CHILDREN WITH MEANING PROCESSING PROBLEMS

Children who have meaning processing problems have difficulty understanding what they read. They may be able to say the words but the words do not have meaning for them. Your work with them will be different from what you do with readers who have print processing difficulties.

When children rely on just one cueing system, they are not going to be able to read well. With the goal of better reading comprehension, students need to focus on using all four cueing systems (semantic, syntactic, graphophonic, and background knowledge) interactively. In order to become competent readers, children must accept the idea that reading has meaning and that it must make sense. They must think as they read. These are ideas that you will need to reinforce with your students all year long. Children can get so caught up in saying the words, that they have no energy left to think about what they words mean. Some students will have the idea that merely saying words is reading.

Certain strategies promote understanding of what has been read. Some of these suggestions follow in the next portion of this chapter. You will note that the strategies are listed in order of reader capability. In other words, strategies for readers in the early stages are listed first. Think back to the stages of reading discussed in Chapter 3 and remember that in the early stages the focus is on decoding. Later comes the search for meaning.

STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING MEANING

Reading Aloud

Reading aloud to your student may be the best thing you can do in helping him become a better reader. As you read, you direct the child's attention to predicting events in the story and interacting with the story. This procedure is explained in detail in Chapter 6.

Language Experience Approach (LEA)

Besides developing comprehension, the Language Experience Approach builds on the child's own language and knowledge and is an effective way to encourage self-expression and to build an awareness of the connection between reading and writing (Allen,1965).

1. The tutor and the child talk about a shared event, something that happened to the child, or perhaps something that is occurring in the classroom that the child knows about.

2. The tutor asks the student to tell a story about the selected event.

3. The tutor prints the child's words, exactly as dictated, onto paper.

4. The tutor reads the story to the child.

5. The tutor and the child read the story together.

6. The story is saved and read at subsequent sessions.

Modified Language Experience Approach-1

1. The child selects a wordless book.

2. The tutor and the child look through the book as the tutor asks the student to describe what is happening in each picture. When the child has difficulty, the tutor draws attention to various aspects of the picture.

3. The tutor invites the child to tell a story about the pictures.

4. The tutor either tape records the story and copies it later or writes it, exactly as the child dictates, on strips of paper or a full sheet.

5. The words are paper clipped onto the appropriate picture. If the story was written on a single sheet of paper, the child will have to cut it apart before paper clipping it to the pages.

6. The child reads the story.

Modified Language Experience Approach-2

1. The tutor reads a predictable book to the child.

2. The tutor shows the child a tutor-produced book in which the same language patterns have been used or in which the words are printed but the pictures are missing.

3. When the language patterns have been written on the pages, with missing words, the child completes the sentences and draws pictures to accompany them. For example, if the predictable book is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, the words in the tutor-made book may be _______________, _________________, What do you see? The child fills in the blanks and draws a picture to match his words. Another story that works well using this idea is It Looked Like Spilt Milk and the child tears objects on white paper to glue onto blue pages and labels them. The word pattern should be copied from the original book.

4. When the words are printed but the pictures are missing, the child draws pictures to match the words. For example, if the book were The Bus Ride, the text would say, The girl got on the bus. Then the bus went fast. The child would draw a picture of a girl getting on a bus.

Directed Reading Activity (DRA)

Using the DRA method will help the student set a purpose for reading and develop comprehension skills. A DRA is best suited for basal texts or content area textbooks (Walker, 1996). This method is a tutor-led technique and is implemented as follows:

1. The tutor develops readiness for reading by introducing new vocabulary words in oral and written context. The student should be directed to remember the words by their distinctive visual features. The tutor develops appropriate background knowledge and sets a purpose for the reading by telling the student to look for specific information.

2. The student then reads the text silently. It may be helpful to divide the story into sections in order to question the student's comprehension following his reading of each section. The student supports his answers by reading the appropriate sections in the text.

3. The instructor provides activities which reinforce and extend concepts introduced in the story. Word recognition and word meaning activities may be completed, as well as activities which require a creative response or a personal relation from the student's own experience would be excellent.

Listening Thinking Activity

A Listening Thinking Activity (LTA) is an instructional format for teaching children how to listen to stories. It involves predicting what will happen, talking about what happened, and talking about how you know what is happening. As the tutor reads aloud, she communicates the message by adding intonation and gestures to facilitate understanding. Following are the steps included in a LTA (Walker, 1996).

1. Using the title, the tutor has the student brainstorm what the story might be about.

2. The tutor reads to a turning point.

3. The tutor models questions about what is happening thus far in the story: "I wonder why the author said. . .?"

4. The tutor summarizes what she has read so far, relating it to the I wonder statements.

5. From the summary, she develops a prediction or bet. She says, "Oh, I know, I bet. . ."

6. Then the student makes predictions or bets.

7. The tutor continues reading to the next turning point in the story.

8. The tutor asks the student to talk about what he is thinking using I wonder statements

9. The tutor asks the student to tell what has happened so far to make him curious. The tutor adds her own interpretation.

10. The tutor and the student review previous predictions. Then they decide if they want to keep all the predictions.

11. The student revises or makes new predictions.

12. The tutor alternates reading and discussing until the end of the story.

13. The tutor uses nonverbal cues from the student to check his understanding. When the student is confused, the tutor stops to discuss the story line and how they arrived at their interpretations.

14. The tutor and the student discusses the story as a whole, relating various interpretations.

K-W-L

When using the K-W-L strategy (Ogle, 1986), the student does two brief prereading activities:

1. Lists in writing items he already Knows about the topic;

2. Lists, in question form, things he Wants to learn about the topic. After the material is read, the student:

3. Writes down what he Learned while reading or listening to the material. This may be done by answering the questions posed in step 2 and then listing any additional items of interest noted during reading.

Modified K-W-L

The child should be encouraged to integrate his background knowledge into reading. Before he begins reading, he should think about what he already knows about the topic he is reading and make predictions, based on his own experiences, regarding the content of the materials to be read. When the child finishes reading, he should compare and contrast his experiences to his perceptions of the story's content. This activity is a modified version of the K-W-L reading strategy described above.

Oral Cloze

When you read to a child, stop before significant words and wait expectantly. The child usually supplies the next word, without your instructing him to do so. This technique fosters his paying attention. After you have finished, you can ask the student how he knew the next word. His response will be that he knew from the meaning of the passage or from the context. Point out that this is exactly what he must learn to do when he is reading and comes to an unknown word. Guess. Then he should check to see if the guess has the right beginning letter and looks as if it could be the word he said. If so, he has probably guessed correctly.

Triple Read Outline

Triple read outline is the rereading of expository text to develop an organizational framework of main ideas and supporting details. By reading the information three times, the student focuses on different purposes for organizing information during each reading (Walker, 1996).

1. The tutor selects a short expository passage to demonstrate the triple read outline.

2. The tutor states the purpose for the first reading--identify the main idea. The tutor demonstrates how to find the main idea and writes it in the paragraph margin.

3. The tutor models the second procedure--identify supporting details, by explaining how to find key details that support the main idea for the first paragraph.

4. On the third reading, the tutor demonstrates organizing the information into an outline. The main ideas and the details are put into an outline of the passage.

5. The tutor writes a summary of the passage using the main idea as the topic sentence and details that support the main idea.

6. This procedure is practiced on other text.

Metaphors

Metaphors are used to relate words and concepts to already known objects by identifying their likeness and differences. For young children, common concrete objects can be used to develop metaphors (Walker, 1996).

1. The tutor selects a key word or concept from the assigned text.

2. The tutor creates a metaphor that describes the key attributes of the word or concept.

3. The tutor describes how the metaphor is like the key word and how it is different from the key word. For example, "A cloud is a puddle in the sky. It is like a puddle because a cloud is made of water droplets. A cloud is not like a puddle because the water droplets have become water vapor. It is not like a puddle because it is in the sky and not on the ground."

4. Then the student creates a metaphor within the reading of a selection. For example, "A dragon is like a volcano."

5. The student decides on a metaphor.

6. The students explain the similarity. For example, "A dragon is like a volcano because they are both hot and spit fire."

7. The student explains how it is different from the metaphor. For example, "A dragon is not like a volcano because it is a make-believe animal. It has four legs, and can run very, very fast."

8. The student discusses the meaning of the word.

Prediction Maps

The prediction map uses a conceptual flowchart to visually map the comprehension process of prediction and revision. In using the map, tutor questioning focuses on what the reader is understanding about the text and the sources of information being used. The tutor suggests that she can revise or expand her prediction according to what she has read and what she already knows (Walker, 1996).

1. The tutor selects a narrative text at the appropriate reading level.

2. The tutor identifies the key turning points in the story.

3. The tutor designates the story intervals that reveal enough of the story line to encourage logical inferences, but not enough to draw exact conclusions.

4. Using the title, the student and tutor make a prediction and place it in the center of the oval on the left side of the page.

5. The tutor and the student select important information from the text and what the reader already knows as illustrated.

6. The student reads to a designated point in the story.

7. The tutor demonstrates her thinking by saying, "I predict ___________is going to happen next."

8. The tutor asks, "What did the text say that made you think that?" The student adds textual information to support or revise the prediction.

9. The tutor asks, "What do you know about the information that made you think that?" The student writes what he knows on the map to support his prediction.

10. The prediction/revision process is mapped at predetermined points in the story. Important information from the text and what is already known about the important information are used to make predictions.

11. Initially, the tutor takes an active role by mapping her own process of comprehending as the story is read.

12. The predictions, important textual information, and personal interpretations are mapped in the flowchart, with the tutor modeling how the comprehending process is restructured during the reading of a story.

13. The tutor phases out her modeling as the student becomes more active in predicting and revising.

Summarization

Summarization teaches the student how to write summaries of material read. The student is shown how to delete unimportant information, group similar ideas, decide on or invent topic sentences, and list supporting details. These procedures culminate in a short paragraph that reflects the most important information (Walker, 1996).

1. The tutor selects an expository text.

2. She describes a summary as a short version of the text that contains all the important information.

3. The tutor explains that the purpose of writing summaries is to put all the important information together so it can be remembered better.

4. The student reads a short selection.

5. The student rereads the selection and asks, "What is this mainly about?"

6. The tutor reads her summary to the student.

7. In the original text, the student marks the information that the tutor used in the summary.

8. The tutor explains how she wrote the summary.

9. The tutor demonstrates, for instance, the rule of deleting trivial information. Interesting information that is not key ideas is deleted.

10. The tutor also demonstrates deleting repeated information. Although information is sometimes repeated for emphasis, it is used just once in a summary.

11. The tutor demonstrates combining details into generalizations when they fit into the same category.

12. The tutor demonstrates how to select a topic sentence which is the author's one sentence summary and usually comes at the beginning or end of the paragraph.

13. The student writes a summary for the demonstration selection.

14. More selections are made available for which summaries may be written.

Story Writing

Story writing is an instructional format for teaching narrative writing that includes three stages: prewriting, writing, and evaluating (Walker, 1996). By writing his own stories, the student increases his awareness of story parts. The procedure for story writing includes:

Prewriting:

1. The tutor introduces the structure of a story. Stories have a beginning (the characters and place), middle (problems and events), and an end (solution of the problem).

2. The tutor and the student brainstorm ideas to select a topic and information that might go into the story.

Writing:

3. Using the information collected, the student writes his story. The tutor emphasizes that the story needs to flow from one idea to the next and make sense.

Evaluating:

4. The tutor has the student reread his story to see if it makes sense. The tutor uses the following questions.

a. Does the story make sense?

b. Does the story contain all the important parts?

c. Has any information been left out that the reader might need to know in order to understand the story?

5. The student revises any unclear information.

6. The student makes a final copy of his story.

Story Map

Some children benefit from instruction in the use of a Story Map to aid in their comprehension and ability to cue in on important segments of the story. A Story Map outlines the setting, characters, conflict, and resolution of a book. The child should be encouraged to identify each of these components upon completion of the stories read, and later, after becoming familiar with the components of a story, he should be encouraged to look through a book to be read and predict its content by looking at the pictures and title of the story. Following the reading of the story, the child should compare his predictions to the story and prove or refute his assumptions.

Secondary Reading Sequence (SRS)

SRS is designed to integrate story understanding with word recognition. The tutor develops background knowledge by reading the story aloud and discussing its main points prior to the student's reading of the story. SRS is adaptable to all types of text and is particularly useful with content area reading. The lesson sequence involves four comprehensive steps: listening comprehension, choral reading, oral reading, and review (Walker, 1996).

1. The tutor selects a text that matches the student's listening comprehension level.

2. The tutor follows a listening comprehension sequence.

a. The tutor reads the passage aloud. If the passage is long, an interrupted predictive listening format may be followed, i.e., a Listening Thinking Activity.

b. The tutor either asks questions or has the student retell what was read to assess comprehension. Both literal and nonliteral information need to be stressed.

c. The tutor asks interpretative questions like these: "What would happen if...? How is this character or idea similar to another character?"

3. The tutor and the student chorally read the same passage. The tutor models correct intonation and phrasing. Errors are ignored as the tutor continues to read fluently.

4. Then the student reads the same passage orally. The tutor records errors on a copy of the text. Errors are reviewed and skill activities developed around these errors, i.e., flash cards, games etc.

The steps are as follows:

a. The student reads the passage orally.

b. The tutor records errors.

c. The tutor and student review the errors, making a list of target words.

d. Sentences are reread in an echo fashion. The tutor reads the correct form.

The student reads following the tutor's model.

e. The student rereads the passage.

f. The tutor records errors in different colored pens.

g. A comparison is made of the errors.

Herringbone Technique

The Herringbone Technique develops comprehension of the main idea through the use of a visual diagram of a fish skeleton (Walker, 1996). The diagram enables the student to plot WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, HOW and WHY questions. Using the answers to these questions, the student writes the main idea on the diagram. The technique is implemented by:

1. An appropriate reading level expository text is selected.

2. A visual diagram of the herringbone is provided below.

3. The student reads to find the answers to the following questions and records them on a larger version of the diagram above:

a. WHO is the author talking about?

b. WHAT did they do?

c. WHEN did they do it?

d. WHERE did they do it?

e. HOW did they do it?

f. WHY did they do it?

4. After the student has recorded his answers to the questions, he uses the information to write a sentence about the main idea. The tutor should guide the student through this process until the student is able to do it independently. Younger students might dictate their answers to the tutor who could copy them for the student.

5. The diagram is then used as a tool for discussion of the material.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

You may have noticed that predicting is included in many of these activities. That is because predicting requires thinking and comprehending written material is a thinking process. Keep in mind that your goal is to get the student with whom you work to interact with the story. That includes relating it to his life, thinking about why something in the story happened, and understanding the characters.

I think of life as a good book. The further you

get into it, the more it begins to make sense.

--Harold S. Kushner