Read Well, Think Well

Build Your Child's Reading, Comprehension, and Critical Thinking Skills

Hal W Lanse

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781440515866
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Méthodes pédagogiques pour la lecture

Millions of children struggle with reading-and even more struggle to understand exactly what they're reading. Read Well, Think Well will help you to teach your children to build the essential reading and comprehension skills they need to succeed in today's demanding school system. Teacher trainer and literacy specialist Hal W. Lanse, Ph.D., provides the necessary knowledge, strategies, and exercises that will turn your kids into first-rate readers and thinkers. Learn how to:

• Choose the best, age-appropriate reading material
• Boost your child's memory and retention skills through verbal and visual exercises
• Utilize technology aids to help your child understand the comprehension process
• Understand the "Big Six" of reading comprehension through analysis and summary of the text
• Promote values for everyday life through reading

Read Well, Think Well -the ultimate guide to secure your child's academic success. Hal W. Lanse, Ph.D., is a premiere teacher trainer in New York City, specializing in middle-grade and young-adult literacy. He is the winner of the 1997 Frank W. Dilley Award, Walden University's annual prize for outstanding doctoral dissertation. Dr. Lanse, a consultant with the UFT Teacher Center, trains teachers in current literacy research and shows them how to turn the research into daily classroom practice. He has also taught many parent workshops for the United Federation of Teachers. Lanse lives with his teenage son, Kenny, in New York, NY.

CHAPTER 1

The Big Six: The Key Comprehension
Skills That Your Child Must Master

If your child is in second grade or higher, her teacher might tell you that she’s reading well. As a concerned parent, you must then ask, “What do you mean by reading well?” It’s quite possible that you will be told one of the following:

“She can decode most of the words.”

“Her phonics skills are great.”

“She pronounces the words well when she reads aloud.”

It’s true, most children in general education classes are pretty good at these skills. But this doesn’t mean they can read! Reading is more than phonics. It’s more than decoding. Reading is also about understanding, or what literacy experts call comprehension. Guess what? Most teachers don’t teach comprehension. For the past twenty-five years researchers have noted that children comprehend the basic plot elements of stories but go bust when it comes to the deeper meanings. Most children cannot grasp these deeper meanings on their own. It’s not a matter of intelligence. Our kids aren’t stupid. Comprehension must be explicitly taught and most educators are not trained to teach it. In fact, many teachers that I’ve trained over the years had no idea that they weren’t teaching comprehension. It’s not their fault. In the age of test-prep we’ve confused drilling kids with instruction. They aren’t the same.

If your local school gives lots of practice tests throughout the year, your child is being robbed of precious instructional time. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against assessment, but I’m an advocate of smart assessments. Smart assessments are brief and they don’t require teachers to sit their students down for lengthy, complicated, stressful tests. Most assessments can be done with a conversation while the teacher is jotting down some brief and focused notes.

I’ll teach you how to do it. It’s not complicated. You don’t have to spend years at your local teachers’ college to learn. As your child’s most important teacher you can learn the six key competencies of reading instruction, and you can learn how to teach them to your child.

Here are the Big Six:

1. Predicting

2. Questioning the text

3. Using text features

4. Hearing the text

5. Visualizing the text

6. Summarizing

None of these competencies is more important than the others, nor do they go in any particular order. Teaching any one of these will bring your child’s reading comprehension a long way. Work on one until he’s good at it, then work on another.

Number 1: Predicting

Good readers build theories in their heads. They think, “I believe the character is going to (run away from home) because he’s already said (he wants to join the circus and get away from his battling parents).” (The parentheses get filled in with the particular details of a story.) The prediction, even in sophisticated adult readers, is sometimes correct and sometimes not. Being incorrect doesn’t make you a bad reader. Having no theory at all makes you a bad reader. Good readers, even very young ones, develop theories as they read; and very often they revisit their theories. A good reader might say, “Ha, I was right! When the hero said (the planet Xenon must be saved), I knew he was going to (steal his father’s star cruiser and join the intergalactic army).” The same good reader might also say, “Oh, my theory can’t be right. Now that the author has told me that (the hero is blind), I know that my prediction that the character will (steal the star cruiser) can’t be true. But now that I know that (he’s always talking his best friend into doing crazy things) I’m thinking that maybe the hero will (talk his friend into stealing the star cruiser and joining him on the adventure).”

See? A good reader makes theories, then checks and revises them. So how do you teach a young reader to think like this? Easy. You show him how you do it. Read a story together with your child. Read it aloud while he follows along. Stop every now and then and say, “I’m noticing that the character said (she hates asparagus) and that the family (always feeds scraps to the dog). I’m thinking that maybe later in the story she’s going to (give the asparagus to Rover). Let’s read on and check. Aha! I was right!” or “Wait a second! Now she’s saying that (Rover hates vegetables too), so I was wrong. My new prediction is that (she’s going to toss the asparagus into the trash masher) because now I’m noticing that (the family is talking a lot about their beautiful new trash masher).”

The more skilled your child gets, the more he can be challenged. If he gets really good at predicting and revising predictions about what characters will do, you can try some more-sophisticated predictions. This will require that you tap into your child’s growing understanding of the patterns in stories.

Some of these patterns are:

Problem/solution: “I know that in books there’s often a problem that a character or group of characters has to solve. I noticed that in this book (the character is afraid of heights). But I also noticed the fact that (he loves his Dad, with whom he is on a trip in the mountains). This makes me think that maybe the character is going to (overcome his fear of heights) by (saving his Dad from an accident on the mountain top).”

A life lesson: “I noticed that the author said that (playing with fire is dangerous). I think the author is going to teach the reader a life lesson by having the heroine (cause a fire); then she’ll learn (the error of her ways when she sees the harm she has done to her sister’s new condo).”

Characters change: “I noticed that the character has been (saying bad things about black people). I also noticed that (an African American ambulance driver moved in next door). As a result, I think the character is going to change (when the driver saves him or somebody he loves).”

There are similar books in this genre: “I noticed that in biographies the person being written about usually (overcomes a personal difficulty to become an achiever). I think that in this book the difficulty is (the fact that she was blind and still wanted to win the Olympics).” The same type of pattern can be looked for in mysteries (the detective has a special skill, job, or personality trait that helps her solve the crime) and in science fiction stories (evil is threatening the world and someone who doesn’t see himself as a hero has to save the day).

There are other books by this author: “I’ve read a couple of other books by this author. In her books the main character always (finds an eccentric adult who can teach her to love her own uniqueness). I think maybe in this book (she’ll learn from her Harley-riding grandmother).”

Remember, in all of these cases you’re modeling your own thinking for your child. Gradually, after a few books, try to turn the modeling into a shared conversation. “Oh my gosh, the hero just said that (he dreamed his twin sister is still alive and calling to him from the Haunted Zone). What do you think he’s going to do?”

Always have the experience be fun and relaxed. Never grill your child. Research indicates that if reading becomes stressful, electrical impulses shift away from the brain’s learning center and toward the brain’s self-defense center. It then becomes physically impossible for your child to develop greater comprehension. Learning and stress are mutually and biologically exclusive.

Number 2: Questioning the Text

By predicting, you’ve already begun questioning the text. When a reader develops a theory and later confirms or revises that theory, she is questioning the text. (“I believe that the trapeze artist must have killed the bearded lady because he’s the only person with the ability to fling himself through a second story window.”) (“Oh wait, the trapeze artist was in love with her but the lion tamer is really her brother and second in line to inherit the family fortune. Maybe Mr. Big Cat, her brother, is the killer.”) There are additional ways that a good reader questions the text:

• Where am I in the story? I lost my train of thought.

• What does the author want me to learn? How do I know?

• Does the author have a particular point of view that others might not have?

• Is the author trying to control my thinking with tricky language?

• Is the author trying to control my thinking by leaving out information?

• Does the author’s opinion or facts go along with what I know about the world?

Where Am I in the Story? I Lost My Train of Thought.

Admit it. You’re squirming right now. This has happened to you, hasn’t it? Relax. It happens to all of us. Not to worry. Lack of sleep, stress, and hunger can all contribute to this problem. And usually it’s temporary. But young readers lose their train of thought for another reason. No one teaches them how to hang on to their train of thought. If they’re natural readers, swell. If not, they’re in trouble.

There are two easy solutions to this problem. It’s called stickies and fingers. Not to be confused with sticky fingers. That’s a totally different problem and you’ll just have to go out and buy moist wipes.

Let’s start with stickies. You’ve probably got some on your refrigerator right now. Yeah, those. The adhesive pads on which you put your shopping list? They can help your child read. Go to the store and buy the little ones. You may find the ones shaped like arrows to be particularly helpful.

Have your child trace one idea through the book using the stickies. For example, every time you learn something about the main character’s feelings, put a sticky on that spot in the book. After your child has read a chapter, have her look back at the stickies and say what she noticed at each spot. Then, a day or so later, when she’s ready to read another chapter, have her skim through the stickies from all of the previous chapters, saying what she remembered. Literacy experts call this accumulating text, a fancy way of saying practicing remembering.

Begin by doing this with your child. Show her how you use the stickies. Later on, let her try it on her own.

Another way of accumulating text is to use five fingers. Each time your child reads a chapter, have her practice saying the most important events by checking them off across five fingers. Typically, children say too much. When trying to summarize, they spit out every minor incident in the story and mention every minor detail. Together, you and your child can practice boiling down the events of the last chapter, or the story thus far in five clear points. It’s not as easy as it sounds. A lot of adults can’t do it, so give your kid time.

Another problem you might encounter is that your child neglects to name the important characters when retelling the story. Practice this, too. For further practice, you can make a game of summarizing what the two of you did at the mall, at grandma’s house, in the park, and so on. The better your child becomes at retelling events, the better a reader and thinker she’ll be.

Number 3: Using Text Features

Parents love to buy books for kids. For the younger ones, it’s picture books, fairy tales, and simple chapter books. For older kids there are all sorts of novels: fantasy, mystery, science fiction, adventure stories. Sometimes parents worry that letting kids read fiction will give them a distorted picture of reality. However, a more common feeling is that passionate young readers are very creative in all sorts of ways, and they tend to be quite self-confident, too.

Children who immerse themselves in novels grow up to be creative problem-solvers. Look for a person who has developed a new solution to an old problem and you’re likely to find an avid reader—and you’ll be able to trace the habit back to childhood.

Reading novels is great for kids, but it isn’t enough. They also need exposure to nonfiction—lots of it. There are truckloads of research to show that kids who are exposed to lots of different facts about the world are better readers. Why? Because comprehension involves not just the skill of reading, but knowledge of the countless facts and references that one finds in books, magazines, and newspapers. It’s what the literacy gurus call background knowledge.

There are many ways to build background knowledge. There are the fancy and formal ways—trips to museums ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: At Long Last: A Training Manual for Parents
• CHAPTER 1: The Big Six: The Key Comprehension Skills That Your Child Must Master
• CHAPTER 2: Picking Appropriate Books
• CHAPTER 3: Modern Literacies: From Web Sites to Video Games
• CHAPTER 4: Meditation for a Better Brain
• CHAPTER 5: Building Background Knowledge with Idiomatic Expressions
• CHAPTER 6: Building Background Knowledge with Popular Proverbs and Sayings
• CHAPTER 7: Memory Games
• CHAPTER 8: Study Skills
• CHAPTER 9: Writing Builds Better Readers
• CHAPTER 10: Multiple Intelligence Strategies That Improve Critical Thinking
• CHAPTER 11: Boys and Reading: A Very Special Challenge
• CHAPTER 12: Learning Disabilities: What to Know and What to Do
• Conclusion
• About the Author