Reading Fundamentals for Students with Learning Difficulties

Instruction for Diverse K-12 Classrooms

Sheri Berkeley, Sharon Ray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351137836
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Reading Fundamentals for Students with Learning Difficulties is a foundational resource on reading instruction for students with learning difficulties. This comprehensive, practical textbook provides fundamental information related to typical and atypical reading development, reading instruction within K-12 classrooms, and how to identify reading problems and provide interventions to a wide range of students who struggle to learn. Throughout the text, cutting edge research on reading instruction for students with learning disabilities and English Learners is translated to practice, making it accessible to even the most novice teachers. Each section concludes with application activities, including self-tests and discussion prompts, to reinforce learning.

Section IV

Understanding Text

Section IV: Overview

Reading comprehension is the purpose of reading. As students progress through their schooling, they will be increasingly expected to read independently to learn new information. Their success in doing this will be dependent on whether they have acquired the basic reading skills needed to access the text as well as their background knowledge of the topic being read about. This background knowledge includes the depth and breadth of students’ vocabularies. The first chapter in this section focuses on instructional strategies that help students approach text in the strategic ways that good readers do. The second chapter in this section focuses on how to help build background knowledge and vocabulary to help students make connections between newly read information and their existing knowledge. The last chapter in this section presents the characteristics of students who struggle with reading comprehension and describes how to use assessment data to inform instructional choices for these students.

• Chapter 10: Reading Comprehension
• Chapter 11: Background Knowledge (Including Vocabulary)
• Chapter 12: Supporting All Students in Understanding Text

Guiding Questions

As you are reading, consider the following questions:

• What are the major processes of reading comprehension?
• How are reading strategies most effectively taught?
• What instructional approaches foster reading comprehension?
• What types of vocabulary words are important to teach?
• What instructional approaches support building and activating background knowledge?
• What instructional approaches foster vocabulary acquisition?
• What challenges do at-risk students have with understanding text?
• What assessments are used to informally assess a student’s ability to understand text?
• What additional instructional supports are needed for readers who struggle to understand text?

Chapter 10

Reading Comprehension

Fundamentals of Reading Comprehension

The purpose of reading is comprehension—the construction of meaning from print (Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005). Reading comprehension requires simultaneous proficiency in both the automatic identification of words as well as the language processes required to derive meaning from those words (Chard, Vaughn, & Tyler, 2002; Joseph & Schisler, 2009; Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005). Additionally, reading comprehension is an active rather than a passive process that requires engagement from the reader before, during, and after reading (Berkeley & Taboada Barber, 2015). As such, readers need to be both purposeful and active if comprehension is to occur (National Reading Panel, 2001). Fortunately, students can be taught to be purposeful and active readers by teaching them how to approach text strategically.

Types of Text

Demands on the reader can vary based on the type of text being read. There are numerous ways to categorize and discuss types of text; however, the most common terms used are narrative text and expository text (Kent, 1984). In the early elementary grades when students are beginning to learn to read, students are predominantly exposed to narrative texts. By the end of high school, however, students are required to read predominantly expository texts, such as textbooks (Barton, 1997; Vidal-Abarca, Martínez, & Gilabert, 2000).

Narrative Texts

Narrative texts are fictional stories written with the purpose to entertain. The components of narrative text, called text structure, are referred to as story grammar. In its simplest form, the story grammar of narrative text refers to characters, setting, and plot (Fountas, 2001; Keene, 2008). Story grammar of narrative text can also include theme, perspective, antagonist, protagonist, movement through time, change, goals, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

Many genres of text tend to be written in a narrative text structure, including fables, historical fiction, science fiction, and mysteries, to name a few. Because narratives are also conveyed through oral language and conversation, students are likely to enter school with exposure to storytelling, which helps with understanding of narrative stories in print (Morrow, 2014). As students move through the grades, narrative texts become increasingly complex with non-sequential story lines, multiple points of view, and complex storytelling devices (such as foreshadowing, irony, and hyperbole). As the complexity of text increases, students will need additional guidance and instruction.

Expository Texts

Nonfiction texts that are written to help a reader learn something new are called expository texts, also called informational texts. Unlike narrative texts, expository texts generally contain a variety of text structures that can vary among chapters, paragraphs, and even sentences (Berkeley, King-Sears, Hott, & Bradley-Black, 2014). These text structures include descriptive, explanatory, sequential, compare/contrast, problem/solution, and cause/effect (Meyer & Poon, 2001). See Table 10.1 below for a description of each. This complexity of text structure is part of the reason that expository texts are more challenging for students to read and understand than narrative texts (Sáenz & Fuchs, 2002).

Among others, genres of expository texts include textbooks, newspapers, manuals, and biographies. Textbooks are a particularly challenging form of expository text because they are typically written above grade level—containing large numbers of unfamiliar multisyllabic words, highly variable text structures, and large numbers of novel concepts and vocabulary terms (Berkeley, King-Sears, Vilbas, & Conklin, 2016). Textbooks are relied on heavily in content area classrooms (Issitt, 2004; Nokes, 2010), so it is important for teachers to understand the challenges inherent to this type of text and strategies that can help students understand more of what they read. Although expository texts are predominantly used in the upper grades, secondary teachers are not the only teachers who need to understand how to help students with this type of text. It is also important for teachers in the elementary school grades to expose students to these types of texts early so that they are familiar with some of these text structures later when they are expected to independently read to learn new information. See Chapter 5 for an example of how to incorporate expository text into classrooms as young as kindergarten.

Table 10.1 Text Structures

Text Structure	Definition	Example
Description (also called explanatory)	lists of related facts (order is not important)	description of the parts of a microscope description of a desert topography
Sequential	temporal listing where time order is important	historical events in chronological order steps to complete an algebraic equation the sequence of the water cycle
Compare/Contrast	similarities and differences between people, events or concepts	comparison of democracies and dictatorships comparison of characteristics of fruits and vegetables
Problem/Solution (also called cause/effect)	description of a response to an event (problem)	causes and outcome of the Revolutionary War causes and effect of soil erosion

Adapted from: Kinder, D., Bursuck, B., & Epstein, M. (1992). An evaluation of history textbooks. The Journal of Special Education, 25, 472–491.

Reading Comprehension Strategies

Students understand more of what they read when they approach text strategically (Deshler, Ellis, & Lenz, 1996; Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Pressley & Ghatala, 1990). While some students are naturally strategic in how they approach reading, many students are not and will need to be taught how to do so. Because reading comprehension is not a visible behavior, students will not “pick up” strategic behaviors by observing their peers. Rather, they will need direct instruction that makes these invisible cognitive behaviors visible. The benefit of improved reading comprehension extends far beyond the reading lesson. When students learn to approach text strategically, it enables them to learn independently from text in content areas, such as social studies and science, as well (Scruggs, Mastropieri, Berkeley, & Graetz, 2010; Therrien, Taylor, Hosp, Kaldenberg, & Gorsh, 2011).

A wide array of reading comprehension strategies have been developed to help students approach the reading process systematically. As shown in Figure 10.1, these processes can be conceptualized as the “4 Ps”: plan, pay attention and problem solve, and process information. Planning generally occurs before readers begin reading and helps them be more efficient in their efforts. During reading, strategic readers pay attention to what they are understanding and problem solve steps they should take when they recognize that comprehension has broken down. After students have finished reading, they actively process and synthesize the information read and integrate it into their existing knowledge base.

Figure 10.1 The 4 Ps of reading comprehension

Plan

A part of planning is strategy awareness. Strategy awareness involves understanding the demands of a task and whether a strategy would assist with comprehension as well as knowing the steps of the selected strategies (Pressley & Ghatala, 1990). This seems rather straightforward, but for many students this awareness does not occur naturally and needs to be overtly taught (Wixson & Lipson, 1991).

Strategy use is more likely to be sustained when students understand why, how, and when to use a strategy. Both of these processes are important for sustained strategy use. Table 10.2 presents these key instructional features of strategy instruction.

Activities that occur before students begin reading can be instrumental in reading comprehension. Therefore, it is important that instruction is front-loaded to have maximum impact on student learning (Berkeley & Taboada Barber, 2015). In other words, teachers should take care to adequately prepare students before they begin reading, as students will then be better able to access and understand what they read independently.

Table 10.2 Strategy Planning Guide

Instruction Component	Purpose
Why to use a strategy.	Students are more motivated to use strategies when reading if they understand why the strategy will help.
How to use a strategy.	Students need to know how to follow the steps of the strategy. Sometimes a mnemonic or visual cue is used to help students remember all of the steps.
When to use a strategy.	Students need to understand when a strategy will be appropriate. This is an important step because students who rigidly apply strategies to texts that do not fit the strategy may abandon the...