March 26, 2006
Building Metacognition Strategies
"As teachers, we need to assess comprehension for many different purposes," write Camille Blachowicz, PhD, and Donna Ogle, PhD, in their book Reading Comprehension: Strategies for Independent Learners. "Assessment . . . both alerts us to the ways in which our students are capable comprehenders and strategy users, and helps us to see their instructional needs." The Developmental Reading Assessmentr 4-8, Second Edition, (DRA2) provides an extensive look at student comprehension, as well as alerts teachers to students' instructional needs.
Though the DRA2 covers prediction, summary, literal comprehension, interpretation, and reflection, an extremely unique and powerful component is the metacognitive awareness section. "Developing engaged readers involves helping students to become both strategic and aware of the strategies they use to read" (McCarthey, Hoffman, & Galda, 1999).
The specific metacognitive strategies covered in the DRA2 are using background knowledge, questioning, making connections, determining importance, making inferences, responding emotionally, and visualizing. Students are asked to identify the strategies they used when reading the Benchmark Assessment Book and locate the passage of text where they applied that particular comprehension strategy. Analysis of the students' responses allows teachers to determine each student's instructional needs in this area. But once you have this view of students' comprehension, what do you do?
As both teachers and students become more aware of the impact that the application of these comprehension strategies has on the reading process, the more "tuned in" they will be in daily activities in both instructional and independent reading situations. The Book Treks collections for Grades 3, 4, 5, and 6 are perfect for both teaching these comprehension strategies and also applying them. Here are some examples.
Making Connections
American Indian Crafts (6-Pack ISBN 0-673-62839-6), from Book Treks Level 3, explores the crafts of four American Indian nations. Crafts discussed include the construction of a canoe, a pair of moccasins, a basket, and a clay jar, which are still practiced today. This is an excellent book to use for making comparisons between crafts and also making connections to real-life situations. This book successfully demonstrates making text-to-self connections, text-to-text connections, and text-to-world connections.
Making Inferences
Another vivid example of teaching and applying comprehension strategies comes from Catching the Sun, Tales from Asia (6-Pack ISBN 0-673-61842-0), in the Book Treks Level 5 collection. In the first tale of a Vietnamese family, the little boy tells the neighbor that his father has gone off to "cut down live trees and plant dead ones," and his mother has gone off to "sell the wind to buy the moon." This is a great passage for analyzing imagery. Ask students, "Do you know what the parents were doing?"
Visualization
In the Book Treks Level 4 book Wacky Weather (6-Pack ISNB 0-673-61778-5), there is a section where the author is describing how hail is formed. "These little pieces of ice fall and then get tossed up again by the updrafts. As they are tossed up and down, more water droplets attach to them and freeze, making them larger. When they become heavy enough to overcome the force of the updrafts, they fall to the ground." We teach students that the strategy of visualization is being able to close your eyes and "see the movie in your mind." If that is the case, when students apply the strategy of visualization while reading this text they will, indeed, be able to see the movie of the hail being formed in their minds.
These are just three examples of how you can teach students how to use comprehension strategies in their own reading. Always model and label the strategies in teaching, and then provide students with opportunities to practice these skills in their own reading. Use what you glean from the DRA2, 4-8, assessment and the Focus for Instruction to build readers who will be successful comprehenders for years to come.
McCarthey, S. J., Hoffman, J. V., & Galda, L. (1999). Readers in elementary classrooms:
Learning goals and instructional principles that can inform practice. In J.T. Guthrie & D.E.
Alvermann (Eds.), Engaged reading: Processes, practices, and policy implications
(pp. 46-80). New York: Teachers College.
Posted by Melody at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)