A New Look at Comprehension Instruction for Disabled Readers Katherine Maria
Collegeof New Rochelle New Rochelle,New York
The traditional specific skills approach to comprehension instruction is no longer considered useful since research has demonstrated that comprehension is a holistic process. However, one must break down the process in some way in order to teach it. Three models of comprehension instruction that attempt to break down the process are described. Strengths and weaknesses of each of the three models: text-based instruction, explicit comprehension instruction, and a combined model, are discussed. Techniques which are exemplars of each of the models are described in relation to their use with reading-disabled children. The combined model of comprehension instruction is recommended because it joins the goal of understanding the text with helping children learn how to learn.
In most special education classrooms and resource rooms, reading instruction has emphasized direct instruction of basic decoding skills. The instruction is carefully structured in a step-by-step fashion by the teacher, who generally makes all the learning decisions. This is certainly understandable since decoding problems are obvious difficulties presented by the children who receive special education services. Moreover, there is evidence that this type of direct instruction in decoding is successful. Under this present system with the focus on decoding, decoding is eventually mastered, but comprehension scores remain low and may be permanently affected (Brown, Palincsar, and Armbruster 1984). Again, this is understandable. If comprehension is a low priority, and there is little or no systematic comprehension instruction for reading-disabled children, then the likely result will be a comprehension deficit. Thus many reading authorities (e.g. Tharp 1982; Brown, Palincsar, and Armbruster 1984) are urging that learning264
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disabled children with reading problems should receive more direct comprehension instruction. Two basic questions regarding comprehension instruction for learning-disabled children will be considered here, namely: "What should we teach?", and "How should we teach it?" In attempting to answer these questions, I will describe three models of comprehension instruction: text-based comprehension instruction, explicit comprehension instruction, and a combined model, along with specific techniques that are exemplars of each of the models. First, "What should we teach?" The answer has traditionally been specific comprehension skills. Every basal reader system and its supplementary comprehension material has its own list of these skills, skills like recognizing cause and effect and getting the main idea. These lists of comprehension skills are presented along with lists of phonic skills and other word recognition skills, so that they have tended to be viewed as analogous to the word recognition skills. Some materials even suggest that these comprehension skills can be taught and mastered in the same way that a child can master the short a sound. The child is pretested on getting the main idea, for example. He or she then reads several texts and chooses the main idea. He or she is then given a main idea post test. If the child reaches criterion, the skill of main idea is checked off. However, if we think about it, we can see that comprehension skills are not skills that can be checked off a list as they are mastered. Recognizing cause and effect and getting the main idea are processes that continue throughout one's lifetime, processes that are used in understanding more difficult, more abstract, and more varied texts. Cooper (1986) and Nix (1981) have suggested that these traditional comprehension skills are really not very specific. For example, there are many cases in which getting the main idea involves recognizing cause and effect. These skills are just different ways of focusing the reader's attention on the text. The veritable explosion of research in comprehension in recent years has demonstrated that comprehension is a holistic process that is affected by many factors, particularly the background knowledge which the reader brings to the text. Given this new view of the comprehension process, it is clear that comprehension instruction must be viewed as much more complex than teaching a set of discrete skills. As Collins and Smith (1982) suggest, WHAT should be taught is the process of comprehension. Yet this does not give much help to teachers. How does one go about teaching a holistic process? The lists of specific skills were an attempt to break down the complexity of the process so that it could be taught. The traditional skills lists may be inappropriate, but the idea that the process must be broken down in some way in order to teach it is still valid, especially when dealing with children who have difficulty with the process.
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Table I Factors Affecting the Reading Process Reader Decoding Ability World Knowledge: Concepts and Schema Linguistic Knowledge of: Vocabulary Sentence Structure
Text Readability Level Topic and Content Language Used: Vocabulary Types of sentences Use of cohesion Text Structure Particular Genre Author's Purpose
Narrative and Expository Schema Schema for particular genre Purpose for reading Use of strategies Metacognitive Awareness Interest and Motivation The teacher: A bridge between the reader and text Theory of reading: Method, Approach Personality Management Skill Teaching Skill Structuring of Task Environment Curriculum Political Pressures Context of Teaching (Class size, testing, etc.)
One way of breaking d o w n the c o m p r e h e n s i o n process as it takes place in school settings is to consider it in terms of the factors in the reader, the text, and the e n v i r o n m e n t (including the teacher) that interact to affect comprehension. Table I contains a tentative list of these factors. The list is tentative; it makes no pretence of being exhaustive and probably can never be, given the complexity of the process. However, it is a starting point, based on the current view of the comprehension process as suggested by schema theory. This list is presented as an overview or framework. I will suggest several ways in which teachers may deal with a few of the factors. To discuss this table fully or to give a complete explanation of schema t h e o r y would require m u c h more space than is available here. 1 1The reader who wishes a more detailed discussion of schema theory is referred to the followingarticles: Anderson, R. C. and Pearson, P. D. 1984. A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading. In P. D. Pearson (ed.). Handbookof Reading Research. New York: Longman. Mason, J. M. and the staff of the Center for the Study of Reading. 1984. A schematheoretic view of the reading process as a basis for comprehension instruction. In G. G. Duffy, L. R. Roehler and J. Mason (eds.). ComprehensionInstruction: Perspectivesand Suggestions. New York: Longman.
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Nevertheless, a brief discussion of schema theory is necessary in order to make any sense of the table. Schema theory developed by Rumelhart (1975) and others, based on the work of Bartlett (1932), suggests that all knowledge is contained in units, called schemata. Schemata are like concepts, only broader. There are schemata for concepts like pencil or liberty, but there are also schemata for situations, events, actions, and sequences of actions. As noted in Table I, there are schemata related to language, schemata for words, but also schematata for how sentences and texts are structured. Embedded into each schemata, in addition to the knowledge itself, is information about how this knowledge is to be used. Schemata are arranged in hierarchical networks. A schema for going to McDonald's might be a subschema for the schema of going to a restaurant. A schema for how fairy tales are structured (a genre schema) might be a subschema for the schema of how stories are structured. Schemata are developed by experience so that people's schema for restaurant, for example, will differ depending upon what kinds of restaurants they have been to, have heard about, or have read about. In ~'eading, a problem arises when the reader and the author do not have the same schema for a situation.
Text-based Model In the first model of comprehension instruction, the text-based model (MacGinitie 1984), the starting point is the text. The primary goal of instruction in this model is understanding a particular text. During reading, the teacher focuses questions and discussion on important concepts, a common feature in the text, something in the text which provides an opportunity to learn how to learn, or something which is particularly interesting in itself. Ideally, in using this model, the teacher will control text selection and will choose each text because its topic is interesting to the children. It is something they will want to read. Another good reason for selecting a text is that it relates directly to the content of the curriculum and contain material the children need to learn. The text should be well written and carefully organized. Realistically and unfortunately, teachers are not always free to select the texts. The text is selected because it is the next text in the basal reader or because it is part of the social studies series. The basal reader selection may be a bland, uninteresting stor~ and the content area text may lack a logical structure, having instead lists of facts loosely related to a theme. If this is the case, then the teacher may have to build interest and supply structure, focusing on these factors in addition to others he or she might want to consider.
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The next step is for the teacher to read the text very carefully and consider the following questions: What phrases, sentences, or paragraphs might some students not understand? What dues in the written context lead to the teacher's own understanding? How might a student find those clues and so understand what the text is saying? In other words, what factors might be interfering with students' understanding and what factors might aid in thei r understanding? Reading carefully may mean reading several times; it certainly does not mean skimming or reading the summary in the teachers' manual. When teachers skim texts, they develop superficial goals, trivial questions, and generate unproductive discussions. The teacher also needs to decide whether the children's lack of background knowledge (e.g. they are unfamiliar with key concepts) or their lack of linguistic knowledge (they are unfamiliar with vocabulary or text structure) is likely to affect their comprehension. Teachers' knowledge of the children they teach and their knowledge of the text acquired by careful reading should guide them in the selection of one or two concepts as a focus for a prereading activity and the framing of a few questions for use during and after reading. No one is better able to select the focus than the teacher because no one else has as much knowledge about the children, what they know, and what they need to learn. However, several examples of how others have used this approach in designing comprehension instruction should be helpful. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) improved the story comprehension of good and poor third-grade readers by focusing on one of the factors found in Table I, i.e., world knowledge. First, they determined those central ideas of the story that might require some prereading discussion. For example, one story that they used was entitled "The Raccoon and Mrs. McGinnis" (Clymer 1976). In this story, Mrs. McGinnis wishes on a star. The raccoon, who comes to her doorstep every night for food she leaves him, frightens some bandits who drop the bag of money they have stolen. The raccoon picks up the money and drops it on Mrs. McGinnis's doorstep. Mrs. McGinnis thinks she got the money because she wished on a star. The major concepts introduced in the prereading lesson were (a.) coincidence because Mrs. McGinnis's gets her wish through a series of coincidences, and (b.) habit because the raccoon's instinctive habitual behavior is what allows the coincidences to occur. The prereading discussion included the general idea
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that animals focus on seeking food and avoiding danger and ideas more specific to the story, i.e., raccoons tend to pick up things that they find and raccoons have masks on their faces which makes them look like bandits. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) found that all prereading discussions centering around basic text concepts are one way of improving comprehension. However, they did not give specific guidelines for structuring these discussions. Another researcher who has suggested more specific guidelines for prereading discussions centered on basic text concepts is Judith Langer (1982). Her method, called the PREP method, consists of three steps and was designed for use with content area materials, though it is also appropriate for stories. First, the teacher asks the children to brainstorm about an important concept in the text. If the children are about to read a text about birds, the teacher might ask "What comes to your mind when I say birds?" The children would then supply answers like fly, wings, feathers, robin, etc. Second, after the children have supplied all the ideas they can think of, the teacher asks each of them "What made you think of that particular idea or ideas?" Child A might say, "I thought of fly because birds can fly and other animals can't." Child B might say "I thought of feathers because I have a parakeet. It is a bird and it has feathers." This stage of the process should help the children to become more aware of the associations they have made, to listen to the other children's responses, and to become more aware of their changing ideas. Finally, the teacher asks, "Now that we have had our discussion, do you have any new ideas about birds?" The method assesses how much prior knowledge children have about a topic, but, more importantly, it helps to build their knowledge, so that they can respond with new ideas gained from the discussion. The children pool their individual knowledge of the topic so that each child benefits from the contributions of the others. Techniques like this are particularly appropriate for learning-disabled children. Many of these children have a rich fund of knowledge, but they often fail to apply this knowledge to comprehension. Using this technique helps them to call upon their prior knowledge and to organize this knowledge. In using this technique with any children, but particularly learning-disabled children, the teacher can use probing questions to guide the discussion toward central text concepts. The text on birds might focus on feathers as the feature that makes birds different from other animals (Garelick 1986). After Child A's response, the teacher could ask "Has anyone ever seen any other kind of animal fly?" After Child B's response, the teacher might ask if anyone knows of other kinds of birds that have feathers. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) also helped children to understand the story by activating their knowledge of story structure
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(narrative schema) through the use of story maps. A story map lists the major events and ideas that constitute the plot or gist of the story, including implied ideas and the links between the events and ideas. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) used these maps as guides to teacher questions designed to aid children in constructing their own internal story map. As the authors pointed out, children cannot be expected to interpret or evaluate stories unless they first have a good grasp of what happened. Pearson (1982) turned story maps into pictorial displays, but like Beck and his colleagues advocated their use by teachers, not children. However, more recently, several researchers (Sinatra, StahlGemake, and Berg 1984; Idol-Maestas and Crol11985) have been using graphic story maps successfully with reading-disabled children to aid them in understanding narrative texts. The visual organization of a story's essential elements appears to help these children who often have trouble organizing verbal material for efficient storage and retrieval. Learning-disabled children may need an overt, concrete representation of the story before they can construct their own internal story maps. Idol-Maestas and Croll use the story map form found in Figure 1. As the child reads the text, the teacher guides him or her to note the essential elements of the story as they appear and then to fill in the appropriate part of the story map. At first, the teacher models the filling in of the story map. Then teacher and student read and fill in the map together until finally the student is able to read and fill in the map independently.
Explicit Instruction Model In the second model of comprehension instruction, the explicit instruction model (Pearson and Gallagher 1983), the starting point is an instructionally relevant skill to be taught. Various texts are chosen because they provide the opportunity to learn this skill. Children move from short, simple texts to longer, more complex ones. The goal in this model is the same as in traditional skills instructions i.e., the acquisition of instructionally relevant automatic skills. The explicit instruction model differs from traditional skills instruction, however, because the child is shown how to acquire the skill. The teacher demonstrates the use of a strategy, an intentional effortful, self-selection of a means to an end (Paris 1978). The idea of intentionality is what makes a strategy different from a skill. Strategies are not necessarily different actions from skills, but they are skills which have been removed from their automatic contexts. In reading, the use of strategies is particularly important during initial learning and w h e n comprehension problems arise due to the difficulty of the task or fatigue or stress in the learner (Paris, Lipson, and Wixson 1983). At these times, readers need to have meta-
MY STORY MAP DATE_
NAME_ The Setting Characters:
Time:
Place:
The Problem
The Goal
Action
The Outcome
F~u~l.
Story Map Form Usedby Idol-Maestasand Croll (1985)(Reprinted, by permission of the authors.) 271
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cognitive awareness (See Table I). In other words, in order to be strategic, children need to think about their own thinking. The teaching of strategies is particularly important for learningdisabled children because there is evidence that they have great difficulty in this area, failing to use metacognitive strategies, such as planning, monitoring, and checking spontaneously (Torgesen 1977). In the explicit instruction model as in the Idol-Maestas and Croll (1985) study, the teacher initially takes full responsibility and gradually releases the responsibility to the student, moving him toward independent use of the strategy and eventually toward automatic use of a skill (See Figure 2). This explicit instruction model is useful in teaching a wide variety of strategies, from understanding pronoun referents (Baumann 1986), to writing summaries (Day 1980). Gordon and Pearson (1983), for example, used this model to teach children how to answer inferential questions. First they determined four components of the questionanswering task: (1) posing the question; (2) answering it; (3) finding evidence for the answer; and (4) giving the reasoning for how to get to the answer from the evidence. In the first stage of instruction, the teacher demonstrated all four components of the task. In the second stage, she asked the question and answered it, but asked the children to provide the evidence and the reasoning. In the third stage, the teacher asked the question and gave the evidence but asked the children to provide the answer and the reasoning that led to that answer. PROPORTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR TASK COMPLETION
ALL TEACHER
JOINT RESPONSIBILITY
UIDED PRACTICE MODELING
"~l.~e/~~
.
ALL STUDENT
1 PRACTICE OR
APPLICATION
F~u~ 2. A Model of Explicit Comprehension Instruction (Pearson and Gallagher 1983). Reprinted, by permission from Contemporary Educational Psychology.
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Finall~ the teacher only asked the question and the children provided all the other components. The hope was that the children would eventually take over all the components of the task, generating their own inferential questions about the texts they read. One objection that can be raised about this model relates to its first step, the choice of an instructionally relevant skill to be trained. At present, there is no consistent body of evidence to support the identification of a discrete list of skills that should be taught in reading comprehension programs (Cooper 1986). In fact, Cooper suggests that because of different individual schemata, each reader's comprehension process is somewhat different and, therefore, it is unlikely that any body of research will ever conclusively support any given set of comprehension skills as being the essential skills to teach. Such a view seems rather radical, however. Intuitively, it seems that there must be a core of skills that can be used by different readers for a wide variety of reading tasks. Nevertheless, at the present time, the selection of the particular skill to be taught has no research base. Another objection to the explicit instruction model is that although it teaches the children how to acquire skills, it may retain the fallacy of the more traditional skills approach, which treats comprehension as a set of discrete skills rather than as a holistic process. The text-based model, on the other hand, treats comprehension as a holistic process, but there is no evidence that improving comprehension of individual texts will improve overall comprehension. To gather the evidence needed, a large scale longitudinal study would be necessary. However, as Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) note in discussing this approach, "It is intuitively compelling to think that cumulative reading experience designed to maximize conditions for comprehension to occur will better prepare children to comprehend subsequent texts than will lessons that fail to facilitate story comprehension" (p. 478).
Combined Model
In an attempt to combine the strengths of both models, some psychologists and educators (Palincsar and Brown 1984; Cooper et. al. 1979) recommend that the teaching of any comprehension skill or process be closely tied to actual text reading. Several techniques make use of a combined model, starting with skills or strategies, but teaching these skills or strategies as they relate to particular texts in basal reader or content area materials, so that the primary goal is understanding the text. For example, Hansen and Hubbard (1984) started by selecting a skill that they wanted third-grade poor readers to learn, i.e., making inferences. However, like Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) they
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read the text carefully to determine the major concepts and then focused on these concepts in fostering the strategy of making inferences. The first step in the Hansen and Hubbard lessons is what they called a metacognitive discussion. In this discussion the children are reminded that they should use their own experience as an aid to understanding the text. The teacher asks them questions about their experiences because this can help them to understanding the text. The teacher then guides discussion that focuses on no more than three major concepts in the text. Hansen and Hubbard suggest discussions before reading, but in some instances it may be preferable to have part of the discussion before reading and part after reading all or part of the story. With each concept, the teacher asks the children about their own experience and then guides them to relate this experience to that of a character in the story, making a prediction about how the character will behave or what will happen to that character. For example, in the first part of "The Little Green Man", a story found in the 2-2 reader of the Macmillan r series (Smith and Wardhaugh 1975), a little green man from a far away planet called Zym decides to leave his home because he is so bored. He comes to earth where he meets a farmer and several animals who, though normal in earth terms seem very strange to him. Before the children read the story, the teacher might ask the children if they have ever been bored and invite them to tell why they were bored and what they did about it. After this sharing of experiences, the teacher says that the little green man in the story is bored and then asks the children to predict what he is going to do. Later in the story, after the little green man has left his planet, the teacher can ask the children to share the feelings they have had w h e n they were in a place where everything was strange to them and what they did about it. Again, the teacher will relate this to the stor)~ noting that little green man is going to a place where everything is strange to him, asking for predictions about what he might do. There is nothing new about having children share their own experiences related to the story. The strength of this technique, however, is the way the children's experiences are immediately and directly related to a situation in the story so that the children are asked to make predictions about the story based on their own experiences. Another technique which combines the text-based and the explicit-instruction model is the Reciprocal Teaching Method (Palincsar and Brown 1985). This method was used in several studies (Palincsar and Brown 1984) with middle grade and junior high students who were at a grade-appropriate instructional level in decoding but well below instructional level in comprehension. Results of the studies showed improved comprehension on standardized tests as well as bet-
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ter understanding of content area texts. This improvement was noted in classroom performance as well as in the experimental setting and was maintained after the intervention was discontinued. Reciprocal teaching is introduced to students as a way of helping them understand texts which can often be difficult. The importance of a strategic approach to reading is emphasized. Four strategies: question generating, summarizing, predicting, and demanding clarity are taught. Palincsar and Brown (1985) gave several reasons for choosing these particular strategies to teach: 1. They are strategies that are spontaneously used by good readers. 2. They foster comprehension and also help to monitor comprehension. 3. Each strategy can be used as a response to a particular problem in text comprehension. Question generating and summarizing help the reader to identify, integrate, and review important information in the text. Predicting helps the reader to activate background knowledge and to set a purpose for reading. Practice in demanding clarity alerts readers to difficulties in the text, such as unfamiliar vocabulary or unclear referents. The reader must then use some sort of fix-up strategy, such as rereading or seeking help from an outside source. Although in this technique, as in the explicit instruction model, the starting point is the teaching of strategies, very little time is spent on teaching each separate strategy. Palincsar (1986) suggests that the strategies be introduced separately, one on each of four successive days. Then the strategies are immediately combined and modeled by the teacher so that the primary goal of instruction is the comprehension of a content area text. During the next few days, the teacher initiates and sustains a dialogue about the text, presenting good summaries and questions for the students to answer, making predictions, and pointing out parts of the text which might be unclear or cause some difficulty. Then, the individual students are asked to take the role of teacher. Students take turns asking the questions, pointing out the problems etc. The teacher steps in w h e n necessary, to suggest an addition to a summary, to provide an example of a good question, to call for a different type of prediction, to point out a difficulty that has been overlooked. The teacher consciously works on relinquishing responsibility to the students, helping them by evaluating their contributions and guiding them toward higher levels of participation. Reciprocal teaching and all the techniques described here have been successful with disabled readers because they provide them with
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the support of a skilled language user, the teacher, who coaches them in how to perform an unfamiliar language task. These techniques fit the criteria for scaffolding (Bruner 1978; Applebee and Langer 1983):
1. Intentionality: There is an overall purpose which is made clear to the students. 2. Appropriateness: Initial tasks can be solved with help. Tasks are neither too easy nor too hard but are in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1962). 3. Structure: Modeling and questioning by the teacher help to structure the task for the student. 4. Collaboration: The teacher and students work together. The teacher is a coach rather than an all-knowing authority. 5. Internalization: The external scaffolding is gradually withdrawn and techniques are internalized by the students. Only a few techniques have been described here. Many other such techniques can be found in the books listed in Appendix A. Since these techniques have been tried with students at particular ages, some of the techniques may not be appropriate for other age groups. Other techniques may need to be adapted if they are to be used with children at different ages. In using and adapting the techniques, teachers should keep the criteria for scaffolding in mind. It is also suggested that w h e n using these techniques, teachers should try to follow a model of instruction which combines the text-based and explicit instruction models. This combined model is recommended because it focuses on understanding of text as a goal but also provides students with the opportunity to learn how to learn.
References Applebee, A. N. and Langer, J. A. 1983. Instructional scaffolding:Reading and writing as natural language activities. LanguageArts 60:168-175. Baumann, J. F. 1986. Teaching third grade students to comprehend anaphoric relationships: The application of a direct instruction model. Reading Research Quarterly 21:70-90. Bartlett, E C. 1932. Remembering.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beck, I. L., Omanson, R. C. and McKeown, M. G. 1981. An instructional redesign of reading lessons: Effects on comprehension. ReadingResearchQuarterly16:462-481. Brown, A. L., Palincsar, A. S. and Armbruster, B. B. 1984. Instructing comprehensionfostering activitiesin interactive learning situations. In H. Mandl, N. L. Stein and
T. Trabasso(eds.). Learningand Comprehensionof Text. HiUsdale,NJ: Erlbaum. Bruner, J. 1978.The role of dialogue in language acquisition. In A. Sinclair, R. J. Jarvelle and W. J. M. Levelt (eds.). The Child's Concept of Language. New York: SpringerVerlag.
Clymer, T. 1976. Reading720 Lexington MA: Ginn.
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Collins, A. and Smith, E. E. 1982. Teaching the process of reading comprehension. In Cooper, J. D. (ed.). 1986. Improving Reading Comprehension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Cooper, J. D. 1986. Improving Reading Comprehension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Cooper, J. D. et al. 1979. The What and How of Reading Instruction. Columbus, OH: Merrill. Day, J. D. 1980. Training Summarization Skills: A comparison of teaching methods. Doctoral thesis, University of Illinois. Garelick, M. 1986. What makes a bird a bird? In W. K. Durr (ed.). Journeys. (Houghton Mifflin Reading) Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gordon, C. and Pearson, P. D. 1983. The Effects of Instruction in Metacomprehension and Inferencingon Children'sComprehensionAbilities. (Technical Report Number 277) Urbana: Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. Hansen, J. and Hubbard, R. 1984. Poor readers can draw inferences. The Reading Teacher 37:586-589. Idol-Maestas, L. and Croll, V. J. 1985. The Effects of Training in Story Mapping Procedureson the Reading Comprehensionof PoorReaders. (Technical Report Number 352) Urbana: Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. Langer, J. A. 1982. Facilitating text processing: The elaboration of prior knowledge. In J. A. Langer and M. Smith-Burke (eds.). ReaderMeets Author: Bridging the gap. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. MacGinitie, W. H. 1984. Readability as a solution adds to the problem. In R. C. Anderson, J. Osborn and R. J. Tierney (eds.). Learning to Read in American Schools: Basal readers and content texts. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Nix, D. 1981. Links: A method for teaching reading comprehension. In D. F. Fisher and C. W. Peters (eds.). Comprehensionand the CompetentReader. New York: Praeger. Palincsar, A. S. 1986. Reciprocal Teaching. (Manual accompanying videotape entitled Teaching Reading as Thinking.) Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Palincsar, A. S. and Brown, A. L. 1985. Reciprocal teaching: Activities to promote "reading with your mind". In T. L. Harris and E. J. Cooper (eds.). Reading, Thinking and Concept Development. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Palincsar, A. S. and Brown, A. L. 1984. Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction 1:117-175. Paris, S. G. 1978. Coordination of means and goals in the development of mnemonic skills. In P. A. Ornstein (ed.). Memory Development in Children. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Paris, S. G., Lipson, M. Y. and Wixson, K. K. 1983. Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology 8:293-316. Pearson, P. D. 1982. Asking Questions About Stories. Boston: Ginn. Pearson, P. D. and Gallagher, M. C. 1983. The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology 8:317-344. Rumelhart, D. E. 1975. Notes on a schema for stories. In D. G. Bobrow and A. M. Collins (eds.). Representationand Understanding: Studies in cognitive science. New York: Academic Press. Sinatra, R. C., Stahl-Gemake, J. and Berg, D. N. 1984. Improving reading comprehension of disabled readers through semantic mapping. The Reading Teacher37: Smith, C. B. and Wardhaugh, R. 1975. Macmillan r Series. New York: Macmillan. Tharp, R. G. 1982. The effective instruction of comprehension: Results and description of the Kamehameha Early Education Program. Reading Research Quarterly 17:503527. Torgesen, J. K. 1977. Memorization processes in reading disabled children. Journalof Educational Psychology 69:571-578. Vygotsky, L. S. 1962. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
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Appendix Sources for Comprehension Techniques Cooper, J. D. 1986. Improving Reading Comprehension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Devine, T. 1986. TeachingReading Comprehension:From theory to practice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Harris, T. L. and Cooper, E. J. 1985. Reading, Thinkingand ConceptDevelopment. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Langer, J. A. and Smith-Burke, M. T. (eds.). 1982. ReaderMeets Author/Bridging the Gap. Newark DE: International Reading Association. McNeil, J. D. 1984. Reading Comprehension: New directionsfor classroom practice. Glenview, II: Scott Foresman. Pearson, P. D. and Johnson, D. D. 1978. TeachingReading Comprehension. New York: Holt Rinehart. Readence, J. R., Bean, T. W. and Baldwin, R. S. 1985. Content Area Reading:An integrated approach. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
Collegeof New Rochelle New Rochelle,New York
The traditional specific skills approach to comprehension instruction is no longer considered useful since research has demonstrated that comprehension is a holistic process. However, one must break down the process in some way in order to teach it. Three models of comprehension instruction that attempt to break down the process are described. Strengths and weaknesses of each of the three models: text-based instruction, explicit comprehension instruction, and a combined model, are discussed. Techniques which are exemplars of each of the models are described in relation to their use with reading-disabled children. The combined model of comprehension instruction is recommended because it joins the goal of understanding the text with helping children learn how to learn.
In most special education classrooms and resource rooms, reading instruction has emphasized direct instruction of basic decoding skills. The instruction is carefully structured in a step-by-step fashion by the teacher, who generally makes all the learning decisions. This is certainly understandable since decoding problems are obvious difficulties presented by the children who receive special education services. Moreover, there is evidence that this type of direct instruction in decoding is successful. Under this present system with the focus on decoding, decoding is eventually mastered, but comprehension scores remain low and may be permanently affected (Brown, Palincsar, and Armbruster 1984). Again, this is understandable. If comprehension is a low priority, and there is little or no systematic comprehension instruction for reading-disabled children, then the likely result will be a comprehension deficit. Thus many reading authorities (e.g. Tharp 1982; Brown, Palincsar, and Armbruster 1984) are urging that learning264
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disabled children with reading problems should receive more direct comprehension instruction. Two basic questions regarding comprehension instruction for learning-disabled children will be considered here, namely: "What should we teach?", and "How should we teach it?" In attempting to answer these questions, I will describe three models of comprehension instruction: text-based comprehension instruction, explicit comprehension instruction, and a combined model, along with specific techniques that are exemplars of each of the models. First, "What should we teach?" The answer has traditionally been specific comprehension skills. Every basal reader system and its supplementary comprehension material has its own list of these skills, skills like recognizing cause and effect and getting the main idea. These lists of comprehension skills are presented along with lists of phonic skills and other word recognition skills, so that they have tended to be viewed as analogous to the word recognition skills. Some materials even suggest that these comprehension skills can be taught and mastered in the same way that a child can master the short a sound. The child is pretested on getting the main idea, for example. He or she then reads several texts and chooses the main idea. He or she is then given a main idea post test. If the child reaches criterion, the skill of main idea is checked off. However, if we think about it, we can see that comprehension skills are not skills that can be checked off a list as they are mastered. Recognizing cause and effect and getting the main idea are processes that continue throughout one's lifetime, processes that are used in understanding more difficult, more abstract, and more varied texts. Cooper (1986) and Nix (1981) have suggested that these traditional comprehension skills are really not very specific. For example, there are many cases in which getting the main idea involves recognizing cause and effect. These skills are just different ways of focusing the reader's attention on the text. The veritable explosion of research in comprehension in recent years has demonstrated that comprehension is a holistic process that is affected by many factors, particularly the background knowledge which the reader brings to the text. Given this new view of the comprehension process, it is clear that comprehension instruction must be viewed as much more complex than teaching a set of discrete skills. As Collins and Smith (1982) suggest, WHAT should be taught is the process of comprehension. Yet this does not give much help to teachers. How does one go about teaching a holistic process? The lists of specific skills were an attempt to break down the complexity of the process so that it could be taught. The traditional skills lists may be inappropriate, but the idea that the process must be broken down in some way in order to teach it is still valid, especially when dealing with children who have difficulty with the process.
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Table I Factors Affecting the Reading Process Reader Decoding Ability World Knowledge: Concepts and Schema Linguistic Knowledge of: Vocabulary Sentence Structure
Text Readability Level Topic and Content Language Used: Vocabulary Types of sentences Use of cohesion Text Structure Particular Genre Author's Purpose
Narrative and Expository Schema Schema for particular genre Purpose for reading Use of strategies Metacognitive Awareness Interest and Motivation The teacher: A bridge between the reader and text Theory of reading: Method, Approach Personality Management Skill Teaching Skill Structuring of Task Environment Curriculum Political Pressures Context of Teaching (Class size, testing, etc.)
One way of breaking d o w n the c o m p r e h e n s i o n process as it takes place in school settings is to consider it in terms of the factors in the reader, the text, and the e n v i r o n m e n t (including the teacher) that interact to affect comprehension. Table I contains a tentative list of these factors. The list is tentative; it makes no pretence of being exhaustive and probably can never be, given the complexity of the process. However, it is a starting point, based on the current view of the comprehension process as suggested by schema theory. This list is presented as an overview or framework. I will suggest several ways in which teachers may deal with a few of the factors. To discuss this table fully or to give a complete explanation of schema t h e o r y would require m u c h more space than is available here. 1 1The reader who wishes a more detailed discussion of schema theory is referred to the followingarticles: Anderson, R. C. and Pearson, P. D. 1984. A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading. In P. D. Pearson (ed.). Handbookof Reading Research. New York: Longman. Mason, J. M. and the staff of the Center for the Study of Reading. 1984. A schematheoretic view of the reading process as a basis for comprehension instruction. In G. G. Duffy, L. R. Roehler and J. Mason (eds.). ComprehensionInstruction: Perspectivesand Suggestions. New York: Longman.
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Nevertheless, a brief discussion of schema theory is necessary in order to make any sense of the table. Schema theory developed by Rumelhart (1975) and others, based on the work of Bartlett (1932), suggests that all knowledge is contained in units, called schemata. Schemata are like concepts, only broader. There are schemata for concepts like pencil or liberty, but there are also schemata for situations, events, actions, and sequences of actions. As noted in Table I, there are schemata related to language, schemata for words, but also schematata for how sentences and texts are structured. Embedded into each schemata, in addition to the knowledge itself, is information about how this knowledge is to be used. Schemata are arranged in hierarchical networks. A schema for going to McDonald's might be a subschema for the schema of going to a restaurant. A schema for how fairy tales are structured (a genre schema) might be a subschema for the schema of how stories are structured. Schemata are developed by experience so that people's schema for restaurant, for example, will differ depending upon what kinds of restaurants they have been to, have heard about, or have read about. In ~'eading, a problem arises when the reader and the author do not have the same schema for a situation.
Text-based Model In the first model of comprehension instruction, the text-based model (MacGinitie 1984), the starting point is the text. The primary goal of instruction in this model is understanding a particular text. During reading, the teacher focuses questions and discussion on important concepts, a common feature in the text, something in the text which provides an opportunity to learn how to learn, or something which is particularly interesting in itself. Ideally, in using this model, the teacher will control text selection and will choose each text because its topic is interesting to the children. It is something they will want to read. Another good reason for selecting a text is that it relates directly to the content of the curriculum and contain material the children need to learn. The text should be well written and carefully organized. Realistically and unfortunately, teachers are not always free to select the texts. The text is selected because it is the next text in the basal reader or because it is part of the social studies series. The basal reader selection may be a bland, uninteresting stor~ and the content area text may lack a logical structure, having instead lists of facts loosely related to a theme. If this is the case, then the teacher may have to build interest and supply structure, focusing on these factors in addition to others he or she might want to consider.
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The next step is for the teacher to read the text very carefully and consider the following questions: What phrases, sentences, or paragraphs might some students not understand? What dues in the written context lead to the teacher's own understanding? How might a student find those clues and so understand what the text is saying? In other words, what factors might be interfering with students' understanding and what factors might aid in thei r understanding? Reading carefully may mean reading several times; it certainly does not mean skimming or reading the summary in the teachers' manual. When teachers skim texts, they develop superficial goals, trivial questions, and generate unproductive discussions. The teacher also needs to decide whether the children's lack of background knowledge (e.g. they are unfamiliar with key concepts) or their lack of linguistic knowledge (they are unfamiliar with vocabulary or text structure) is likely to affect their comprehension. Teachers' knowledge of the children they teach and their knowledge of the text acquired by careful reading should guide them in the selection of one or two concepts as a focus for a prereading activity and the framing of a few questions for use during and after reading. No one is better able to select the focus than the teacher because no one else has as much knowledge about the children, what they know, and what they need to learn. However, several examples of how others have used this approach in designing comprehension instruction should be helpful. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) improved the story comprehension of good and poor third-grade readers by focusing on one of the factors found in Table I, i.e., world knowledge. First, they determined those central ideas of the story that might require some prereading discussion. For example, one story that they used was entitled "The Raccoon and Mrs. McGinnis" (Clymer 1976). In this story, Mrs. McGinnis wishes on a star. The raccoon, who comes to her doorstep every night for food she leaves him, frightens some bandits who drop the bag of money they have stolen. The raccoon picks up the money and drops it on Mrs. McGinnis's doorstep. Mrs. McGinnis thinks she got the money because she wished on a star. The major concepts introduced in the prereading lesson were (a.) coincidence because Mrs. McGinnis's gets her wish through a series of coincidences, and (b.) habit because the raccoon's instinctive habitual behavior is what allows the coincidences to occur. The prereading discussion included the general idea
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that animals focus on seeking food and avoiding danger and ideas more specific to the story, i.e., raccoons tend to pick up things that they find and raccoons have masks on their faces which makes them look like bandits. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) found that all prereading discussions centering around basic text concepts are one way of improving comprehension. However, they did not give specific guidelines for structuring these discussions. Another researcher who has suggested more specific guidelines for prereading discussions centered on basic text concepts is Judith Langer (1982). Her method, called the PREP method, consists of three steps and was designed for use with content area materials, though it is also appropriate for stories. First, the teacher asks the children to brainstorm about an important concept in the text. If the children are about to read a text about birds, the teacher might ask "What comes to your mind when I say birds?" The children would then supply answers like fly, wings, feathers, robin, etc. Second, after the children have supplied all the ideas they can think of, the teacher asks each of them "What made you think of that particular idea or ideas?" Child A might say, "I thought of fly because birds can fly and other animals can't." Child B might say "I thought of feathers because I have a parakeet. It is a bird and it has feathers." This stage of the process should help the children to become more aware of the associations they have made, to listen to the other children's responses, and to become more aware of their changing ideas. Finally, the teacher asks, "Now that we have had our discussion, do you have any new ideas about birds?" The method assesses how much prior knowledge children have about a topic, but, more importantly, it helps to build their knowledge, so that they can respond with new ideas gained from the discussion. The children pool their individual knowledge of the topic so that each child benefits from the contributions of the others. Techniques like this are particularly appropriate for learning-disabled children. Many of these children have a rich fund of knowledge, but they often fail to apply this knowledge to comprehension. Using this technique helps them to call upon their prior knowledge and to organize this knowledge. In using this technique with any children, but particularly learning-disabled children, the teacher can use probing questions to guide the discussion toward central text concepts. The text on birds might focus on feathers as the feature that makes birds different from other animals (Garelick 1986). After Child A's response, the teacher could ask "Has anyone ever seen any other kind of animal fly?" After Child B's response, the teacher might ask if anyone knows of other kinds of birds that have feathers. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) also helped children to understand the story by activating their knowledge of story structure
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(narrative schema) through the use of story maps. A story map lists the major events and ideas that constitute the plot or gist of the story, including implied ideas and the links between the events and ideas. Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) used these maps as guides to teacher questions designed to aid children in constructing their own internal story map. As the authors pointed out, children cannot be expected to interpret or evaluate stories unless they first have a good grasp of what happened. Pearson (1982) turned story maps into pictorial displays, but like Beck and his colleagues advocated their use by teachers, not children. However, more recently, several researchers (Sinatra, StahlGemake, and Berg 1984; Idol-Maestas and Crol11985) have been using graphic story maps successfully with reading-disabled children to aid them in understanding narrative texts. The visual organization of a story's essential elements appears to help these children who often have trouble organizing verbal material for efficient storage and retrieval. Learning-disabled children may need an overt, concrete representation of the story before they can construct their own internal story maps. Idol-Maestas and Croll use the story map form found in Figure 1. As the child reads the text, the teacher guides him or her to note the essential elements of the story as they appear and then to fill in the appropriate part of the story map. At first, the teacher models the filling in of the story map. Then teacher and student read and fill in the map together until finally the student is able to read and fill in the map independently.
Explicit Instruction Model In the second model of comprehension instruction, the explicit instruction model (Pearson and Gallagher 1983), the starting point is an instructionally relevant skill to be taught. Various texts are chosen because they provide the opportunity to learn this skill. Children move from short, simple texts to longer, more complex ones. The goal in this model is the same as in traditional skills instructions i.e., the acquisition of instructionally relevant automatic skills. The explicit instruction model differs from traditional skills instruction, however, because the child is shown how to acquire the skill. The teacher demonstrates the use of a strategy, an intentional effortful, self-selection of a means to an end (Paris 1978). The idea of intentionality is what makes a strategy different from a skill. Strategies are not necessarily different actions from skills, but they are skills which have been removed from their automatic contexts. In reading, the use of strategies is particularly important during initial learning and w h e n comprehension problems arise due to the difficulty of the task or fatigue or stress in the learner (Paris, Lipson, and Wixson 1983). At these times, readers need to have meta-
MY STORY MAP DATE_
NAME_ The Setting Characters:
Time:
Place:
The Problem
The Goal
Action
The Outcome
F~u~l.
Story Map Form Usedby Idol-Maestasand Croll (1985)(Reprinted, by permission of the authors.) 271
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cognitive awareness (See Table I). In other words, in order to be strategic, children need to think about their own thinking. The teaching of strategies is particularly important for learningdisabled children because there is evidence that they have great difficulty in this area, failing to use metacognitive strategies, such as planning, monitoring, and checking spontaneously (Torgesen 1977). In the explicit instruction model as in the Idol-Maestas and Croll (1985) study, the teacher initially takes full responsibility and gradually releases the responsibility to the student, moving him toward independent use of the strategy and eventually toward automatic use of a skill (See Figure 2). This explicit instruction model is useful in teaching a wide variety of strategies, from understanding pronoun referents (Baumann 1986), to writing summaries (Day 1980). Gordon and Pearson (1983), for example, used this model to teach children how to answer inferential questions. First they determined four components of the questionanswering task: (1) posing the question; (2) answering it; (3) finding evidence for the answer; and (4) giving the reasoning for how to get to the answer from the evidence. In the first stage of instruction, the teacher demonstrated all four components of the task. In the second stage, she asked the question and answered it, but asked the children to provide the evidence and the reasoning. In the third stage, the teacher asked the question and gave the evidence but asked the children to provide the answer and the reasoning that led to that answer. PROPORTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR TASK COMPLETION
ALL TEACHER
JOINT RESPONSIBILITY
UIDED PRACTICE MODELING
"~l.~e/~~
.
ALL STUDENT
1 PRACTICE OR
APPLICATION
F~u~ 2. A Model of Explicit Comprehension Instruction (Pearson and Gallagher 1983). Reprinted, by permission from Contemporary Educational Psychology.
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Finall~ the teacher only asked the question and the children provided all the other components. The hope was that the children would eventually take over all the components of the task, generating their own inferential questions about the texts they read. One objection that can be raised about this model relates to its first step, the choice of an instructionally relevant skill to be trained. At present, there is no consistent body of evidence to support the identification of a discrete list of skills that should be taught in reading comprehension programs (Cooper 1986). In fact, Cooper suggests that because of different individual schemata, each reader's comprehension process is somewhat different and, therefore, it is unlikely that any body of research will ever conclusively support any given set of comprehension skills as being the essential skills to teach. Such a view seems rather radical, however. Intuitively, it seems that there must be a core of skills that can be used by different readers for a wide variety of reading tasks. Nevertheless, at the present time, the selection of the particular skill to be taught has no research base. Another objection to the explicit instruction model is that although it teaches the children how to acquire skills, it may retain the fallacy of the more traditional skills approach, which treats comprehension as a set of discrete skills rather than as a holistic process. The text-based model, on the other hand, treats comprehension as a holistic process, but there is no evidence that improving comprehension of individual texts will improve overall comprehension. To gather the evidence needed, a large scale longitudinal study would be necessary. However, as Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) note in discussing this approach, "It is intuitively compelling to think that cumulative reading experience designed to maximize conditions for comprehension to occur will better prepare children to comprehend subsequent texts than will lessons that fail to facilitate story comprehension" (p. 478).
Combined Model
In an attempt to combine the strengths of both models, some psychologists and educators (Palincsar and Brown 1984; Cooper et. al. 1979) recommend that the teaching of any comprehension skill or process be closely tied to actual text reading. Several techniques make use of a combined model, starting with skills or strategies, but teaching these skills or strategies as they relate to particular texts in basal reader or content area materials, so that the primary goal is understanding the text. For example, Hansen and Hubbard (1984) started by selecting a skill that they wanted third-grade poor readers to learn, i.e., making inferences. However, like Beck, Omanson, and McKeown (1981) they
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read the text carefully to determine the major concepts and then focused on these concepts in fostering the strategy of making inferences. The first step in the Hansen and Hubbard lessons is what they called a metacognitive discussion. In this discussion the children are reminded that they should use their own experience as an aid to understanding the text. The teacher asks them questions about their experiences because this can help them to understanding the text. The teacher then guides discussion that focuses on no more than three major concepts in the text. Hansen and Hubbard suggest discussions before reading, but in some instances it may be preferable to have part of the discussion before reading and part after reading all or part of the story. With each concept, the teacher asks the children about their own experience and then guides them to relate this experience to that of a character in the story, making a prediction about how the character will behave or what will happen to that character. For example, in the first part of "The Little Green Man", a story found in the 2-2 reader of the Macmillan r series (Smith and Wardhaugh 1975), a little green man from a far away planet called Zym decides to leave his home because he is so bored. He comes to earth where he meets a farmer and several animals who, though normal in earth terms seem very strange to him. Before the children read the story, the teacher might ask the children if they have ever been bored and invite them to tell why they were bored and what they did about it. After this sharing of experiences, the teacher says that the little green man in the story is bored and then asks the children to predict what he is going to do. Later in the story, after the little green man has left his planet, the teacher can ask the children to share the feelings they have had w h e n they were in a place where everything was strange to them and what they did about it. Again, the teacher will relate this to the stor)~ noting that little green man is going to a place where everything is strange to him, asking for predictions about what he might do. There is nothing new about having children share their own experiences related to the story. The strength of this technique, however, is the way the children's experiences are immediately and directly related to a situation in the story so that the children are asked to make predictions about the story based on their own experiences. Another technique which combines the text-based and the explicit-instruction model is the Reciprocal Teaching Method (Palincsar and Brown 1985). This method was used in several studies (Palincsar and Brown 1984) with middle grade and junior high students who were at a grade-appropriate instructional level in decoding but well below instructional level in comprehension. Results of the studies showed improved comprehension on standardized tests as well as bet-
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ter understanding of content area texts. This improvement was noted in classroom performance as well as in the experimental setting and was maintained after the intervention was discontinued. Reciprocal teaching is introduced to students as a way of helping them understand texts which can often be difficult. The importance of a strategic approach to reading is emphasized. Four strategies: question generating, summarizing, predicting, and demanding clarity are taught. Palincsar and Brown (1985) gave several reasons for choosing these particular strategies to teach: 1. They are strategies that are spontaneously used by good readers. 2. They foster comprehension and also help to monitor comprehension. 3. Each strategy can be used as a response to a particular problem in text comprehension. Question generating and summarizing help the reader to identify, integrate, and review important information in the text. Predicting helps the reader to activate background knowledge and to set a purpose for reading. Practice in demanding clarity alerts readers to difficulties in the text, such as unfamiliar vocabulary or unclear referents. The reader must then use some sort of fix-up strategy, such as rereading or seeking help from an outside source. Although in this technique, as in the explicit instruction model, the starting point is the teaching of strategies, very little time is spent on teaching each separate strategy. Palincsar (1986) suggests that the strategies be introduced separately, one on each of four successive days. Then the strategies are immediately combined and modeled by the teacher so that the primary goal of instruction is the comprehension of a content area text. During the next few days, the teacher initiates and sustains a dialogue about the text, presenting good summaries and questions for the students to answer, making predictions, and pointing out parts of the text which might be unclear or cause some difficulty. Then, the individual students are asked to take the role of teacher. Students take turns asking the questions, pointing out the problems etc. The teacher steps in w h e n necessary, to suggest an addition to a summary, to provide an example of a good question, to call for a different type of prediction, to point out a difficulty that has been overlooked. The teacher consciously works on relinquishing responsibility to the students, helping them by evaluating their contributions and guiding them toward higher levels of participation. Reciprocal teaching and all the techniques described here have been successful with disabled readers because they provide them with
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the support of a skilled language user, the teacher, who coaches them in how to perform an unfamiliar language task. These techniques fit the criteria for scaffolding (Bruner 1978; Applebee and Langer 1983):
1. Intentionality: There is an overall purpose which is made clear to the students. 2. Appropriateness: Initial tasks can be solved with help. Tasks are neither too easy nor too hard but are in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky 1962). 3. Structure: Modeling and questioning by the teacher help to structure the task for the student. 4. Collaboration: The teacher and students work together. The teacher is a coach rather than an all-knowing authority. 5. Internalization: The external scaffolding is gradually withdrawn and techniques are internalized by the students. Only a few techniques have been described here. Many other such techniques can be found in the books listed in Appendix A. Since these techniques have been tried with students at particular ages, some of the techniques may not be appropriate for other age groups. Other techniques may need to be adapted if they are to be used with children at different ages. In using and adapting the techniques, teachers should keep the criteria for scaffolding in mind. It is also suggested that w h e n using these techniques, teachers should try to follow a model of instruction which combines the text-based and explicit instruction models. This combined model is recommended because it focuses on understanding of text as a goal but also provides students with the opportunity to learn how to learn.
References Applebee, A. N. and Langer, J. A. 1983. Instructional scaffolding:Reading and writing as natural language activities. LanguageArts 60:168-175. Baumann, J. F. 1986. Teaching third grade students to comprehend anaphoric relationships: The application of a direct instruction model. Reading Research Quarterly 21:70-90. Bartlett, E C. 1932. Remembering.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beck, I. L., Omanson, R. C. and McKeown, M. G. 1981. An instructional redesign of reading lessons: Effects on comprehension. ReadingResearchQuarterly16:462-481. Brown, A. L., Palincsar, A. S. and Armbruster, B. B. 1984. Instructing comprehensionfostering activitiesin interactive learning situations. In H. Mandl, N. L. Stein and
T. Trabasso(eds.). Learningand Comprehensionof Text. HiUsdale,NJ: Erlbaum. Bruner, J. 1978.The role of dialogue in language acquisition. In A. Sinclair, R. J. Jarvelle and W. J. M. Levelt (eds.). The Child's Concept of Language. New York: SpringerVerlag.
Clymer, T. 1976. Reading720 Lexington MA: Ginn.
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Collins, A. and Smith, E. E. 1982. Teaching the process of reading comprehension. In Cooper, J. D. (ed.). 1986. Improving Reading Comprehension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Cooper, J. D. 1986. Improving Reading Comprehension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Cooper, J. D. et al. 1979. The What and How of Reading Instruction. Columbus, OH: Merrill. Day, J. D. 1980. Training Summarization Skills: A comparison of teaching methods. Doctoral thesis, University of Illinois. Garelick, M. 1986. What makes a bird a bird? In W. K. Durr (ed.). Journeys. (Houghton Mifflin Reading) Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gordon, C. and Pearson, P. D. 1983. The Effects of Instruction in Metacomprehension and Inferencingon Children'sComprehensionAbilities. (Technical Report Number 277) Urbana: Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. Hansen, J. and Hubbard, R. 1984. Poor readers can draw inferences. The Reading Teacher 37:586-589. Idol-Maestas, L. and Croll, V. J. 1985. The Effects of Training in Story Mapping Procedureson the Reading Comprehensionof PoorReaders. (Technical Report Number 352) Urbana: Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. Langer, J. A. 1982. Facilitating text processing: The elaboration of prior knowledge. In J. A. Langer and M. Smith-Burke (eds.). ReaderMeets Author: Bridging the gap. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. MacGinitie, W. H. 1984. Readability as a solution adds to the problem. In R. C. Anderson, J. Osborn and R. J. Tierney (eds.). Learning to Read in American Schools: Basal readers and content texts. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Nix, D. 1981. Links: A method for teaching reading comprehension. In D. F. Fisher and C. W. Peters (eds.). Comprehensionand the CompetentReader. New York: Praeger. Palincsar, A. S. 1986. Reciprocal Teaching. (Manual accompanying videotape entitled Teaching Reading as Thinking.) Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Palincsar, A. S. and Brown, A. L. 1985. Reciprocal teaching: Activities to promote "reading with your mind". In T. L. Harris and E. J. Cooper (eds.). Reading, Thinking and Concept Development. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Palincsar, A. S. and Brown, A. L. 1984. Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction 1:117-175. Paris, S. G. 1978. Coordination of means and goals in the development of mnemonic skills. In P. A. Ornstein (ed.). Memory Development in Children. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Paris, S. G., Lipson, M. Y. and Wixson, K. K. 1983. Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology 8:293-316. Pearson, P. D. 1982. Asking Questions About Stories. Boston: Ginn. Pearson, P. D. and Gallagher, M. C. 1983. The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology 8:317-344. Rumelhart, D. E. 1975. Notes on a schema for stories. In D. G. Bobrow and A. M. Collins (eds.). Representationand Understanding: Studies in cognitive science. New York: Academic Press. Sinatra, R. C., Stahl-Gemake, J. and Berg, D. N. 1984. Improving reading comprehension of disabled readers through semantic mapping. The Reading Teacher37: Smith, C. B. and Wardhaugh, R. 1975. Macmillan r Series. New York: Macmillan. Tharp, R. G. 1982. The effective instruction of comprehension: Results and description of the Kamehameha Early Education Program. Reading Research Quarterly 17:503527. Torgesen, J. K. 1977. Memorization processes in reading disabled children. Journalof Educational Psychology 69:571-578. Vygotsky, L. S. 1962. Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
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Appendix Sources for Comprehension Techniques Cooper, J. D. 1986. Improving Reading Comprehension. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Devine, T. 1986. TeachingReading Comprehension:From theory to practice. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Harris, T. L. and Cooper, E. J. 1985. Reading, Thinkingand ConceptDevelopment. New York: College Entrance Examination Board. Langer, J. A. and Smith-Burke, M. T. (eds.). 1982. ReaderMeets Author/Bridging the Gap. Newark DE: International Reading Association. McNeil, J. D. 1984. Reading Comprehension: New directionsfor classroom practice. Glenview, II: Scott Foresman. Pearson, P. D. and Johnson, D. D. 1978. TeachingReading Comprehension. New York: Holt Rinehart. Readence, J. R., Bean, T. W. and Baldwin, R. S. 1985. Content Area Reading:An integrated approach. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.
