“The Discovery Channel Said So” and Other Barriers to Comprehension

Abstract

With increasing attention focused on comprehension, there is a need for research regarding how to implement comprehension instruction for struggling readers and assess its effectiveness. This article describes reading instruction as it occurred over two years with one struggling reader in third and fourth grade. A comprehension checklist provided a framework for instruction that was both systematic and responsive to the reader's needs. The result was improved comprehension and metacognition for the student, though the progress was slow and often cyclical instead of sequential.

Initiation, Response, Follow-up and Beyond: Analyzing Dialogue Around Difficulty in a Tutorial Setting

“…Guided by (a) findings from the literature, as well as the gaps within them, (b) studies of effective tutoring protocols (Massey, 2007;Mokhtari, Hutchison, & Edwards, 2010), and (c) the tenets of instructional dialogicality, I developed and implemented a tutoring protocol and conducted an analysis of tutor/tutee interactions. The site for this exploratory, IRB-approved study was an elementary school in a large urban district in a western state which enrolled 350 students.…”

“…I incorporated four major elements in the tutoring design, all of which reflect the construct of instructional dialogicality. First, the instructional design was data-based and differentiated, allowing for dialogue specifically suited to each child (Massey, 2007;Timmons & Morgan, 2010). An analysis of miscues and retellings from the CRI helped me better understand each child's strengths and challenges (e.g., Sam decoded fluently, but struggled with comprehension, whereas Bella's low-inference comprehension was…”

“…As such, these were SMART goals: straightforward, measurable, attainable, relevant (to the child's needs), and time-bound (MindTools, 2017). We regularly revisited these decisions as needed in response to evidence from the ongoing tutorial process (Massey, 2007). While I established this protocol, student cooperation and general enthusiasm confirmed their willingness to engage in it, despite (or because of) the fact that these types of instructional interactions were not part of their prior experience.…”

“…Finally, our sessions were uniformly meaning-focused (Baumann, Jones, & Seifert, 1993;Fitts & Gross, 2012;Massey, 2007). Even when the child's goal involved decoding or fluency, our work was contextualized in the reading of extended text.…”

Multicomponent Reading Intervention: A Practitioner's Guide

“…(2) Teachers may also have students read a short passage and identify the keywords and write a main idea statement (Williams, 1986). (3) In addition, teachers may create a list of sentences that students read and identify if the sentence makes sense or not (see Massey, 2003; Oakhill et al., 2015). For instance, students read the sentence: Three lawyers were on their way to cart .…”