October 1998 Video Presents Strategies for Assessing Reading Skills
By LEE SHERMAN
Anew training video, The Journey of a Reader, provides expert guidance on strategies for gauging students’ ability to decode, comprehend, interpret, and critique what they read.
The half-hour tape blends scenes from Northwest classrooms with the playfulness of Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini, the drama of Othello, the whimsy of The Camel Dances by Arnold Lobel, and the lyricism of To Kill a Mockingbird. Words and illustrations from these and other literary works are woven in and around the classroom vignettes, in which students pore over and ponder stories, poems, and plays under the skillful direction of their teachers. Activities featured in the video are designed to assess students’ skills in reading between the lines, and, ultimately, "beyond the lines," in the words of Dr. Lesley Thompson, the NWREL reading assessment expert who wrote and produced the video.
"When good readers read," Thompson says, "they read critically, they read deeply, they apply information, and they pull on their experience to understand the world of ideas and subjects.
We want all readers to develop the skills of critical reading."
The video is organized around the "traits of an effective reader" developed by the Laboratory’s Assessment and Evaluation Program. The six traits—the discrete skill areas that identify what good readers do—are:
1. Decoding conventions of writing, organization, and genre. Advanced students are able to recognize correct grammatical constructions, understand the function of punctuation, and have an awareness of spelling conventions. They can identify the title, author, and components of the text, such as the table of contents and chapter headings. And they can identify the genre.
2. Establishing comprehension. Students can state or write a thesis statement; name major and minor examples of the thesis; identify the turning moments with facts and examples; and connect the turning points to the main thesis.
3. Realizing context. Students can use examples from the text to discuss the author’s intentions and inferred meanings, both implicit and explicit.
4. Developing interpretation. Students can identify problems in texts and resolve them using clues and evidence.
5. Integrating for synthesis. Students can connect text with other texts, subjects, and experiences.
6. Critiquing for evaluation. Students can, with insight and evidence, critique ideas and perspectives found in the reading.
In an engaging and entertaining format, lavishly illustrated with images from children’s literature, the video presents 17 activities or tools that teachers can use to assess students’ critical reading skills. These tools, which Thompson classifies as either "ongoing" or "cumulative," have the important plus of building students’ skills at the same time that they assess those skills, Thompson notes.
Among the classroom vignettes presented in the video are these:
A class of third-graders reading Smoky Night, a story by Eve Bunting about a family caught up in an urban riot, huddles in small groups for a "say anything" activity, in which they talk about turning points, details of interest, and main ideas. Then, as a class, they make a "story web," which graphically organizes the events in the story. A group of advanced-placement high schoolers read the first few pages of Clytie, a short story by Eudora Welty. Students then write their own version of what happened next. They attempt to capture the writer’s tone and voice, while remaining true to the story’s historical period and culture. A kindergarten teacher has covered a story illustration with construction paper. As the class watches, she tears off a small piece of paper to reveal a corner of the picture, then asks the children to make guesses about the illustration and the content of the story based on the clues they can see. Gradually, she tears more and more strips of paper away, until the children, giggling delightedly, see a picture of a camel in a tutu and ballet shoes. A 10th-grade teacher leads a group of students through a role-play based on the plot of Shakespeare’s Othello. Kindergartners listen to their teacher read Frog Girl and Storm Boy, two picture books by Paul Owen Lewis. Then, with prompting from their teacher, they talk about similarities and differences in the two stories. Read-alouds, oral interviews, buddy reading, "Dear Author" letters, and dialogue journals are among the other activities featured in the video. Together, they are designed to reach all kinds of learners—visual, verbal, and hands-on, Thompson notes. To become critical readers, she says, students must be given "voice and choice" in their reading experiences.
"Students should be engaged with text and empowered as readers," Thompson notes. "Critical-reading strategies give them the tools they need to become independent readers and, ultimately, lifelong learners."
Accompanying the video are a facilitator’s guide and a set of masters for overheads and handouts for conducting a teacher-training workshop.
The Journey of a Reader, which is part of the "In the Classroom Video Training Series," can be ordered for $165 from IOX, Educational Research & Development, 28170 SW Boberg, Suite 1, Wilsonville, OR 97070. For more ordering information, contact IOX by phone at (503) 582-8958 or by fax at (503) 582-8938.
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