Thinking To Read, Reading To think - Outcomes from Think2Read Comprehension Thinking Skills Project (Phase 1) 2005 - 06 Donna Thomson
Whilst acknowledging the importance of phonics; outcomes from theThink2Read Comprehension Project Phase 1 reading assessments across our large Devon primary school over 2 years (from 2001 -03), clearly pointed to an urgent need for the children to think, question and actively seek meaning much more during their primary reading experience than many of them were doing.
Outcomes suggested that it was essential for students to be shown:-:-
- how to explore the text in much greater ‘depth’;
- how to question author’s meaning and intention using literal, inference, deduction and evaluation.
- how to identify and apply these essential thinking skills meaningfully, alongside greater understanding of how to clarify, summarise, skim and scan text to support exploration of text.
- how to predict possible outcomes in the narrative as they read.
- how children of all abilities could collaboratively identify and apply these skills independent of constant teacher guidance.
In response to these research outcomes, Think2Read created a programme
(Think2Read, 2005) for children in Years 5 and 6 of our primary school to support the implementation of the reciprocal progress: which relies on a generic framework to organically facilitate thinking skills, encourage independent learners and broaden the children’s understanding and enjoyment of their reading in general. By using authentic classroom activities, imaginative visual prompts and ‘real’ books in a series of interactive mixed ability sessions, modeled by the teacher, the children were taught:-
- how building pictures in their heads from information they already knew and linking these images with new information - enabled them to make a connection with the authors meaning
- how to identify the difference between the author's literal, inferential and evaluative intention
- how to respond to and generate literal, inferential and evaluative questioning, appropriately, effectively and meaningfully - independent of teacher guidance
- how to find key word connections in questions that link to key information and evidence in the text to provide a full and accurate answer
- how to communicate their deductive ideas meaningfully and with confidence orally and on paper
- how to skim and scan quickly and effectively in pursuit of the ‘bigger picture’
- how to gather information that makes connections and links with different sections of text
- how to enrich and broaden their use and understanding of vocabulary
- how to work together using the reciprocal process to explore a range of different genre using prediction, clarification, questioning and summarising within collaborative mixed ability teams.
Encouraging results from children with specific learning difficulties
The programme yielded encouraging results. SATS results for participating Year 6 children showed a particularly high comprehension result of 90% passes at level 4/5, with a significant rise in standards in just two terms. The school considered this to be especially encouraging because of the number of children with dyslexic tendencies that were included in the score. Teachers reported that pupils were more willing to learn from one another’s assumptions and keen to explore and challenge each other about text and the author’s intention within the reciprocal reading process. Dr. Maureen Lewis, an observer from the NLS who came to visit the school in 2005, reported that the sessions seemed to have ‘opened the gates to children’s learning of prediction, clarification, questioning and summarizing.’ Children were found to be experiencing a much greater appreciation of the books they were reading and were better prepared to engage in more independent and meaningful exploration of author’s intention, style of writing, narrative and non-fiction text and different genre.
Encouraging impact on writing skills
In addition this has introduced them to the world of ‘the author’, where for many they were beginning to understand for the first time how authors write with intention using inference clue devices to build imagery and plot. This effective and fun approach to the development of writing had such an impact on many of the children, that they moved a whole level up in their writing as a result of this discovery - in just one lesson. This experience also led them to transfer their deductive thinking practice to a variety of contexts across the curriculum; once they realized that they were able to use inference devices to help them to solve a range of problems, particularly with regard to maths and science.
Programme methods reflected in Revised Primary National Strategy 2006
Since this programme’s success which has resulted in publication of the step-by-step methods used to teach these strategies (Thomson & Nixey, 2007), it is heartening to see that the specific outcomes from Phase 1 of the Think2Read Project are clearly reflected in the new PNS literacy framework(Sept. 2006): where it advocates the use of the reciprocal reading process and underlines the ‘crucial role of the teacher’ in providing ‘explicit instruction’ of ‘the five strategies’ e.g., ‘prediction, questioning, clarifying, imagining and summarization’ (USA National Reading Panel, 2000) and qualifies this by saying that it ‘should be taught to ensure good reading comprehension’, as it ‘trains children to monitor their own understanding’ and ‘helps children go beyond literal interpretation and recall to explore the complex meanings of a text using inference and deduction.’
References
Primary National Strategy (2006), Primary Framework for literacy and mathematics
www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/teachingresources
Stuart, M (2003) Fine Tuning the NLS, paper written in response to paper circulated to speakers on 24 February 2003, prior to DfES Phonics Seminar, March 17th 2003 www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/publications/literacy/686807
Thomson, D. & Nixey, R. (2005) Reading To think, Thinking To Read: Bringing meaning, reasoning and enjoyment to reading, Literacy Today No.44, September issue, Devon: The Education publishing company
Thomson, D & Nixey, R. (2007) Quick Fix For Year Six, Leamington Spa: Scholastic Ltd
(Phase 2) Think To Read: Developing Comprehension Through Communities of Enquiry 2008 - 2009 Ros Fisher, University of Exeter (for full report contact r.j.fisher@exter.ac.uk)
Introduction
The research reported here was a pilot study for a project seeking funding from ESRC. It investigated the teaching of literal and inferential comprehension to children in Primary Year 2.
Research literature reveals uncertainty about the extent to which comprehension can be effectively taught to early readers and yet evidence shows persistent problems with comprehension for some children, even those who are competent decoders; in other words these children can read the words in a text but do not understand what they have read. Comprehension must be the essential goal of reading. As Presley (2000) reminds us, 'Most of what matters in reading instruction matters because ultimately it affects whether the student develops into a reader who can comprehend what is in the text' (545). Recent review of research evidence for the DCFS (Kispal,2008) shows that poor inferencing skills cause poor comprehension and not vice versa. Further more, the review indicates that there is little research evidence as to how teachers can best improve the inferenceing skills of their students.
The development of literacy is an area of major concern worldwide both from an economic and individual perspective. the past several years have seen major initiatives to improve the teaching of reading (National Literacy Strategy, Primary Strategy, Rose Report) Yet, despite these, there are still worrying indications that we could do better.
Although there have been gains in attainment following the recent initiatives, there has been criticism of the current approaches to the teaching of literacy focused on evidence of rather rigid teaching with almost scripted sequences of interaction (Mroz, Hardman et al. 2000;Alexander 2004). Indeed recent research for the DCFS (2007) found that those children who did not make good progress at KS2 could be described as passive learners. There is also evidence that attitude scores of primary school children to reading have shown a decline since 1998 (Sainsbury and Clarkson, 2008). PIRLS (2006) also showed that attitudes to reading of 10-year-old children in England and Scotland are poor compared to those of children in many other countries, and that they had declined slightly since 2001.
Thus interventions aimed at improving standards of reading need to focus not only on attainment but on children's atitudes to reading and their engagement in lessons. Recent initiatives have focused crucially on the development of early reading through the effective teaching of phonics. However, whilst the learning of phonics is an essential part of early reading development, it is not the only part. Rose (2006) reminds us that 'phonic work is therefore a necessary but not sufficient part of the wider knowledge, skills and understanding which children need to become skilled readers and writers, capable of comprehending and composing text' (p.4). it has been argued that the National Literacy Strategy and subsequent developments have tended to place more emphasis on word level skills rather than those skills that are fundamental to text comprehension (Nation & Angell, 2006).
Background
The teaching programme adopted in this research has been developed over several years at Dartington Primary School in Devon. It involves a series of lessons based around stories that help children develop the process and the understanding of how readers make meaning of text. The teaching style used in the programme is integral to the approach and is based on Philosophy for Children (P4C) (Lipman 1981) and Storywise (Haynes, 2002). This involves the development of a community of enquiry in which teachers and children, as partners, explore ideas with emphasis on the children raising and responding to questions.
The approach known as Think2Read has generated considerable interest from other schools and local authorities due to the good results reported locally and in professional literature (Thomson and Nixey, 2005). A weakness, however, is the lack of robust empirical evidence of its effectiveness.
Conclusion
Where the teacher followed the Think2Read programme carefully and was fully committed to it, the children have made good progress in reading. there is some evidence that these children made better progress in reading according the Neale analysis than their peers in the parallel class. This is borne out by national test results. in the second of the two schools involved in the project where the approach was not kept as different as in the first school, there is a possibiltity that the increased amount of group work and less didactic teaching in both classes resulted in good results for both teaching groups.
References
