The Two Tested Strategies Marginalia Commonly known at Think Alouds Using this strategy students are asked to make quick responses to a series of six questions as they read It is best if students respond within the text itself rather than on a separate piece of paper ID: 489844
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Improving Reading Comprehension Across Content AreasSlide2
The Two Tested Strategies:
“Marginalia:” Commonly known at “Think Alouds
”
Using this strategy, students are asked to make quick responses to a series of six questions as they read.
It is best if students respond within the text itself, rather than on a separate piece of paper.
This method must be modeled before it is assigned.
Close and Critical Reading Questions
These four questions ask students to get in depth in their response to the text- each response should be a paragraph long.
Questions build in difficulty- they are
scaffolded
according to Bloom’s Taxonomy.Slide3
Marginalia Questions/ Categories:
Making Connections:
What do I already know about this?
Determining Importance:
What is this selection mostly about? What are the major ideas?
Repair Comprehension:
Do I understand what I’m reading?
Questions:
What am I wondering about? Am I confused?
Visualizing: What pictures do I see in my mind?Inferring: What is the author telling between the lines?Synthesizing: How has my thinking changed? Do I have some new ideas?Slide4
Close and Critical Reading Questions:
What does the text say? (Briefly summarize the text at a literal level.)
“Comprehension” level of Bloom’s Taxonomy
How does it say it? In other words how does the author develop the text to convey his/her purpose? (What are the genre format organization/features etc.?)
“Knowledge” level of Bloom’s Taxonomy
What does the text mean? (What message/theme/concept is the author trying to get across?)
“Analysis” section of Bloom’s Taxonomy
So what? (What does the message/theme/concept mean in your life and/or in the lives of others? Why is it worth sharing/telling? What significance does it have to your life and/or to the lives of others?
“Synthesis” level of Bloom’s TaxonomySlide5
Methods of Assessing Effectiveness of Strategies
READING COMPREHENSION TESTSThe same reading comprehension test was given to two classes of students both before and after assigning the reading comprehension strategies.
INSTITUTION OF STRATEGIES
Students were assigned several readings over the course of two weeks. During this time they were assigned Marginalia three times and Close and Critical Reading Questions twice.Slide6
Summary:
Findings
Student Sample Used =20
Number of students who showed an increase in test score:
10
Number of students who showed a decrease in test score:
8
Number of students with no change in test score:
2
Margin of difference information: Average number of points students with a decreased score went down by
-2.5
Margin of difference information:
Average number of points students with an increased score went up by
4.7
Although more students scored higher on the second reading comprehension test, there was also a fair number of students who actually showed a decrease in their test scores.
However, the most convincing piece of evidence that indicates the strategies were successful is the margin of difference in test scores. Students who showed improvement increased their test score by an average of 4.7 points while students whose scores decreased showed a smaller average decrease of -2.5. Slide7
Student Survey: 62% of students believed the strategies helped them to understand the readings better:Slide8
Conclusions:
The resulting data was mixed, with a slightly higher percentage of students seeming to have benefited from the strategies than those who did not.
Students
who increased their test scores
did so by a significantly high average number of points. This helps
confirm the value of these strategies.
Students own belief that these strategies were effective confirms their usefulness.
Although this study did not prove a definite correlation between utilizing these strategies and increasing ALL students’ reading comprehension test scores, this study shows that these strategies will increase students’ understanding of a text. Slide9
Parting Thoughts:
Study results have influenced me to include more reading comprehension strategies in my teaching.
I believe that teachers across the high school curriculum can easily implement these strategies (especially Marginalia) in their own classrooms to help improve students reading comprehension skills.