Multiliteracies

Multimodal and digital texts have changed the traditional view of literacy. Look at this website for example! I have engaged any different literacy skills to navigate and construct this text. Through this text, I can record and share my thoughts, involve images, links and even video if I choose to and then display it for potential thousands to see.
The boom in technology over the last 10 years has changed the traditional view of literacy, and has led to the introduction of terms such as viewing and representing as key literacy skills. The wide spread use of multimodal texts has also changed demands on students.
However, all literary acts are socially and culturally based. If socially and culturally children are experiencing more multimodal texts, then schools need to reflect this.

Image from: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/gadgets/article889844.ece

Multimodal refers to texts that have more than one mode and meaning is communicated through the synchronisation of print based forms and non print based forms (New South Wales Department of Education nd Training).
Multiliteracies refers to meaningful interaction with any text, irrespective of technology, media, form or structure.

While multimodal texts may appear to be immediately different to traditional print based texts there are many similarities and multimodal texts require the same skills as print based texts.
Multimodal texts require students to relate messages in words to pictures, images and graphics, read visuals, interpret movement and sounds, interpret broader understandings of texts (non linear text, or interactive texts). While multimodal texts have their differences and own set of specific skills, they are not so different to traditional print based texts. Both traditional print based texts and multimodal texts require an understanding of a wider social context, an interaction between the reader and the text in order to construct meaning, an activation of imagination and specific context, discourse and coherence.
The differences between the two stand at only the type of visual images and visual style.

21st century learners have access to a variety of 21st century texts. These include websites, online magazines and newsletters, game sites, video viewing websites, instant messaging sites, emails, text messages, television programs, blog, pod casts, vlogs...the list could go on and on.
Such access to these text types does not, however, mean that traditional print based texts have been disposed of. They now stand side by side with multimodal texts.
Due to this, schools must prepare students to communicate across a range of texts and contexts. Schools must also provide a range of texts: modern, digital and multimedia and from a variety of medias: print, photo, film, drawing etc.

Image from: http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/Students-viewing-Birds-of-Paradise-exhibits/

While multimodal texts are becomming more common, it should not be assumed that all children have access to, are interested in or know how to navigate multimodal texts.
It is not okay to present a multimodal or digital text to a student and expect them to know how to navigate it and use it to create meaning. Teachers are still required to explicitly teach reading skills associated with multimodal texts to students.

Provided below are a selection of multimodal text resources.
Teacher Tube
A website with video content similar in layout to YouTube. Content through this website is monitored, suitable for students and accesible through school filters. It contains videos on every topic or subject area, photos, audio, lesson plans and activity ideas.
National Geographic Magazine
This website features content from the National Geographic magazine. It is great for a range of subject areas, from science, maths, geography to English. It's 'real life' content is easy to engage students with. It provides access to photos, archived documents from past magazines, teacher resources, video links and daily news.
Raz Kids
A website with access to ebooks. Books on this website are quick and easy to download. They are organised according to reading level across the year levels from K-6. It is not, unfortunately a free website, however reviews I have read suggest that it is worthy of it's price. The webpage provides samples, videos, pictures and teaching ideas.
Art Gallery NSW
This website features online or audio tours of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Podcasts discussing a selection of art works and images of the art works can be downloaded and listened to by students. The art pieces include modern, contemporary, Renaissance, pop, sculpture, indigenous, landscapes and portraits from a selection of artists from well known artists such as Tom Roberts to little known, or emergent artists.

Spelling

Owed to a spell checker

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It show me strait a weigh

As soon as  a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

Thanks to Wendy Burdekin, CSU, 2012.

  

Spelling, another one of those topics that can make us all cringe! Spelling is an essential literacy and writing tool. It makes writing quicker and easier and enhances communication and understanding of our language system. It requires high levels of student engagement and is often seen as a problem solving exercise requiring a range of strategies to be successful.

Image from: http://englishinteractive.net/spelling.html

There are any number of spelling programs, activities and booklets that can be bought and implemented. Some focus on phonetics, some focus on lists and rote learning and others on a traditionalist approach.
However, one thing can be said about spelling; it cannot be taught using only one approach.
Trying to teach every single word is a waste of time, trying to remember every letter of every word, or every sound of every word is impractical and far too difficult. In order to be successful with spelling, students need a range of sensible strategies, an understanding of patterns, sounds and meanings (Campbell and Green, 2006).

Good spelling programs and teachers engage a combination of the following knowledges:
Phonemic knowledge: knowing how to separate sounds and syllables in words.
Graphophonic knowledge: knowing the letter names in the English alphabet, the sound-symbol relationships and that sounds can be represented by different letters.
Morphemic knowledge: using the meaning of words as a clue to their spelling and realising that meaning units (morphemes) are often spelt the same in different words.
Etymological knowledge: using the origins of the word as a clue as to it's meaning and spelling.
Visual knowledge: using familiarity with how words look in order to determine the correct way to spell them.

Image from: http://oursecondgradejourney.blogspot.com.au/2010_09_01_archive.html

These knowledges need to be taught in an appropriate way. This means integrating spelling into all subject areas with links to talking, listening reading and writing.
Teachers need to be aware of what and when to teach. This means understanding curriculum guidelines on which areas of spelling are to be taught and when. Individual levels and understandings also need to be taken into account so that lessons can be tailored to student needs.
Teachers also need to monitor students and their spelling progress. Monitoring needs to be done in a systematic manner. This will assist teachers in knowing whether students have understood new skills and track the need for additional skills (Burdekin, 2012).

Again, teachers must teach spelling through texts and experiences that are relevant to students. Spelling will be interesting and engaging for students if they can see the point and relate it to things they have been learning about. For example, a class is working on a 'Beneath the Sea' unit. Word walls have a focus on interesting words associated with the sea. Spelling patterns for the unit have a focus on the 'ee' sound produced by the 'ea' in sea. Students learn about the different 'eff' sounds produced by word combinations, like 'ph' in dolphin. Individual spelling lists have interesting words that students have selected from their writing or reading activities, like urchin and coral.
When spelling is presented in this manner, it is purposeful and meaningful rather than appearing as a string of unrelated and 'useless' words for students.

A number of activities are available that see spelling come alive. Learning journals and reflection logs assist students in seeing their own learning develop. They provide a base for students to record interesting or unusual words. They also stand as a useful assessment tool for teachers, as they track student progress and understandings over a length of time. Personal dictionaries play a similar role.
Spelling conferences allow students to share new discoveries with each other. It also provides students with other resources for checking their spelling. If they are unsure of a word or have found something interesting they can share it in a spelling conference. Spelling conferences also give students the opportunity to use correct language and terminology associated with spelling, speaking and writing.
Campbell and Green (2006) in chapter 8 'Skills and knowledge for writing', list a number of excellent word play and word game activities. The activities include acrostic poems, anagrams and enigmas. These are great games as they encourage students to see words as fun and exciting rather than items to spell and 'get right'.

And yes, you guessed it! When spelling is taught in a supportive, safe and encouraging classroom, students will be more willing to take risks, experiment and make discoveries, enhancing and strengthening their learning.

Writing

Since almost the beginning of time, people have been writing in some shape or form. This has led to writing becomming a social and cultural practice, differing slightly from culture to culture. Writing has broadly been used to describe and record events, important details and ideas.

Just as approaches to writing have changed across different cultures, approaches to writing have changed in the classroom. Approaches have varied greatly over the past 100 years, fluctuating from precise, explicit and instructional to creative and free form styles and back again.
Current approaches use a balanced teaching method with a focus on both explicitly teaching writing skills, while encouraging and supporting creativity and imagination (Campbell and Green, 2006).

Teachers of writing are involved in helping students decide what to write about, how to present their writing and how to craft and style their writing in an appropriate manner for their audiences.
This approach ensures that writing is both purposeful and creative; good writing requires a solid grasp on both. When students have a solid understanding of the craft of writing (style, structure, particulars of genre and form) they are more able to express their creativity and imagination in a mature and sophisticated manner. Students must learn the skills of writing first, then link these skills to pratical application. When a writer has control over a particular writing style, then creativity, originality and imagination are more enhanced (Campbell and Green, 2006).

Image from: http://edu.warhol.org/ulp_hlands.html.
The folders in the middle of the table suggest that these students may be working on writing portfolios.

What about reading and writing? Reading and writing together are wonderful skills that help enhance the skills of each other. Simply reading and talking about literature and writing does not ensure that students absorb good writing practice. They need to be taught hand in hand. For example, as a whole class, students may read a new text type that they have not encountered before, say, persuasive writing. Under guidance from their teacher, students read and discuss different types of persuasive writing. Once students have a handle on the important elements of persuasive writing, they can begin to experiment with the new style. With a strong understanding of the expectations of persuasive writing, students can unleash their creativity and imagination, imagine the possibilities: 10 reasons dinosaurs should be cloned and brought back to life, why life on Mars would be amazing...
Teaching students the particulars about a certain style of writing, sets them up for success. Once they understand how and why a style is used, they can apply it in any way they like, knowing that they will always receive good marks for appropriate use of the style.

As with most areas of the curriculum, a student's back ground must be taken into consideration. As mentioned above, different cultures have different views and uses for writing. Some value writing as an important way of recording events, while other cultures have a more oral way of passing on important information. When teaching writing to students, this needs to be taken into consideration. A student's culture must be aucknowledged, respected and most importantly, involved. If a student has an oral based culture, then approach writing in a way that would be meaningful and interesting to the student.

Image from: http://seanbanville.com/2010/04/27/paired-and-group-writing-activity/

While writing is a main area of English, it has many applications across several KLAs that are often forgotten. Writing is not only a tool for expressing creativity and imagination! It can be used to record and consolidate unerstandings, assist a student to work through a problem step by step, help them confirm what they actually know and can be a valuable tool for assessment for both students and teachers.
Writing activities such as RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) can be used for any subject area. Using RAFT is a quick activity for students to record and present their knowledge on a particular topic (Fisher and Frey, 2008).
Fisher and Frey (2008) in chapter 9 'Powerful Pens: Writing to Learn with adolescents' provide a number of quick and easy writing tasks that can be used across all subject areas for students to display their learning. These include activities like yesterday's news, exit slips, cinquains, admit slips and crystal balls. Some of these activities require specific instruction on their form, others are simply a way for students to write down everything they know or do not know. These activities really confirm that writing is not just for English, that writing can be used across any subject area as a tool to reflect, awaken, confirm and consilidate learning and as a useful and inportant assessment tool for both teachers and students.

Overall writing should be used in a purposeful or necessary manner (even if the purpose is just to be creative or to have fun with words; just be sure that students understand why). Writing should encourage students to explore, take risks, awaken joy, creativity and imagination.

Image from: http://2kmand2kj.global2.vic.edu.au/websites-for-kids/

And, as always, a classroom that is safe and supportive, one that fosters writing, words and a range of genres and styles is a classroom in which children will take risks and explore, further enhancing their learning and understanding.

Oracy

Oracy is often one of the more neglected areas of literacy. This is mostly due to the fact that many people do not understand what it is, or why it is important. As a learner, I was confused as to what oracy was, and why it is important, it wasn't until we began having lengthy discussions in class that I began to realise how important oracy is.
We'll begin with a definition.

'Oracy is the ability to express oneself in speech and appropriately to setting. 

Fluent expression is the product of knowledge, experience, positive self esteem and a supportive learning environment' (Campbell &Green, 2006).

Speaking and talking are used for a variety of purposes, for interacting with others, for making connections between key ideas, for expressing ideas and experiences about our world and for constructing coherent texts (Burdekin, 2012). Because speech is used in so many different ways, it is important that students are given the skills to use speech appropriately. Children learn to speak before they learn to read or write; oracy skills are developed first, however as children learn to read and write, their reading, writing and oracy skills develop hand in hand.Campbell and Green (2006) state that learners must be effective communicators and thinkers before they can become effective readers and writers.
As students develop an understand of the language spoken around them, they begin to test words, and language rules, they develop an understanding of symbols used and they develop an understanding of the social and cultural conventions of their language (Saracho & Spodek, 2007). Language becomes a tool for children to express, convey, mediate and manage actions, emotions and knowledge. Their language is inextricably connected to their local, social, emotional and cognitive experiences, which requires them to use thinking skills (Saracho & Spodek, 2007). As children learn these skills through speaking and listening, they can then begin to apply them to reading and writing, while further developing their oracy skills.

 Debate has raged since research into oracy and language acquisition research began. Psychologists and theorists have pondered as to how language is developed. Is language inbuilt, or is it a learned skill? Many teachers and modern theorists are of the opinion that it is a combination of both. As children grow and develop, they acquire language skills from those around them, they develop the basic understandings of their cultural language (Campbell and Green, 2006).
However, the language skills that students acquire and develop before they begin school, are just the foundations of language development. As students progress through school, they learn skills associated with language, pronunciation, questioning and communication.
In built skills, language acquired through social and cultural means and oracy skills developed through educational settings develop hand in hand. It is important for teachers to acknowledge and respect this.

When teaching oracy skills, students and teachers face a number of barriers. These include epistemological trouble, organisational, reasoning and pedagogical trouble, relational trouble and stylistic trouble. Campbell and Green (2006), in their chapter 'Oracy: The cornerstone of effective teaching and learning' provide a detailed description of each of these troubles.
These barriers are not the end of oracy learning for students. These barriers can be over come through skillful teaching. Simple things such as making sure teacher talk is clear and explicit, ensuring that student's contributions are managed with consistency, offering choice, open ended tasks, modelling and scaffolding questioning and reflecting on thinking and learning regularly can help assist students with their oracy skills and development.



Developing good language practices in the classroom does not happen 'over night'. However, meaningful discussions about topics that interest students, appropriate 'teacher talk' and appropriate 'student talk' will go a long way in ensuring that your classroom is one where oracy and speech skills blossom.
Most importantly, talk must be encouraged: a quiet classroom is not necessarily always a good classroom. When talk is encouraged and supported through a positive environment, where students feel safe and encouraged to take risks and engage through speech, will be a classroom where students stretch their learning, take risks and further their learning.

The following are links which I particularly liked focusing on oracy:
O is for Oracy
Teaching oracy and literacy skills to EAL learners
Oracy Australia
Developing Oracy Skills

Bibliography

Across this subject, I have viewed a wide range of texts that have assisted in the development of my ideas and opinions surrounding literacy.  Due to the nature of this subject, a lot of my ideas were jotted down in my subject book without direct notes on the resources that helped to formulate my ideas. Discussion was also a large part of this subject, so many of my opinions have been moulded through input from my peers. Rather than include only the texts that I directly referenced through this blog, I felt it was more appropriate to list the references that helped to formulate my ideas.
Thank you to my peers from ESS418. Our discussions, group work and even the odd arguement have been fundamental in cementing my views on literacy teaching and learning.
I would like to especially thank Wendy Burdekin for her support, encouragement and wealth of knowledge in teaching us a such a broad topic in a concise, interesting, engagaing and relevant manner, just as all good literacy teachers should!

Bibliography

Board of Studies, New South Wales, (2007). English, K-6 Syllabus. Board of Studies: Sydney, NSW.

Campbell, R., and Green, D., (Eds.), (2006). Literacies and Learners- Current Perspectives (3rd. ed.). Pearson Education Australia: Frenchs Forest.

Derewianka, B., (2011). A New Grammar Companion for Teachers. Primary English Teaching Association: Newtown, NSW.

Diamond, L., Gutlohn, L., (2012). Teaching Vocabulary. Reading Rockets: Weta, Washington, D.C.

Fisher, D., and Frey, N., (2008). Improving Adolescent Literacy- Content Areas at Work (2nd. ed.). Pearson Education: Ohio.

Hill, S., (2009). Developing Early Literacy- Assessment and Teaching. Eleanor Curtin Publishing: Prahan, Melbourne.

Lowe, K., (Ed.), (1994). Growing into Readers. Primary English Teaching Association: Newtown, NSW.

 Mather, N., and Goldstein, S., (2001). Reading Fluency. LD Online: Washington.

Murdoch, K., (2010). Classroom Connections- Strategies for Integrated Learning. Eleanor Curtin Publishing: Prahan, Melbourne.

Saracho, O., and Spodek, B., (2007). Oracy: Social Facets of Learning Language in Early Child Development and Care. Vol. 177, Nos 6 & 7, August 2007, pp. 695–705. Routledge Publishing: London.

Wolf, M., (2012). New Research on an Old Problem: A Brief History of Fluency. Scholastic Publishing:http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/new-research-old-problem-brief-history-fluency.http://www.meadowscenter.org/vgc/downloads/primary/guides/Fluency_Presentation.PDF

In my classroom...

So now that we have looked at my collection of key understandings surrounding literacy, what am I going to do with all of them? What will literacy look like in my classroom.
Everytime I am asked this question, I never give the same answer. Literacy excites me, interests me, engages me, and so I would like my students to feel the same way.
The most important understanding I have collected about literacy is that all teachers are teachers of literacy. When I 'don' my art teacher hat, I am still a teacher of literacy. When I 'don' my maths teacher hat, I am still a teacher of literacy.
Included in this blog, is a lesson plan with a focus on reading comprhension.
My lesson plan uses one of the strategies listed in the reading comprehension blog post: coding the text. This task assists students in making connections, understandings, and helps students to think in a broad manner about the content of the text. This task also helps students to critically analyse the chosen text piece. The information gained from coding the text activities can be used for a range of activities, like persuasive essays about characters or events from the novel, posters or discussions about key characters.

LESSON PLAN

Unit/Lesson Title:  Detailed coding of ‘Pankration’ novel.		Lesson duration:    1 hour		Stage:3           Year : 6		Class/Group: 6.2
Rationale: Upon completion of the lesson students will have begun developing their understandings and levels of comprehension of the main characters and their influences and impacts on other main characters and the plot of the story.		Outcomes: RS3.5 Reads independently an extensive range of texts with increasing content demands and responds to themes and issues. RS3.6 Critically analyses techniques used by writers to create certain effects, to use language creatively, to position the reader in various ways and to construct different interpretations of experience. RS3.7 Identifies the structure of a wider range of more complex text types and discusses how the characteristic grammatical features work to influence readers’ and viewers’ understanding of texts. RS3.8 Uses a comprehensive range of skills and strategies appropriate to the type of text being read. RS3.8 Identifies the text
Prior Knowledge: Students will have read the novel ‘Pankration’.		Resources: Novel, ‘Pankration’ by Dyan Blacklock, white board markers, students’ writing materials, instructions on coding the text, sticky tabs.
Specific Teaching Target: To broaden the students’ understandings and comprehension of the text, characters and their influences on the plot, and on readers.
Time	Content/Learning Experience		Teaching Strategies		Class Organisation		Assessment Techniques
15-20mins 1-1.5 hours 10-15mins	Introduction: Students are welcomed into the classroom. Students will be directed to open up their books and be ready to start the lesson. Students must also have their copy of the novel with them. Students will be told that they will be undertaking a further study of the novel and the different parts of the text. Students will be given out copies of the coding the text instructions Body: Students will undertake a short brainstorming session surrounding the first chapter of the novel. Students will work through the first few paragraphs of the first chapter. Following the instructions, students will suggest Very important information to the story, questions they have about any information, new information that is presented, predictions that they may have about further events in the story, instances of inference, and words or phrases that helped them to visualise. Students can also code any other key information or interesting sections that help them with their understanding of the text. While students discuss as a whole class, the teacher will model an example of coding the text using information provided by the students. Once students gain an understanding of the task and feel comfortable working on their own, they can move onto individual work. Conclusion: Students can share any finished key points with the class if they choose. Work will be collected to ensure that it is not lost, and for the teacher to assess how they are working and how their level of comprehension has developed. This will help the teacher to adjust the following lessons.		Teacher will be positive and upbeat, enthused about the lesson. Teacher will prompt the students to skim read their book to help them identify key points. Positive feedback will be provided for any positive contribution. Once the students move onto completing their own work, the teacher will move around the class and assist students and provide positive feedback. Modelling on the board will help direct students. Students will be praised and thanked for their participation and good efforts. Areas of the text that students coded in a similar or different fashion can be discussed; students can talk about why they chose to code a piece of text in a particular way.		Students will work as a whole class, when first examining the instructions. However when work commences students will work independently, as this task is about the student’s own level of comprehension.		Work will be collected at the completion of the lesson and reviewed by the teacher to enable adjustment of the following lesson.

 Within my classroom, I hope to have a range of different areas for students to explore literacy. These would include 'stations' around the room designed to stimulate literacy learning and a love for literacy within students. A reading area would contain a wide range of interesting, relevant and multimodal texts for students to explore. Books, magazines, newspapers, dictionaries and other reference materials, novels, posters, comics, ebooks, books made by the whole class and students' own books from home would feature in this type of area. This area would expose students to a range of text types, promoting interest and discussion about different reading materials.
Nature or special interest tables would include interesting items surrounding an area of study, such as the ocean. These items would encourage students to examine and discuss with one another, with their teacher and with their parents. Interesting, 'random' items placed on a table would help stimulate students questioning and enquiry skills. Specific floor space where students and teachers sit together as a close unit will also help to stimulate discussion, listening and sharing skills. 

Writing materials resource areas will feature greeting cards, access to emails and blogs, booklets, instructions on specific writing types and a collection of stimulating materials (these can be from the nature or special interest tables, items bought in by students or items from the reading area of the classroom). Providing students with a range of writing materials allows them to write when they feel the need or desire to write. Providing students with a wide variety of writing items, like greeting cards, and instructions on writing types encourages students to explore a wide range of text types and structures.

Most of all, I hope that students will find my classroom a positive, encouraging and safe environment; one where they feel safe to explore, experiment and take risks.

Reading Comprehension

'Reading is meaning making' (Campbell and Green, 2006)

Comprehension is the act of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning from the text (Hill, 2009). However, reading comprehension is about more than just understanding individual dictionary meanings of words, althought this is important too. It's about making real world, authentic meaning and creating context of space and time and location. Reading is a social practice; in order to make authentic, real life meaning, reading must draw on a vast repetoir of social, cultural and cognitive resources in order to construct meaning from traditional (paper based) and multimodal texts. 

 

Digital literacy- guided/shared reading using a 'tablet' and headphones.
From: http://dmlcentral.net/blog/john-jones/social-reading-and-foundations-digital-literacy

While reading draws on social and cultural practices, it also requires cognitive skills. These cognitive skills are known as the 4 basic cueing systems- semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and paralinguistic (Campbell and Green, 2006). Semantic cues involve bringing prior knowledge to the topic you are reading about. Syntactic cues involve understandings of the patterns of language. Graphophonic cues refer to the sound-symbol relationships in language. Paralinguistic cues are the punctuation, pictures, font and layout, all important elements in developing meaning. 

These congnitive skills have also been broken down into 4 different roles that effective readers adopt. These roles are code-breaking, meaning making, text-using and text analysing. Code-breaking is the ability to recognise and use the fundamentals of written language including alphabet, sounds in words, spelling and patterns. Meaning-making is the ability to understand and compose meaningful written, visual, spoken, digital and multimodal texts. Text-using is the ability to use written spoken, visual, digital and multimodal texts outside the school setting. Text-analysing is the ability to critically analyse written, spoken, visual, digital and multimodal texts and uderstand that texts represent particual points of view and influence people's ideas.

(These roles and definitions are taken from Literacy on Track: http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/literacy/program/lit_track/index.htm)

So, how do children learn these cueing systems? Although reading can be broken into different elements and text users, it is not something that can be taught in seperate developmental sections and taught one bit at a time. Reading must be taught as a whole, in a sympathetic and supportive classroom.

The best ways to teach comprehension strategies is by using activities such as making connections, predicting, summarising, monitoring, visualising and questioning. Each one of these activities will need to be taught explicitly to children when they are first introduced. After some practice and frequent use,  they should become second nature to students. 

For example, making connections strategies might include activities such as inference equations, coding strategies and before and after webs. 

Predicting strategies might include activities like Y chart predictions and before, during and after tables.

Summarising activities include activities such as V.I Ps (very important points). 

Examples of these activities will be included as links at the end of this section.

 Reading Comprehension strategies hand, from: http://staffweb.srk12.org/bond_v/forms.htm
This website has a range of little activities that could be used for a range of literacy activities.

The hand above would be great to use with students to help them remember these 5 reading comprehension strategies.

Relevant  reading material is an important aspect of reading comprehension for students. How can students be expected to understand a piece of reading material if it is not relevant, interesting and important to them? In your classroom, be sure to have a range of reading materials (remembering that students are 21st century readers). Include a wide range of factual, fictional texts from a range of genres. Comics, graphic novels, encyclopedias, magazines, ebooks, read-along story tapes, online magazines and webpages, advertisments, manuals, recipe books are all great types of texts to include in your classroom, they will stretch your students reading skills. While many of these are not traditional types of texts, they will be sure to engage your readers and help them develop some interesting understandings of what they have read.

However, as with many things in the teaching world, the most effective way of teaching comprehension techniques will be for you as a teacher to model them. It is important to study your own reading habits; do you question your reading, are you an active and enthusiastic reader, do you create V.I.Ps as you read, do you summarise the information you have read, do you predict using pictures and fonts, do you monitor your own reading, do you close your eyes and visualise scenes from a book? It is important that students see you utilising these skills. In shared or whole class reading (reading from a big book, or whole class text), try speaking out loud as you use your comprehension strategies, encourage your students to work with you while reading a book aloud.

It is important to build student's reading skills in a supportive and sympathetic classroom. Children who arrive in the middle years with reading difficulties will often not be enthusiastic about reading (Fisher and Frey, 2008), therefore it is important to build a supportive environment in your classroom. Encourage and support your readers as they take risks with their reading. Ensure that students in your classroom are not blamed or shunned for their short comings and most importantly, be sure that all students in your classroom are given the opportunity to experience success, and then be sure to celebrate these successes!

A reading corner, designed by students to be like a rain forest, an appealing place for them to read.
This image is from: http://themenagerie.edublogs.org/2010/03/11/hello-world/ a classroom blog!

Comprehension strategies activities:

Making Connections-

Inference questions: 

 Educational leadership- Teaching Inference

This webpage is for teachers. It explains what inference is and how to help students understand what inference is. It contains step by step processes and key questions to ask students as they work through understanding inference. 

Speechlanguage-Resources. Teaching Inference
This is another teacher webpage, although it could be worked through with a small group of students. It provides a definition of inference, discusses some problems you may face when teaching inference to students with learning problems, and several examples. I particularly liked that it showed an example of teaching inference using an image. 

University of Missouri, ethemes- Teaching Tips: Inference 

This is a huge collection of content rich inference activities. There are activity ideas, lesson plans, and graphic organizers.

Coding strategies:

ELL Resources- Coding the Text 

WOW! This is some website, the creator has put so, so much work into orgainising and collecting resources. I spent ages on this page. This particular link is about coding reading. It contains word document instructions that can be printed out and given to students to help guide them through coding their reading. Many of the resources on this webpage are for English Language Learners, however they can be used any children.  

Before During and After:

Before, During and After Reading Strategies

These are activities designed to be used in a guided reading session. After practice with teacher guidance, they should become second nature for a child and provide valuable skills when students begin to read more challenging texts. 

Predicting:

Y Chart Predictions:

Y Chart 

Y Charts are fairly easy to use. This page provides a template to print out, and instructions on how to use them with your classroom. 

Summarising:

V.I.Ps:

VIPs: Very Important Points 

Again these are quite simple, while reading students note down very important points. The procedure in it's self is not difficult, but teaching a child to distinguish between important information and not so important information can be tricky. This page contains short and sweet instructions, and a selection of variations to the task.