C&T 741 Comprehension and Study Strategies for Use with Multiple Texts

Final Portfolio Submission

Standard: 1.3 Candidates apply content and discipline-specific knowledge as reflected in
state and/or national discipline-specific standards.

Instructional Practices Portfolio

School Setting

This is my sixth year teaching at the International School Manila in the Philippines. The

school was established as an American school in 1920 by a group of American and British

expats. It began with 8 teachers and 50 students. It has changed campus locations several

times and has grown to 2000+ students and over 200 teachers. The school offers preschool

through grade 12. In the 1980s the school changed the name from American School to

International School Manila to reflect the student body though the curriculum remains

American-based. The entire school is located together on one campus.

In 2010, the fifth grade was moved to the middle school. This helped alleviate the high

numbers in elementary and eased the fifth graders into the middle school model where they

have separate teachers for each subject. To ease the transition, fifth graders are assigned two

core teachers. One teacher teaches science and math and the other teacher teaches English

and social studies. The teachers teach two different classes of fifth graders. I have one class of

18 students and one class of 19 students. My largest class at ISM was 21 students.

I teach students from all over the world from various backgrounds and religions. Because of

this diversity they come to me with background knowledge and vocabulary that may not match

my expectations. I have realized that most of the resources I use are geared towards

Americans. How can I read books about Rosa Parks when most of my students have little

knowledge of the civil rights movement in the United States? I have to be very aware of the

differences in my classroom. Yet, we give the students an American based test twice a year

(Measuring Academic Progress or MAP). In many ways these students are more sophisticated
than me. I did not travel outside of the United States until I was 27, yet my students have a

passport full of stamps. Still, they lack much of the background knowledge needed to

understand the picture books I have accumulated and use for lessons. Also the poems I read

come from western poets.

One of the challenges I face is how much class time I have with the students. I see each

class four times a week. I have two seventy minute blocks for each subject. I teach only

English and

social studies. There is no way in 70 minutes that I can do all the things necessary to teach

English properly. That is not enough time to run both a reading and writing workshop, frontload

vocabulary and background knowledge, teach reading strategies, have book clubs, read aloud

and teach spelling. I find I am constantly taking time from social studies but it is still not

enough. I have to alternate my explicit instruction of reading and writing.

I believe the positives in teaching overseas at a private school are the high expectations

parents have for their children. This means most children come to school with their needs met

and ready to learn. It is not perfect but I can actually teach and not deal with behavior

problems like I did in the States. We also dont lose any funding for underachieving students so

we have considerably less pressure during testing time. We are not encouraged to teach to the

test and our students still have full access to recess and all of the encore classes (music, art,

PE, wellness).

Comprehension Strategies

My school adopted the United States Common Core standards for Language Arts and Math

two years ago. Common Core was chosen because of the thoroughness of the standards, the

focus on nonfiction, and the building of skills at each grade level. Here are three standards I

have chosen:

Key Ideas and Details in literature: R.L. 5.3

Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing

on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

We have been learning about and practicing reading strategies throughout the year.

Because of the complexity of inferring I feel I need to spend more time and make sure it is

explicitly modeled and practiced. In this lesson, I wanted to compare and contrast two

characters but first I wanted the students to make inferences and figure out the traits of the

character from what the character says and does. I first read a picture book The Royal Bee by

Francis and Ginger Park. The students were given a graphic organizer to keep track of

characters behaviors. The organizer has two columns. One column is labeled, What does the

character say or do? and the other column is labeled My inferences about the character

based on his or her words and actions. As I am reading the book to the class I think aloud and

point out several examples to the students. I have them write these examples on their graphic

organizer. The first example is the character Song-Ho does has many chores and works very

hard to help his mother. His father has passed away and he and his mother struggle to put

food on the table. After talking through a couple of examples the students are then encouraged

to add thinking of their own as I finish the book. After I have finished, we discuss what we have

learned about this person. We talk about the inferences we made and I do some thinking aloud

to show the students how I came to my conclusions. We have talked before about inferring

several times before this lesson and I have written the formula BK (background knowledge) +

TC (text clues) = inference on the whiteboard. For lesson two, the students work on the back

of the original worksheet. The back sheet has the same graphic organizer that was used for

the lesson from the previous day. For this lesson I read Beatrices Goat by Page McBrier. The

students complete the same activity writing down what the character says and does to see if

that gives them insight into what kind of person the character is. For the third lesson, students
will create a brainframe comparing and contrasting the two characters. At this point in the year

the students have had several opportunities to create compare and contrast brainframes about

various other topics we have addressed in both English and social studies. The brainframes

are promoted by Bonnie Singer. She teaches 6 different frames that work across content and

genre. There is no need to print anything out and the frames can be whatever size or as

detailed as the student wishes. For the compare and contrast brainframe it actually works

better than a traditional Venn diagram in that you actually have room to show comparisons.

Students have the option of drawing circles around the brainframe if they want to show a Venn

diagram.

What I love about both of the picture books used in these two lessons is that they are both

based on true stories. I believe the books also help the students think about perspective and

gratitude. For Beatrices Goat there is a video on Youtube based on an 60 Minute interview. It

is so powerful and leaves the students speechless.

Craft Structure in literature: R.L. 5.4

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative

language such as metaphors and similes.

According the article Poets in Practice, to teach poetry better teachers need to immerse

themselves in poetry, not just by reading it, but by writing it is well. I am improving as a teacher

by using my own writing as mentor texts for my students. I have not make the leap to poetry

yet. I have written a few poems but only one by choice. I know that if I write more I will

understand figurative language more thoroughly. I have grown to love reading and teaching

poetry.
 One of the classes in this Master's inspired me to be more diligent with fluency in my

classroom. I have made that my professional goal this year. My goal coincided with my plan to

teach poetry the entire year instead of just one quarter. It has gone exceedingly well. Reading

a poem a day lets us practice fluency and tap into various literary devices daily. I expect that

these lessons will stick with my students longer since they happen more frequently.

In the article The Poetry Cafe is Open! Teaching Literary Devices of Sound in Poetry

Writing, Beth Kovalcik and Janine Certo give some great ideas for mini-lessons during the

writing workshop. For example, their onomatopoeia lesson idea. I usually read a picture book

to show examples of that literary device to students. The authors suggest having the students

stand up to act out sounds and having the other students identify the onomatopoeia.

For the metaphor and simile lesson, I want the students to be exposed to more than just

knowing similes use like or as and I want them to dig deeper with metaphors and look for the

implied meaning. I took excerpts from the website literarydevices.net to give the students

examples. I think the explanation that website gives provides the students with a more

complex illustration of metaphors. I feel it makes the students look beyond the obvious. The

students then go work on poetry and experiment with metaphors and similes independently.

Two poems I often use to practice metaphors is Dreams by Langston Hughes and for similes,

Flint by Christina Rossetti. Each poem is simple but a great example of the richness of

language through the use of literary devices. Reading poems daily has made a difference in

my students appreciation for the language of poetry.

Key Ideas and Details in informational text: R.I. 5.2

Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details;

summarize the text.

 According to research from Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of

Adolescents in Middle and High Schools by Steve Graham and Dolores Perin, the

summarizing strategy is one of the most useful skills to teach. Teaching students to summarize

can be a difficult task. I have worked for years to figure out strategies that would help

intermediate students learn how to summarize well. Many teachers do not teach this skill for

lack of confidence. In the older grades, some teachers assume that students have learned this

skill in the younger grades, but they need practice with this difficult technique in every grade as

the texts they interact with become progressively more difficult. I had some great professional

development with Bonnie Singer and she changed how I now teach summarizing.

For my summarizing lesson, I used the gradual release of responsibility model. I read a very

short informational passage (three paragraphs) about fossils to my students. First I go over an

anchor chart that describe the steps to creating a good summary. The steps include: delete

unnecessary words or sentences, delete redundant words or sentences, substitute

superordinate terms, select or create sentences. I then model a think-aloud as I talk through

summarizing the article. Bonnie taught me that in a short article I find the main point of each

paragraph, make a telling brainframe with that information, refer to the anchor chart, cut out

redundant information and write new sentences for my summary. I have read different books

about summarizing, but I am a visual learner, so it wasnt until I saw the process that it clicked

for me. Even writing about this lesson is difficult, because it does not fully explain the

procedure that I complete with my students. The students and I then complete the process

together with the students talking me through the steps. The next day, the students work in

pairs with a different short article. I expect them to use the same process as we practiced the

day before. The subsequent day students will summarize an article on their own. By this time,
most students are successful and feel more confident with summarizing. I plan to revisit this

lesson a few more times through the year. We can transfer these skills to other subject areas.

Some ideas to supplement this lesson come from the article Writing to learn across the

curriculum: Tools for comprehension in content area classes. In the article, they describe some

reviewing and summarizing strategies. I could use the framed paragraphs and text box formats

to aid students who need extra scaffolding.

Most of the lessons I have written about I have experience completing them with my class. I

would now like to talk about some lessons I learned from this course and apply them in future

lessons.

Writing to Learn

Writing to learn is something I want and need to do more of. In the article Writing to learn

across the curriculum: Tools for comprehension in content areas of classes, they suggest bio

poems. I have done bio poems with my class for the past few years. This is a lesson I do the

first two weeks of school. It is a great activity that gets the students immediately writing poetry.

Even reluctant poetry writers can be successful with the prompts that ask the writers about

themselves. I learn so much about the students from this activity. Imagine my surprise when

Bio Poems was listed as one of the writing-to-learn activities! The activity was applied during a

social studies lesson. Students completed a Bio Poem about a famous person from history

who they had studied. I would not have thought to do this. I plan on taking this activity and

adding it to the choice board of activities for our biography unit in quarter four. I think this

assignment would be meaningful and interesting. The article mentioned that the students have

to infer what the biographical figure would think or want. Since the students have already
created their own bio poem there will be no time wasted explaining the steps. I was excited to

learn a new twist on a beloved assignment.

Other writing-to-learn activities I would like to try are sentence synthesis and quick writes. I

think we could be doing more writing during social studies and this is the perfect way to

achieve that goal. I believe these strategies would work well with all of our units (geography,

ancient civilizations, economics, biographical figures). I think the listen-stop-and-write method

would work well for watching various social studies videos. This activity would get the students

writing more and help with retention.

Conclusion

I think we all agree that teaching reading strategies is a very important. I find it interesting

that the Common Core reading standards do not explicitly mention these strategies. That

means the responsibility is on the teachers to make sure this critical information is explicitly

taught. The Common Core standards are in many ways an improvement to previous standards

but one of the noticeable flaws is the omission of metacognitive reading strategies. Because of

this it is very important that educators be cognizant and teach accordingly. I will continue to

strive to teach and assess these skills.

Works Cited

Parr, M. & Campbell, T., (September 2006) Poets in Practice, The Reading Teacher Vol. 60,

No. 1

Kovalcik, B., & Certo, J., (2007) The Poetry Cafe Is Open! Teaching Literary Devices of Sound

in Poetry Writing, The Reading Teacher 61(1), pp. 89-93,

Knipper, K., & Duggan, T., (2006) Writing to learn across the curriculum: Tools for

comprehension in content area classes, International Reading Association (pp. 462-470)

Zimny, J., Using Picture Books to Teach Comprehension Strategies, 2008, Scholastic

Kurzer, K., (July 2015)Metacognition in the Common Core Standards: Underlying (Yet

Neglected) Focus?, NYS TESOL Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2,

Park, F., & Park, G., (2000) The Royal Bee, Boyds Mill Press, Pennsylvania

McBrier, P., (2001) Beatrices Goat, Aladdin Paperbacks, New York

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x_HMGRa0SY (Beatrice from Beatrices Goat)