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A Blueprint for Reading Comprehension Instruction

Presented by Nancy Hennessy, M.Ed.

The Reading Comprehension Blueprint

Get the essential knowledge and practical tools needed to help every student become a proficient reader—and build a strong foundation for school success!

https://bpub.fyi/ReadCompBlueprint

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Today …

q Why is comprehension so complex?

q How does language comprehension contribute to student understanding of texts?

q What is the blueprint and how does it inform the design and delivery of effective instruction and student acquisition of essential skills?

q How does the blueprint provide direction for the development of critical language structures?

q What does an evidence-based instructional framework for sentence comprehension include?

Why is comprehension so complex?

…reading comprehension is not a single entity that can be explained by a unified cognitive model. Instead, it is the orchestrated product of a set of linguistic and cognitive processes operating on text and interacting with background knowledge, features of the text, and the purpose and goals of the reading situation.

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K., 2018

How does language comprehension contribute?

…when children become competent at decoding, it is their competence in language comprehension that will determine their overall reading ability. So, in more advanced reading, good language comprehension will be more crucial than word recognition.

The Reading Rope Model, Scarborough, H.S. 2001.

Levels of language processing…

Based on: Oakhill & Cain, 2007

• Words & Phrases
  • Academic vocabulary (breadth, depth, precision)

• Sentences
  • Density
  • Length
  • Cohesive ties & connectives
  • Structure

• Knowledge
  • Inference
  • Local

©2012 Nancy Hennessy

What is the Blueprint?

• An evidence-based master plan that addresses both process and product demands.
• Organizes and scaffolds the teacher’s preparation of a text for varied purposes.
• Calls for the use of evidence-based strategies and activities.
• Allows for flexibility based on text, the student, and context.
• Acknowledges the metacognitive nature of teaching.

Check your understanding…

Which of the following is not correct? The blueprint is ____________________.

a) a lesson plan

b) based in evidence

c) metacognitive in nature

d) scaffolds and organizes instruction

Critical Understandings?

What do you want students to know and understand after reading the text?

What are the critical concepts and understandings—big ideas you want your students to acquire?

The big ideas, the important understandings, that we want students to ‘get inside of’ and retain after they’ve forgotten many of the details. . . . go beyond discrete facts or skills to focus on larger concepts, principles, or processes.

Reading lessons need to have double outcomes—an improvement in reading ability and an increased knowledge about whatever was read.
Shanahan, 2017

Choosing Texts?

What texts will support these understandings?

Educators who are intentional choose rich texts to develop the critical understandings as well as the language and cognitive skills necessary for comprehension proficiency.

• Will these readings develop the identified enduring understandings?
• Will these readings provide opportunities to develop necessary language processes and skills?
• Do these texts provide opportunities to develop academic language?
• Do these readings represent different genres and disciplines and an integrated approach to learning?
• Have we considered access issues for struggling readers?

Hennessy, 2020

Purpose?

What are the content instructional goals and objectives?

What are the literacy instructional goals and objectives?

• Acquiring knowledge of critical topics, including enduring understandings, constitutes content goals.

• The development of content and literacy knowledge is accomplished over time and through multiple interactions with varied text.

How does the blueprint address the development of language structures (semantics & syntax)?

LANGUAGE STRUCTURES (phrases, clauses, sentence comprehension)
Are there phrases, clauses, and sentence structures that may be difficult for your students?

How and when will you directly teach sentence comprehension?

How and when will you teach students to work with challenging sentences?

How will you facilitate the integration of ideas within and between sentences (e.g., the use of cohesive ties and connectives)?

How and when will you teach students to work with these?

If a reader cannot derive meaning from individual sentences that make up a text, that is going to be a major obstacle in text-level comprehension.

Scott, 2009

What does an informed framework for sentence comprehension instruction include?

An example activity: Words Working Together …

Sentence

In the end, the Americans won the Revolutionary War and the British soldiers went back to England.

Questions:
Which word(s) answers who/whom?

The Blueprint:

Intentionally designed to support the educator as he/she uses their knowledge to identify learning goals, set purpose, organize instruction, select instructional activities, and monitor students' progress.

Thank you!