“Early research shows that basic knowledge plays a role,” says Causalai Vikumar, a professor of education at Texas University A&M, who studies reading instructions and has recently created a study that sheds more light on the debate. “People with good basic knowledge seem to read more quickly and understand more quickly.”
For some children, especially for children from wealthy families, she said, basic knowledge is “enough” to unlock the reading understanding, but not everyone. “If we want all children to read, we have proven that they can be taught with the right strategies,” Wijekumar said. She has a research study to support her position.
Wijekumar agrees that the punching of students at the main moment or the purpose of the author is not useful, since the struggling reader cannot come up with a point or purpose of thin air. (She is also not a fan of emphasizing keywords or graphic organizers, as general strategies for understanding reading in schools.) Instead, Wijekumar advocates a step-by-step process designed in the 1970s by her mentor and research partner, Bonnie J. Meyer, Professor Emeritus in Penn State.
The first step is to direct students through a series of questions while reading, such as “Is there a problem?” “What caused it?” And “Is there a solution?” Based on their answers, students can decide which structure the passage follows: cause and effect, problem and solution, comparisons or consistency. Students then fill in the blanks – like in a Mad Libs worksheet – to help create a basic idea for an idea. Finally, they practice expanding this idea with the relevant details to form a summary.
Wijekumar analyzes Cinderella’s story for me using her approach. The problem? Cinderella is harassed by her stepmother and sisters. We learn this because it is forced to deal with additional obligations and is not allowed to attend the ball. The cause of the problem? They are jealous of her. That’s why they take away her nice clothes. Finally, the decision: the fairy godfather helps Cinderella to go to the ball and meet Prince charming. The students can then collect all these elements to come up with the main idea: Cinderella is harassed by the stepmother and sisters because they are jealous of her, but a fairy godfather saves her.
This is a formal approach and there are certainly other ways to see or express the basic idea. That way I would not analyze Cinderella. I would assume that this is a story of never giving up your dreams, even if your life is unhappy now. But Wijekumar says this is a useful start for students who fight the most.
“It is very structured and systematic and it provides a strong base,” Wijekumar said. “This is just a starting point. You can take it and put more things, but 99 percent of children are having difficulty starting.”
Wijekumar has turned the meyer strategy into a computerized teacher called ITSS, which means intelligent training using a structural strategy. About 200,000 students worldwide use ITSS. The Non -Profit Organization of Wijekumar, Literacy.ioCharges the $ 40 student school plus teacher training, which can manage $ 800 per teacher, depending on the size of the school.
Teachers allows students to practice understanding of reading at their own pace. Name was one of the only Three online training technologies This demonstrates clear evidence to improve students’ achievements, according to a February 2021 report of the Institute of Educational Sciences, Research and Development Activity of the US Department of Education.
Since then, Wijekum has continued to refine its reading program and test it with more students. Her last study, A large -scale replication in high poverty schoolsHe was extremely successful according to one criterion, but not as successful, according to another measure. It was published last year in the Journal of Educational Psychology.
A team of six researchers, led by Wijekumar, randomly appointed 17 of 33 schools in the northeast and along the Texas border to teach reading with ITS while the other 16 schools taught reading as usual. More than 1,200 five -graders practiced their reading understanding using ISSS for 45 minutes a week for six months. Their teachers received 16 hours of training on how to teach understanding of reading in this way and also provided traditional analog lessons to read their students.
After six months, students who received this reading instruction published significantly higher score designed by a researcher that measures students’ ability to write basic ideas, recall key information and understand text structures. However, there is no statistically significant difference between the two groups of a standardized test, the gray silent reading test (GSRT) that measures the overall understanding of students. Researchers do not report state test results.
More studied studies with more wealthy students showed improvements of the standardized test to understand reading. It is difficult to understand why this study showed giant benefits using one measure, but none using another.
Significant changes to the instruction for these high poverty students were needed. Some were so weak readers that the Wijekumar team had to make easier texts so that students could practice the method. But the biggest change was 14 hours of additional teacher training and creating teachers’ guides for teachers. Wijekumar strategies directly contradict what the textbooks of their schools told them. At first, the students were confused with the teachers who teach them in one way and another. Thus, Wijekumar works with teachers to scrape their instructions as a textbook and teach it on the way.
I consulted with Marisa Filderman, a respected reading expert who has reviewed literature on understanding instructions for children fighting with Reading and is an assistant at the University of Alabama. She said that despite the imperfect evidence of this study, she sees the body of Wijekumar research as proof that the explicit instructions for strategy is important in addition to building basic knowledge and dictionary. But this is still developing science and research is not yet clear enough to direct teachers on how long to spend on each aspect.
Improving reading understanding is crucial and I will look for new research to help you answer these teachers’ questions.
Shirley Liu contributed to the reporting.
This story about Teaching the main idea was written by Jill Barchay and produced by Hachinger’s reportNon -profit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Point and others Hachinger BulletinsS