Traveling Terrain: Comprehending Nonfiction Text on the Web

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

Strategic instruction and explicit teaching of targeted comprehension strategies can allow students to integrate skills into their current competencies, thus improving their overall reading ability. This lesson identifies three skills (i.e., identifying text features of nonfiction text in a Web format, locating specific information, and generalizing information) to be taught in strategic lessons that build upon each other and allow for scaffolding of skills when necessary.

back to top

 

FEATURED RESOURCES

Connecting Concepts Organizer: This helpful handout will guide students in generalizing the biome information and comprehending how human interaction affects the environment.

back to top

 

FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Guthrie, J.T. (2001, March). Contexts for engagement and motivation in reading. Reading Online, 4(8). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.asp?HREF=/articles/handbook/guthrie/index.html

• Teachers create contexts for engagement when they provide prominent knowledge goals, real-world connections to reading, meaningful choices about what, when, and how to read, and interesting texts that are familiar, vivid, important, and relevant. Teachers can further engagement by teaching reading strategies. A coherent classroom fuses these qualities.
  
  
• Strategy instruction involves the explicit teaching of behaviors that enable students to acquire relevant knowledge from text. Explicit instruction includes teacher modeling, scaffolding, and coaching, with direct explanation for why strategies are valuable and how and when to use them (Duffy et al., 1987; Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1991). Fundamental to most theories of intrinsically motivated learning is self-perceived competence (Bandura, 1997; Deci & Ryan, 1987; Harter, 1990). In the domain of reading, students are given a sense of self-perceived competence when they are taught strategies for learning from text (Pressley, 1997).

back to top