Quotes

The use of a word wall in a classroom can be a highly effective teaching strategy to improve literacy skills. Word wall activities encourage active student participation. Gestures, such as pointing to key words during a lesson, offer visual reinforcement which can be very helpful for students. -Jennifer Cronsberry []

The thinking processes involved in predicting assist students in making meaning. - Block, Rodgers, & Johnson, 2004

Regardless of one's position on the centrality of [|phonics] in reading, self-monitoring for meaning-making is critically important. -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscue_analysis

The only way to improve reading skills is to read. - Norma Decker Collins []

Readers who have negative experiences with reading generally view reading as a process of getting the word right rather than an act of making sense of the material. They do not hear a voice on the page; they do not know they can skip words; they do not know that they must do different things with different kinds of materials. - Norma Decker Collins []

ELLs (ESL students) with learning disabilities or language disorders would benefit from active instructional strategies, such as summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting, that would capture their attention and facilitate their engagement. These strategies provide opportunities for students to become leaders of interactive dialogue, to practice use of unfamiliar vocabulary, and to facilitate comprehension. - Mabel O. Rivera, Nonie K. Lesaux, David J. Francis []

In a well balanced language program covering the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing each of the four strands should have roughly equal amounts of time. - I.S.P Nation, __Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing__, 2009 Both top-downandbottom-up processes are integral parts of perception,problem solving, and comprehension.Without sensory input (bottom-up) we could neither perceive, nor comprehend, nor think. However, perception, comprehension, and thought would be equally impossible without a memory or knowledge component (top-down). It makes no sense to ask whether one is more important than the other: Nothing happens without both. So the question for the theorist is not top-down or bottom-up,but how do these processes interact to produce fluent comprehension? - Kintsch, Walter(2005) 'An Overview of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Effects in Comprehension Perspective', Discourse Processes, 39: 2, 125 — 12

The research shows that children who struggle as readers tend not to ask questions at any time as they read -- before, during, or after... They're inert as they read. They read -- or I should say they submit to the text -- never questioning its content, style, or the intent of the author. -Keene/Zimmerman __Mosaic Of Thought__ []

Believe it or not, many children may not even know that they are supposed to be thinking as they read! Ask your students if they know to think as they read - you may be shocked by what they tell you! - Beth Lewis []

Findings [in research] indicate that ESL studentst do not require a high level of oral English proficiency in order to acquire English literacy skills. Once young ESL students acquire a minimum level of oral language proficiency, their ability to learn how to read words and simple texts in English quickly reaches the same level as their first language peers. The story is somewhat different, however, when it comes to acquiring higher levels of literacy such as reading comprehension and writing. - From First Language not Necessarily Linked to Reading Proficiency, on the Canadian Council of Learning website []

ESL students can improve their literacy skills by working cooperatively to develop a shared understanding of written material.Reading fluency and reading comprehension often improve when a proficient reader and a less-proficient reader take turns reading aloud to one another. -From Effective literacy strategies for immigrant students, on the Canadia Council of Learning website []

The great sociologist James S. Coleman, after spending a career examining the characteristics of effective schools andprograms, concluded that the most important feature of a good school program is that it makes good academic use of school time. The consistent theme of Coleman’s work had been “equality of educational opportunity”—the title of his monumental “Coleman Report” of 1966. 22 Making good use of school time, he concluded, was the single most egalitarian function the schools could perform, because for disadvantaged children, school time was the only academic-learning time, whereas advantaged students learned a lot outside of school. - From Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge - of Words and the World By E. D. Hirsch, Jr. []

FIVE ACADEMIC LITERACY RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendation 1: All teachers should provide explicit instruction and supportive practice in effective comprehension strategies throughout the school day. Recommendation 2: Increase the amount and quality of open, sustained discussion of reading content. Recommendation 3: Set and maintain high standards for text, conversation, questions, and vocabulary. Recommendation 4: Increase students’ motivation and engagement with reading. Recommendation 5: Teach essential content knowledge so that all students master critical concepts. - Marcia L. Kosanovich, Deborah K. Reed, Debra H. Miller []

RECIPROCAL TEACHING - FROM WIKIPEDIA

Reciprocal teaching follows a dialogic/dialectic process. Palincsar, Ransom, and Derber (1989) wrote that there were two reasons for choosing dialogue as the medium. First, it is a language format with which children are familiar (as opposed to writing, which may be too difficult for some struggling readers). Second, dialogue provides a useful vehicle for alternating control between teacher and students in a systematic and purposeful manner. Reciprocal teaching also follows a very scaffolded curve, beginning with high levels of teacher instruction, modeling, and input, which is gradually withdrawn to the point that students are able to use the strategies independently. Reciprocal teaching begins with the students and teacher reading a short piece of text together. The teacher then specifically and explicitly models his or her thinking processes out loud, using each of the four reading strategies. Students follow the teacher's model with their own strategies, also verbalizing their thought processes for the other students to hear. Over time, the teacher models less and less frequently as students become more adept and confident with the strategies. Eventually, responsibility for leading the small-group discussions of the text and the strategies is handed over to the students. This gives the teacher or reading tutor the opportunity to diagnose strengths, weaknesses, misconceptions, and to provide follow-up as needed. []

A well-thought out reading course can be the core of the language programme as it can give rise to activities in the other skills of listening, speaking and writing, can can provide the opportunity for useful, deliberate focus on language features. - I.S.P Nation, __Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing__, 2009

Because students at the secondary level are required to use textbooks, it is important for them to see what reading informational books has to offer. By browsing a variety of books and scanning them for something they want to know about, readers see the usefulness of reading. It is the job of teachers to construct situations where students can find personal reasons to make the effort to comprehend books. By doing this, reading is reinforced as a useful language operation--not seen by the student as a testing ground for self worth. - Norma Decker Collins []

Research has shown that an important factor in successful acquisition of English as a second language is students’ access to //comprehensible input// in English (Krashen, 1985). This means that teachers must be able to not only teach the subject matter, but they must do so in a way that makes the concepts and content comprehensible to second language learners of English in their classrooms - Margo DelliCarpini []

I believe the role of education is to build underlying competence. In many areas, behaviorists have confused overt behavior with the competence that makes overt performance possible. So correct answers to questions are assumed to prove that learning has occurred, whereas they may simply be rehearsed for a test and quickly lost. - Ken Goodman, Making Sense of Written Language: A Lifelong Journey []

Reading does not flow evenly over the text, as the term “fluency” suggests, but rather ebbs and flows much as a river does. Speed responded to the same text features as the reader’s oral miscues did. Flukey suggests we should be using the term “flow” rather than fluency. - Ken Goodman []