Who’s Got Your Back? Research Supporting Reading Comprehension and Instruction Annotated Works Cited Compiled by Wisconsin State Reading Association’s Middle Level Literacy & High School Literacy Committees January 2016 Rationale WSRA Middle Level Literacy & High School Literacy Committee conducted a survey of reading comprehension instruction and practice from August to October 2014. This reading comprehension survey addressed issues in both literacy and content classes. It was sent to teachers and administrators throughout Wisconsin’s 12 CESA regions; 400 teachers, reading specialist and administrators responded to 17 questions. The purpose of the survey was to ​
gather information to identify perceptions and practices relating to reading comprehension and instruction in all disciplines, grades 6­12. Feedback from Wisconsin stakeholders ​
identified trends in comprehension instruction and revealed professional development needs​
. Using key information from the survey the two committees located research, presented at WSRA 2015 convention session, as well as compiled this annotated works cited document. The committees continue to study the survey results and develop further professional development opportunities for Wisconsin educators. TABLE OF CONTENTS ​
Pages Citing Textual Evidence ……………………………………...1 ­ 2 Inferencing……………………………………………………..3 ­ 6 Motivation, Engagement and Choice………………………...7 ­ 8 Vocabulary ……………………………………………………..9 ­ 10 Contact Information: WSRA High School Literacy Committee co­chairs: ​
[email protected]​
, ​
pmcintyre@west­bend.k12.wi.us WSRA Middle Level Literacy Committee co­chairs: ​
[email protected]​
, ​
[email protected] Citing Textual Evidence
Practice
Beers, K. & Probst, R.E. (2013). Notice & note: Strategies for close reading. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Beers and Probst offer “signposts” for readers to what for when performing a close
reading. These “signposts” require students to collect evidence from the text to determine what
the texts says explicitly and implicitly. Teacher friendly resource.
Calkins, L. & Kirshbaum Robb, A. (2014). Writing pathways: Performance assessments and
learning progressions, grades 6-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
This text provides performance assessments, learning progressions, student checklists, writing
rubrics and exemplars to use during literacy instruction. Student expectations are clearly defined
as are next step in moving them forward.
Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2014). Close reading and writing from sources. Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
Fisher and Frey provide a purpose for incorporating evidence into classroom activities. This text
will help teachers teach students how to read and analyze complex texts, develop annotation and
citation skills, and collaborate with peers to refine their ideas before writing.
Frey, N. & Fisher, D. (2013). Rigorous reading: 5 access points to comprehending complex
texts. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Rigorous reading provides access points on how to teach students to comprehend complex texts.
Frey and Fisher share multiple ways to engage students in authentic learning tasks that revolve
around the gradual release of responsibility. Students need to “read with a pencil” and use
textual evidence when analyzing texts. Teacher friendly resource.
McNeill, K.L. & Martin, D.M. (2011, April/May). Claims, evidence, and reasoning:
Demystifying data during a unit on simple machines. Science and Children, pp. 52-56.
Provides a framework for students to make meaning from a situation. Students focus on claim,
evidence, reasoning and eventually, a rebuttal. This framework allows students to analyze the
work they are doing at higher levels.
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Taylor, L. (2013). The language of argumentation: Using debate to spark interest and learning in
science. The Science Teacher, pp. 44-49.
When developing arguments, people need to state a claim, back up the claim with data, and
warrants the relationships between the claim and data. If students are to participate in a debate,
citing evidence behind their argument is crucial to support a strong claim. This article provides
some key steps in teaching students how to collect this evidence and use it to support a claim.
Theory
Calkins, L., Ehrenworth, M. & Lehman, C. (2012). Pathways to the common core: Accelerating
achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
The text dissects the Common Core State Standards and what the standards mean for
educators. Chapter three focuses on CCSS Reading Anchor Standard one, read closely to
determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific
textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. Students
need to understand what the text states and what the texts infers. By citing textual evidence,
students are able to move from literal comprehension to interpretive comprehension.
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Inferencing
Note: Due to the complexity of inferencing as part of comprehension, it is difficult to find articles focused
specifically on inferencing strategies for secondary students. Existing studies are geared toward younger
students, English language learners, or students with disabilities. There is a substantial gap in the
research on inferential strategies for regularly performing middle and high school students.
Practice
Beck, I. L. & McKeown, M. G. (2006). Improving comprehension with questioning the author:
A new and expanded view of a powerful approach. NY: Scholastic.
The authors update their classic Questioning the Author (QtA) strategy and offer new
perspectives on how to use QtA to improve students’ understanding of complex texts.
Teachers prepare for in-class readings by marking stopping points in the text at which they ask
open-ended and thought-provoking questions to elicit student discussion.
Bintz, William P., Moran, Petra P., Berndt, R., Ritz, E., Skilton, J., & Bircher, L. (2012). Using
literature to teach inference across the curriculum. Voices from the Middle, Vol. 20:1,
National Council of Teachers of English.
The article shares literature and strategies to teach inference in grades 5 -8 across content
areas. It acknowledges that inference is an important 21st century skill for all students.
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2014). Contingency teaching during close reading. The Reading Teacher,
68(4), 277-286.
Fisher and Frey studied 12 teachers in grades third through eighth, asking how they supported
students during close reading, and what they did when students did not understand the
text. Despite the age of the students, this article is useful for secondary teachers trying to
improve students’ inferencing skills because several of the supports and contingency plans
transfer to secondary classrooms. The planned supports include: explicitly encouraging repeated
readings, planning for collaborative conversations among student groups, creating textdependent questions, and requiring ongoing text annotations. The contingency plans include: reestablishing the purpose of the lesson, analyzing questions according to Question-Answer
Relationships (QARs), prompting and cueing, modeling one’s own problem-solving process, and
using students’ annotations as formative assessments to determine what they missed and to plan
for reteaching.
Fritschmann, N. S., Deshler, D. D., & Schumaker, J. B. (2007). The effects of instruction in an
inference strategy on the reading comprehension skills of adolescents with disabilities.
Learning Disability Quarterly, 30, 245-262.
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Working with a veteran special education teacher, researchers designed and implemented a
strategic approach to teaching inferences to students with severe reading comprehension
deficits. The strategic approach was called INFER, an acronym of the five steps.
1. Students “Interact with the passage and questions” by reading the multiple-choice questions
and identifying them as one of two categories: factual or think-and-search; then further
classifying the think-and-search questions into one of four types: purpose, main idea/
summarizing, prediction or clarification.
2. Students “Note what you know” by activating background knowledge on the topic,
underlining key words in the questions, and coding questions by category and type.
3. Students “Find the clues” by carefully reading the passage and underlining clues directly
related to keywords in the questions, and choosing tentative answers to the questions.
4. Students “Explore more details” by looking for additional clues in the passage.
5. Finally, students “Return to the question” by checking if each question has been marked and
answered.
The researchers found strong positive gains on standardized test measures, but acknowledge that
the study was limited to ninth grade students with severe disabilities, and should be replicated
with other groups of students. They also found that students did not maintain the gains without
practice in the inferencing strategy, but responded with continued strong gains after a 45-minute
review session, twelve months later. These results indicate that strategic approaches to reading
must be practiced consistently for students to successfully continue their use.
Loh-Hagan, V. & Bickel, D. D. (2014). Text-based questioning to support student attainment of
the CCSS. California Reader, 48(1), 20-28.
The authors highlight the Questioning the Author (QtA) approach to reading as a way to help
teachers meet the challenges of close reading under the Common Core standards. QtA may help
teachers to write and ask questions that demand higher order thinking from students. They offer
advice and tips to teachers on how to use QtA and other approaches to structure classroom
discussions and assignments to lead students into deeper understanding of complex texts.
Marzano, R. J., Norford, J. S., Paynter, D. E., Pickering, D. J. & Gaddy, B. B. (2001). A
handbook for classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Incredibly useful text for a variety of instructional approaches. Presented here for its clear chart
of question frames to help teachers or students write inferential questions about things and
people, actions, events and states of being.
Nokes, Jeffery D. (2008) The Observation/Inference Chart: Improving students’ abilities to make
inferences while reading nontraditional texts. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,
51:7, 538-548.
The author uses artifacts for observing nontraditional texts that leads into an inference based on
the observation. A two column chart is created, left side is for observation and right side lists the
inference for the observation. Several rationales are given for this observation/inference chart.
Examples are given from an 11th grade US history class.
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Raphael, T. & Au, K. H. (2005). QAR: Enhancing comprehension and test taking across grades
and content areas. Reading Teacher, 59, 206-221.
The authors revise Raphael’s original (1986) Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) approach to
categorizing comprehension questions students often encounter while reading in school. In
QAR, students learn to analyze questions and answers by two major categories: “in the text” or
“in my head.” “In the text” questions are further classified as “right there,” in which the answer
is found in one place, or “think and search,” in which the answer must be assembled from several
places in the text. “In my head” questions are further classified as “on my own,” in which
answers rely on personal connections that do not require further examination of the text, or
“author and me,” in which readers must combine their background knowledge with the
information presented by the author, including inferences. By considering the types of questions
posed, readers learn where answers may be found, and learn when it is appropriate to apply
inferencing strategies.
Theory
Bowyer-Crane, C., Snowling, M. J. (2005). Assessing children’s inference generation: What do
tests of reading comprehension measure? British Journal of Educational Psychology, 75,
189-201.
In this analysis of elementary students’ performance on two standardized tests of reading
comprehension, the authors ask if students may struggle with specific types of inferencing. They
created categories of 6 question types: elaborative inferences, cohesive inferences, knowledgebased inferences, evaluative inferences, literal information, and vocabulary dependent
questions. Then they analyzed the performance on both tests of ten students designated as
“skilled comprehenders” and ten students designated as “less-skilled comprehenders.” Both
groups scored higher on the literal questions and the cohesive inferences than on the other
categories. Skilled comprehenders scored well on literal information, cohesive inferences, and
elaborative inferences, but less well on knowledge-based inferences. Less-skilled
comprehenders scored well on literal and cohesive inference questions, but struggled on
elaborative and knowledge-based inferences. The authors’ conclusions suggest that the
differences between less-skilled and skilled comprehenders’ performances lie in their use of
efficient reading strategies in applying background knowledge to reading, especially in longer
text. They suggest that students probably possess the needed background knowledge, but may
need teacher support to know when to apply it for understanding.
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Cain, K. & Oakhill, J. (1998). Comprehension skills and inference-making ability: Issues of
causality. In Hume, C. & Joshi, R. M. (Ed.s), Reading and spelling: Development and
disorders (pp. 329-342). Mahwah, NJ. Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.
The second author has a series of studies on the reading comprehension abilities of elementary
students with regular or delayed reading abilities. In this study, the authors investigated whether
inference-making was more likely to be a cause or a consequence of poor comprehension
ability. They examined standardized reading test results of 80 students, ages six to seven,
grouped as skilled comprehenders, less-skilled comprehenders, and a control group of same-age
average comprehenders. Less-skilled comprehenders made fewer inferences than the skilled and
control group, and were less certain about when to use inferencing strategies, such as drawing
upon background knowledge. The authors conclude that poor inferential skills cause incomplete
comprehension of texts.
Dreyer, M. (2013). A mixed-method analysis of reading intervention effectiveness in the
community college. Dissertation Abstracts International: Humanities and Social
Sciences, 73,(10-A)(E).
In this dissertation, the author examined how the use of K-12 reading interventions, including
Question-Answer Relationships, may improve adult learners’ standardized test scores. The
quantitative results indicated non-significant results, but with a noteworthy trend toward higher
percentage scores in the experimental group. Qualitative results, including interviews with
remedial community college teachers, supported the positive influence on test scores by reading
interventions. Findings also explored the substantial role of barriers to learning in adult learners’
lives.
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Motivation, Engagement, and Choice
Practice & Theory
Guthrie, J., Lutz Klauda, S., & Ho, A. (2013). Modeling the relationships among reading
instruction, motivation, engagement, and achievement for adolescents. Reading Research
Quarterly, 48(1), 9-26.
This study focuses on the relationships among reading motivation, engagement, and academic
achievement in a traditional reading language arts setting, and an intervention reading language
arts setting. More than 800 seventh grade students participated in the intervention, which focuses
on Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI), which focuses on the need for motivation,
engagement, and cognitive strategies for reading informational texts. The intervention analyses
of this study show that the intervention under CORI was associated with positive changes related
to motivation, engagement, and achievement.
Ivey, G. & Broaddus, K. (2001). “Just plain reading”: A survey of what makes students want to
read in middle school classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(4), 350-377.
Authors surveyed more than 1,700 middle school students from more than 20 diverse schools
about what motivates them to read. Follow-up interviews were conducted with more than 30
students where they reported high engagement with reading. Findings indicate that students most
appreciate time to read, and the teacher reading aloud based on personal reasons for reading.
Students also emphasized that they saw a need for quality and diversity of reading materials.
Ivey, G. & Johnston, P. (2013). Engagement with young adult literature: Outcomes and
processes. Reading Research Quarterly, 48(3), 255-275.
This study examines eighth grade students’ perception about choice reading and engagement.
Engagement, here, focuses on the social, based on findings from more than 70 student interviews
and 15 separate categories of outcomes from relational, intellectual, and even moral lives.
Students read primarily young adult literature, by choice, and read at a self-paced speed over the
course of the school year. The inclusion of the social aspects of engaged reading from this study
lead to questions related to things like how engagement may traditionally be defined, requiring
students to all read the same text, treating reading as a purely individual, cognitive task, and
expecting similar outcomes for all students.
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Morgan, D. & Wagner, C. (2013). “What’s the catch?” Providing reading choice in a high school
classroom. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 56(8), 659-667.
One high school English teacher implements choice reading in his high school (sophomore)
English classes. The teacher structured the class with everyone reading a different book over the
course of a three-week unit. The teacher conferred with all students 57 students in two classes
while they read.. Based on Atwell’s reading workshop model, the teacher created mini-lessons
on literary concepts and expected students to apply those concepts to their choice books through
conversations and journals. Of the 57 students, there were some who were reluctant to begin, but
quickly found out that because of the conferences, they could not get away with fake reading,
and actually ended up enjoying “re-discovering” reading.
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Vocabulary
Practice
Abrams, Sandra Schamroth, & Walsh, Sara. (2014). Gamified vocabulary: Online resources
and enriched language learning. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58 (1), 49-58.
doi:10.1002/JAAL.315.
The authors focus on web-based software in two different settings, in school and after school
with 11th graders and young adults in the New York City area. Their question is: What role does
gamification have in adolescents’ vocabulary development and attitude? They surveyed a
number of online sites and used several sources for the study. They found students’ written
reflection and motivation strong as the weeks proceeded.
Allen, J. (2007). Inside words tools for teaching academic vocabulary, grades 4-12. Portland,
Me.: Stenhouse.
Allen connects research in effective vocabulary instruction and practical strategies. Focuses on
helping students understand academic vocabulary found in textbooks, tests, articles, and
information text.
Boyd, F. B., Sullivan, M. P., Popp, J. S., & Hughes, M. (2012). Vocabulary instruction in the
disciplines. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(1), 18-20. doi:10.1002/JAAL.00097
This column explores how literacy practices similarly enacted across disciplines served as a
platform for considering collaborative professional development contexts. Based on research
across science and history classrooms, general vocabulary development was present during
engagement with texts as a stepping-stone to disciplinary practices and embedded within
disciplinary learning.
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Word wise and content rich, grades 7-12: Five essential steps to
teaching academic vocabulary. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Ready to use vocabulary strategies and activities to help readers. Practical for all content area
teachers.
Flanigan, K., Templeton, S., & Hayes, L. (2012). What's in a word? Using content vocabulary to
generate growth in general academic vocabulary knowledge. Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy, 56(2), 132-140. doi:10.1002/JAAL.00114
Demonstrates how content area teachers can help students become aware of, understand and
apply word knowledge to grow their vocabularies. Steps for teaching vocabulary and resources
for work selection and included.
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Marzano, R. (2005). Building academic vocabulary: Teacher's manual. Alexandria, Va.:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
This is a practical approach to helping students to master academic vocabulary. This manual
contains a six-step method of instruction, tailored English Language Learner procedures, and
vocabulary activities and games.
Theory
Lesaux, N. K., Harris, J. R., & Sloane, P. (2012). Adolescents' motivation in the context of an
academic vocabulary intervention in urban middle school classrooms. Journal Of Adolescent
& Adult Literacy, 56(3), 231-240. doi:10.1002/JAAL.00132
This study focused on a target population’s weaknesses in language and vocabulary, especially
specialized academic vocabulary of text. The first year of the study sixth graders were from
seven middle school in a large urban school, the second year randomized the study in 14 middle
schools. Effects were observed on researcher-developed measures of academic vocabulary
knowledge, morphological skills and reading comprehension of expository text.
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