Strategies That
Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis
This book was recommended to me by a 5th grade teacher at
the Bronxville middle school. The authors'
take home message is that effective use of reading comprehension strategies deepens
understanding. As reading comprehension
equates to thinking skills, enhancing such comprehension improves a readers
ability to think independently.
The meat of the book's message consumes roughly 200 pages,
the remaining 100 devoted to the useful appendices. On top of your standard table of contents the
book contains an additional list for all of the reading comprehension strategy
lessons found throughout the text.
Unlike my last review, I'm taking notes and writing this
review as I go. Bad idea? I have no idea. Also the review is organized so that the more
you read on, the more detail of the book I go into. Also, beyond "Synopsis" is
essentially just syntheses of sections of the book that are more or less notes
for myself.
Synopsis
Before beginning, the words "skills" and "strategies"
are used interchangeably as often a strategy is itself a skill.
Strategies That Work introduces the reader to the stepping
stones reading comprehension which is how to take students from the level of
novice to expert. I may have even
learned a thing or two myself.
Such stepping stones begin with rudimentary elements like the
efficacy of an instructional approach and matters of teachers competencies. Once groundwork such as this is secure,
reading comprehension skills can be honed by teaching, modeling, and
reinforcing specific strategies in order of complexity. Such includes making connections,
questioning, visualizing and inferring, determining importance, and synthesizing
information; each of which are the prerequisite for the subsequent skill/strategy.
My only gripe is that the material of part two could have
been better organized and distilled. The
way the methods for honing a skill are laid out, visualization or determining
importance for instance, suffered the most from this deficit. What would have been great would have been a
note as to how exactly a method honed
a skill and a generic version of such a lesson to teachers could create their
own versions following such parameters.
The above sometimes left me frustrated or staring blankly,
lost in the text, for over a minute like I was having an epileptic seizure. Part three of the book somewhat made up for
this. I say somewhat because I still at
one point in my life had to drag my eyes across text and information that just
wouldn't get to the damn point.
Regardless of its shortcomings, I'm glad to have read it as
I've gained some exposure on the topic, have a resource to turn to, learned a
thing or two personally, and gained perspective. It's not the 'how to' manual for reading
comprehension I was hoping it would be, which is perhaps why I feel a bit let
down by it. While there are probably
better books out there covering the same topic don't discount this one.
Each Section
Part 1: The
Foundation of Meaning - Focuses
on how readers extract meaning and relate to it, sound instructional practices
for teaching reading strategies, general approaches to engage students with
their reading and thinking, and finally how to match instruction with specific
literature and help students choose books they enjoy and apply the strategies
on their own.
Part 2: Strategy
Lessons and More - Provides a
step by step guide for specific strategies that focus on increasing complexity
for students. The authors also note
specific considerations that must be made when planning a lesson; to name two, one's
own interest and enthusiasm for the content and how one intends to stress
students apply the practices on their own.
Part 3: Resources
That Support Strategy Instruction - Includes seven. With the intent to enhance comprehension,
each appendix is a compendium of useful resources for teachers to refer to when
in need of things like literature selections
for certain content areas (science, history, etc), adult level
literature selections for the classroom, professional journals, and assessment
measures for 4th graders.
Each Chapter
Part One
Chapter 1:
Strategic Reading - Reading comprehension is the ability to think
independently. To hone students' skills,
as the Wong's put it, an effective teacher must teach, model, and reinforce.
Chapter 2:
Strategic Thinking - Effective
readers question the material before, during, and after reading as well as
self-monitor their comprehension and self-correct when they notice their
understanding or attention wavering.
Students range from those oblivious to their own lack of comprehension
(usually focused on something like decoding words instead of extracting
meaning) to reflective. When students
can connect the text to themselves, other works, or the world at large
comprehension becomes easier. Essential
reading strategies of increasing complexity include making connections,
questioning visualization and making inferences, determining importance, and
synthesizing information.
Chapter 3:
Strategy Instruction & Practice - Teach, model, reinforce, and
design lessons with the intent to gradually release responsibility so that
students shift towards independence.
Examples of teaching and modeling would be reading and thinking aloud or
lifting text onto an overhead while focusing on something like visualization or
determining importance by analyzing the text.
Anchor reading strategies to engaging lessons and refer to it/them
when necessary. Students should take
notes as they go in margins, on sticky notes, or in their own books. This accomplishes many things including
keeping them engaged but most importantly self-aware of their thinking and strategy
selection among other things.
Chapter 4:
Teaching With Short Text - Short text takes on many forms (articles,
essays, journals, picture books, poetry, etc), covers many content areas, can
be filled with sophisticated ideas and perspectives, and range in elements like
it's quality and writing style. Using
short text as a vehicle for teaching comprehension strategies is simpler, more
effective, and can be more accessible (engaging) than using longer text. Because the adult world typically involves
the reading of short text, utilizing such material may better serve students. Short text is best text for skill honing.
Chapter 5: Book
Selection - Much goes into the selection of books by teachers for
comprehension instruction that must be considered when searching for the right
book. Picture books are again stressed
as their accessibility and potential complexity of content (literary devices or
even social implications) are underscored.
They can be used for strategy lessons, building knowledge, and can be
challenging. Assisting students with the
ability to appropriately select their own books involves helping them consider
readability, interest, and the purpose of their original search (to find
information or to relax, for example).
Book selection is a lesson itself!
Part Two
To become an effective reader, students must master each of these
skills. Again, each of these skills is a
prerequisite to the more complex one following it.
An anchoring lesson is absolutely
necessary for all of these skills.
Chapter 6: Making
Connections - Making connections is step one. This chapter emphasizes that students'
connections must be authentic (actually connections) and to help them relate
what they're reading to something outside of the text itself in a relevant
way. Doing so should be performed via
'coding' text for connections like text-to-self (T-T-S) or taking brief notes
in margins.
Connections not only deepen understanding but facilitate
retention. How text relates to
ourselves, other literature, and our world enhances understanding by building
upon what we already know.
To elaborate, it's a known fact that the more we know about
one topic, the easier it becomes to remember and apply related new
information. If, for example, an
engineer that works on hydroelectric dams were to watch a presentation about
some new innovation and listen to detailed information, they will remember much
more and understand greater implications than if I were to watch it because
they, all things being equal, can anchor everything they see to something they already know.
Chapter 7:
Questioning - After connections comes questions and questions are the
product of curiosity. The end goal here
is to create curious learner with the habit of questioning, recognizing types
of questions, and addressing them. The
teacher needs to create such curiosity, help students organize and categorize their
questions in such ways that enhance understanding, and eventually help students
create meaning through questioning
(inferences).
The chapter closes by differentiating between assessment
(answerable) and sincere (unanswerable) questions and their place in
academia. In short, sincere questions
are likelier to enhance understanding than assessment whereas assessment
questions are best for checking up on student progress and seeing if they're
paying attention!
Chapter 8:
Visualizing and Inferring - Typically the two co-occur. Visualization (all of the senses) involves
making inferences (presumptions) using the limited information known and
inferring often utilizes visualization its vehicle to a conclusion. Both help create a more meaningful, complete
picture of what's read and can be used to bring dull textbooks to life, and
make historical texts relevant.
Students
should be encouraged to reread text to ensure the accuracy of the information
they've gleaned from it as such is the foundation of their visualizations and
inferences. This chapter felt like it
could have been boiled down significantly even though it was only about ten
pages.
Chapter 9: Determining Importance in Text - It's
best to introduce this skill using non-fiction as it's less ethereal than
fiction. Teaching students how to
determine importance in text has numerous cornerstones and strategies. Students need to know how to get an overview
of the text quickly before delving into it and know how to best handle
information (notes/highlighting/cue words).
The goal of lesson examples provided is to get students comfortable
handling information (notes) and skilled at inferring where importance lies.
Chapter 10:
Synthesizing Information - Synthesis, the incorporation of new
information with current knowledge to generate new ideas, requires the mastery
of each previous skill. It's essentially
Connections 2.0. The lessons focus on
getting readers personally involved in the text to get the juices flowing,
summarizing and personally responding to text, and compare/contrast style work. Compare/contrast style work lays before students
their thinking making novel connections jump out at them. Teachers can encourage momentary reflection after
each page to keep student's engaged and thinking.
Chapter 11:
Strategy Instruction in Context - The best vehicle for teaching,
modeling, and reinforcing is content that will eventually be formally studied
by students. If students will be
studying a certain era of history during the school year, for example, skills
should be honed using text that focuses on that era. This way student's background knowledge is
built simultaneously. Not only does rich
background knowledge help down the line, but it sparks students' ability to make
connections, question, synthesize, etc.
Methods and strategies here also discuss ways enhance
learning, student engagement, and ways to help students that are failing to
achieve a particular learning objective we had in mind. The gradual release of responsibility was
omnipresent in this chapter. Students
must be granted time to work on their own (and carefully observed)so that the
responsibility of learning shifts from the teacher to self-guided learning. So tack 'release' after the Wong's (Wong
& Wong, 2009) teach, model, reinforce.
Chapter 12:
Assessing Comprehension - If you don't know what students are thinking,
you don't know what they're understanding.
To get to what they're thinking, teachers have to read students' body
language, eavesdrop during group work, really listen to what they're saying (sure they can say they're
visualizing but are they?), keep track of exchanges to create an anecdotal
record of progress, perform effective one on
one interviews with students to monitor understanding and misconceptions,
et cetera. Many if not all of these can
be achieved verbally or with written responses.
In sum, get a grip on what they're actually thinking.
Part Three
The majority of the books recommended in
this section are either picture books or short text.
Appendix A: Great
Books and Author Sets to Launch Strategy Instruction and Practice -
Books specifically chosen for their relevancy for teaching a certain
skill/strategy.
Appendix B: Great
Books for Teaching Content - Books covering content areas (science,
history, et cetera)
Appendix C: Adult
Text Sets - Great books for adults to read to build background
knowledge in a variety of areas. Choose
select pieces of text to demonstrate how adults use reading skills/strategies
to gain deeper meaning.
Appendix D: Magazines
and Newspapers for Kids and Young Adults - Magazines selected for young
readers
Appendix E: Professional
Journals for Selection of Children's Books - Professional journals that
review books for classroom use.
Appendix F:
Response Options for Each Strategy - Forms, worksheets, and charts to
guide students through certain tasks to reach a learning objective.
Appendix G: Assessment
Interviews with Fourth-Graders - The point is not to assess
understanding of story events but to capture their thinking throughout
reading. These interviews are best to do
at the beginning of a book to see how students handle information on their own,
before stories are resolved, and before they are distracted by major story
events. Small groups of 2-3 students
works best.
Random Note(s)
- Inverse relationship between how exciting/interesting text is with corresponding task is necessary.
- I've picked up taking notes as I go (coding).
- When students fail to achieve the objective of an assignment, such as using a desired skill, make the instructions clearer, model again, and if necessary hone the requisite skills for the current task/skill.
Book Criticisms
- Nitpicking, but I don't like how the authors always refer to students as 'kids'
- Personally I just don't like the feel of the content layout. It reads for me like a novel and is more or less laid out like one. As a consequence I think there is a lot of fluffy content around whatever the authors are trying to convey as important to the reader. What I liked about the Wong's book was how it was extremely well thought out, organized, to the point, the content became exciting to me, and ideas were reinforced effectively. This text however falls short in each of these areas I believe. The distilled information is indeed useful, but it just took me much longer to figure out and get to than was necessary.
- The lessons feel at times repetitious and filled with unnecessary information and anecdotes. Sometimes they are also quite similar to the ones beforehand. Essentially the reader only needs to get the message of each chapter and can refer to the lessons later when designing a lesson plan. At least as things stand. The trouble is that much of the message is mixed in throughout the lessons, not just in the beginning prior to lesson examples.
Works Cited:
Harvey, Stephanie, and Goudvis, Anne. Strategies that Work: Teaching comprehension to enhance understanding.
Markham: Pembroke Publishers Limited. 2000
Wong, Harry, and Wong Rosemary. The First Days of School: How to be an effective teacher. Mountain
View: Harry K. Wong Publications, Inc. 2009
