tell us 
  that communities are unified bodies of individuals with common 
  interests, who share ownership and jointly participate in 
  community activities.  Families are communities, as are groups of 
  friends.  Classrooms can be communities, too, if the 
  instructional framework invites learners to participate actively, 
  explore issues of common interest, and interact cooperatively.

  The ownership aspect of communities is also important.  
  Community members can ordinarily make some decisions about if 
  
and how to become involved in community activities.  Classroom 
  communities should also feature choice.  For example, students 
  can often choose what to read, how to respond to their reading, 
  and whether they wish to work alone or with others.  Of course, 
  individual community members don't make  all  the decisions about 
  involvement, so in classroom communities the teacher has 
  choices, too.  In fact, balance between teacher choice and 
  student choice is one feature of a supportive instructional 
  framework.

  In classrooms, learning is most assuredly a social 
  activity.  To foster the development of literacy learning 
  communities, we must promote authentic, cooperative interactions 
  among students.  We must expect active involvement and invite 
  student choice.
 
   How Much Time on What Kind of Task? 

  
  Time is another important factor to consider in 
  establishing a framework for instruction.  Deb's young students 
  showed her the value of taking time to teach for conceptual 
  change.  Time available for reading is equally important.  For 
  example, the Commission on Reading (1985) reported that students 
  in basal-dominated classrooms spend up to 70% of their time for 
  reading instruction completing up to 1,000 worksheets each year.  
  That doesn't leave much time for reading, reflecting, 
  discussing-- all the things we know lead to reading growth.  
  Indeed, findings from a series of studies reviewed by Rupley, 
  Wise, and Logan (1986) indicate that time spent reading 
  correlates highly with reading achievement.  This certainly makes 
  
sense;  to grow as readers, students need opportunities to read.  
  So, in planning instruction, teachers must think carefully about 
  how much time will be available for reading.  

  The focus of attention during reading time, especially 
  during reading instruction, is another issue related to time.  
  One careful study of two 30-minute reading lessons (McDermott, 
  1978) revealed that students in the high ability group spent 
  three times as much time on task (that is, reading and 
  discussing what they'd read) as students in the low ability 
  group.  These substantial differences must have an impact on 
  reading growth.  Other studies have shown that teachers' 
  discussions with better readers tend to focus on meaning, but 
  discussions with poorer readers tend to focus on decoding 
  (Allington, 1978, 1980;  McDermott, 1978).  As a consequence, 
  perhaps, better readers spend more time thinking about their 
  reading and sharing their thoughts with others.  

  Ability group differences in teachers' responses to 
  students' miscues have also been noted.  For example, Allington 
  (1978) found that teachers correct poor readers' miscues more 
  often than they correct good readers' miscues.  Further, the 
  correction cues that teachers provided were more apt to be 
  graphophonic for poor readers and semantic or syntactic for 
  good readers.

  Thus instructional environments can differ, even for 
  students in the same classroom, with regard to how time is 
  spent.  Like others (e.g., Good, 1987), we believe that these 
  differences are cause for concern.  Too often, students who find 
  
reading difficult participate in lessons that emphasize decoding, 
  rote drill, and meaningless practice.  Given our knowledge of the 
  reading process and of ways to support reading growth, this 
  sort of instruction does more harm than good.  In fact, it can 
  lead to what Keith Stanovich (1986) calls the "Matthew Effect"-- 
  a sort of rich get richer and poor get poorer situation where 
  the environment supports continued growth for good readers but 
  actually thwarts growth for those who find reading difficult.  
  Instead, instructional frameworks should feature an abundance of 
  time to read and write for meaningful, interesting, student-
  selected purposes.
 
   Establishing Instructional Routines 

  Part of the solution to the problems we have identified 
  above lies in instructional planning, specifically the creation of 
  predictable routines that together constitute daily opportunities 
  for reading and learning to read.  Routines are blocks of time 
  during which certain predictable types of activities occur.  To 
  some, the word "routine" connotes boredom.  Not so in whole 
  language classrooms.  The routines we describe below-- read 
  aloud, sustained silent reading, and choice time-- are anything 
  but.

   Read Aloud .  Story time is a staple in most classrooms, 
  as well it should be.  Read aloud should be an instructional 
  routine in all classrooms.  The benefits are many.  Listening to 
  a text well read is a pleasure for all of us.  In addition, 
  students encounter new ideas, characters, situations, and places 
  through the literature read to them.  Another advantage of 
  
reading aloud, especially for those who find reading difficult, is 
  that it familiarizes students with the style and form of written 
  language.  Finally, a special time for daily read alouds 
  demonstrates that reading is a worthwhile activity, important 
  enough to include in the busy instructional schedule.

  Virtually any interesting material can be read aloud-- 
  fiction or nonfiction picture books or "chapter books," poetry, 
  articles, letters, and so on.  And read alouds need not be 
  restricted to "story time."  Mary Beth frequently reads aloud to 
  her students with learning disabilities.  "We have story time 
  every day," she says.  "But I also read to students during 
  science and social studies, sometimes just a paragraph or two 
  and sometimes an entire selection.  Not just nonfiction either;  
  I look for poetry and fiction related to the concepts that we're 
  working on.  Sometimes the kids bring things in.  Reading aloud in 
  the content areas is a great way to foster additional learning 
  and to give students access to information that they couldn't 
  read independently."

  Students can learn a great deal about the nature of 
  reading by listening to good books, poems, articles, or other 
  types of text read aloud.  They can also experience the rewards 
  that reading can offer.

   Sustained Silent Reading .  Just as time is devoted to 
  the teacher's reading aloud every day, so too should students 
  have daily opportunities to read material of their own choice 
  for their own purposes.  To develop feelings of comfort and 
  success as readers, students need consistent opportunities to 
  
behave as readers-- to read.  Toward this end, we recommend 
  sustained silent reading (SSR) as another instructional routine.  
  SSR is simply a period of time when everyone, including the 
  teacher, reads.  (Two other strategies, DEAR--  drop  everything 
   and  read-- and SQUIRT--  sustained,  quiet,  independent  reading 
   time, follow essentially the same procedures.)  

  Harry introduces SSR to his first graders on the very 
  first day of school.  Initially, children read for only 5 minutes, 
  but by the end of the year, SSR lasts for 20-30 minutes each 
  day.  He begins with such a brief time period because he wants 
  the students to be successful in sustaining their reading: 
  "Everyone can hang in for 5 minutes.  After a week or so, I 
  gradually increase the time."  Two rules govern SSR in Harry's 
  classroom:  Children must be quiet, and no one may leave his or 
  her seat.  Children's desks are arranged in clusters, and Harry 
  puts an extra stack of books on each cluster of desks so that 
  children can easily select other books if they need or want 
  them.  The SSR period always concludes with a brief sharing 
  session so that children can read interesting parts of their 
  books aloud or talk about what they have read.

  Of course, there are lots of other times during each 
  school day when Harry's students can choose to read and choose 
  what to read.  "But SSR is a time when we all have our noses in 
  a book and all at the same time," Harry says.  "We enjoy it, the 
  kids get good practice, and I think it goes a long way toward 
  helping children develop the 'reading habit.'  In fact, I really 
  know they're hooked when they start groaning at the end of SSR 
  
periods.  That's music to my ears!"

   Choice Time .  A third block of daily time should be 
  devoted to choice, a time when students can make their own 
  decisions about what they wish to do as readers or writers.  
  Choice time is fun to observe in classrooms because students 
  are so productively busy with such a variety of tasks.  Some 
  read or write alone, and others read or write together.  Some 
  perform or share their work, and others prepare to do so.  "If 
  you don't look carefully, choice time can appear chaotic," Brenda 
  observed.  "And I suppose in a way, it is.  But all you have to 
  do is talk to the kids to see that they are meaningfully engaged 
  and interested.  Boy!  Talk about time on task!"

  Some teachers and students establish informal rules for 
  choice time.  They might decide to reserve certain portions of 
  the classroom for people who need silence, for example, or 
  establish a procedure for seeking the teacher's assistance.  (In 
  this regard, Brenda's students simply write their names in a list 
  on the chalkboard, and she works down the list in "first come-
  first served" fashion.)  Other teachers prefer less initial 
  regulation, opting to wait to see if problems arise and inviting 
  students to develop solutions if they do.  

  Because students are involved in such a variety of 
  activity during choice time, the teacher's role varies too.  Bobbi 
  Fisher, a kindergarten teacher, describes her role during choice 
  time this way (1991):
.lm 2.00"
I have six primary functions during choice time: (1) to 
set up the environment, (2) to facilitate the routine, (3) 
  
to teach, (4) to act as audience, (5) to kid watch, and (6) 
to enjoy the children.... [M]ost of the children are 
practicing independently or with peers, and I work with 
individuals and small groups of students..., although 
sometimes my role is to be an audience while children 
are performing or sharing their work.  During part of 
each day I watch children and conduct formal or informal 
assessments, and occasionally I [simply enjoy myself] as 
a member of the classroom community.  (p. 70)
.lm 1.25"

  Together these three routines could constitute "reading 
  time," or teachers could develop others, such as time for whole 
  group instruction. Either way, planning instruction in terms of 
  routines helps teachers focus on what's important and ensures 
  that classroom time will be well spent.  Routines are helpful for 
  students, as well, because a predictable environment allows 
  independence.  Students can get about the business of reading 
  and writing, rather than always waiting for the teacher's 
  directions.
 
   Creating a Literate Environment 

  Creating a literate environment involves everything that 
  we have addressed thus far in this chapter.  However, two other 
  aspects of the physical environment can also affect opportunity 
  to learn:  room arrangements and availability of materials.  
  Support, interest, variety, and choice are important concepts to 
  remember in making decisions about either, for environments that 
  reflect these concepts both encourage and facilitate literacy 
  learning.

   Room Arrangements .  "User friendly" is a good way to 
  think about effective room arrangements.  Rooms should be 
  organized so that students can read and write independently and 
  efficiently.  This means easy student access to reading and 
  writing materials and often well defined areas for certain types 
  of activities, such as a classroom library area or a corner 
  where resources and editing supplies are available.  Display 
  areas, such as bulletin boards, should be accessible to 
  students, too.

  Although the specifics of room arrangement may depend 
  on students' ages and curricular issues, the overall organization 
  should promote group inquiry, encourage independence and 
  responsibility, and cultivate student interest.  In short, 
  classroom setups are important because they, too, can support 
  or hinder students' learning.  Like so many other decisions we 
  make as teachers, room arrangements reveal what we believe 
  about how children learn and how best to support their learning.  
  Bolted down desks in straight rows reveal one set of beliefs;  
  classrooms arranged as a variety of "interest centers" reveal 
  another.  

   Materials .  A literate classroom environment offers a 
  wide range of authentic materials for reading and writing.  
  Materials should be conveniently available so that student 
  readers and writers have easy access to what they need.

  Reading materials for beginners should support and 
  encourage them in their quest for meaning.  Predictable 
  materials are especially effective, as they enable "the beginning 
  reader to process the printed page in the same way as the 
  mature reader, employing the predicting, sampling, confirming, and 
  disconfirming strategies from the first" (Bridge, 1979, p.507).  
  Materials are predictable when it is easy to determine what will 
  come next-- both what the author is going to say and how it 
  will be said.  Students' own dictations are predictable because 
  they use familiar language and the content is already known.  
  Pattern literature is predictable for a variety of reasons, 
  including repetition, use of familiar concepts, match between 
  illustrations and text, and use of rhythm or rhyme.  (A starter 
  list of pattern literature is provided in Appendix _____).  Both 
  types of material provide a familiar, dependable context for 
  beginning readers.

  Likewise, materials for students who are developing as 
  readers should also be supportive and encouraging.  Since 
  reading interests and tastes differ, students need access to 
  variety in topics, genre, and formats.  And since we read for 
  many purposes, reference books and even lists and written 
  directions are legitimate "materials" for the classroom.  

  Jerry Harste says that effective literacy learning 
  environments are "littered with print."  This is a useful visual 
  image for thinking about both room arrangements and availability 
  of materials.  Although organization is apparent, classrooms are 
  arranged and stocked with materials so that students naturally 
  read and write in the process of getting things done.
 
   What Do Teachers Do? 

  Obviously, the teacher has an essential role to play in 
  the development and maintenance of an effective instructional 
  framework.  This role is shaped by beliefs and attitudes, as well 
  as by instructional skill.  Teachers expect all their students to 
  learn, see the value of all that students bring with them into 
  the classroom, think that it's more important to focus on what 
  students can do than on what they can't, and believe that 
  learning is easiest when students have choices and when 
  instructional opportunities are based on interest and relevance.  
  Teachers' attitudes toward mistakes are also important.  They 
  know that mistakes are an inevitable part of the learning 
  process, part of the human condition;  they communicate this 
  attitude to their students through what they say and do.

  Jackie taught "developmental" readers in college.  Her 
  reflections about that experience summarize key aspects of the 
  instructional environment and the teacher's role quite well:  "I 
  think of my developmental reading students who were 
  'conditionally admitted' because they weren't successful enough in 
  their bottom-up, form-before-content schooling.  Many blossomed 
  in the nonthreatening environment I tried to offer.   All  were 
  readers and writers; but more important,  all  were thinkers, and 
  they repeatedly demonstrated this when invited to do so.

  "I saw Brian again today.  He was driving a campus bus 
  and called to me as I walked across the parking lot.  He's 
  confident, majoring in English, and plans to be a secondary 
  teacher.  He's a junior, I think, but as a first semester 
  freshman when he read my comments about his fine writing, he 
  said, 'No one ever said that to me before.'  How could his 
  teachers of 12+ years not see him as a writer?  I think it's 
  because they saw him as 'at risk' rather than inviting him to 
  take risks."

   Word Recognition

  Reading involves the construction of meaning by the 
  reader from a written text.   Unless the reader has some 
  understanding of the text we could hardly say that he or she 
  is reading.  In order to access that meaning, however, it is 
  essential that the reader quickly, accurately, and 
  effortlessly recognize the words that are in the text.  By 
  recognize we mean the ability to translate the written 
  symbols into their oral representation, even if that 
  translation is done within the reader's head, as in silent 
  reading.

  The less efficient a reader is at this task of 
  recognizing the written words, the more mental energy he or 
  she has to devote to it which results in less mental energy 
  that can be devoted to the critical task of making sense of 
  it all.  In other words, what we want readers to become is 
  so efficient at word recognition that they can recognize or 
  decode words with as little effort as possible so that all 
  of their attention can be used to make sense of the author's 
  message.  Words that are familiar to students from previous 
  encounters should be recognized instantly or automatically, 
  that is without the use of attention.  Words that are not 
  familiar to students (often longer and/or content specific 
  words) should be recognized quickly and accurately through 
  the employment of effective word recognition strategies.

  In our work with students' experiencing difficulty 
  in reading, we have noticed that an overwhelmingly large 
  number of these students demonstrate difficulty in word 
  recognition and fluency.  They labor over too many words, 
  they need to repeat many words several times before they are 
  pronounced correctly, they exhibit long pauses before words 
  that are unfamiliar to them, and they seem to treat reading 
  as a problem in "getting the words right" rather than 
  comprehending the text.  When reading is so labored, slow, 
  and frustrating we have to admire students who persevere and 
  are able to make any sense out of what they read.  
  Nevertheless, despite their incredible efforts to read, 
  reading is much more difficult and frustrating for these 
  readers than it should be.  Just think of how successful 
  these children would be in reading if they didn't have to 
  struggle with the figuring out the words and could devote 
  all their mental resources to making sense of the passage.

  We have found that word recognition develops best 
  when it is an integral part of meaningful and authentic 
  reading experiences.  Children learn to deal with words when 
  they are actively involved in interesting and constructive 
  experiences.  Within these experiences the following 
  principles help to us create instructional experiences that 
  keep students' attention focus on reading while at the same 
  time allowing them to explore the nature and structure of 
  the written words that form the text.
 
  *  Word recognition instruction should be part and parcel of 
  real reading experiences.  The direction of word recognition    
  instruction  should proceed from whole texts to  examination 
  of  parts of the text and then back to the whole.  That  is, 
  word  recognition instruction should begin with the  reading 
  of  a text, move gradually into consideration of  particular 
  words  and  parts of words from that text, and  end  with  a 
  return to the text in the form of a rereading, response,  or 
  a reading related to the whole text.
 
  *   Word recognition instruction should allow students  some 
  freedom  to  explore, make, and play  with  words.   Through 
  their  own  acting upon words they create for  themselves  a 
  thorough understanding of how words work.
 
  *   Word recognition should include many  opportunities  for 
  students  to put their word recognition competencies to  use 
  through  daily and extended times for group and  independent 
  reading   of   authentic   texts.    Students   need    many 
  opportunities  to apply their knowledge in word decoding  to 
  the  essential purpose of reading, to make sense of  printed 
  discourse.   Only through these chances to apply  what  they 
  have   learned  are  students  able  to  master   the   word 
  recognition  strategies  and, through their  exposure  to  a 
  multitude of words in their reading, to make their
  subsequent   recognition  of  the  words  encountered   more 
  efficient and effortless.
 
  *  The teacher's role in word recognition instruction is  to 
  help  students  understand and use  basic  word  recognition    
  strategies and then to immediately apply those strategies to 
  real reading.  Teachers should never treat word  recognition 
  development  as an end in itself.  Teachers should  be  very 
  cautious  about testing students' skill in applying  various 
  strategies when their actual reading indicates that they are 
  quite  able  to  recognize the  word  they  encounter  while 
  reading.  Word recognition should never be treated as a  set 
  of  skills  that should be mastered and  tested  outside  of 
  actual reading.

  What follows is a description of various word 
  recognition strategies that work.  We have used them in our 
  classrooms and clinics and we know that they work.  As with 
  all instructional strategies, however, they should never be 
  given to students in a mechanical or uninformed way.  
  Teachers need to design lesson formats that meet students' 
  needs and match teachers' own style of teaching.
 
  LANGUAGE  EXPERIENCE  APPROACH.   The  Language   Experience 
  Approach  (LEA)  to  reading  is  often  associated  with  a 
  beginning  reading  instruction.  We have found it to  be  a 
  excellent   format   for  providing  instruction   in   word 
  recognition  at  a variety of levels.  Because  in  the  LEA 
  students  employ texts of their own composition,  they  have 
  the important benefit of dealing with stories and words with 
  which they are already familiar.  Students own the text  and 
  words.

 
  
  In the basic form of LEA students dictate, either 
  individually or in a group, a brief story of their own to 
  the teacher.  The teacher acts as a scribe by writing down 
  the students' text, either on a sheet of large chart paper 
  or, if the dictation is done by one child, on sheet of 
  notebook size paper.  Students can read the story easily and 
  successfully because the story is their own.  After several 
  readings of the story over a number of days students' become 
  familiar with many of the words and are able to identify the 
  words more effectively in other reading settings.

  Once children have become adept at reading the whole 
  text we often begin what we call the process of 
  decontextualization.  This means that we begin to look at 
  parts of the text as we strip away parts of the context.  
  Students' success in reading the story initially may be due 
  to their use of context as well as their familiarity with 
  the whole passage.  Decontextualization requires students' 
  to take a closer look at individual sentences, phrases, 
  words, word parts, or even letters and letter combinations.  

  One way teachers decontextualize is through the use 
  of sentence strips and word cards taken from the passage.  
  Paula S. is a Chapter 1 teacher who has had great success in 
  using LEA with a number of her students.  She tries to do at 
  least two stories with her students each week.  For example 
  on Monday she might discuss with her students an interesting 
  experience they might like to turn into a story.  After the 
  discussion the group dictates the story to Paula who writes    
  it out on chart paper.  The session ends with the students 
  and Paula reading the several times, chorally, individually, 
  orally, silently, and with Paula reading to the group. 

  On Tuesday, after a couple of readings of the story 
  (and stories from previous lessons) Paula engage in 
  decontextualization activities with her students.  She 
  created a second copy of the text on chart paper and she 
  begins to cut this copy into sentences strips in front of 
  the students.  Together the groups practices the sentences 
  and puts them in their original order to remake the story.  
  They also experiment with reordering the sentences to alter 
  the meaning of the story.  After some work with sentence 
  strips, Paula cuts the strips into phrase strips and word 
  cards that are practiced, sorted into various categories of 
  the students' choosing, put together to form new sentences, 
  and played with in other ways.  Students and teacher 
  experiment with changing the beginning, middle and end of 
  several words in order to make new words. Paula has also 
  typed out the story on regular size paper and make copies 
  for all students to read on their own in school and at home 
  to their parents.

  On Wednesday, Paula may continue with reading the 
  story and "messing around" with words and sentences from the 
  story depending upon how well the students have learned the 
  story and its parts.  She also will begin a new LEA story 
  with her class about the interesting speaker who came to 
  school on Tuesday.  She will make it a point to return to    

 
  Monday's story periodically over the next several weeks.
 
  KEY  WORDS and WORD BANKS.  Key words and word banks  are  a 
  form of decontextualization that give students some personal 
  control and investment in the words they are to learn.  This 
  personal  ownership of words provides a  powerful  incentive 
  for students' learning.  A key word is simply a word or  two 
  that  the  student  chooses from  a  reading.   The  student 
  chooses  the word because she finds the word  interesting  - 
  the  way it sounds, the word's length, what  it  represents.  
  Children  will  often  choose words  that  are  well  beyond 
  children's  range  of words for a particular  age  or  grade 
  level.  But, because the words are the children's own,  they 
  are learned easily and recognized quickly in future reading.  
  We  have  seen kindergartners and  beginning  first  graders 
  choose words such as microphone, carriage, and malevolent.

  When key words are written on index cards or the 
  like they become part of student's word bank.  A word bank 
  is a collection of words taken from students' reading and 
  chosen by the student and her teacher.  We have found that 
  one or two words chosen by the student and one or two words 
  chosen by the teacher from each story is sufficient to 
  maintain an active word bank.  Students may choose any words 
  they like.  Teachers might wish to choose words that can be 
  generalized into other words through the substitution of 
  letters or the addition of word parts (e.g. "pup" can be    
  expanded into "puppet" and "puppeteer").  The ideal size for 
  word banks is between 20 and 30 words.  As students master 
  certain words from the word bank they can be taken out to 
  make room for new words.  Or, as students master one word 
  bank a completely new one can be developed.

  Words in word banks can be practiced, sorted, used 
  to make sentences, or used to play word games with others.  
  It is this immersion and practice with words that develop 
  students' proficiency in word recognition.  For each LEA 
  story Paula has each student select one or two key words.  
  Students write their key words on index cards and share them 
  in the group, telling why they chose their particular words 
  and making up a sentence with the word in it.  Paula also 
  choose a word that each student writes on a card and adds to 
  their word bank.  From the most recent LEA story Paula chose 
  "table" which she will use to illustrate the words that can 
  be made from the "able" word part and to discuss with her 
  students the consonant +le generalization.

  Once or twice a week Paula has her students warm up 
  for reading by reading their word bank words with a partner.  
  With a partner, she also has students use their word bank 
  words to make  sentences.  At least once a week she has 
  students sort their word bank words into categories that she 
  provides or the students think of.  In Paula's classes 
  students also use their word banks for word games such as 
  word match (duplicate sets of word cards are laid face down 
  and players have to find matching pairs) and word war (the    
  word with the most letters wins the war).  Paula also uses 
  the word banks to practice alphabetizing and other word 
  related concepts such as word families and phonics 
  generalizations.
 
  PHONICS.   It  seems that reading  teachers  and  clinicians 
  either  love  or  hate  phonics.  It  is  either  viewed  as 
  something   indispensable  to  proficient  reading   or   as 
  something that bogs students down as they try to make  sense 
  out of the passages they are reading.  

  Phonics refers to the relationships of spelling 
  patterns to sound patterns that exist in written language 
  and the reader's use of this knowledge to decode unknown 
  words.  We feel, and the research tends to confirm, that 
  phonics knowledge is extremely useful to readers and that 
  students should be guided by knowledgeable teachers in 
  understanding and using phonics generalizations.  What we 
  disagree with most strenuously is the typical, 
  uninteresting, mindless, and mechanical way that phonics is 
  taught in most classrooms today.  Indeed, we are convinced 
  that many children end up in remedial reading classes and 
  get turned off on reading for the rest of their lives 
  because of the incessant skill and drill activities and 
  worksheets that are foisted upon youngsters.  In some 
  classrooms first and second graders spend more time saying 
  such things as "buh, aah, tuh, baaaat, bat" than they do    
  reading real and interesting books.  As a result we see many 
  unmotivated children in remedial reading classes who care 
  more about "sounding out" the letters than trying to make 
  sense of the passage.

  Steven Stahl (1992) has identified several 
  principles that may help guide teachers in their development 
  of phonics instruction for their classrooms or clinics.  
  Among the principles are the following:

  1)  Phonics learning should proceed from what 
  children already know about reading.  It should proceed from 
  an understanding of stories gradually toward an analysis of 
  letter sound relationships within the stories that have been 
  read.  Phonics, as part of a total word recognition program, 
  should proceed from whole to part.  Moreover, phonics and 
  word recognition instruction is only one part of the total 
  reading program, whether the program is found in a classroom 
  or in a remedial reading situation.  Students need, first 
  and foremost, to read and talk about what they are reading.

  2)  Phonics instruction should be clear, direct, 
  brief, and focused on real words and text.  Workbooks and 
  worksheet activities in which children circle pictures, 
  color, cut, and paste, and the like do not help children 
  learn the essentials of phonics.

  3)  Phonics instruction should focus on reading 
  words, not learning phonics rules.  Phonics instruction 
  should lead directly to students using their new found 
  knowledge to read words and stories.  When unknown words are    
  encountered teachers should model or explain how phonics 
  knowledge can be used to unlock letter patterns and decode 
  the word.

  4)  Phonics instruction should focus on onsets and 
  rimes within syllables with the ultimate goal of students' 
  noticing patterns of letters within words.  Onsets are the 
  part of a syllable before the vowel and rimes are the part 
  of the word from the vowel to the end of the syllable.  
  Rather than focus on individual letters within words and 
  syllables, onsets and rimes help students focus on larger 
  segments of words and syllables that are more easily 
  recognized and more consistent in their pronunciation.

  5)  Invented spelling helps to develop students' 
  knowledge and application of phonics.  Teachers need to 
  encourage children to experiment with the writing/spelling 
  system through their own spellings of words.  Even though 
  these spellings may not be conventional in form at first, 
  they allow children to apply their knowledge of sounds, 
  letters, and letter patterns in their own writing.  
  Preliminary work in this area suggests that children who are 
  encouraged to invent spell are better in decoding than 
  children who learn to spell and read in more traditional 
  programs.

  Many of the instructional activities described in 
  this section deal with elements of phonics.  Children need 
  to learn how to use phonics, but only within an environment 
  of real and purposeful reading.   

 
  WORD  SORTS.  Word sorts are activities that  require  small 
  groups  of  students to categorize words according  to  some 
  dimension  identified  by the teacher or  a  student.   Word 
  sorts  help students use their knowledge and learn from  and 
  with  each other.  The categories can be chosen to focus  on 
  some  element of the words that the teacher  feels  requires 
  some work.  Moreover, word sorts work particularly well when 
  students sort the words from their individual word banks.  

  Paula S. uses word sorts with her students several 
  times each as part of their word bank activities.  After a 
short mini lesson on syllabication Paula had her students 
  work in groups of three's to sort their word bank cards into 
  words containing one, two, three, and more than three 
  syllables.  On other occasions she has had students sort 
  words by initial consonants, vowels sounds, long and short 
  vowels, prefixes and suffixes, and other characteristics of 
  words with which that she feels students should become 
  familiar.  "I think it's important for students to put into 
  practice the strategies we are exploring.  Word sorts gives 
  students the opportunity to test their knowledge with words 
  they are already familiar with and the sorts allow me to 
  observe how well students have grasped and can use the 
  strategies.  I think its also important to note that in 
  using word sorts with groups of students they actually teach 
  and reinforce each other as they go."

  As students become more familiar with word sort 
  activities teachers can challenge students to sort their    
  words into their own creative categories.  After a few 
  minutes of sorting the groups try to guess (infer) the 
  categories created by the other groups.  Alternatively, 
  teachers can simply ask each group to explain its way of 
  categorizing.
 
  WORD   WALLS.   One  of  our  goals  in   word   recognition 
  instruction  is  to  create a physical  environment  in  the 
  classroom  that encourages word exploration and  play.   One 
  step  toward  creating such an environment is  through  word 
  walls.   Pat Cunningham (1992) described word walls as  part 
  of  a  four  part  instructional  strategy  in  reading  for 
  students.   We like to think of word walls as a  combination 
  community  word bank and graffiti wall where  students  feel 
  free to write their own words and commentaries.

  A word wall begin with the teacher placing a large 
  piece of butcher paper on a classroom wall.  Every day the 
  class adds a word or two to the wall.  The teacher and 
  students explore other words that are related to the chosen 
  word for the day and write those words on the wall, often 
  connecting them with lines as in an idea web.  Teachers and 
  students also look for letter patterns in the chosen words 
  and brainstorm other words that contain the pattern.  
  Students practice and refer to the words on the wall often.  
  Students may also be permitted to use the word wall to jot 
  down some of their own words or ideas on the wall.  These    
  are then read by all students and result in some lively oral 
  and written discussion.

  Sherrie N. is a 5th grade teacher and the first 
  thing a visitor notices in her room is the word wall that 
  takes up an entire bulletin board.  One day the word 
  selected for the wall was "portage" that one student came 
  upon in his reading.  After talking about the meaning of the 
  word other related words (either by meaning or structure) 
  were added and discussed.  Among them were "canoe", "river", 
  "port", "porter", "portable", "sort", "porous", and "sage".  
  Sherrie reports that the word wall fills up in less than two 
  weeks.  She will leave it up for a few days after it is 
  filled because she finds that students often refer to the 
  words in writing or discussion and are continually adding 
  their own words to that connect to the ones already on the 
  board.  Even though the wall may not look very neat after 
  several days of many students' contributions, Sherrie notes 
  that the wall is important to the class as a whole because 
  it is a joint venture for which all students feel the need 
  to contribute.
 
  WORD  FAMILIES.   A  large  number  of  word  that  children 
  encounter  in  their reading are made up of  word  parts  or 
  rimes  that  are, in reality, quite  common.   For  example, 
  recognizing  the "an" word part can help students  recognize 
  words  such as "can", "pan", "ant", "pant", "fantasy",  etc.  
  In  fact, one study (Blachman, 1984) estimated  that  nearly    

 
  500  primary words could be derived from the 37  word  parts 
  listed below:
 
  -ack 
    
  -ain 
  
  -ake 
  
  -ale 
 
  -all 
 
  -ame 
 
  -an 
  
  -ank 
  
  -ap 
  
  -ash 
 
  -at 
 
  -ate 
 
  -aw 
 
  -ay 
 
  -eat 
 
  -ell 

  -est 
 
  -ice 
 
  -ick 
 
  -ide 

  -ight  
 
  -ill 
 
  -in 
 
  -ine 
 
  -ing 

  -ink 

  -ip 

  -ir 

  -ock 

  -oke 

  -op 
 
  -or 

  -ore 
 
  -uck 

  -ug

  -ump 
  
  -unk
 
  Other  common word families or letter patterns can be  found 
  in Edward Fry's "The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists".

  Mel T. makes good use of word family instruction 
  with his primary and intermediate grade students who have 
  difficulty in recognizing words.  Every three-to-five days 
  he introduces a new word family to his students.  The first 
  thing they do is brainstorm as many words as they can that 
  contain that word part.  Mel writes down his students' 
  choices as they are called out on a large sheet of chart 
  paper.  This paper is hung in the classroom and students can 
  add new words to the chart as they are discovered.  Mel 
  encourages his students to use the words from the word 
  family in their  story writing and in class and individual 
  poems, and in  reading Mel's own poems and poems written by 
  his past students.  Later Mel demonstrates how knowledge of 
  the word part in question can help decode some unknown and    
  lengthy words.  For example, after working on the "at" word 
  parts Mel helped his students see how knowledge of that word 
  part could help them figure out "Atlantic" and "cattle".
 
  FLASHCARDS and WORD LISTS.  Teachers may notice that many of 
  the  activities  in  this  chapter  can  be  extended   into 
  flashcard and word list reading activities.  While we accept 
  the  goal  of  wanting to get our  students  to  read  words 
  instantly,  accurately, and effortlessly without  having  to 
graphophonic  structural  or  context  cues,  we  are  very 
  cautious  in recommending the use of flashcard or word  list 
  activities.  Such practice tends to communicate to young and 
  corrective  readers  that  reading is  simply  a  matter  of 
  getting the words right and not making sense of the passages 
  read.   Moreover, it suggests to students that word by  word 
  reading  is  the appropriate way of processing  text.   And, 
  perhaps   most   important,  there  is   little   inherently 
  interesting  or  worthwhile  in reading a  set  of  isolated 
  words.

  If word list or flashcard reading is used in 
  classrooms or clinics we recommend that it be used very 
  briefly, such as in warm up activity or game lasting no more 
  than a minute or two.  One alternative to words in isolation 
  reading is phrase reading.  Instead of word cards, make up 
  phrase cards that contain target words for students to read.  
  These help students practice the words as well as practice    
  reading in multiple word phrases.

  The best alternative to word list and flashcard 
  reading is real contextual reading.  In real reading 
  students practice  words and phrases, they work to 
  comprehend the author's message, and they learn and enjoy 
  the fruits of their efforts in ways that real readers do.  
  One of the most enduring findings in all of reading research 
  is that good readers read a lot and poor readers read 
  little.  We must learn to maximize the amount of contextual 
  reading done by our students.  It is the very best type of 
  practice they can do to improve their reading.

  Jane S. works with students who seem to have some of 
  the most severe difficulties in reading.  While she admits 
  to some words in isolation reading ("I'll admit that I do 
  it.  I think that students need to learn to recognize words 
  at sight and quick and regular practice over the words helps 
  them develop that recognition."), the amount of such reading 
  amounts to no more than a minute or two per day.  Moreover, 
  in her classes students spend 10 to 20 times more time in 
  contextual reading than in word list reading.
 
  MAKING WORDS.  Making words is another activity described by 
  Pat Cunningham (1992) as part of a comprehensive reading 
  program.  Key features of the activity are students making 
  up their own words of increasing complexity concretely 
  manipulating a limited set of letters.  Students having 
  difficulty in word recognition are often overwhelmed by the    
  seeming endless number of letters and letter and sound 
  patterns that they need to deal with.  Limiting the number 
  of letters to 5-8, as done in this activity, helps students 
  focus on the essential characteristics of only a few 
  letters.  As with most activities, we recommend that 
  students work in pairs or in small groups so that students 
  can learn more thoroughly by teaching each other.
 
  Making  Words begins with the teacher selecting a word of  5 
  to 8 letters from student ' past reading.  Then passing  out 
  enough  one  inch squares of paper for each letter  to  each 
  group  she calls out the consonants and vowels of  the  word 
  and  has students write down one letter on each  slip.   Now 
  the fun begins.

  Mel T. who does Making Words with several of his 
  primary Chapter 1 classes begins by asking his student pairs 
  to arrange the letters to make two letter words.  Students 
  are asked to call out their constructions.  Mel writes a few 
  of the words on the board.  Then he has students work 
  through three, four, five, and six letter words and writes 
  many of these on the board as well.  At last he challenges 
  his students to use all the letters to come up with the 
  original word and other words that can be made from the 
  entire set of letters.

  Then taking a few of the words written on the board, 
  Mel explores some of the words with the group.  "What would 
  I have to do to change "part" to "art", to "par"... to    
  change "art" to "arch'... to change "par" to "parka".  Mel 
  often cuts up a transparency into squares and does the 
  activity with his students on an overhead transparency so 
  that the students can see the manipulations.  Making words 
  is quick and fast paced.  Students learn, in a very concrete 
  way, that words and the letters that make up words can be 
  manipulated in many ways to alter words or make up new 
  words.  Mel has found that his students like the quickness 
  of the activity and the fact that they are actively involved 
  in the activity throughout the 10-15 minute session.
 
  CONTEXTUAL  ANALYSIS.  In addition to analyzing the  letters 
  and  letter  combinations  to  decode  or  recognize   words 
  proficient readers may also use context to help them  figure 
  out  unfamiliar words.  By context we mean that readers  use 
  the  meaning of the passage and sentence as well as her  own 
  knowledge about the world to predict words unknown to  them.  
  For example, in the following sentence 

  
  The mail carrier was bitten by the _________.
 
  the  blank or unknown word can be figured by  combining  the 
  sentence that describes mail carriers being bitten with what 
  they  know about the stereotypical predicament that  befalls 
  postal carriers as they make their rounds to come up
  with  the  inference that the missing word  is  most  likely 
  "dog".   This reasonable prediction is made without the  use    
  of any letter or phonic information from the word itself.

  We can help readers use context by asking them to 
  think what an unknown word should be based upon the meaning 
  of the passage rather than always giving the age old advice 
  to "sound it out."  Similarly, teachers can occasionally 
  explain to their students how they figure out unknown words 
  in their own reading.  Making what is subtle clear and 
  apparent to students is what teaching is all about.

  Another activity that helps to develop readers' use 
  of context is what is known as the cloze procedure.  Cloze 
  may seem like an odd name, but is based upon the 
  psychological understanding that humans attempt to provide 
  closure or completeness to incomplete illustrations or 
  objects.  In the cloze procedure the reader attempts to 
  impose closure on incomplete linguistic data by using the 
  contextual information that is available.  In a cloze 
  procedure activity the teacher deletes words from a passage 
  by marking over certain words with a marker or by retyping 
  the passage with blanks for the deleted words.  Here is an 
  example of a cloze procedure taken from  Stega Nona'a Magic 
  Lesson   by Tomie dePaola
 
  Bambolona,  the  baker's daughter, was  angry.   Every  day, 
  summer,  fall,  ________ , and ________, she had to  get  up 
  before  the  sun to bake the _________.   Then,  piling  the 
  ________ on her head, she went to deliver them.

 
  When creating a cloze passage it is a good idea to leave the 
  first  sentence  intact so that the reader can  establish  a 
  mental framework for the text.  

  The reader's job in a cloze procedure is to use the 
  context, both prior to and after the deleted words to 
  identify them.  Then, after having complete of passage 
  containing 20 to 30 deletions, students discuss the clues 
  they used to make their predictions and are given the words 
  actually used by the author.  Again, cloze activities work 
  well in groups as students verbalize their own strategies 
  for predicting words with their partners.

  There are several variations possible with the 
  cloze.  Students unfamiliar with the procedure or who are 
  dealing with a difficult text may be overwhelmed by a 
  passage containing deleted words.  The task can be made 
  easier by placing possible answers next to each blank or to 
  list all the deleted words at the end of the passage.
 
  One  day  Bambolona said, "Papa, there is  too  much  ______ 
  (work, noise, money) to do.  I need some ____ (fun, work, 
  help).  "Get up earlier," her father said.
 
  "But  I get up now before the ____!" said ___________.  "And 
  I'm  the  last one in town to ___ to bed."  That's  the  way 
  things are," ___ father said as he went out the ____ on his 
  way to the ________.  (Bambolona, square, her, door, sun)

 
  
  Good readers simultaneously employ both context and 
  letter information to decode words.  Cloze activities can be 
  designed so that students integrate both sources on 
  information about words.  Here's an example from Gary 
  Paulsen's  Hatchet

  Somehow  the  plane was still flying.  Seconds  had  passed, 
  nearly  a m_________, and the plane f____ on as  if  nothing 
has happened and he had to do something, had to do  something 
  but did n___ know what....
 
  He  str________  one h___ toward the p_____,  saw  that  his 
  fingers  were  trembling,  and  touched  the  pilot  on  the 
  chest....
 
  The  pl______ lurched again, hit more t_________, and  Brian 
  felt  the nose dr__.  It did not d_____, but the n___   went 
  down slightly and the down-angle i__________ the speed,  and 
  he  knew  that at this angle, this slight  angle  d____,  he 
  would ultimately f__ into the tr___.
 
  In  this  passage  readers  employ  both  context  and   the 
  beginning  letter  or letter combination, the  most  salient 
  graphic cue for readers, in recognizing the missing words.

  Key elements in using the cloze procedure 
  successfully with students are to choose texts that are 
  challenging but not overwhelming for students, to give    
  students time and assistance in predicting the missing 
  words, and having students share the strategies and clues 
  they used in identifying the unknown words.

  Karen B., a Chapter 1 teacher who works with primary 
  grade children, finds that many of her students get so hung 
  up on "sounding out" words they often fail to attend to the 
  meaning of the passage and come up with responses that are 
  nonwords or words that fail to fit the meaning of the 
  passage.  For these children Karen designs cloze passages.  
  She chooses stories that students have read a few days 
  previously and have found interesting.  "This ensures that 
  the students' have a familiarity with the content and that 
  they have a motivation for reading."  As students become 
  more adept at using context she may choose unfamiliar 
  passages that come from a sequel or by a familiar author.  
  She may also add challenge by increasing the number of 
  blanks within a given passage.  As a rule of thumb, Karen 
  tries to provide no less than four words for every missing 
  word in a cloze passage for her most challenging passages.  
  "I think that the most important part of the cloze activity 
  is when we talk after the groups have had a chance to fill 
  in the blanks.  Students talk about the various strategies 
  they used to figure out the blanks.  This is where you see 
  the lights go on in students' heads as they say to 
  themselves, 'Oh yea!  I didn't think about doing it that 
  way."

 
  DEALING WITH LONGER WORDS.  Long word can present young  and 
  struggling  readers  with some  daunting  challenges.   Long 
  unfamiliar words are difficult often difficult to handle  as 
  a  whole  initially.  Even when proficient readers  come  to 
  longer  words  tend to break the word down  into  manageable 
  chunks  onto  which students can apply some of  their  basic 
  phonics knowledge until they become familiar with the  word.  
  There are several strategies that readers can use to break a 
  longer word down into more manageable units.
 
  Compound  words.   Compound words are  combinations  of  two 
  whole  words.   Compound  words can  first  be  broken  into 
  constituent  words.  For example, "everybody" can  initially 
  be  broken into "every" and "body" and either identified  as 
  whole words or be further broken down.
 
  Affixes.   Prefixes and suffixes often add to the length  of 
  words.  Readers should look for common prefixes and suffixes 
  and  segment them from longer unknown words after  searching 
  for compounds.  For example, "mini lesson" can be broken into 
  the  common  prefix "mini" and the base  word  "lesson"  and 
  decoded   from   these   two   major   parts.     Similarly, 
  "government", if not immediately recognized by a reader, can 
  easily be broken into the base word "govern" and the  common 
  suffix "ment".
 
  Patterns.  Earlier in this chapter we discussed the idea  of    
  helping   students  become  familiar  with   common   letter 
  patterns,  which we also called rimes and word families,  in 
  words.  A good strategy for helping students deal with  long 
  words is to encourage them and give them practice in finding 
  these   patterns   in  longer  words.   Research   in   word 
  recognition suggests that this pattern search, combined with 
  confirmation  by  contextual  analysis,  is  the  way   that 
  proficient readers read and that teaching students to employ 
  this  strategy  can  be  highly  effective.   In  the   word 
  "literature",  for  example, several patterns  are  apparent 
  that  students can use to decode the word.  The "it",  "er', 
  and  "ture"  in  the final position of the  word  should  be 
  common  and  familiar word parts to students  who  have  had 
  opportunities to play with word families.  Helping  children 
  to become familiar with common letter patterns in words  and 
  then  helping  them  learn  how and  when  to  employ  their 
  knowledge of word patters can be a significant aid in their 
  learning to recognize long and unfamiliar words.
 
  GAMES.   The best way for students to put to use their  word 
  recognition  strategies  is  through  plenty  of  contextual 
  reading.  Through real reading readers not only become adept 
  at   using  helpful  recognition  strategies,  but   through 
  repeated  exposure  to many words they add  words  to  their 
  sight  vocabulary,  those words that can  be  recognized  at 
  sight  without having to rely on any  recognition  strategy.  
  Thus, reading actually reduces the number of words to  which    
  readers have to apply decoding strategies.

  But in addition to real reading, we have found that 
  occasional games add a different dimension to the reading 
  class while giving students practice at recognizing words.  
  Most of the games are simple and many are variations of 
  popular television games shows.  Here are a few of our 
  favorites.
 
  Scrabble.   In  this classic game board  game,  players  are 
  challenged to construct words from a limited set of  letters 
  that fit within an array of letters already on the board.
 
  Hangman and Wheel of Fortune.  Players are required to guess 
  unknown  words and phrases by calling out  possible  letters 
  within  the  words and having the letters entered  into  the 
  word  frame when they are actually present.  Players have  a 
  limited  number  of opportunities to call out  letters  that 
  might fit into the unknown word or phrase.
 
  Wordo.   A variation of Bingo, in Wordo words that  students 
  have  been practicing are randomly written into the  squares 
  on  blank bingo cards.  The teacher or game  randomly  calls 
  out  the words, their definitions, or  sentences  containing 
  the  words  but in which the word is  left  blank.   Players 
  cover  up  their  word squares as the words  are  called  or 
  identified.  The first player with a complete line of  words    
  across, down, or diagonal is the winner.
 
  Match.   Match  is a variation of the Memory  game  that  is 
  popular with young children.  Match is played with 15 or  20 
  matching  pairs of word cards.  The cards are randomly  laid 
  in  grid  on a flat surface.  Players uncover two  cards  at 
  time,  saying each word as is turned over.  If the two  word 
  cards are of the same word the player keeps the cards and is 
  allowed to uncover two more cards.  Play continues until all 
  cards  have been matched and removed from the playing  grid.  
  Then players count their cards and the player with the  most 
  cards is declared the winner.
 
  Word War.  In Word War, a variation of the popular card game 
  War, each player has a deck of cards (one child can use  her 
  word bank deck and deal it out evenly to all players).  Each 
  player plays one card at a time by uncovering the card at 
  the top of his or her deck, saying the word, and laying it 
  on the table.  The player that uncovers the word with the 
  most letters and says the word correctly wins the round and 
  takes the cards of the other players.  If there is a tie 
  between two or more players, each player involved in the tie 
  uncovers a second card and says it.  In this tie breaking 
  round the player with the most letters wins all the cards 
  played in the entire round.  Another tie results in another 
  tie breaking round.

 
  
  Gary J., a remedial math and reading teacher in a 
  4th through 6th grade school finds that word games, while 
  not a central part to his instructional program, do create 
  an added sense of playfulness and spontaneity.  He reserves 
  one day every two weeks for words games and uses quick games 
  whenever he has a few minutes at the end of a class session 
  with students.  "Students respond well to the games and the 
  games make our word study more like playing around with 
  words which is how I want them to think of it."
 
  MULTIMODALITY  APPROACHES  TO WORD  RECOGNITION.   For  some 
  children   word   recognition  is  a  struggle   even   when 
  instruction   is   provided  in   various   effective   word 
  recognition  strategies.  They seem unable to perceive  even 
  common and familiar words and have tremendous difficulty  in 
  seeing  patterns  in  longer  and  unfamiliar  words.    One 
  approach  for  helping these children involves  the  use  of 
  several sensory modalities.  It is often referred to as  the 
  visual-auditory-kinesthetic-tactile   approach   or    VAKT.  
  Kinesthetic  refers  to the position and  movement  of  body 
  parts,  hand  and mouth, in recognizing  words  and  tactile 
  refers  to  touch.   An early version of this  approach  was 
  described   by   Grace  Fernald  (1943)  who   developed   a 
  multimodality  approach  that  she  used  successfully  with 
  children having extreme difficulty in learning to  recognize 
  words.

 
  
  In VAKT approaches to word recognition students 
  initially learn words of their own choosing by seeing, 
  saying, tracing, and touching a printed version of the word 
  until the learner can trace or write it without looking at 
  the word.  As you can see, in this method students perceive 
  the word visually and auditorily as they say and see the 
  word.  Kinesthetic perception is accomplished through the 
  body movement involved in saying and tracing the word and 
  tactile perception happens when the student touches the 
  written as she traces it.  A body of words is learned which 
  is developed into a word bank and the words are used in 
  language experience stories created the by the student and 
  teacher.

  As students become more adept at perceiving words 
  and word patterns (often children with severe reading 
  difficulties take two or more months of instruction before 
  beginning to recognize words without having to trace words) 
  the teacher begins to reduce some of the modality support.  
  Students might be asked to trace the words in the air while 
  looking at a printed copy or move to the point of 
  recognizing and writing words from just seeing the word and 
  saying the word.  Students also move from reading their own 
  stories to reading commercially published storybooks, 
  beginning with easy texts and moving progressively to more 
  challenging texts.  Eventually, students should learn to 
  recognize new words by recognizing familiar patterns in them 
  as most proficient readers do.   

 
  
  The VAKT approach is a labor intensive approach.  It 
  usually needs to be implemented over a considerable amount 
  of time and it is most effective when it instruction is 
  provided on a one-to-one basis.  Thus, it should be viewed 
  as a method of last resort for children experiencing 
  difficulty in word recognition.  Nevertheless, teachers can 
  use variations and portions of multimodal approaches within 
  their regular classroom or clinical instruction.

  Kim H. is one Chapter 1 teacher who does just that.  
  One group of second graders seems to have considerable 
  difficulty in recognizing and remembering words encountered 
  in their reading.  When students add words to their word 
  banks by writing the words on index cards, Kim has them 
  trace each word several times while at the same time slowly 
  saying the word.  Then she will ask them to turn over their 
  word card and write the word on a piece of scratch paper.  
  Similarly, she encourages students to trace, with their 
  fingers, words added to the groups word wall when they go up 
  to the wall and practice the words or make an entry.  "I 
  really find that for these students the added practice of 
  touching and tracing the words for their word banks helped 
  make the words more easily remembered.  And, I found that I 
  only had to this for about eight weeks.  Students quickly 
  began to pick up key patterns in words and for words they 
  were unfamiliar with they began to trace the words on their 
  own.  They saw the value of the tracing and touching without 
  even me having to tell them."   

 
  
  We know we have mentioned this before in this 
  chapter and in other parts of this paper, but we feel 
  compelled to mention it again.  We think that it is at the 
  heart of all successful reading instruction.  All readers, 
  whether highly proficient or struggling, need to read 
  authentic reading material of their own choosing.  Through 
wide and in-depth reading children not only get the 
  opportunity to practice the word recognition strategies that 
  they can use when they come to unfamiliar words, but also by 
  encountering new words and through repeated exposure to more 
  familiar words and word parts, students begin to acquire the 
  ability to recognize many words automatically that 
  characterizes proficient reading.

  One genre of books, predictable or pattern books, is 
  particularly well suited for developing early reading 
  competency and word recognition.  These books are 
  characterized by familiar and repetitive patterns that make 
  the stories easy to read after only a few readings.  In 
  addition to making reading successful, these books promote 
  word recognition through multiple readings.  Two or three 
  readings of texts with repetitive patterns are certain to 
  help students develop strong visual imprints of words and 
  associations with their verbal counterparts.  These words 
  then become part of the students' sight vocabulary that set 
  the stage for more challenging reading and that also allow 
  close analysis and inspection of the words for key elements 
  and patterns generalizeable to other words.  A list of    
  predictable pattern books is available in the appendix to 
  this book.

  Reading programs with which we are familiar that are 
  successful in helping children learn to read, overcome 
  difficulties in learning to read, and develop a genuine love 
  of reading seem to one thing in common.  Students in these 
  program read plenty of connected discourse.  They read daily 
  in their regular classrooms, they read for a large portion 
  of their corrective or remedial reading time, and they read 
  at home, encouraged and supported by parents.  The more 
  children read the better they become in all aspects of 
  reading -- word recognition, fluency, attitude, vocabulary, 
  and comprehension.  As Gary J. has told us, "You can't 
  expect children to learn to read if they don't get the 
  chance to read.... you have to read!"
 
  PUTTING   IT  ALL  TOGETHER.   Knowledge  of   instructional 
  strategies is only one part of developmental, corrective, or 
  remedial  reading instruction.  The other part is  designing 
  coherent instructional packages that use selected strategies 
  in informed ways.

  Sensible instructional packages begin and end with 
  students reading real texts.  Word recognition should be a 
  small but consistent part of instruction if the students are 
  experiencing difficulty in this area.  We do not recommend 
  that teachers try to use every one of the instructional 
  activities presented here.  Rather, choose a small number of    
  strategies that seem to make sense given the nature of the 
  students' reading performance.  Although few in number the 
  chosen activities should be applied consistently from day to 
  another.  It is through consistent application of strategies 
  that students that instruction becomes predictable for 
  students and instructional time can be used efficiently for 
  actual instruction rather than for explaining the activity 
  and managing behavior.

  Mary K. tries to design instruction for her 
  students' experiencing word recognition difficulties in this 
  manner.  Mary works with a group of five students for 30 
  minutes five days a week.  She begins the instructional 
  period by reading a short story or poem to the students.  
  This is followed by the group chorally reading and rereading 
  the same text presented in enlarged text format.  Previously 
  introduced stories are also read.  Then students choose a 
  word or two from the text to add to their word bank.  For 
  five to ten minutes students work in pairs on various word 
  bank activities including word sorts and games.  Three days 
  a week she works with the students on word family 
  exploration and the other two days the group words through a 
  cloze passage taken from passages the students have recently 
  read.  In several weeks she plans to substitute the word 
  family instruction with Making Words.  Each instructional 
  period with this group ends with sustained silent reading 
  and students' making entries into their learning log 
  journals.   

 
  
  Mary wishes that she could have more time to work 
  with this group of youngsters.  However, the periods are all 
  business and because students are familiar with the routine 
  they are able to get the greatest benefit from the 
  instruction.  Progress is being made and sustained where 
  previously progress was painfully slow.

  Word recognition is only one part of learning to 
  read proficiently.  But, it is an important part of learning 
  to read and many children who experience difficulty and 
  frustration in reading do so because of a lack of ability to 
  recognize words accurately and quickly.  Word recognition 
  should have two major aims - to help children learn to 
  decode unknown words and to help them recognize familiar 
  words quickly or automatically.  The best ways to accomplish 
  both of these goals of word recognition is to provide a 
  little direct instruction in word recognition and a lot of 
  guided authentic reading experiences so that what has been 
  learned through instruction can be applied immediately in 
  real reading situations.
 
   Fluency 

  Accuracy in word recognition is not enough to ensure 
  proficient reading.  Many times students exhibit, on the 
  surface, good word  recognition skills.  They read with few 
  noticeable errors in recognizing words.  However, a slightly 
  deeper analysis of many of these readers shows that they 
  read with excessive slowness, their oral reading seems 
  rather dull, expressionless, almost belabored, as if the 
  reader is getting no satisfaction or enjoyment out of the 
  reading.  These readers may be well be diagnosed as having 
  significant difficulty in achieving good levels of expertise 
  in fluency.

  Reading fluency is not an easily defined concept.  
  Specifically, what it represents may mean different things 
  to different people.  Yet, most people can tell when they 
  are listening to a fluent reader or speaker.  Usually words 
  such as "quick", "with expression", "good phrasing", or 
  "read in a meaningful way" are used as indicators of reading 
  fluency.  We agree that all these, and others, are valid 
  indicators of reading fluency.  We feel that one of the best 
  ways of thinking about fluency is to think of it as dealing 
  with larger, multiple word units of texts.  Disfluent 
  readers read so slowly that they appear to deal with each 
  word they encounter as an individual case.  Fluent readers, 
  on the other hand, read quickly enough and with appropriate 
  phrasing and expression that it is clear that the reader is 
  dealing with units of text larger than individual words.     

 
  Phrases, clauses, and sentences seem to be more the important 
  unit of text for fluent readers.  

  Why is the ability to read quickly and in 
  appropriate textual units so important to proficient 
  reading.  We like to use the analogy of fluent and disfluent 
  speakers when discussing the importance of reading fluency.  
  Fluent speakers speak in such as a way as to make the job of 
  the listener as easy as possible in making out the intended 
  message.  The fluent speaker speaks quickly enough so that 
  message can be quickly processed by the listener.  The 
  fluent speaker speaks in meaningful phrases and embeds 
  expression and pauses into his speech so as to help the 
  listener make sense out of the speech as easily as possible.  
  The disfluent speaker, on the other hand, speaks in such a 
  slow, belabored, and word by word fashion so as to make the 
  job of the listener very difficult in making out the message 
  intended by the speaker.  The fluent reader, in the same 
  way, casts and processes the surface level information in 
  the text to make it as easy as possible to make sense or 
  comprehend the text.  Word by word, expressionless, 
  belabored, and slow reading often result in poor 
  comprehension of the text.

  Is fluency a problem among students experiencing 
  difficulty in reading?  We think that problems in fluency 
  are a major contributor to reading difficulties.  Recently 
  we studied elementary grade children from a large urban 
  school district who were referred for special tutoring in    
  reading in the Chapter 1 program.  As part of their initial 
  diagnostic assessment, each child was asked to read and 
  answer questions about two passages that were near their 
  grade placement.  From this reading we were able to take 
  measures of students' word recognition, reading fluency, and 
  comprehension.  Fluency was measured by students' rate of 
  reading.  We found that the students tended to be below 
  grade level in all three areas.  However, word recognition 
  and comprehension were not far from below what one would 
  expect for children reading at grade level.  Reading 
  fluency, on the other hand, was significantly below grade 
  level expectations for these students.  These elementary 
  students' reading performance was most dramatically and 
  consistently marked by excessively slow and labored oral 
  reading.  It was fairly obvious to anyone listening to these 
  children read that they were struggling to make it through 
  the passages and that comprehension was likely to suffer as 
  a result of their lack of fluency.

  We feel that reading fluency is one of the most 
  significant obstacles to proficient reading for elementary 
  students experiencing difficulty in learning to read.  
  Students with whom we work in the university reading clinic 
  confirm this observation.  A rather large majority of 
  children referred to the clinic for corrective reading 
  tutoring manifest significant problems in achieving fluency.

  There are several ways to assess readers' level of 
  fluency.  Perhaps the quickest and most effective assessment    
  is simply to listen to children read orally.  Teachers know 
  what good fluent reading should sound like.  Students who 
  lack fluency are easily detected by listening for children's 
  quickness, phrasing and expression.  For those who need a 
  more quantifiable method for assessing fluency, reading rate 
  offers a relatively simple, easy, and direct approach.  An 
  easy way to calculate rate is to ask a reader to read a text 
  orally at or slightly below grade level in difficulty in his 
  normal manner.  Time the reader and at the end of 60 seconds 
  tell the reader to stop.  Then, simply count the number of 
  words that were read which is the reader's rate in words per 
  minute.  Do this procedure a few times and calculate the 
  average rate.  Compare the student's reading rate against 
  the following mid year grade level minimum rates:
 
  Grade 1:   80 wpm
 
  Grade 2:   90 wpm
 
  Grade 3:  100 wpm
 
  Grade 4:  110 wpm
 
  Grade 5:  120 wpm
 
  Grade 6:  130 wpm

  If the reader is reading below the appropriate grade 
  level for his criteria you can assume that the student is 
  experiencing difficulty in achieving fluency.

  Fortunately, several holistic approaches for 
  improving reading fluency are available to teachers and 
  clinicians.  These approaches tend not only to improve 
  fluency, but also can have a positive effect on readers'    
  proficiency in word recognition.
 
   Model Fluent Reading

  
  One of the problems corrective readers face in 
  fluency is that many don't know what fluent reading is like.  
  They are often segregated into groups of other corrective 
  readers.  When they hear someone read it's usually someone 
  like themselves, disfluent and frustrated.  And, we think 
  most of us would agree that learning something is difficult 
  if we don't have an idea of what we're supposed to learn 
  should look like.  That is why modelling fluent reading, 
  more commonly referred as reading aloud to children, is 
  especially important for less able readers.  These children 
  need to know what fluent reading should sound like.  They 
  need to develop in their minds models of what fluent reading 
  is.  Reading to children helps accomplish this goal.  This 
  can be further reinforce by talking with children about 
  fluency after reading to children.  A teacher might ask 
  students before the read aloud begins to listen to her 
  change in voice, or phrasing, or rate, or expression, of 
  volume.  Or ask students after reading a passage, "How did I 
  communicate love or hate or fear or excitedness with my voice 
  during the reading?"  Getting students to listen for various 
  aspects of fluent reading and then talk about it is a first 
  step toward getting students to read fluently on their own.

  Another appropriate practice related to fluency and 
  teacher read aloud is for the teacher to read aloud a text 
  to students prior to asking them to read it aloud or    
  silently on their own.  The preview reading by the teacher 
  will help develop in students a sense for how that 
  particular reading should be done and it will conveniently 
  and unobtrusively introduce students to words they may not 
  have encountered before in print.

  Terry Phillips know about modelling fluent reading 
  for his third grade class.  Although he works in a suburban 
  school he recognized early in the year that several of his 
  lower ability students were not fluent in their reading.  He 
  has developed a program that involves his students in paired 
  and repeated reading.  But, an equally important part of his 
  fluency instruction involves reading to his class every day.  
  "About once or twice a week I try to talk with the class 
  about fluency after my reading.  At first I had to ask them 
  specific questions about my reading.  After a few weeks I 
  only had to ask, 'What did you think about my reading?'.  
  They began talking about my expression, phrasing, rate, and 
  how I used these elements to help convey meaning.  Now when 
  I ask my students to read orally I remind them to think 
  about fluency.  Not only do they think about it, they read 
  with greater ease and expression.  Even the lower kids have 
  gotten into this.  I think I've noticed them more because 
  they've made the greatest gains of all."

  Mr. Phillips will also frequently read a passage to 
  students and then ask them to read the passage to themselves 
  or a partner aloud.  Mr. Phillips feels that the preview 
  reading is a good alternative to asking students to read the    
  text silently to themselves or to introduce students to the 
  text through a discussion or other activity not directly 
  related to the text reading itself.  "This way students get 
  a good introduction to the passage itself because they hear 
  and understand it before they actually read it themselves."
 
   Repeated Reading

  
  The method of repeated reading is a rather simple 
  instructional procedure in which students are asked to 
  practice read one passage several times until a 
  predetermined degree of fluency, usually defined in terms of 
  rate and word recognition accuracy, is achieved.  Like 
  musicians or athletes, readers must practice certain 
  passages in order to achieve fluency.  Although the activity 
  itself may be simple, the effects of repeated reading are 
  quite powerful.  In an early study of the method of repeated 
  readings Jay Samuels (1979) asked students diagnosed as 
  learning disabled in reading to practice reading short texts 
  until the students were could read those texts fluently (85 
  words per minute).  Samuels found that his students 
  exhibited progress not only on the passages that were being 
  practiced, but also on passages that they read subsequently 
  without the benefit of practice.  In other words, the 
  benefits of repeated readings were internalized or were 
  transferred to new passages.  Other studies (Dowhower, 1985; 
  Herman, 1984) have validated Samuels' original finding that 
  repeated reading can help improve students' fluency and word 
  recognition.   

 
  
  One of the questions teachers often have about 
  repeated readings is how can teachers persuade students to 
  read a passage more than once?   In traditional classrooms 
  teachers often have difficulty getting students to read a 
  text one time.  The whole language answer to this dilemma is 
  to create situations in which students have a real reason to 
  read a passage more than once.  In writing process 
  classrooms the desired outcome for most students' writing is 
  some form of publication.  In a similar fashion, the natural 
  outcome for practiced reading is some form of performance.  
  Teachers need to think about ways and reasons for students 
  to read for another person or a group.  Poems are meant to 
  be shared orally with others.  So are play scripts.  
  Teachers can use poetry or scripts or dramatic reading as a 
  vehicle for repeated reading.  Another idea is to encourage 
  students to practice reading a short story so that they will 
  have a story to share with a reading buddy in another or 
  lower grade.  Some students are motivated by the opportunity 
  to work with a friend on some activity.  Pat Koskinen and 
  Irene Blum (1987) found that repeated reading could be used 
  successfully in a group situation they called paired repeated 
  reading.  In this type of repeated reading students are 
  asked to read a passage to a partner several times.  The 
  partners' role is to provide feedback to the reader.  After 
  several readings, the roles are reversed.  Koskinen and Blum 
  found that students enjoyed the alternative format and 
  demonstrated strong gains in fluency and word recognition.   

 
  
   For some students fluency difficulties may be so 
  severe that performance may not be a reasonable option.  For 
  these students, teachers may wish to track students' 
  performance as they practice reading texts.  Then using a 
  simple graph of reading performance teachers can show 
  students the progress they are making in increasing their 
  reading rate or decreasing the number of word recognition 
  miscue as they practice.

  Mrs. James is a classroom teacher who has noticed 
  that several of students in her class exhibit difficulties 
  in reading fluency.  When asked to read orally they read at 
  an excessively slow rate, with little attention to 
  meaningful phrasing and expression.  It has become 
  increasingly evident to Mrs. James that these students have 
  developed a very negative attitude about reading and 
  themselves.  They balk at any opportunity to read aloud and 
  they have begun to cause disruptions during any type of in 
  class reading.  Mrs. James decided these students needed 
  opportunities to engage in repeated readings with relatively 
  easy texts, to experience success in reading.  She made 
  arrangements with Tim Free, one the first grade teachers in 
  her building, to pair one of her sixth grade students with a 
  first grader.  The "reading buddies" would meet once a week 
  and during each visit the buddies would read a book to one 
  another.  The sixth graders were encouraged to choose books 
  that were appropriate for first graders.  These were the 
  type of books that were ideal for her disfluent readers.     

 
  Sixth graders practiced their books diligently throughout 
  the week.  By Friday they had their books down pat and when 
  they shared their books with their buddies they glowed in 
  their reading success and in the awe they inspired in the 
  first graders.

  The program has continued for several months now and 
  Mrs. James is delighted with the progress her students have 
  made,  "These students have begun to believe in themselves 
  again as readers.  They see that they can read fluently and 
  that their reading can have an impact on other children.  
  When provide instruction for these students they can relate 
  it to their work as tutors and buddies."  Although her 
  students have yet to tire of the program, indeed, they seem 
  to have thrived on their weekly sessions, Mrs. James has 
  begun to think of other ways in which students have 
  authentic purposes for reading to others.  These include 
  reading at home to parents and developing partnerships with 
  residents of a nearby retirement center.   "It really 
  doesn't take a lot for something like this to work," Mrs. 
  James says, "just someone willing to honestly listen to 
  these children read and give them encouragement.  After 
  experiencing so much failure in reading, these kids need to 
  practice to get good and they need people to tell them that 
  they are good."
 
   Paired Reading

  
  In the 1960s a new approach to corrective reading, 
  with a monster of name, was described in the professional    
  literature (Heckelman, 1969).  The procedure was called the 
  Neurological Impress Method (NIM).  The procedure was really 
  quite a bit simpler than its name implied.  Simply put, NIM 
  involved pairing a good and poor reader.  Both readers read 
  one text aloud and together.  Early descriptions had the 
  good reader directing his voice into the left ear of the 
  poor reader in order to "imprint" the voice-print match in 
  the less able reader's head.  Early research into NIM was 
  impressive.  Tutors and tutees were asked to read together 
  for relatively short periods of time, usually no more than 
  15 minutes per session.  Using this type of format, 
  Heckelman (1969) found that poor readers were able to make 
  substantial progress in relatively short periods of time.  
  One student, for example, made gains of nearly 6 grade 
  levels after doing NIM for a total of 7.25 hours!  The 
  average gain made by 24 students was 19 grade levels.

  For whatever reason, NIM never really seemed to 
  catch on in the United States.  You'd hear about it now and 
  again in a professional article or at a professional 
  meeting, but you never heard about many teachers actually 
  using the method with their less able readers.  This was not 
  the case in England, however.  Researchers in England 
  developed an activity that was very similar in nature to 
  NIM.  They called it Paired Reading.  Perhaps it is this 
  more easily understood name that has helped with its 
  popularity. 

  Paired reading was originally intended for use with    
  parents and their children as way to supplement children's 
  reading at school.  In Paired Reading, parent and child read 
  one text aloud and together.  Normally, the parent reads at 
  a moderately loud voice and at a pace that tends to pull the 
  child along.  No reading into the ear of the child is 
  required.  In easier parts of the reading or when the child 
  wants to read on her own, she signals her parent who then 
  either stops reading aloud or reads in whisper and at a rate 
  that shadows or slightly trails the voice of the child.  As 
  soon as the child begins to experience difficulty, the 
  parent returns to his original role as leader.

  Keith Topping (1987) who has lead the Paired Reading 
  movement in England reports that students can make 
  remarkable progress in a rather short period of time.  
  Having students work with their parents for only five 
  minutes per night on paired reading, he reported that 
  students who had been experiencing difficulty in learning to 
  read could expect to make progress in the range of three to 
  five times normal progress in word recognition and 
  comprehension.  Because children and parents are reading 
  connected texts together in fluent fashion it is easy to 
  expect that fluency would be positively impacted as well.  
  Topping (1989) has also indicated that paired reading can 
  work with pleasing results in situations where peers or 
  other adults take on the role of tutor.

  Katherine Barrett has been a Chapter 1 reading 
  teacher for the past 15 years in an inner city school.  She    
  takes seriously the Chapter 1 mandate to involve parents in 
  her programs to improve her students' reading.  But, up to a 
  few years ago she had lots of problems with the parents 
  involvement programs she designed.  "We had all kinds of 
  problems.  Either the parents didn't show up for the 
  training program, they didn't follow through and I didn't 
  have the time to follow up with every child, or the program 
  was more fun and games and really didn't involve sustained 
  reading on the part of the child."  After hearing about 
paired reading at an in-service workshop she decided to try 
  it out with her students and their parents.  She arranged 
  for a one hour training sessions at various times throughout 
  the day and advertised it furiously.  Most parents came and 
  were enthusiastic about paired reading.  "This was something 
  they could do with their children pretty much on their own", 
  Mrs. Barrett recalled.  She set up a system whereby students 
  bring in their record sheets on Friday which documents the 
  amount of paired reading parents and children engaged in 
  during the previous week.  Then, children select a new book 
  to read for the upcoming week and a new record sheet.  
  Parents have stayed with program.  As Mrs. Barrett notes, 
  "They see that it works, and I do too.  Children who do 
  paired reading with a parent make significantly more 
  progress during the year than those who don't....Paired 
  reading is one of the best strategies for helping our less 
  able readers that I have seen."

 
   Choral Reading

  
  Choral reading is similar to paired reading in that 
  less able readers receive support in their reading.  
  However, in the case of choral reading, the support is given 
  a group of readers.  Choral reading has become something of 
  a lost art in elementary schools.  In past generations, 
  students together learned and chorally recited poems, songs, 
  famous speeches, interesting passages from stories, and 
  other selections.  Through choral reading even the least 
  able reader was able to join in as much as he dared without 
  risk of failure or ridicule.  After several readings of this 
  sort even the less able readers were able to read the 
  passage on his or her own with considerable fluency.  Today, 
  however, with so much emphasis place on silent reading, 
  children have few opportunities to engage in the community 
  form of reading.

  Choral can be made interesting and capture the 
  interest of readers through antiphonal choral reading.  In 
  antiphonal reading the class is divided into groups (girls 
  and boys, January to June birthdays and July to December 
  birthdays, etc.).  Then, different parts of the text are 
  assigned to each group.  Some parts may be assigned to the 
  entire group or to individuals in the group.  The choral 
  reading thus becomes a complex and orchestrated arrangement.

  Throughout this activity, less able readers benefit 
  from the support they receive from the group, the 
  camaraderie and joy of participating in a group activity    
  with peers representing a variety of abilities, and the 
  valuable practice from reading chorally one text in a 
  variety of ways.

  In Elizabeth Toth's second grade class choral 
  reading is a way of classroom life.  AT the beginning of 
  each morning Ms. Toth use choral reading as a way of warming 
  up the class to reading and language.  She usually finds a 
  short suitable poem for the class to read together.  She 
  either writes out the poem on chart paper or puts it on an 
  overhead transparency so that all the children can see it.  
  Her routine is to read the poem to the class first, talk 
  about with the children, then invite the children to read it 
  chorally several times and respond to it through discussion.  
  "I really like doing this at the beginning of each day 
  because it helps create a sense of togetherness and 
  community in the class.  After reading it a couple times I 
  might ask four or five individual students of varying 
  ability in reading to read it to read it to the class.  
  Choral reading really lets those less able readers shine 
  with their peers!  Later in the day when I'm working with 
  those readers who are struggling in reading we will usually 
  go back and practice the poem together some more and do some 
  word analysis activities with it.  Really, you can create a 
  whole lesson that's fun and interesting from this initial 
  group choral reading."

  Not everyday means a new poem.  Sometimes, Mrs. Toth 
  will reintroduce students to an old favorite.  And, about    
  half way through the school year she begins to share with 
  the students her role of initially reading the class each 
  morning.  The day before she will give a selected student a 
  copy of the poem for the next day and ask that child to 
  practice reading it the night before and lead the class in 
  reading it the next day.  For some less fluent readers, she 
  will supply a tape recorded version of the poem to aid that 
  students' practice.
 
   Tape Recorded Passages

  
  For some students paired reading just may not work.  
  They may not have a parent, or sister or brother, or other 
  relative who has the time or desire to read with them in the 
  paired reading format.  One alternative to paired reading is 
  to provide students with the text to be read on audio tape 
  so that the child can listen to the text on tape while 
  reading the written version.  Marie Carbo (1979) who has 
  studied the use of tape recorded passages with less able 
  readers calls the approach "talking books".  In Carbo's 
  research, learning disables readers were given a trade book 
  along with an oral version of the text on tape.  Students 
  were instructed to read the text while simultaneously 
  listening to the text on tape.  After using this approach 
  for only a few weeks, Carbo reported that her students made 
  gains in reading that were significantly beyond what would 
  normally be expected for students at their grade level.  
  Using this approach students learned to read fluently what 
  they were previously unable to read at all.  Other research    
  has reported similar positive results with elementary 
  readers.

  Although a wide variety of commercially prepared 
  texts are available for purchase, we are of the opinion that 
  tape recorded passages prepared by the teacher or someone in 
  the school may be more effective than the purchasable 
  versions.  The commercial tapes often have sound effects 
  that may draw students' attention away from the passage, 
  they may not provide a word for word rendition of the 
  passage, they may be read at an inappropriate rate for 
  students, or they may have unconventional or inadequate 
  signals for students to turn pages and alert students to 
  other aspects of the written passages.  These potential 
  difficulties can easily be overcome by the teacher or his or 
  her representative preparing the tapes themselves.  In 
  addition, students may find hearing the voice of the teacher 
  or some other school person rather comforting and 
  encouraging.

  Mr. Ted Carroll uses tape recorded books in his 
  elementary chapter I reading program.  Students he feels 
  manifest difficulties in reading fluency are allowed to 
  choose a book and tape from his rather extensive library of 
  taped books that he has collected and made over the last 
  several years.  They are asked to learn the book over the 
  next several days on their own and to come to class on a 
  designated day and read the book, or a portion of it, to 
  him.  Mr. Carroll feels this assignment gives students some    
  control over and responsibility for their own learning while 
  at the same time learning to enjoy a good book.  "Most of my 
  students really like learning to read books on their own.  
  It's really an accomplishment they can feel proud of."  Once 
  students have become familiar with Carroll's format for the 
  tape recorded and have developed some degree of fluency, 
  Carroll invites them to make their own taped books to add 
  his library and be checked out by other students.
 
   Marking Phrase Boundaries

  
  An important part of reading fluency is the ability 
  to read in syntactically and semantically appropriate 
  phrases.  Meaning is embedded in multiple word chunks of 
  text or phrases, not in individual words themselves.  Thus, 
  one of the tasks of the fluent reader is to read in these 
  phrases or chunks.  Peter Schreiber (1979, 1990) has 
  theorized that many readers characterized as disfluent 
  suffer from a poor ability to phrase text appropriately 
  while reading.  This may be due to the readers' lack of 
  sensitivity to semantic and syntactic cues in the text that 
  mark phrase boundaries, or it may be due to disfluent 
  readers having routinized their word by word reading.  
  Regardless of the cause of this behavior, the end result is 
  continued difficulty in fully understanding the text.

  One method to help students overcome this difficulty 
  is through repeated reading.  Schreiber notes that repeated 
  reading activities allows the reader practice in discovering 
  the text cues that mark phrase boundaries.  Another approach    
  is to physically mark or highlight phrase boundaries in the 
  text itself, using a pencil slash or vertical line to 
  specify the boundary.  A review of the research has found 
  that marking phrase boundaries in this way has considerable 
  potential for improving reading performance and 
  comprehension, especially with less able readers (Rasinski, 
  1989).

  Ted Carroll has found that marking phrase boundaries 
  for students is very helpful for his less fluent Chapter 1 
  students.  "If we are studying a short passage or poem that 
  I want students to read orally, I will lightly mark phrase 
  boundaries in the passage with a pencil and run enough 
  copies of the text for each student.  I use single slash 
  marks for within sentence phrase boundaries and double 
  slashes for the end of sentences.  After talking about the 
  role of the marks, we might read the passage chorally and 
  attend to the phrase and sentence breaks."  Later, as 
  students become fluent and phrase sensitive to the text, 
  Carroll will give the students another copy of the same text 
  without the slash marks.  He feels that this is a good way 
  to get students to transfer their newly learned sensitivity 
  to phrase boundaries to passages in a conventional format.  
  As a variation and follow up to phrase marked texts, Carroll 
  will give students copies of another passage that will be 
  read orally.  He asks them to read the passage to themselves 
  and to mark their own phrase boundaries. This is followed by 
  a discussion of the need to read in chunks or phrases.  Mr.   
  Carroll notes that his students appear to make real progress 
  in their ability and desire to read in appropriate phrases 
  when reading both orally and silently.
 
   Choice of Texts

  
  The texts chosen for reading can aggravate or 
  ameliorate fluency problems.  More often than not 
  aggravation is the end result.  Students with fluency 
  difficulties are often given texts that are too difficult 
  for their current level of progress in reading.  Such text 
  ensure disfluent reading and perpetuate students' self-
  evaluations of themselves as poor readers.  In dealing with 
  fluency problems, teachers should always attempt to choose 
  texts that are relatively easy for students to read in terms 
  of word recognition and syntactic complexity.  Reading easy 
  texts helps students develop power and self-confidence in 
  their reading.

  One type of text particularly well suited to helping 
  students develop fluent reading is called predictable or 
  patterned texts.  These texts are written in a distinct and 
  easily detected pattern that make them not only easy to read 
  but also require readers to attend to the pattern through 
  phrasing and expression during their reading.  Bill Martin's 
   Brown Bear, Brown Bear  is, perhaps the most well known 
  example of a predictable or patterned book.  The text 
  follows a clear pattern that most beginning readers will 
  discover and employ after one reading.

 
  Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?
   
  I see a red bird looking at me.
  
  Red bird, red bird, what do you see?
  
  I see a yellow duck looking at me?  (Martin, 1983, pp 1-4)

  The pattern is easily discernible and the passage is 
  imminently readable and fun to read.  But, reading the text 
  is best when the reader attends to the author's pattern.  
  Later, students can use the same pattern to create
  their own stories, as Martin has done himself with his book, 
   Polar  Bear,  Polar  Bear, What do you  hear?    Most  school 
  librarians can supply  teachers with a variety of patterned 
  books written for a variety of reading levels and interests.  
  We have compiled a bibliography of predictable pattern 
  books.  It is located in the Appendix.  

  Patterned texts can also be found in poetry and 
  verse for children.  Verse has the particular advantages of 
  usually being short in length (lending itself to repeated 
  readings) and easily appealing to a variety of grade levels.  
  Shel Silverstein's  Where the Sidewalk Ends  and  A Light in 
  the Attic  contain poems that are sure to delight children 
  from  six to 65.  There are many poets who write verse for 
  children and several publishers publish collections of poems 
  that can be read to be enjoyed and build fluency.  
  Children's verse is also written in rhyme which makes the    
  poems even more appealing and predictable for students.

  Jean Davidson works with students who are in 
  transitional second grades.  These are students who did not 
  successfully complete the first grade curriculum in the 
  previous year.  Davidson's students have particular trouble 
  in emerging into conventional forms of reading.  She has 
  found that predictable books and poems are great ways to get 
  her students, who had in the previous year spent their time 
  doing worksheets and unsuccessfully manipulating letters and 
  sounds, into successful reading experiences.  Each day she 
  introduces one or two new predictable stories that are 
  written in the form of big books or, if poems, are written 
  on chart paper.  "The large texts allows the reading to be 
  community and choral reading experience."  The lesson begins 
  with students reading several patterned stories and  poems 
  read on previous days such as  Brown Bear, Brown Bear , Joy 
  Cowley's  Mrs. Wishy Washy , and Sue Williams' I Went Walking .  
  After reading these several times as a group and asking 
  individual and pairs of students to read the stories, 
  Davidson helps students detect individual letters and words 
  in the stories.  She makes word and letter cards and has 
  students match and name the cards with words and letters in 
  the stories.  She has students work in groups to find words 
  from the stories that begin or end with particular sounds, 
  letters, or letter combinations.  After several minutes 
spent looking at various aspects of the familiar texts, Mrs.    

 
  Davidson introduces her students to the new passages.  Her 
  routine includes showing students the cover and/or giving 
  them the title and asking them what the story may be about.  
  She asks students to brainstorm various possible plots and 
  to select the most plausible.  This is often charted on the 
  chalkboard in the form of a bar graph.  Following this 
  discussion she reads the text to her students while pointing 
  to individual words as she reads.  Students then talk about 
  the story.  Were their predictions correct?  What did they 
  like about the story?  Were there any particularly 
  interesting words?  After a brief discussion Davidson reads 
  and points to the again.  Then, she invites the class  to
  join her in a third reading.  After  a  few  more 
  choral readings she moves on to other activities.   However, 
  she  makes  sure  to leave the text out  available  for  her 
  students  so that they can read and explore the  passage  on 
  their  own  during free time.  In upcoming days,  the  class 
  will continue to read the patterned story introduced on this 
  day  and  begin to explore, in more detail,  the  sentences, 
  words, letters, and sounds that make the text what it is.
 
   Fluency Development Lesson

  
  So far, we have been discussing individual aspects 
  of successful fluency instruction.  Teachers who can create 
  lesson experiences that employ more than one aspect of 
  fluency instruction will increase the effectiveness of their 
  instruction.  One example of this principle is the Fluency 
  Development Lesson (FDL).  We devised the FDL for teachers    
  who work with primary grade children experiencing difficulty 
  in achieving even the initial stages of fluent reading.  WE 
  devised the FDL by combining several principles of effective 
  fluency instruction in way that maximized students' reading 
  real texts over a relatively short period of time in a way 
  that required cooperation between two or more students.  In 
  the schools in which we tried it out, the FDL was done at 
  the beginning of each day and took about ten to fifteen 
  minutes to complete.  It was a supplement to the regular 
  reading curriculum.  Teachers made copies of brief passages 
  (50 - 150 words) for each child.  The passages often were in 
  the form of a verse poem.  A typical Fluency Development 
  Lesson looked like this:

  1.  Teacher passes out copies of the text to each 
  student.

  2.  Teacher reads text to the class while students 
  follow along silently with their own copy.  This could be 
  done several times.

  3.  Teacher discusses the content of the text as 
  well as her/his reading of the text with the class.

  4.  Entire class, along with the teacher, reads the 
  text chorally several times.  Teacher created variety by 
  having students read in antiphonal and echo styles.

  5.  Class is divided into pairs and instructed to 
  find a quiet spot and practice reading the text to the 
  partner three times.  The partner's job was to follow along 
  in the text, provide help when needed, and give positive    
  feedback to the reader.  After the first three readings, the 
  roles were switched and the partner became the reader and 
  read the text three times as well.

  6.  Students regroup and teacher asks for volunteers 
  to perform the text. Individuals, pairs, and groups of up to 
  four perform the reading for the class.  The teachers often 
  made arrangements for students to perform the text for the 
  school principal, secretary, janitor, and other teachers and 
  classes.  The performing students were always lavished in 
  praise.

  7.  Students were instructed to take the passage 
  home and read it to their parents and other relatives.  
  Parents were asked to listen to their child read as many 
  times as they would like and to praise their child's 
  efforts.

  In our work with the FDL teachers implemented it 
  almost daily from October to June.  We found that nearly all 
  children benefited from the lesson, improving their overall 
  reading achievement, word recognition, and fluency over a 
  comparable group of children who received a more traditional 
  type of instruction using the same passages.  The greatest 
  gains were made with students who were the poorest readers 
  at the beginning of the year.  Teachers and students who 
  used the FDL liked the enjoyable passages, the opportunity 
  to read chorally and with friends, and the noticeable 
  improvement it offered students.

  Maria Winn has employed the Fluency Development    

 
  Lesson in her class for over two years.  She has seen 
  several of her second graders make extraordinary progress in 
  reading as a result of the FDL.  "The main thing about this 
  lesson is that it makes children become successful in 
  reading.  Even though this is second grade, several of my 
  students essentially begin the school year reading at a very 
  low level.  These kids need intensive help in word 
  recognition and developing fluent reading habits.  I 
  honestly think that the FDL is one answer to helping these 
  youngsters."  At the beginning of the year she asks parents 
  to purchase a particular collection of poems for children.  
  Each day, whenever possible, Ms. Winn and her students 
  explore one or more poems using the FDL format.  She has 
  made one modification which she feels helps reinforce 
  students word recognition learning.  After each FDL she asks 
  students to choose a favorite or interesting word from the 
  poem, write it on an index card, and add it to their 
  personal word banks which are then used in word practice and 
  word sort activities (see word banks and word sorts in 
  Chapter 3 for a complete description of these activities).  
  Students really like the opportunity to perform their 
  readings for others and to work with others in practicing 
  their reading.  Indeed, Ms. Winn has recently worked with a 
  first grade teacher to develop a program where second and 
  first grade readers are paired for reading practice in much 
  the same way as in the FDL.
  
 Figure 4.1 
 
  Procedures for Fluency Development Instruction
 
   Repeated Reading 

  Students practice reading texts until fluency is  
  achieved.

  Students perform texts for interested audiences:           
  peers, younger students, family members, etc.
 
   Paired Reading 
 
  Student selects book.
 
  Student and parent (or other better reader) read  
  book aloud together.
 
  Parent's reading leads or follows, depending on  
  student need and desire.
 
  Student logs paired reading activities.
 
   Choral Reading 
 
  Teacher or students select text and  
  determine/assign parts (if antiphoned reading).
 
  Teacher reads text aloud; students listen and read  
  along silently.  Discussion may follow.

  Teacher and students read text together.
 
  Choral or antiphonal choral reading is performed.
 
   Tape-Recorded Passages 

  Teacher or other competent reader prepared audio  

  

  
  tapes of texts.

  Student selects book and tape.  Student reads and  
  simultaneously listens to book several times.
 
  Student performs book or a portion of it for an  
  audience.
 
   Fluency Development Lesson 
 
  Teacher selects short text and prepares copies for  
  students.
 
  Teacher reads text; students listen and critique  
  reading.  Discussion may follow.
 
  Teacher and students read text together.
 
  Pairs take turns reading the text to each other.   

  Listeners provide assistance and positive feedback.
 
  Students perform the text for interested audiences.
 
   Comprehension Development 

  Comprehension is what reading is all about.  In 
  fact, finding a definition of reading that doesn't address 
  comprehension as the reason for and goal of reading is 
  nearly impossible.  The Commission on Reading (1985), for 
  example, defines reading as the "process of constructing 
  reading from written texts, ... a holistic act" that depends 
  upon "the background of the reader, the purpose for reading, 
  and the context in which reading occurs" (p. 7).  Whether 
  we're reading a novel, a technical manual, or a number from 
  the telephone directory, comprehension is involved.  And a 
  primary goal for literacy instruction, regardless of 
  students' ages, grade levels, or ability levels, is to 
  foster their development as purposeful, independent 
  comprehenders.

  What's important in comprehension instruction?  What 
  kinds of discussions or activities can help students 
  construct meaning?  How can we foster students' thoughtful 
  interaction with text?  These are critical questions for 
  teachers to consider as they plan instruction; advice about 
  how to answer them abounds.  The Commission on Reading 
  (1985), for example, suggests that teachers engage students 
  in discussions and provide instructional activities that:
 
  o      cause  students  to focus  attention  on  relevant 
  information,   to  synthesize  the  information,  and   to 
  integrate it with what they already know; and
  
o     provoke thought and motivate higher-level thinking.
 
  These  are certainly sensible suggestions;  we would  add 
  several others, however:  
 
  o     Comprehension instruction must involve students  as 
  readers  in  real reading situations.   Instruction  must 
  keep   the  process  whole,  rather  than   focusing   on 
  artificial  bits and pieces.  This means that  completing 
  exercises    about   specific   skills   won't    enhance 
  comprehension  as  effectively as  reading  something  of 
  interest and talking about it with others.  
 
  o      Instruction should help students focus on  meaning 
  for  themselves as readers and thinkers.  Thinking is  at 
  the  center  of all reading, and the  meaning  that  each 
  individual constructs when reading is dependent, at least 
  in  part,  on  his or  her  knowledge,  experiences,  and 
  purposes for reading.  Two readers may comprehend the same 
  piece of material in different ways, but that doesn't mean 
  that one reader is right and the other wrong.  Comprehension 
  is a relative notion, not an absolute one. 
 
  o      The instructional environment must  promote  risk-
  taking.  Proficient readers are active risk-takers.  They 
  think  about what they know and what they are  likely  to 
  encounter while they read.  If their predictions are  not 
  confirmed, they may continue reading, remaining alert  to 
  clues that will help them make sense of the material,  or 
  reread for missed clues and make alternative predictions.  
  Making predictions and then evaluating them are important 
   aspects of reading; predictions, of course, are  educated 
  guesses.   Making  a  guess means taking  a  chance,  and 
  readers  are unlikely to take chances in  an  environment 
  where being "right" is always stressed.  
 
  o     In  classrooms,  learning  is  a  social   process.  
  Obviously,  students must interact with text in order  to 
  enhance  their abilities as  comprehenders.   Interacting 
  with  others  is equally  important.   The  instructional 
  environment  should  foster group  inquiry  and  problem-
  solving  by  providing  students  with  opportunities  to 
  clarify their own thinking and to understand the thinking 
  of others.  Instructionally, two heads are almost  always 
  better than one.

  Each of the instructional activities described in 
  both this chapter and the next reflects these instructional 
  priorities.  In this chapter we present activities that work 
  especially well with narrative materials.  The first section 
  describes strategies that support students while they are 
  reading.  The second section provides many after-reading 
  options that allow students to share their responses and 
  thinking with each other.  Chapter ___ is devoted to similar 
  strategies that help students comprehend expository text.  
 
   Supporting Comprehension During Reading 

  In order to plan comprehension instruction, we must 
  first understand how comprehension happens.   Meaning 
  construction (or comprehension) appears to depend upon 
  several types of prior knowledge as well as active thought.  
  
In order to read we must understand the features of written 
  language as a form of communication.  We make use of our 
  underlying knowledge of graphophonology, syntax, and 
  semantics.  Furthermore, reading involves thinking and 
  predicting, which are based, in part, on experiential and 
  conceptual background.  In other words, reading is an active 
  thinking process dependent upon the reader's thoughts, 
  language, and experiences as well as upon the text.

  The context in which we read also influences 
  comprehension.  Obviously, external contextual influences 
  like lighting or distractions can affect comprehension.  
  Other, more subtle contextual factors are also important.  
  One of these is purpose, which we use to determine if we 
  have comprehended adequately.  In classrooms, students' 
  perceptions of the instructional environment, including the 
  kinds of interactions encouraged, are equally important.  To 
  support meaning construction, communication should be open 
  during text discussions.  Free and voluntary exchange of 
  ideas should be the goal, so that students can try out their 
  ideas and modify them after they hear what others have to 
  say.  This sort of context makes it possible for students to 
  "exert a group effort at understanding-- enable them, that 
  is, to arrive at conclusions that they could not have 
  reached alone and without that support"  (Barnes et al., 
  1971, pp. 97-98).  

  Instructional support during reading should provide 
  students a framework for thinking about text and sharing 
   ideas with others.  The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity 
  (DR-TA; Stauffer, 1980), Think-Pair-Share, Character 
  Sketches, and  Linguistic Roulette, described next, all fit 
  this criterion.  

   The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) .  The 
  DR-TA is a holistic, problem-solving discussion strategy 
  designed to improve students' reading-thinking skills and to 
  maximize their learning.  Lessons evolve through cycles of 
  student hypothesis generation and subsequent validation, 
  rejection, or modification of hypotheses.  First students 
  make predictions about story content based upon the title of 
  the selection and their prior knowledge.  Students then read 
  silently to predetermined stopping points.  Discussions 
  follow, which the teacher facilitates by asking students to 
  indicate whether their predictions were confirmed and to 
  support their ideas.  Next students refine their original 
  predictions and/or make new ones.  This cycle of predicting; 
  reading to confirm, modify, or reject; providing support 
  from the text; and making further predictions continues 
  until the entire selection has been read.  

  To prepare for a DR-TA, the teacher decides where 
  students will stop for discussion.  Divisions between 
  episodes of a story often work well.  Preparation may also 
  involve becoming comfortable with DR-TA questions, which are 
  quite different from more conventional comprehension 
  questions.  For example, the teacher initiates discussion by 
  asking, "What do you think this will be about?"  and then 
  may ask for elaboration or clarification with questions such 
  as, "Why?" or "What makes you say that?"  After students 
  have read the first portion of the text, the teacher 
  initiates discussion by asking questions such as, "Did 
  anything surprise you?" or "Did things happen like you 
  thought they would?" or "Were you right?"  Again, 
  clarification or elaboration questions are asked as students 
  evaluate their earlier ideas in light of information 
  provided in the text.  Finally, the teacher asks students to 
  think ahead with questions such as, "What will happen next?  
  Why?"  Students then read, and the discussion cycle begins 
  anew.

  Several excepts from a DR-TA that Bonnie conducted 
  with a group of eighth graders are reproduced below.  The 
  students were reading and discussing the short story, "All 
  the Years of Her Life" (Callaghan, 1935). 
 
  BONNIE:  WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS STORY'S GOING TO BE ABOUT?
 
  Lucy:  Somebody's life...
 
  Joseph:  A diary.  It'll be a diary about her life....
 
  Lucy:  She's going to be older.
 
  BONNIE:  WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?
 
  Lucy:  Well it's a story about her life.
 
  Heather:  It says, "All the Years"...
 
  Lucy:  So that means she's going to be like older....
 
  BONNIE:  SOME OTHER PREDICTIONS?...
 
  Joseph:  Someone's problems
 
  BONNIE:  WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?
  
Joseph:   I don't know.  You can just tell by  her  life.  
  And usually people have problems.
 
  [students read;  later in the lesson]
 
  BONNIE:  WELL, WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN NEXT?
 
  Joseph:  I don't think they're going to go get a cop.
 
  BONNIE:  NO?  WHY NOT?
 
  Joseph:  Why not?  I just don't think that.  Uh, with the 
  mother's  attitude, the way she came in, I think that  it 
  might have changed the owner's mind.
 
  Lucy:  Yeah, you know, with a mother like this maybe  the 
  kid'll turn out o.k.
 
  BONNIE:  IS THERE ANY SIGN OF THAT IN THE STORY?
 
  Lucy:  Yeah.  Well he couldn't believe the attitude  that 
  his  mom  came  in with.  Maybe  that  might  change  his 
  opinion about her.
 
  Heather:   I think that he's more likely to get a cop  if 
  she came in nice like that.  That's what I would do.
 
  Andrew:  Yeah, because he thinks that she's probably  not 
  going  to do anything to him, or punish him for  what  he 
  did...
 
  Heather:   The store manager thinks that the mother  sort 
  of planned for him to take something....
 
  BONNIE:  WHAT DO THE REST OF YOU THINK?
 
  Joseph:   Well, maybe the store manager let him  off  the 
  hook because he'll probably punish himself enough....
 
  BONNIE:  TELL SOME MORE ABOUT THAT.
 
  Joseph:  Guilt.
  
Heather:  Yeah, the way he'll feel about himself from now 
  on.  Lucy:  And he probably won't do it again.
 
  BONNIE:  OK
 
  Andrew:  Well, the kid's already scared as it is.

  Did you notice how little Bonnie said?  In a DR-TA, 
  students do most of the talking.  Did you notice that she 
  did not provide important ideas or generalizations for 
  students?  Her goals were to encourage thinking and 
  facilitate group interaction, rather than manipulating 
  students' thinking or testing their recall.  The 
  instructional context signaled that students' ideas were 
  valued, that they should explain their ideas so that others 
  could understand their reasoning, and that they should 
  listen to and talk with each other.  In short, students were 
  intellectually involved with text concepts. 

   Think-Pair-Share .  Like the DR-TA, Think-Pair-Share 
  provides opportunities for students to talk about a story as 
  they are reading it.  To prepare for the activity, students 
  find partners.  The teacher identifies stopping points for 
  discussion and shares these with students, who can make 
  light pencil marks in their books to remember when to stop.  

  Students read to the first stopping point and then 
  pause to  think  about the reading.  They might consider such 
  issues as what they found interesting or puzzling;  they 
  often make brief notes about their thoughts.  After each 
  partner has completed this thinking, the  pairs  talk with 
  each other using their notes to remind them of the points 
  they wish to make.  Finally, the larger group  shares , 
  focusing on interesting issues that arose during the partner 
  discussions.  Depending on students' interest and need, 
  these discussions may be very brief or rather lengthy.  When 
  the first Think-Pair-Share cycle is complete, students read 
  the next portion of the story and begin the cycle again.

  Think-Pair-Share is an extremely adaptable 
  organizational structure for conducting classroom 
  discussions.  For example, it can be used as an after-
  reading activity, rather than while reading as described 
  above.  It also works well with expository text.  Harold, 
  who uses the strategy frequently in his work with students 
  with disabilities, sees two major benefits to its use:  "My 
  students often need support as they are reading a story.  If 
  we use Think-Pair-Share a couple of times while they read, 
  the thinking and talking allows everyone to be successful.  
  I also like the fact that individuals think things through 
  for themselves (and often write their ideas down) before 
  discussing them with partners.  I find that this encourages 
  individual response to reading, which I believe is important 
  to helping kids learn, and it also makes the partner 
  discussions more lively."

   Character Sketches .  Think-Pair-Share can be used 
  rather generically, as described above, or to help students 
  focus on more specific aspects of stories.  In Character 
  Sketches, students use the Think-Pair-Share structure to 
  focus their attention on character development.  At the 
  first stopping point in their reading (or listening), 
  students jot down words and phrases to describe one or two 
  major characters.  This becomes the information that they 
  share, first with their partners and then with the larger 
  group.  At each successive stop, students return to their 
  notes about the characters, modifying them based on the new 
  insights they have developed through reading.  A character 
  who initially seemed selfish or unfeeling, for example, may 
  be revealed as shy or grieving.  After modifying their 
  lists, students again talk with partners and the entire 
  group.  The Think-Pair-Share cycle continues until students 
  have completed the story.

  At the conclusion of the activity, students have 
  notes that reflect their descriptions of major characters, 
  which can be used for a discussion of how authors develop 
  characters or a variety of other follow-up activities.  
  Students also have an increased understanding of the story 
  they have read or heard, since characters typically reveal 
  their "personalities" through what they say and do.

   Linguistic Roulette.   This small group discussion 
  technique was developed by Jerry Harste.  After reading a 
  portion of a story, each student skims through it again 
  looking for a single sentence that he or she finds 
  interesting, important, puzzling, or special in some other 
  way.  This sentence or question is written on paper.  

  Discussion begins when all members of the group have 
  read and selected their sentences.  Each student reads his 
  or her sentence aloud and invites group response to it.  
  Students often explain why they selected their sentences, as 
  well, which can give rise to interesting comprehension 
  discussions.  After all group members have shared, students 
  read the next portion of the story, and the cycle is 
  repeated.

  Linguistic Roulette fosters comprehension in several 
  ways.  First, simply stopping periodically to talk with 
  peers supports comprehension.  Moreover, students must think 
  again about the story in order to select their sentences for 
  discussion.  Hearing others' sentences and participating in 
  the small group discussions sometimes encourages 
  consideration of alternate perspectives about meaning.

  Text discussions during reading can enhance 
  comprehension if the instructional environment fosters 
  sharing, group inquiry, and problem-solving.  All of the 
  activities we have described-- the DR-TA, Think-Pair-Share, 
  Character Sketches, and Linguistic Roulette-- encourage 
  students to read actively and thoughtfully.  Over time, such 
  instruction will help them learn that they can (indeed, 
  must) construct meaning as they read.
 
   Extending Comprehension After Reading 

  Discussions during reading should provoke thoughtful 
  consideration of text and promote individual and group 
  efforts at understanding.  Instruction after reading should 
  encourage continued interaction with text content and among 
  students.  The Group Mapping Activity,  (Write and Share)2, 
  
Agree or Disagree?  Why?, Bleich's Heuristic, and response 
  journals are all effective techniques for encouraging 
  students to continue thinking about what they've read.  The 
  teacher's role in all these activities is to promote 
  sharing, encourage critical thought, and moderate 
  discussions.  The students' roles, on the other hand, 
  require reading, thinking, solving problems, making 
  decisions, and interacting with the text and each other.

   The Group Mapping Activity .  The Group Mapping 
  Activity (Davidson, 1982) promotes individual response to 
  reading and provides a framework for discussion.  After 
  reading students create maps, which are then shared and 
  explained to others, who may ask questions or make comments 
  that generally prompt continued discussion of the text.

  A map is a diagram or symbolic representation of the 
  reader's personal response to text.  Young readers often 
  make pictures when asked to map;  older readers tend to use 
  lines, arrows, or other symbols to represent their thoughts.  
  A few words may be used to label portions of a map, but 
  mapping is primarily a  nonverbal activity.  The first time 
  students map, the teacher can help them understand the 
  concept with directions such as, "Put your ideas about the 
  story in a diagram.  You can sketch if you want to or use 
  circles, boxes, or arrows.  Try to show your ideas without 
  using too many words.  Don't worry about a 'right' way to 
  map;  there isn't any."  This detailed explanation won't be 
  necessary after students' initial encounter with mapping;  
  when they see the variety of responses, the concern about 
  being "right" quickly diminishes.  

  Students' maps need not be detailed or perfect; in 
  fact, making one should take only a few minutes.  Mapping 
  allows the reader to synthesize his or her response to the 
  text, but its real purpose is to provide a framework for the 
  discussion that follows, which typically allows students to 
  develop further insights into what they have read and 
  realize that text interpretations often differ.  The Group 
  Mapping Activity helps readers recall and retain text 
  information while providing them with a means to respond 
  personally to what they have read.  

  Anna began using the Group Mapping Activity some 
  time ago.  When she learned about it, she said, "I knew it 
  was  made  for my second graders.  They love to draw, and many 
  are still beginning writers, so they often have more to say 
  than they have patience to write."  Anna has been pleased 
  with children's responses, too:  "The diversity of responses 
  is truly amazing!  Children show genuine interest in each 
  other's maps, and the discussions that accompany sharing are 
  fascinating-- I feel certain that the kids' understanding is 
  enhanced."

   (Write and Share)2 .  Responses to literature may 
  vary among readers, and comprehension is enhanced by 
  considering others' ideas as well as developing our own.  
  (Write and Share)2 (cite) is a strategy that fosters 
  response by providing both of these opportunities.  Students 
  
write twice and share twice--thus the name, all in response 
  to text they have read or listened to.

  In groups of 3-5, students first read the same text.  
  Then each student writes, by quickly jotting down words and 
  phrases that represent his or her response to the text.  
  Teachers often tell students not to worry about putting 
  their ideas into sentences, but rather to make quick notes 
  for their own use only.  This helps students attend to their 
  ideas rather than the mechanics of writing.  The first small 
  group discussion follows, with each student sharing his or 
  her notes and all students reacting to the ideas presented.

  When the first sharing session is concluded, 
  students again write, this time developing their thoughts 
  into prose.  Finally, students share this writing with each 
  other and discussion continues, about both the text and 
  students' reactions to it.  To encourage further response, 
  the teacher may ask for volunteers to read their final 
  pieces to the whole group.  Another alternative is to ask 
  each small group to select one piece to be shared with the 
  larger group. 

  The initial note-taking allows students to capture 
  their individual responses before sharing with others.  Along 
  with the first discussion, the note-taking also serves as a 
  kind of pre-writing activity, since students generate and 
  organize their ideas about the text.  And, of course, 
  hearing and discussing others' ideas during both sharing 
  sessions often enables students to see different 
  interpretations and responses to the same text.  Thus, this 
  easy-to-implement activity has a variety of powerful effects 
  for students as comprehenders.

   Agree or Disagree?  Why? .  In this small group 
  discussion activity, students talk about statements that are 
  related to what they have read or heard.  To prepare for the 
  activity, the teacher writes several statements that reflect 
  issues that may yield differences of opinion.  For example, 
  these statements could accompany the first chapter of 
   Charlotte's Web :
 
  Fern's parents showed that they loved her.

  Animals should be treated like people.

  Sometimes adults have to do cruel things.

  Mr. Arable should have killed the runt.

  Small groups assemble after students have read or 
  listened to the story (or chapter).  Group members discuss 
  each statement, trying to decide if they agree or disagree 
  with it and making notes about their reasons.  When the 
  small groups have completed their discussions, the teacher 
  may wish to convene the larger group to facilitate further 
  discussion of the story.

  Carol uses Agree or Disagree?  Why? frequently, 
  especially when she reads aloud to her primary Chapter 1 
  students.  "Sometimes the books kids read independently are 
  rather straightforward," she says, "but those I read aloud 
  hardly ever are.  I tend to select read-alouds that 
  encourage children to think about life's complexities.  
  
Agree or Disagree?  Why?  provides a framework for them to 
  share their thinking about some of these ideas.  It's also a 
  perfect way to extend the read-aloud experience for kids."

   Bleich's Heuristic .  David Bleich (1978) has long 
  argued that individual, subjective responses to literature 
  have worth and power.  His heuristic, or framework, provides 
  a structure for students to develop individual responses and 
  to see how these may be connected to both the text and their 
  own knowledge and experiences.

  Bleich's heuristic simply asks students to think 
  about their response to the text in two ways, affectively 
  and associatively.  Affective response is prompted by 
  questions such as these:  "How did you feel about this story 
  (poem, etc.)?"  "What's your reaction/ response to this 
  reading?"  Questions can also promote associative thinking, 
  which asks students to consider connections among their 
  responses, their own experiences, and the text:  "Where did 
  this reaction come from?" "What did the author do to create 
  this response?" "Why did you respond like that?"  "What's 
  the most important word (sentence, paragraph, etc.) in this 
  piece?  Why do you think so?"

  Students can respond to these questions by talking 
  or writing; both writing and talking, as in Think-Pair-
  Share, also works well.  Wayne, who has tried all these 
  variations with his intermediate students, advises 
  flexibility but cautions that sharing is essential.  "I 
  first learned about this as a writing activity, so that's 
  the way I introduced it to the kids.  It was OK, I guess, 
  but I noticed that students were naturally talking with each 
  other about what they had written.  So then I tried just 
  tossing the questions out as discussion starters.  And that 
  was OK too, but it seemed like some of my more hesitant 
  students got kind of 'bowled over' by others who had firm 
  ideas.  So I have also asked kids to write their answers to 
  the questions or at least jot some ideas down before the 
  group convenes to share.  That, too, is OK.  I guess my 
  advice to others would be to try it all three ways and 
  evaluate students' responses.  For me and my students, the 
  sharing is really important.  It's a powerful activity, 
  though, so it's hard to go wrong."

   Response Journals .  Of course, writing is another 
  powerful tool for reacting to and extending thinking about 
  reading (so powerful, in fact, that we devote Chapter ____ 
  to it).  Many teachers encourage students to keep response 
  journals so that they have a special place for capturing 
  their reactions and thoughts related to the books they read.  
  Entries in response journals can either be open or closed.  
  An open entry is just that-- students can write whatever 
  they want about what they have read.  Closed entries are 
  designed to focus students' thinking in a particular way.  A 
  teacher who wants to encourage summarization, for example, 
  might ask students to write brief plot summaries.  
  Similarly, a prompt like "Write about your favorite part of 
  the book so far.  Tell us why you like that part so much" 
  encourages evaluative response.  Both open and closed 
  response journal entries support students' efforts to 
  construct meaning as they read.

  Response journal entries can be used in several 
  ways.  The teacher may read and respond to entries, or 
  students may trade journals with each other in order to read 
  and respond to what a peer has written.  Peer response works 
  best, of course, if both students have read (or are reading) 
  the same book.  Sometimes teachers invite discussion by 
  encouraging students to read journal entries aloud so that 
  classmates can talk further about the issues or ideas 
  raised.  Closed journal entries can become the basis of 
  mini-lessons about their focus.  Students could share their 
  summaries, for example, and then talk about what makes a 
  good summary.  A final option is for students to keep 
  response journals for their own purposes, as a record of 
  their thinking during reading, and not as a product to share 
  with others.
 
   Instruction to Promote Comprehension 

  Comprehension is like model building.  Readers 
  construct text interpretation by relying upon many "raw 
  materials":  the content and linguistic information provided 
  by the author, their own knowledge and experiences, and 
  their understandings about how written language works.  All 
  this happens in a context, which we know to be critical in 
  determining both what and how students comprehend.  The 
  overall environment for instruction and the activities and 
  techniques employed should reflect knowledge of the factors 
  of and influences on comprehension.        

  We began this section by raising several key 
  questions about how to encourage students to integrate text 
  information with prior knowledge and to interact 
  thoughtfully with the text and each other.  When students 
  are involved in real reading situations in environments that 
  promote thinking, taking risks, and sharing, these questions 
  answer themselves.    
 
   Comprehension Development with Expository Text 

  Our goal for students, those who find reading and 
  writing difficult and all others, is to enhance their growth 
  as independent, purposeful readers and learners.  In Chapter 
  ___ we presented ideas for fostering students' comprehension 
  of narrative materials.  In this chapter we raise questions, 
  offer information, and describe strategies that will help 
  students comprehend expository or textbook material.  

  Like those best suited for narrative material, 
  instructional strategies for ensuring students' 
  comprehension of expository text must incorporate 
  understandings about readers' interactions with text and 
  about students' interactions with the teacher and each 
  other.  Toward that end, we offer several guidelines for 
  developing effective instruction:

  Learning  will  be  enhanced  if  readers'  schemata  are 
  activated   before   reading.   That   is,   students   need 
  opportunities to consider what they already know about  text 
  content before they begin reading.  

  As  with  narrative  material,  predictions  about   text 
  content  must be encouraged.  Good readers  think  backwards 
  and  forward when reading;  that is, they  draw  conclusions 
  about  what they have read and make predictions  about  what 
  they're  likely to read based on their prior  knowledge  and 
  information  in  the  text.   Like  scientists,   proficient 
  readers  constantly entertain hypotheses about  the  content 
  communicated in the text.   

 
  The instructional environment should help students  learn 
  to  comprehend  actively and purposefully  and  to  evaluate 
  their  own  efforts as readers and learners.   Teachers  can 
  support   students'  growth  by  providing  frameworks   for 
  sharing,   discussion,  and  exploration  and  by   modeling 
  literate, learned behavior themselves.

  Activities that foster cooperative involvement and  joint 
  problem-solving  enhance  learning (Spurlin et  al.,  1984).  
  The  instructional environment must foster taking risks  and 
  sharing  ideas.  Students must know that their  thinking  is 
  valued.

  Instruction based on these criteria can help readers 
  grow in their ability to comprehend and learn from 
  expository text.  The strategies described below are 
  effective with readers of all age and ability levels.  
  Although most of the strategies can be used with 
  individuals, they work best when small groups of students 
  can share their ideas with one another.  
 
   Prereading Activities 

  Too often, students are simply told to read or 
  provided with an artificial reason for reading, such as 
  "read to see how tornadoes are formed."  We believe that 
  this sort of guidance neither prepares students effectively 
  for reading nor motivates them to read.  Effective 
  prereading activities should invite students to:
 
  o     consider what they already know about what they'll  be 
  reading and share these ideas with others;   

 
  o     anticipate  and make predictions  about  what  they're 
  likely to encounter as they read;
 
  o     develop their own purposes for reading; and
 
  o     build curiosity and motivation for reading.
 
  Word  sorts, brainstorming activities, anticipation  guides, 
  and   K-W-L  are  prereading  activities  that  meet   these 
  criteria.

   Word Sorts .  Open word sorts (Gillet & Kita, 1980), 
  as described in Chapter ___, can be an effective prereading 
  activity.  To prepare for this type of word sort activity, 
  the teacher selects about 20 words or phrases from the text 
  selection that students will read.  For example, Becky, an 
  intermediate grade Chapter I teacher, selected the following 
  words from an article about spiders:

  
  liquid silk 

  tiny claws   
 	  &  
  egg sac
 
  4 pairs of legs  
 
  poison fangs 
 	  &  
  mandibles

  spinnerets 
 
  water 
 
  trap door

  wolf 
  
  balloon 
 &  
  tarantula

  orb-weaver
 
  After  preparing sets of word cards, Becky distributed  them 
  to  pairs of students and directed them to "put  these  into 
  groups  that  make sense to you.  Be ready to  explain  your 
  reasons."    Student   examined  the  words,   looking   for 
  relationships between and among them.  In order to establish 
  and  agree  upon categories, students discussed  the  chosen 
  concepts,  shared knowledge with each other, and engaged  in 
  hypothesis testing.

  When the small groups completed sorting the words 
  into their categories, Becky invited groups to share both 
  the categories and their reasoning with each other.  Here's 
  how one group of fourth graders sorted the words provided 
  above:
 
   things spiders have   
 
   where spiders live 
 
  liquid silk                   
  
  trap door  
 
  tiny claws                    
 
  water  
 
  4 pairs of legs               
  
  egg sac
 
  poison fangs               
 
   we don't know 
 
   kinds of spiders  

  mandibles
 
  tarantula              

  spinnerets
 
  wolf                   
 
  balloon

  orb-weaver
 
  These students obviously know some things about spiders, but 
  they  can also learn from the article.  Whole group  sharing 
  encouraged  further exploration of key concepts as  well  as 
  providing  Becky  with  information  about  students'  prior 
  knowledge.  

  After students shared their categories, Becky asked 
  them what they expected to be reading about and why.  This 
  served to summarize the word sort portion of the lesson and 
  to encourage making and sharing predictions.  Finally, of 
  course, the students read, armed with relevant knowledge    
  they had organized and shared in their groups.

    Word sort activities provide students with 
  opportunities to activate and share their prior knowledge 
  about concepts and to make predictions about text content.  
  These enhance curiosity and provide natural, meaningful 
  purposes for reading;  students are eager to see if their 
  ideas are accurate.  

   Brainstorming .  Brainstorming activities are 
  identical to word sorts except that students generate words 
  rather than having them selected by the teacher.  Students 
  can brainstorm in small groups, with each group selecting a 
  recorder, or the teacher can serve as the recorder for the 
  entire group.  In either case, the teacher provides a key 
  word or phrase and then asks students for all the words that 
  come to mind when they think about the key word.  Students 
  should generate words quickly rather than stopping for 
  analysis or evaluation.  Another group of Becky's students 
  produced this list of words in response to the key word 
  "spider":  black widow, web, flies, bees, insects, ants, 
  silk, haunted house, gross, neat, plants, basement, desert, 
  round, furry, tarantula, jumping spider, 8 legs.

  After two or three minutes of brainstorming, the 
  teacher can ask small groups to categorize the words and 
  provide titles for the categories, as they do in an open 
  word sort.  Students can use chart paper and markers or an 
  overhead transparency to record their categories so that 
  others can easily see their decisions during the discussion    
  and sharing that follows.  One group of children made a web 
  with the words they'd brainstormed, as seen in Figure 5B.1.  
  After discussion and sharing, students read.

  [insert figure 5B.1, "Spiders' Web," about here]

    As with word sorts, brainstorming is a cooperative 
  activity where students learn from and with each other.  
  Such cooperation fosters successful, purposeful reading 
  among all students, but may be particularly helpful for 
  those who find reading difficult.  

   Anticipation Guides .  A third prereading activity 
  that activates prior knowledge and promotes purposeful 
  reading is the anticipation guide (Herber, 1976;  Vacca & 
  Vacca, 1986).  These are sheets containing written 
  statements for students to think about and discuss before 
  (and often after) they read.  Statements are intended to 
  activate prior knowledge and arouse curiosity  about issues 
  to be addressed in the text.  A sample anticipation guide, 
  developed for the science article about spiders, is shown in 
  Figure 5B.2.  Note that the directions ask students to 
  indicate those statements with which they agree and to be 
  ready to explain their thinking.  

  [insert Figure 5B.2, "Spiders' Anticipation Guide,"  about here]

  After individuals have made decisions about the 
  statements, the teacher leads a discussion so that students 
  can share their ideas and knowledge with each other.  This 
  particular anticipation guide directs students to return to 
  the statements after reading the article, again indicating    
  the statements with which they agree and supporting their 
  ideas with reference to pages from the text.

  Don provides resource assistance for intermediate-
  grade students with learning disabilities.  He relies 
  frequently on anticipation guides because, he says, "the 
  kids really enjoy them, and I think they help kids' 
  learning.  It reassures them to know that they already know 
  something about what they will be reading.  Talking about 
  specific issues seems to help them develop a purpose for 
  reading, too."  Although Don varies the way he uses 
  anticipation guides, he typically asks pairs of students to 
  complete the guides together.  Then, before the group reads 
  the text selection, Don asks students to indicate whether 
  they agreed or disagreed with each statement and to give 
  reasons for their decisions.  Sometimes this discussion 
  proceeds quickly because students arrive at the same 
  decisions for the same reasons.  Other times, more lengthy 
  discussions ensue, either because students' opinions differ 
  or because they raise complex issues.  After reading, Don 
  generally directs discussion to focus on those areas where 
  students have changed their minds or have additional 
  information to share based on their reading.  Don says that 
  this post-reading discussion allows students to share what 
  they have learned and to raise issues for further 
  exploration.

   K-W-L .  Students complete two portions of the K-W-L 
  chart (Ogle, 1986) before reading.  The chart gets its name    
  from the label at the top of each column of the chart:  What 
  We  K now about the topic, What We  W ant to Know from reading 
  about the topic, and What We  L earned from reading.  Pairs or 
  small groups of students can work independently to complete 
  the K-W-L activity, or the group can work as a whole with 
  the teacher serving as recorder.

  
  As with a brainstorming activity, the teacher begins a K-
  W-L  discussion by providing a topic or key word  or  phrase 
  related to what students are about to read.  They then share 
  what  they already know about the topic and  pose  questions 
  they want answered or issues they hope to learn more  about.  
  Notes  about  both of these are made on  the  chart.   After 
  students have read the text, they complete the third  column 
  of the chart by recording what they have learned.  This  may 
  include answers to questions, information related to issues, 
  or  other  information  that  students  find  important   or 
  interesting.

  Betsy frequently uses K-W-L charts with her Chapter 
  1 students.  She says that the children enjoy sharing their 
  knowledge before they read and that these discussions often 
  offer her some effective incidental teaching opportunities:  
  "Sometimes the ideas really come pouring out!  After 
  everyone has shared, we need to decide how to record 
  children's ideas on the chart.  So I say, 'OK, how should I 
  write this down?'  and the students have to think back 
  through the discussion and summarize and synthesize it so 
  that we can decide what to record."  Betsy also notes that    
  sometimes children's questions about the topic (from the  W  
  column) aren't answered by the text selection.  "This is 
  good in a way," she says. "If the kids are really curious, 
  we find other resource books-- a great reason for a trip to 
  the library!"

  All these prereading activities share common 
  elements that make them successful.  Each provides a 
  framework and reason for students to consider what they 
  already know about text content.  Each also promotes sharing 
  so students learn from and with each other.  Finally, each 
  activity encourages students to hypothesize about the 
  reading selection based on what they know, what others have 
  said, and (in the case of open word sorts and anticipation 
  guides) the information provided by the teacher.  These 
  factors combine to create readers who are really "ready" to 
  read actively, purposefully, and enthusiastically.
 
   Activities to Support Students During Reading 

  Text discussions during and following reading have 
  long been recognized as potentially effective means of 
  enhancing students' comprehension and learning.  We 
  certainly agree, but offer a caution:  Discussions must be 
  planned and implemented with careful consideration of both 
  what comprehension is and how discussions can enhance 
  students' individual and collective efforts at comprehending 
  and learning.  For example, if teachers ask predominantly 
  low-level, literal questions during discussions, students 
  may attempt to collect individual and unrelated facts as    
  they read rather than thinking about ideas.  

  Good questions are certainly a key to effective 
  discussions about text.  What makes a question good?  First, 
  good discussion questions are  authentic"-- that is, they are 
  asked because the asker doesn't know and wants to know the 
  answer.  "What do you think about..?" is usually an 
  authentic question because the teacher doesn't know the 
  student's thoughts. In contrast, literal questions are 
  usually not authentic, since the teacher already knows the 
  answers and is simply testing to see if the student does 
  too.  This is not to say that literal information is 
  unimportant in text discussions, since it certainly is.  How 
  and why students use literal information seem to be the 
  issues.  Providing literal or factual support for one's 
  ideas enhances text discussions, as does sharing appropriate 
  prior knowledge.  Questions that encourage this type of 
  thinking will yield more effective discussions than those 
  intended to test what students remember.

  Authentic questions often provoke thought and 
  motivate higher-level reasoning.  These, too, are qualities 
  of good discussions.  Students should be encouraged to focus 
  on relevant, important information, to synthesize, and to 
  integrate text information with what they already know.  In 
  short, good discussions should foster thoughtful 
  consideration of text and promote group and individual 
  efforts at understanding.

  Discussions differ from conversations because they    
  are planned, but in many respects a good discussion should 
  be like a conversation:  a social exchange of ideas, 
  information, and opinions.   A good environment for 
  discussions should invite (but not demand) verbal 
  participation;  in other words, students should feel free to 
  speak or not, as they choose.  Furthermore, students should 
  be encouraged to talk to and with each other rather than 
  filtering everything through the teacher.  The result is of 
  effective text discussions is more than a collection of 
  students' individual meanings;  new meaning is constructed 
  as students listen to and talk with each other.        

  Effective discussions provide a framework for 
  thinking and sharing about text.  The Directed Reading-
  Thinking Activity (DR- TA; Stauffer, 1980), the double-entry 
  or dialectic journal, and "Save the Last Word for Me," 
  described next, are all strategies that can provide just 
  this sort of framework.

   The Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) .  The 
  DR-TA, as described in Chapter ____, also works effectively 
  with expository text selections.  As with fiction DR-TAs, 
  discussions evolve through cycles of student hypothesis 
  generation and subsequent validation, rejection, or 
  modification of hypotheses.  Preparation for an expository 
  DR-TA involves selecting something for students to read and 
  deciding where students will stop for discussion.  Subheads 
  in articles or textbooks provide natural stopping points.

  Below is an excerpt from an expository DR-TA.  Jane    
  is supporting a group of eighth grade students, who are 
  reading a chapter in their history books that describes 
  social reforms of the nineteenth century.  
 
  JANE:   WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS PASSAGE IS GOING TO BE  ABOUT 
  FROM JUST LOOKING AT THE HEADING?
 
  Katy:  What's a reformer?
 
  Karen:  Yeah.
 
  JANE:  WHO CAN TELL US?
 
  Matt:  A person who likes to reshape or something.
 
  JANE:   WHAT  WOULD A PERSON BE DOING IF HE WERE  TRYING  TO 
  RESHAPE?
 
  Matt:  Change it.
 
  Katy:  Make it better.
 
  Mike:  Try to make it better for people.
 
  JANE:   CAN  YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU  THINK  THEY 
  WANTED TO CHANGE BACK AT THAT POINT?
 
  Matt:  Slavery.
 
  Mike:  Government.
 
  JANE:  ALRIGHT.  WHAT ELSE?
 
  Tony:  Laws.
 
  JANE:  READ THE FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS ONLY. [students  read.]  
  WERE YOU RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING?
 
  Tony:  Yeah.
 
  Matt:  Slavery.
 
  JANE:  ANYTHING ELSE?
 
  Karen:  Trying to help people defend themselves and that.
 
  Katy:  What reformers meant.   

 
  JANE:  WHAT DO YOU THINK IT MEANS NOW?
 
  Katy:  The same thing.  Helping people...
 
  Karen:  A person who makes change.
 
  Matt:  Try to do something better.
 
  Mike:  Try to improve something.

  As you can see from the excerpt, the questioning 
  cycle for expository DR-TAs is similar to the cycle for 
  fiction-- Jane encouraged prediction, reflection, 
  integrating text and prior knowledge, and so forth.  Good 
  prediction questions for an expository DR-TA include "What 
  do you think this will be about?", "What issues will the 
  author address?", "What will we read about next?", and 
  "Where is the author going with this?"  After students have 
  read a portion of the text, the teacher can ask these types 
  of questions:  "Were your predictions on target?", "Did 
  anything surprise you?", "Have you changed your mind about 
  anything based on what you've read?", or "Now what do you 
  think?"  Either before or after reading, questions and 
  comments can invite elaboration or clarification, as well:  
  "Why?", "What makes you say that?", "Tell us some more about 
  that," and "Anything else?"  The teacher's talk is not 
  intended to manipulate student thinking or test students' 
  recall; rather, the purpose is to activate student thought, 
  encourage the use of prior knowledge, and facilitate group 
  interaction.  This sort of teacher involvement signals to 
  students that their ideas are valued, that they should 
  justify their opinions so that others can understand their    
  reasoning, that they should listen to and talk with each 
  other, and that the responsibility for learning is theirs.

   Dialectic/ Double-Entry Journal .  Dorothy Watson 
  calls this activity "Dialectic Journal," and Ann Berthoff 
  calls it "Double-Entry Journal."  Both conceive of it in 
  basically the same way, as a during-reading strategy for 
  students to identify important information from expository 
  text, share these ideas with others, and develop their own 
  opinions about what they have read.  The strategy involves 
  several stages:

  
  Stage  1:   As  students read a portion  of  an  article, 
  chapter, or other piece of expository text, they make  notes 
  about  what they think is important.  Notes can be  made  on 
  separate  paper  or  in  a journal, as  the  title  for  the 
  strategy suggests, or students can use pencils to  underline 
  important information on the text itself.

  
  Stage  2:   Small groups (3 - 5) of students  share  what 
  they  have  identified  as important with  each  other.   As 
  students listen to others' ideas, they may revise their  own 
  notes  or  add  or erase underlines, etc.  Stages  1  and  2 
  continue as students complete the text.

  Stage  3:  Having decided on important  information  from 
  the  text, students now make notes about their own  opinions 
  about  what  they have read.  They consider such  issues  as 
  what they agree or disagree with, how the information  might 
  be  useful,  how  new information fits  in  with  what  they 
  already knew, and so forth.   

  
  Stage  4:  Students share their individual opinions  with 
  others  in  their small groups.  Groups  discuss  individual 
  opinions, synthesize discussion, and may prepare written  or 
  oral summaries or lists to share with the entire class.

  Because expository text often contains a great deal 
  of new information, it can be particularly challenging for 
  students to decide what's important enough to remember.  The 
  Dialectic or Double-Entry Journal strategy offers students 
  support as they learn to make these decisions.

   Save the Last Word for Me .  This activity, developed 
  by Carolyn Burke, is also designed to provide support for 
  students as they read challenging text material.  Like the 
  Dialectic/ Double-Entry Journal, students first read a 
  portion of a text and write individually, then discuss the 
  reading in a small group.  Here's how it works:  Students 
  make notes about whatever they wish as they read each 
  portion of a text.  They might note important information, 
  copy a critical sentence, record things they don't 
  understand, or jot down unfamiliar vocabulary;  each student 
  decides what to write.

  Discussion begins after all members of the small 
  group have completed reading the portion of the text.  One 
  by one, students introduce an idea from their notes for 
  group discussion.  Others in the group may respond to the 
  idea, answer the question, or provide their own definitions 
  of vocabulary words.  Conversations take many directions.  
  After others have offered their thoughts, the student who    
  introduced the topic has the "last word"-- he or she may 
  offer an opinion or summarize the discussion.  Then the next 
  student in the group offers another topic, and the 
  discussion begins again.  After each group member has 
  started a discussion, students then read and make notes 
  about the next portion of the text.

  All three of these strategies encourage students to 
  read for their own purposes or for purposes established by 
  participating in the discussions, which themselves 
  facilitate the integration of the new with the known.  
  Students must think carefully while they read and listen 
  carefully during discussions.  As a result, they learn 
  content information, and they also learn that reading is an 
  active, problem-solving process.  Text discussions during 
  reading can enhance comprehension and learning if the 
  instructional environment fosters group inquiry and problem-
  solving.  
 
   Post-Reading Activities 

  Good post-reading activities should provide students 
  with continued opportunities for dynamic interaction with 
  the text and among themselves.  As Goodman and Watson (1977) 
  remind us, "Reading/thinking continues after the book is 
  closed" (p. 869).   Sometimes prereading activities can be 
  revisited after students have read.  For example, open word 
  sorts are effective for refining and extending concepts 
  after reading.  Students can reorganize the words and 
  phrases based on their reading and then discuss the changes    
  that they made.  Brainstorming can also be effective after 
  students have read, this time as a means of integrating new 
  information with prior knowledge.  And students can record 
  what they learned in the  L  column of their K-W-L charts.  
  Several other post-reading activities that foster continued 
  interaction with text are described below.

   Distinctive Features Activity .  One goal for 
  expository reading is often to help students think about 
  similarities and differences between and among related 
  concepts.  In such instances, distinctive features 
  activities, as described in Chapter ____, can be effective 
  post-reading lessons.  A distinctive features chart that 
  Becky and her students developed for the science lesson 
  about spiders is shown in Figure 5B.3.

  [insert Figure 5B.3 about here]

  After students had read, Becky asked, "What kinds of 
  spiders did we read about?"  Children's answers were 
  recorded on the chalkboard and ultimately became one 
  dimension of the chart.  Then Becky asked for the concept 
  features that were described:  "What were some things that 
  we learned about all of these spiders?"  This information 
  became the other dimension of the chart.  Students returned 
  to the text to verify their recollections and make any 
  necessary changes before the final version of the chart was 
  constructed.

  Students then worked in pairs to complete the chart.  
  They talked with their partners, reread if necessary, and    
  decided what to write in each cell of the chart.  After pairs 
  had completed their charts, Becky reconvened the whole group 
  and asked some questions to focus on similarities and 
  differences: "How are all these spiders alike?" and "How are 
  trap door spiders and wolf spiders alike?  How are they 
  different?"  

  Distinctive features activities provide frameworks 
  for organizing and categorizing concept information as well 
  as for synthesizing and making notes about what students 
  have read.  In addition, the completed charts are useful for 
  later review and study.

   Herringbone .  The Herringbone activity (see Figure 
  5B.4) also uses a chart as a means to help students 
  summarize and synthesize what they have read.  Students read 
  and then work with partners to complete the chart.  Together 
  they must decide on answers to each of the "detail" 
  questions on the Herringbone chart.  This frequently 
  involves rereading;  it always involves discussion as 
  students identify a variety of potential answers to each 
  question and settle on the most important.  Finally, they 
  combine these details to write a main idea summary statement 
  for the entire passage.

 
 
  [insert Figure 5B.4, Herringbone, about here]

  Like several of the other activities described in 
  this chapter, Herringbone provides a supportive framework 
  for students to sort through the information provided in 
  expository text and make their own decisions about what is    
  important.  Completing Herringbone charts also helps students 
  think about "main idea," "significant details," and the 
  relationships among them.

   Guided Reading Procedure .  An adaptation of Manzo's 
  (1975) Guided Reading Procedure is another effective post-
  reading activity, particularly when promoting recall or 
  helping students decide upon and organize important 
  information from the text are instructional goals.  The 
  strategy involves reading, brainstorming, and making 
  decisions about key information.

  After students have read a text selection, the 
  teacher asks them to recall everything that they can 
  remember from the text.  Recalled ideas are shared in 
  brainstorming fashion, and the teacher records all this 
  information on the chalkboard.  Next, the teacher provides a 
  purpose for further work with the ideas.  For example, 
  students might be told that they will write a summary 
  paragraph about or prepare an outline of the text using only 
  information on the chalkboard.

  With this purpose in mind, students return to the 
  text  selection, this time thinking about what needs to be 
  added, corrected, or deleted from the information that they 
  recalled.  After a few minutes, the teacher reconvenes the 
  discussion, asking for changes to the information on the 
  chalkboard and reasons for such changes.  For example, the 
  teacher might say, "OK.  You think we should erase _____ 
  from our list.  Why?  What do the rest of you think?  Should    
  we erase _____ from our list?  Why?"  

  This discussion is ordinarily quite lively.  To 
  convince others of their ideas, students must rely on 
  information from the text and their own reasoning ability.  
  The purpose for the final list often enters into the 
  discussion, too.  For example, a student might say, "Yes, 
  well I think that  is" important, but we're supposed to be 
  writing a summary.  I think that's too detailed to go in a 
  summary paragraph."   Majority opinion should be the 
  criterion for making changes.  Finally, students write the 
  summary paragraph or prepare the outline using the revised 
  information from the selection.  

  Note that the teacher never makes recommendations 
  about the information on the chalkboard.  Doing so would 
  undermine one of the major benefits of the activity:  
  helping students learn to make decisions  for themselves" 
  about what is important in their reading.  

  A similar procedure can be useful for helping 
  students prepare written summaries of nonreading experiences 
  in the classroom, such as conducting a science experiment, 
  viewing a movie, or listening to a guest speaker.  The 
  outlines that students prepare in this manner can be 
  valuable additions to the content area study, particularly 
  for readers who have difficulty reading their textbooks 
  successfully.

  This adaptation of the Guided Reading Procedure 
  helps students learn how to read purposefully and how to    
  share their ideas so that others can understand their 
  reasoning.  They also learn that what's "important" depends 
  upon their purposes for reading.  What's important for 
  preparing an outline, for example, may not be the same as 
  what's important for writing a short summary.  Finally, both 
  the recall and decision-making portions of the activity 
  provide opportunities for students to develop and extend 
  their thinking about the text.
 
   Principles for Effective Comprehension Instruction 

  Did aspects of these strategies seem similar?  We 
  hope so.  They share assumptions about what students should 
  do and what teachers should do for comprehension instruction 
  with expository text to be effective.  Students should read, 
  think, solve problems, make decisions, and interact with the 
  text and each other.  Teachers should facilitate the process 
  of comprehension attainment rather than directing it or 
  testing whether or not students can remember what they've 
  read. 

  The instructional framework reflected by each of the 
  activities has been called the "Teacher-Student Generated 
  Lesson" (Davidson, 1986).  This curricular framework takes 
  "into account the social nature of reading and its 
  relationship to comprehension, thinking, and learning" 
  (Davidson, 1986, p. 89).  Teacher-Student Generated Lessons 
  are based on four premises:
 
  o     learning is a social process;
 
  o      students  need  maximum  opportunities  to  use   the    

 
  language associated with the content area;  
 
  o    learners need to be actively involved;  and
 
  o      students  and the teacher construct  meaning  through 
  interaction with each other and the text.

  Lessons based on these principles will benefit all 
  students, of course, but they are especially helpful for 
  students experiencing difficulty with reading.  Students who 
  find reading difficult need support;  they also need to 
  maintain control over the thinking and learning processes.  
  Teacher-student generated lessons provide both.

  Comprehension is the reason for and goal of reading.  
  Before reading, readers need to activate their prior 
  knowledge, make predictions, and formulate purposes for 
  reading.  Discussions during reading should provoke 
  thoughtful consideration of text and promote individual and 
  group efforts at understanding and learning.  Finally, post-
  reading instruction should encourage continued interaction 
  with text content and among students.  The teacher's role in 
  all these activities is to promote sharing, encourage 
  critical thought, and moderate discussions.  The students' 
  roles, on the other hand, require reading, thinking, solving 
  problems, making decisions, interacting with the text and 
  each other, and learning.
 
   APPENDIX