[FamilyLiteracy 1061] Re: Story Grammar and Expository StructureSteve Ewert SEwert at fas.eduTue Mar 11 13:48:32 EDT 2008
What incredible timing. We had just finished administering the TABE test to our prospective ABE/GED and High School Diploma students. A student asked me afterwards the exact same answer. I am very interested in your response. Steven Ewert Fresno Adult School Instructor ________________________________ From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Charlotte Learning Center Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 8:35 AM To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List' Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1060] Re: Story Grammar and Expository Structure Gail, Thanks. That ERIC article was informative. I have another question: I have heard students ask, "Why are the passages on tests so boring?" What does an instructor do to help? Thanks again, Mora ________________________________ From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Gail Price Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 10:22 AM To: The Family Literacy Discussion List Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1053] Story Grammar and Expository Structure Mora, I certainly am not an expert on either story grammar or expository structure, but I will give you my thoughts and perhaps some other subscribers will jump in and correct me or offer further explanation. Perhaps there are some who will share their personal experiences in working with these ideas with their students. I think story grammar is often used to refer to narrative story structure-those elements a reader can expect to find in a story. Narrative story structure would include many types of stories, i.e., fiction, fairy tales, mysteries, plays, and real life adventures. The following explanation of story grammar comes from an ERIC Digest article, "Strategic Processing of Text: Improving Reading Comprehension of Students with Learning Disabilities," by Joanna P. Williams. "Probably the most effective of strategies has been teaching story grammar to use as an organizational guide when reading. Story grammar refers to the principal components of a story: main character, action, and outcome. This technique has been applied by using story maps and by asking generic questions based on story grammar. It has also been used to move beyond the plot level of stories to teach students with disabilities to identify story themes, a more abstract comprehension level than is typically taught to students with learning disabilities." You can access the article at http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-4/reading.html Expository structure has to do more with informational texts, such as content area material, i.e., science and social studies. It would involve how the text is organized to help readers identify key ideas and make connections between ideas. This is where using skills, such as reading headings and subheadings, reading graphic information, and understanding sequence, comparing and contrasting and classification would come in handy. The idea is that understanding the structure of stories or expository text increase comprehension. Mora and I would love to hear from others. Gail J. Price Multimedia Specialist National Center for Family Literacy 325 W. Main Street, Suite 300 Louisville, KY 40202 gprice at famlit.org 502 584-1133, ext. 112 Join us for the 17th Annual National Conference on Family Literacy! "Literacy Grows Families and Communities" March 30, 31, & April 1, 2008-Louisville, KY Register online at www.famlit.org/conference ________________________________ From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Charlotte Learning Center Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 1:06 PM To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List' Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1050] Re: Comprehension MonitoringStrategiesDiscussion When instructors list under comprehension strategies "work with story grammar or expository structure", I am interested to know more in detail. I am doing a seminar on using story and test structure and would love to hear from practitioners. Mora Doherty Charlotte Learning Center ________________________________ From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Gail Price Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 3:24 PM To: The Family Literacy Discussion List Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1049] Re:Comprehension Monitoring StrategiesDiscussion The following is posted on behalf of Molly Elkins. Gail J. Price Multimedia Specialist National Center for Family Literacy 325 W. Main Street, Suite 300 Louisville, KY 40202 gprice at famlit.org 502 584-1133, ext. 112 Join us for the 17th Annual National Conference on Family Literacy! "Literacy Grows Families and Communities" March 30, 31, & April 1, 2008-Louisville, KY Register online at www.famlit.org/conference ________________________________ From: Molly Elkins [mailto:melkins at dclibraries.org] Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 2:05 PM To: 'The Family Literacy Discussion List' Subject: RE: [FamilyLiteracy 1009] Re:Comprehension Monitoring Strategies Discussion In our classrooms we used to use what we called metacognitive thinking strategies, in other words, thinking about thinking. The goal of our activity was to make readers aware of the conversation they were having in their head while they were reading (or perhaps to encourage them to have the conversation in their head at all). These were the strategies: Visualizing Questioning Paraphrasing Evaluating Summarizing Predicting Connecting text to self Connecting text to world Connecting text to text First, as teachers, we would model our thinking as we read aloud. Then for fun, we would put a little sticky note in the text (since we couldn't make marginalia in the text). Next, we would read aloud a text with the class, and encourage students to model their thinking as well. Finally, learners could fill the texts with their own little sticky notes. Molly Elkins Literacy Specialist Douglas County Libraries Phillip S. Miller Library 100 S. Wilcox Street Castle Rock CO 80104 Map <http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&addtohistory=&formtype= address&searchtype=address&cat=&address=100%20S%20Wilcox%20St&city=Castl e%20Rock&state=CO&zipcode=80104%2d1911&search=Get%2bMap> Phone: (303)791-READ Fax: (303) 688-7655 Email: melkins at dclibraries.org Web: www.DouglasCountyLibraries.org <http://www.douglascountylibraries.org/> ________________________________ From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of jalsails at aol.com Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 12:52 PM To: familyliteracy at nifl.gov Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1009] Re: ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today Susan, According to our research (using the CORI during 10 minute observations) in elementary school classrooms, 3rd grade teachers who do address comprehension are four times (on the average) more likely to direct students to practice comprehension strategies than to model it. I agree with you that it's hard to explicitly model comprehension strategies with large groups of adults who have diverse reading abilities. It's a stellar strategy for tutoring and working with small groups of beginning (adult) readers. Jeri Levesque, Ed.D. Evaluator, LIFT St. Louis, MO -----Original Message----- From: Susan McShane <smcshane at famlit.org> To: The Family Literacy Discussion List <familyliteracy at nifl.gov> Sent: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 1:18 pm Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1008] Re: ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today That's interesting Jeri. One of the things we've found we really have to hit hard is the need for explicit instruction. Most often in adult education settings, that's not done, and it can be hard to manage in a multi-level group, especially when people are also studying math and writing, etc. The researchers I worked with in writing the book suggested that a teacher could introduce a strategy to the whole group and then have them practice with different materials at their own reading levels. I agree it's a good idea, but I think it's easier said than done in some classrooms and programs. What do you think, Jeri? And can we hear from others about their experiences in managing comprehension-monitoring instruction? And how about that idea of modeling your own strategies by reading and thinking aloud? ________________________________ From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov <mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov?> ] On Behalf Of jalsails at aol.com Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 1:35 PM To: familyliteracy at nifl.gov Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1005] Re: ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today Susan, Good point about teachers explicitly modeling their comprehension strategies while reading with students. We use an instrument called the Classroom Observation of Reading Instruction (CORI) <Levesque & Drew> to document direct and explicit instruction across the five essential reading constructs. For comprehension instruction (Teacher models/demonstrates), during a ten minute observation we track the number of times a teacher describes and names a specific comprehension strategy and expounds on its value. The strategies we tract are * Prereading comprehension strategies * Describing comprehension strategies * retelling * sequencing * drawing conclusions * predicting * text connection (self, world, other text) * summarizing * generating/answering own question * re-reading for meaning * confirming/rejecting predictions * work with story grammar or expository structure The parallel column of the CORI tracks: Teacher Directs Students to Practice: literal recall of text, using context clues (pictures, format etc) and all the other ones above. Jeri Levesque, Ed.D. Evaluator, LIFT St. Louis, MO -----Original Message----- From: Susan McShane <smcshane at famlit.org> To: The Family Literacy Discussion List <familyliteracy at nifl.gov> Sent: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 11:02 am Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1004] Re: Comprehension Monitoring Strategies Discussion Begins Today Thank you, Aaron, for sharing those experiences. Stopping and restating/summarizing is among the research-based monitoring strategies. Asking yourself questions is another. Has anyone else used these approaches? ________________________________ From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov <mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov?> ] On Behalf Of Kohring, Aaron M Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 11:04 AM To: The Family Literacy Discussion List Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1002] Re:ComprehensionMonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today Susan, I have experienced what you mention working with some students in the past- where we discovered their decoding/word analysis skills (for the level of text we were using) had improved to the point where their oral fluency was good. But they had very little comprehension of what they had just read. So we introduced & taught students to use a comprehension strategy- summarization, for example- and asked them to stop after a few sentences or a paragraph and summarize what they had read. Later, we'd add another strategy- such as a graphic organizer- and practice using that as a comprehension strategy. Another great activity was to extend the question generating/answering strategies for comprehension and have students do this themselves in pairs or groups. Aaron Aaron Kohring Research Associate UT Center for Literacy Studies 600 Henley St, Ste 312 Knoxville, TN 37996-4135 Ph: 865-974-4258 Main: 865-974-4109 Fax: 865-974-3857 akohring at utk.edu Gail J. Price Multimedia Specialist National Center for Family Literacy 325 W. Main Street, Suite 300 Louisville, KY 40202 gprice at famlit.org 502 584-1133, ext. 112 Join us for the 17th Annual National Conference on Family Literacy! "Literacy Grows Families and Communities" March 30, 31, & April 1, 2008-Louisville, KY Register online at www.famlit.org/conference -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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