Bringing Decodable Texts to Life With Comprehension Strategies - Jill Lauren...

This session was led by Jill Lauren who wrote the text Jen's Web that we used as an exemplar. I chose this session as my main objective at ISTE is to do something for the Juniors, something for the seniors and something for me. This one was for our junior team.

When looking beyond barking at print effective reading instruction must be grounded in cognitive science rather than guessing. Comprehension is calculated as Word Recognition (WR) × Language Comprehension (LC) = Reading Comprehension (RC). Reading is never just loudly pronouncing words (barking at print) without processing meaning. Reading is highly complex, requiring the simultaneous interaction of the 5 pillars of literacy, working memory, and executive function.

• Readers must build three cognitive levels at the exact same time:

  • Decoding the literal words.

  • Integrating the text with prior knowledge.

  • Generating inferences to create a complete mental model.

Early Comprehension is vital and comprehension instruction should start early alongside phonics, rather than waiting until decoding is mastered. Learning to read and reading to learn happen simultaneously.

Inference: 

• Texts are rarely fully explicit. Authors leave gaps, making inference the ultimate predictor of long-term comprehension success.

• Local Inference: Word-level connections, such as understanding synonyms and tracking shifting pronoun references (a common stumbling block for poor comprehenders).

• Global Inference: Broader text-level themes, author's purpose, predictions, and cause-and-effect patterns.

• Proven Efficacy (Dr Amy Elleman, 2017): A meta-analysis shows explicit inference interventions over 2–10 months yield a strong effect size of 0.58. It significantly increases both literal and inferential outcomes for struggling readers.

• Teachers must actively teach students how to activate their background knowledge and explicitly model how to answer inferential questions.

Follow up tasks to support comprehension:

1. Discover the Cover

• Action: Before opening a text, have students look at the title and illustration to predict the story using a prediction box worksheet or the whiteboard.

• The Twist: Ask students to share a time they felt, thought, or acted like the character on the cover. This bridges prior knowledge directly into the context of the book to keep them engaged.

• Text Selection: Use high-quality, vocabulary-rich decodable books with full narrative arcs early on (e.g., Phonics Books like Jen’s Web or Whole Phonics resources) rather than relying solely on low-word repetitive readers.

2. Prediction Playground

• Action: Write 4 possible predictions on the board at a critical point in the text.

• The Twist: After reading a snippet, students choose a prediction, physically move to a corner of the room to discuss it with peers, and then defend their choice to the whole class using text evidence.

• Benefit: Cultivates essential self-questioning and self-explanation habits early.

3. Sentence Practice (True/False Detective)

• Action: Write two true sentences and two false sentences about the text on the board.

• The Twist: Students must identify the false sentences and explicitly prove why they are incorrect by pointing directly to evidence in the text.

• Benefit: Simultaneously builds sentence comprehension, self-monitoring, oral language, active listening, and text-based justification.

The ultimate goal is intrinsic motivation. Starting early with systematic decodable books allows students to experience immediate success, which in turn drives motivation. Intrinsic motivation leads to children reading more, which directly builds a larger vocabulary and broader world knowledge, allowing for deep comprehension.

Engage, Empower, Inspire... Reading around the Room

I have been thinking about creating a space on my blog to record the lessons that simply just work. These will be ideas (both old and new) that I have tweaked or reworked to appeal to my learners and help them make authentic and purposeful connections to their learning. 'Engage and inspire: Lessons that work!' is what I have decided to call this section and will be easy to find by clicking on the link in the page tabs under the header.

Today I decided to revive an oldie but a goodie. Reading around the Room was an activity I loved as a child because I got to choose what I wanted to read and I didn't have to sit at my desk or do a boring worksheet. It also gave me an opportunity to look at how others had done something and think about how their work was different to mine. At the time I didn't know that's what I was doing, but I do remember changing the way I did something based on other's work. 

We have recently created some great DLOs about the Ancient Olympics that have been shared on our blogs and displayed on the wall in the classroom. This activity was a collaborative research challenge and can be found here. I was really impressed with how well this activity was done and wanted to think of a way we could capitalise on it as we moved through the term. So rather than simply having a 'decoration' on the wall I turned it into an interactive learning space. 

             

The challenge I set this time is called the LS2 Quiz Challenge. It is actually a way of getting my learners to practise writing questions and answering them by using evidence from the text to support their thinking. 

I introduced this by modelling how I could use a ruler to help me focus on the words I was reading in the information held in this display. Dianne (my teaching buddy), was my partner and together we modelled what we wanted our ākonga to do. Their challenge is to read the information in pairs, co-construct a set of 10 questions using whiteboards then join up with another pair to co-construct and create a quiz where all the information can be found or inferred from what is on the display. This allows for rewindable opportunities as I saw today when one group had already moved onto answering a quiz, that they were running back to the wall to check their facts before recording their responses. That part was not something I reminded them they could do.

I am currently in the process of adding all the quiz links to our site and will timetable an opportunity for everyone to try out the different quizzes. With any new challenge I find if I limit the create options to ones everyone will find success with, I get the best buy in. This also allows for my learners to suggest their own ideas. Kahoot and Pear Deck have already been suggested to me as ways we could do this differently next time,

We must have 'sold' this challenge really well as there was a constant rotation of groups wanting to try the challenge. The next steps with this idea are to extend this challenge to encompass all the walls. I will think of further challenges to support our 'new' Reading around the Room activity as I see this as a great way to strengthen connections to learning whilst practising a wide variety of comprehension strategies. 

Current Events with a difference...

During our Manaiakalani shared staff meeting a few weeks ago I listened to a number of teachers sharing the ways they cover current events in their classrooms. This sparked my curiosity as my current approach has been to encourage my learners to explore the provocation by unpacking the content, looking at the information from both perspectives before forming an opinion based on fact. What I am aware of though, is when you complete this type of task you walk away and often never refer to it again. 

Teacher inquiry challenges you to look closely at your own practice. If what you are doing is 'missing the mark' or has become 'stale' then you need to get creative and find ways to adapt what you are doing to help your learners make stronger connections to the learning. I still wanted my learners to be able to talk about what was happening in the world, both nationally and internationally so I merged a few ideas I saw others doing and came up with a new approach.

I needed to make sure everyone understood the difference between national and international news so we began by unpacking these words. We then revisited author's purpose to consolidate that understanding before looking at the different reasons why a news editor would decide to run or print a story. These included timeliness, magnitude, oddity and emotive to name a few. (Idea sourced from here) This was a fantastic opportunity to gift and explore new vocabulary.

 

I then asked my learners to find a partner and set them the challenge of finding an example of each of these types of stories using national news that they read, watched or listened to. Once they had found an example they would need to talk about their reasons they felt it was best suited to the chosen category, then plot where it took place on a google map. The only written component of this task was to include the title of the news item or article and the exact location it took place in the map pin. 

This was a huge success and was something that could be achieved by all my learners, regardless of ability level. We stopped periodically throughout the lesson to share our news items and justify why these were chosen. I found that throughout these lessons I was continually modelling and reinforcing the use of the vocabulary in context.  

All completed tasks were posted on our blogs. Here is one example of the learning from Mele and Marieta. To see the interactive map you will need to follow the link to Mele and Marieta's blogs.

We repeated the challenge the following week with international current events. What impressed me was the retention of vocabulary and level of understanding behind the reasons news items are run and printed. Here is Alex, Jack, Joseph, Julian and Aung Naing's international current events map. These boys joined forces and had rich and deep conversations as they tried to persuade each other to come to a shared reasoning for their selections. To see the interactive map you will need to follow the link to Alex's blog.

Throughout this learning opportunity all my learners were on task and actively engaged. They were all eager to share their examples, with responses evolving to include a short summary of the content. I'm so glad that I took the time to adapt and change the way we explore current events in LS2!