1. How and why does a prediction strategy, such as use of an anticipation guide, facilitate reading comprehension?
An anticipation guide is a series of statements to which students must respond individually before reading the text. Their value lies in the discussion that takes place after the exercise. The teacher’s role during discussion is to activate and agitate thought. As students connect their knowledge of the world to the prediction task, you must remain open to a wide range of responses. Draw on what students bring to the task, but remain nondirective in order to keep the discussion moving.
Anticipation guides may vary in format but not in purpose. In each case, the readers’ expectations about meaning are raised before they read the text. Keep these six guidelines in mind in constructing and using an anticipation guide:
Analyze the material to be read. Determine the major ideas—implicit and explicit—with which students will interact.
Write those ideas in short, clear declarative statements. These statements should in some way reflect the world in which the students live or about which they know. Therefore, avoid abstractions whenever possible.
Put these statements in a format that will elicit anticipation and prediction.
Discuss the students’ predictions and anticipations before they read the text selection.
Assign the text selection. Have the students evaluate the statements in light of the author’s intent and purpose.
Contrast the readers’ predictions with the author’s intended meaning.
A science teacher began a weather unit by introducing a series of popular clichés about the weather. He asked his students to anticipate whether the clichés had a scientific basis (see Figure 6.7). The before-reading discussion led the students to review and expand their concepts of scientific truth. Throughout different parts of the unit, the teacher returned to one or two of the clichés in the anticipation guide and suggested to the class that the textbook assignment would explain whether there was a scientific basis for each saying. Students were then directed to read to find out what the explanations were.
A health education teacher raised expectations and created anticipation for a chapter on the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS. Rather than prepare written statements, she conducted the anticipatory lesson as part of an introductory class discussion. She raised curiosity about the topic by asking students to participate in a strategy known as the “every-pupil response.” She told the students that she would ask several questions about becoming infected with HIV. Students were to respond to each question by giving a “thumbs up” if they agreed or a “thumbs down” if they disagreed. The class had to participate in unison and keep their thumbs up or down. After each question, the students shared their reasons for responding thumbs up or thumbs down. The questions were framed as follows: “Is it true that you can contract HIV by:
Having unprotected sex with an infected partner?”
Kissing someone with HIV?”
Sharing needles with an HIV-infected drug user?”
Sharing a locker with an infected person?”
Using a telephone after someone with HIV has used it?”
Being bitten by a mosquito?”
The verbal anticipation guide created lively discussion as students discussed some of their preconceived notions and misconceptions about HIV and AIDS.
Mathematics teachers also have been successful in their use of anticipation guides. In a precalculus class, the teacher introduced the activity shown in Figure 6.8 to begin the trigonometry section of the textbook. She created the anticipation guide to help students address their own knowledge about trigonometry and to create conceptual conflict for some of the more difficult sections of the chapter they would be studying.
2. Why is it important for content area teachers to develop a self-efficacy for teaching reading in their discipline?
When students engage in content literacy activities, some feel confident in their ability to achieve success with reading and writing tasks. Others feel unsure and uncertain. Confident learners exhibit a high level of self-efficacy in content literacy situations; unsure learners, a low level. Self-efficacy refers to an “I can” belief in self that leads to a sense of competence. Bandura (1986, p. 391) explains that self-efficacy refers to “people’s judgment of their abilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performance.” Self-efficacy is not concerned with the skills and strategies students bring to content literacy situations, but rather it focuses on students’ estimations of their ability to apply whatever skills and strategies they bring to literacy learning. As Alvermann (2001) explains, self-efficacy contributes to the development of students’ literacy identities. Before they can become lifelong readers, students must first view themselves as competent and capable readers.Self-efficacy is important for supporting teacher effectiveness as well as for developing students’ perceptions of themselves as capable readers. Teachers’ self-efficacy can affect students’ learning (Hoy & Spero, 2005); new and veteran teachers alike need to seek professional development that will support reflective teaching practices and build their own self-efficacy for delivering effective instruction. To help build teacher candidates’ sense of self-efficacy, the College of Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte uses a post-teaching self-efficacy survey, adapted from the model developed by Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk (2001), in some of its teacher education programs. Teachers are supported through the use of in-depth clinical experiences, immediate feedback on teaching performance, and tools for self-reflecting on teaching practices. The self-efficacy survey is one tool for encouraging reflective teaching. Sample items from this survey are shown in Box 6.1
Self-efficacy and motivation are interrelated concepts. If students believe, for example, that they have a good chance to succeed at a reading task, they are likely to exhibit a willingness to engage in reading and to complete the task. Guthrie and Wigfield’s (2000) model of reading engagement calls for instruction that underscores the importance of students’ motivation in addition to their growth in conceptual knowledge, their use of comprehension strategies, and their social interaction in the classroom. The National Institute for Literacy (2007) explains that students who are motivated readers share several characteristics: They perceive that they have some level of control over their reading; they apply appropriate strategies in order to make complex reading tasks more manageable; and they display a high level of engagement in their reading experiences.By the time they enter middle school, students’ motivation to read—particularly motivation that comes from their own authentic interests and desires to explore topics through reading—often declines. For struggling readers in particular, this decline in motivation is often compounded by the assessment and grouping practices common in middle and secondary schools. The problem of aliteracy—when an individual has the ability to read but chooses not to do so—has been found to continue into later adolescence and even into adulthood. The National Endowment for the Arts (2007) found that the percentage of 17-year-olds who chose not to read at all for enjoyment has doubled over the past 20 years. Despite the proliferation of social networking, texting, and messaging outlets, nearly half of all older adolescents read no books at all for pleasure (Institute of Education Sciences, 2011). By fostering a learning environment that is response-centered, teachers can provide students with critical opportunities to explore texts, construct meaning, and make personal connections to content area topics.
Students’ motivation for reading and learning with texts increases when they perceive that text is relevant to their own lives and when they believe that they are capable of generating credible responses to their reading of the text (Knickerbocker & Rycik, 2002). Research suggests that, unlike out-of-school reading experiences, in-school reading is often perceived to be uninteresting to many students. One study found that even students who were identified as avid readers outside of school were not necessarily engaged in school reading experiences (Wilson & Kelley, 2010).
One factor found to inhibit students’ motivation to read centered on their belief that they rarely control what they read during the course of the school day (Daniels & Steres, 2011). A relevant curriculum, engaging instructional strategies, and a school culture that fosters wide reading can help to engage students in reading across the curriculum. Box 6.2 discusses how teachers can apply a disciplinary literacy approach to familiarizing students with content area vocabulary and text perspective. Students have been found to be more enthusiastic about in-school reading when the texts used are accessible and interesting and when they have a choice in the selection of the text (Lapp & Fisher, 2009).
With the rise of multiliteracies, reading now takes place not only in traditional print form but on screens, through hyperlinks, and even within digital games. What counts as “reading” need not be limited to fictional texts or novels but rather expanded to include comics, graphic novels, documents, such as sports statistics, and, of course, nonfiction. Mackey (2014) suggests that students must receive guidance in order to choose appropriate text selections. She recommends that teachers talk with students about how texts were chosen for use in the classroom and, in cases, where texts were selected by a school or district level committee, the process through which those decisions were reached.
While adolescents might not always feel comfortable talking about their out-of-school reading with peers, it is helpful to offer a neutral forum through which students can share reactions to and suggestions about texts beyond the classroom. Within the classroom, the teacher can consider students’ varied reading abilities and interests and make accessible a wide range of texts that will appeal to those needs and levels (Morgan & Wagner, 2013).
Bruner (1970, 1990), a pioneer in the field of cognitive psychology, suggested that the mind doesn’t work apart from feeling and commitment. Learners make meaning when they exhibit an “inherent passion” for what is to be learned. How people construct meaning depends on their beliefs, mental states, intentions, desires, and commitments. Likewise, Eisner (1991) calls on us to celebrate thinking in schools by reminding us that brains may be born, but minds are made. Schools do not pay enough attention to students’ curiosity and imagination. As a result, students disengage from active participation in the academic life of the classroom because there is little satisfaction to be gained from it. Given the current policy emphasis on accountability and adequate yearly progress as measured by high-stakes assessments (discussed in Chapter 4), teachers often find themselves torn between seeking to increase students’ interest in content area subjects by supporting their motivation to learn and simply trying to fulfill externally imposed and even arbitrary achievement targets.
Nevertheless, effective teachers understand the importance of taking the time to make their subject areas relevant to students. In exploring matters of the mind, cognitive activity cannot be divorced from emotional involvement. Meaningful learning with texts occurs when students reap satisfaction from texts and a sense of accomplishment from reading. As Ivey and Fisher (2005, p. 8) explain, “Teachers who understand their students’ backgrounds, prior knowledge, interests, and motivations are much more likely to make the connections that adolescents crave.”
Teachers can support students’ motivation for reading by setting clear goals and expectations for reading, providing students with access to a variety of reading materials, and, when possible, allowing students a level of choice in selecting the texts they read (Brozo & Flyny, 2007; Guthrie & Davis, 2003). Teachers can also give students opportunities to interact with one another through shared reading experiences, and they can guide students in learning how to evaluate their own understanding of a text (Wigfield, 2004; Reed, Schallert, Beth, & Woodruff, 2004).
Two of the most appropriate questions that students can ask about a text are: “What do I need to know?” and “How well do I already know it?” The question “What do I need to know?” prompts readers to activate their prior knowledge to make predictions and set purposes. It gets them thinking positively about what they are going to read. “How well do I already know it?” helps readers search their experience and knowledge to give support to tentative predictions and to help make plans for reading.
As simple as these two questions may seem on the surface, maturing readers rarely know enough about the reading process to ask them. “What do I need to know?” and “How well do I already know it?” require metacognitive awareness on the part of the learners. However, these two questions, when consciously raised and reflected on, put students on the road to regulating and monitoring their own reading behavior. It is never too early (or too late) to begin showing students how to set purposes by raising questions about the text.
As students ready themselves to learn with texts, they need to approach upcoming material in a critical frame of mind. Instructional scaffolding should make readers receptive to meaningful learning by creating a reference point for connecting the given (what one knows) with the new (the material to be learned). A frame of reference signals the connections students must make between the given and the new. They need to recognize how new material fits into the conceptual frameworks they already have. In Box 6.3, Drew, a mathematics coach, works with a fifth-grade teacher to activate her students’ knowledge for and interest in the concepts of area and perimeter. Conceptual conflicts are the key to creating motivational conditions in the classroom (Berlyne, 1965). Should students be presented with situations that take the form of puzzlement, doubt, surprise, perplexity, contradiction, or ambiguity, they will be motivated to seek resolution. Why? The need within the learner is to resolve the conflict. As a result, the search for knowledge becomes a driving motivational force. When a question begins to gnaw at a learner, searching behavior is stimulated; learning occurs as the conceptual conflict resolves itself.