EDUC Midterm

Cognitive Model

Pathway 1: phonological awareness and print concepts; decoding and sight word knowledge; fluency in context  and automatic word recognition. 

Pathway 2: vocabulary, background knowledge, and knowledge of sentence and text structures; understanding the language of the text. 

Pathway 3: general and specific purposes for reading and knowledge of strategies used to achieve those purposes.

= Reading Comprehension

• limitations (Missing): 

  • affective aspects of reading (motivation, etc.)

  • self-regulation  

  • sociocultural factors 

  • linguistic backgrounds

  • connections between elements 

Pathway 1

• Phonological Awareness

• Print Concepts

  • dyslexia comes into play

• Automatic Word Recognition

• Limitations: if you focus tm on decoding words you lose the chance to find the meaning of the texts

Pathway 2

• Vocab Knowledge

• Background Knowledge

• Knowledge of Text and Sentence Structures

• Language Comprehension

  • bring meaning to words

• (stored in gyrus in the temporal and Occipital lobe)

• Limitation: if you rely only on background knowledge, you aren’t decoding or making sense of what the author is trying to teach you; rather, what you know from past experience

Pathway 3

• General Purposes for Reading

• Specific Purposes for Reading

• Knowledge of Strategies for Reading

• Strategic Knowledge

• Limitation: if the reader doesn’t have a purpose, they won’t be able to fully connect with a text cuz they are left with: Why should I read this? What will it help me with in the long run?

Simple View of Reading

Word Recognition x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension

• End goal: reading comprehension 

• Word recognition: the ability to transfer print into spoken language

  • phonological awareness

  • decoding

  • sight word recognition

• Language comprehension: the ability to understand a spoken language

  • verbal reasoning

  • background knowledge

  • vocab

  • language structures

  • literacy knowledge

• Reading comprehension: the ability to understand a written language

  • skilled reading

• Limitation: one or the other; do you have it or not? If not, you cannot reach reading comprehension

Cognitive Model (Coraline ex)

Pathway 1: broke up/ chunking the words he didn’t know and giving more/ less attention to the words that we found most crucial to understanding the story

Pathway 2: He was able to make meaning out of the story and was able to draw on evidence from the text to not only support the compare-and-contrast worksheet but also the drawing of the scene (RW, OW)

Pathway 3: by giving him the comparing and contrasting worksheet we gave him a purpose to reading this story

SVR (Coraline ex)

SVR Predicts 4 diff types of reading

Dyxlexia

• Poor decoding skills mean the reader can’t access the words, despite good language comprehension

Mixed-type or “garden-variety poor reader”

• Trouble with decoding and language comprehension results in poor reading comprehension

Average or Advanced Reader

• Good decoding skills and language comprehension result in good reading comprehension

Hyperlexia

• accurate decoding but poor language comprehension results in poor understanding of written text

Scarborough's Rope 

• Expands on SVR (each supskill is a strand → get stronger the tighter the ropes are tied tg) 

  • Language comprehension 

    • Background knowledge 

    • Vocab knowledge 

    • Language structures 

    • Verbal reasoning 

    • Literacy knowledge

    • → as this grows reader becomes more strategic in their reading 

  • Decoding (word recognition) 

    • Phonological awareness 

    • Decoding (and spelling) 

    • Sight recognition 

    • → more automatic in their reading 

  • All this leads to reading comprehension (skilled reader) 

Occipital lobe

• Immediately into the letterbox

  • individual letts

  • whole words

  • groups of letters

Connect to our tutoring experience (SVR, Scarborough’s Rope, and the Cognitive Model)

SVR

• 
  

What are the factors that make a text complex?

TCMI (Text Complexity Multi-Index)

-Four step process that teachers can use in matching texts and students

-CCSS (Common Core State Standards) have recommended a staircase of text complexity in Appendix A to ensure that HS seniors are able to read at a college and career levels

-Lexiles: A readability system cited in Appendix A

CCSS Establishing Complexity of Texts

-Qualitative analyses of features such as levels of meaning (e.g., readers need to make

inferences to understand a character’s motive)

-Reader-task variables

-Such as readers’ background knowledge of a text’s topic

-Ways in which teachers and situations influence readers’ interactions with a text

Distinguish quantitative measures from qualitative features such as syntax, vocabulary, knowledge demands, levels of meaning, and organization?

• Nearly all readability formulas analyze two main features of texts: Syntax and vocabulary

  • Syntax: Measured in number of words per sentences (or syllables)

  • Vocabulary: Compare the words in a text to a vocabulary list that have been keyed to

• different grade levels (number of syllables in words)

• New generation of readability systems (Lexiles, etc…) use digital technology

  • Average frequency of all the words in a particular text established in comparison with all the words in a database

  • Gets an average word frequency

  • Average used in a mathematical formula to get a Lexicle (L) from 0 to 2,000.

  • Lower end of scale: Green Eggs and Ham and A Kiss for Little Bear

  • Higher end of scale: Principles of Geochemistry

  • Sometimes, the middle of the scale can have less differentiation

  • Equating infrequent words with complexity, readability formulas can overestimate the complexity of informational texts

Specific Features: Sentence Length

• Used consistently in readability formulas

• Short sentences do not necessarily support comprehension some cases, sentences longer resulted in better comprehension

Specific Features: Vocabulary

• Closely tied to comprehension

• Alternative assessment (Assessment of core vocabulary)

1. Sense of how many words are on a page of a book

2. Scan several pages from different parts of the text with the goal of locating words that are infrequent and may be challenging to decode

3. View repetitions of the potentially challenging vocabulary

4. Examine the hard words in relation to the entire text

Step 2: Qualitative Benchmark Texts

• Based on matching texts with model or anchor texts

• Get a sense where book fits relative to other books

• Benchmark texts represent concrete representations of the goals represented in increasing proficiency with complex text

Step 3: Qualitative Rubrics

• Four dimensions:

  • Levels of meaning

  • Knowledge demands

  • Language conventions and clarity

  • Structure

Step 4: Readers, Tasks, and Contexts

• A sense of students’ capabilities is essential

Source of Language Complexity

Word Meanings

• endowed, unalienable, deriving, just

syntax

• Several claims sit inside one long sentence

cohesion

• these, they, their, that refer across ideas

knowledge

• rights, government, consent, historical context

reasoning

• The reader must reconstruct the argument

How can you support reading a challenging word? Be able to apply a broad coaching prompt and a targeted cue.

• Breaking up a word 

• Using images to support understanding 

• Similar word groupings (-tion) 

• Briefly go over this in word work to give multiple exposures, but don’t put too much attention on this as to stump the student or make them feel discouraged 

Which words deserve tutoring time related to vocabulary instruction? Consider issues like breadth and depth

Tiered system: Tier 1 (everyday words), Tier 2 (less common + more important for comprehending texts, used across many topics)

• Tier 2 words 

• Sophisticated words 

• Words that are important to the text and therefore may show up in following texts 

• Some words that require less explicit instruction you can “breeze through”

• Breadth = surface level definition (one definition) 

• Depth = knowing how the word can have different meanings and be used in different contexts 

• Deep word knowledge 

  • Showing how the word can have different meanings in diff contexts 

  • When placed in certain contexts (placed near certain words), you can infer the meaning of the word in these specific contexts 

  • Sounding out of phonetics changes based on the letters around it

Be able to apply the four SWIT categories to a short selection, then justify powerful instruction, brief explanation, inference, or leaving a word for another day.

Powerful instruction

• go back to the text and provide contexts/ definitions of the word

• have them pronounce the word correctly

• show a pic if they still don’t understand

• put the word in the context of an everyday event/ occurance

• ex. participation (used vacation to help, what does it mean to participate? How do you participate in class?)

Brief Explaination

• include a brief explanation or similie word that can be given to a student quickly for them to have a breadth of understanding of that word, then move on!

• ex. Wigwam (showed a picture, explained that it’s their home, keeps them dry)

Leave for another day

• if the learning objective isn’t on word work (decoding) don’t put too much stress on words

• ex. “foreign” wasn’t in the specific group of texts I showed him during my lesson so I skipped over it because yes it is important to understand how Coraline thought of her dads cooking through the use of that word but, it wasn’t the learning objective or crucial in that moment