The NYS-MEP Comprehension Professional Learning Community met on October 14, 2021 for the first meeting in a series of seven. Please see the topical outline below of content discussed, as well as pre-reading, meeting materials, and additional reading resources and references.
I. Memorizing vs. Learning
When information is not committed to long-term memory, students’ working memory has duration and capacity limitations (Sweller, 1994). Students cannot hold random disconnected information in working memory for a long period of time – the new information must connect to information stored in long-term memory. Students require adequate knowledge of how all these facts fit together. “Facts that are placed into a rich structure are easier to remember than isolated or disconnected ones” (NAS, 2018, p. 50).
II. Comprehension: Construction-Integration Model (Kinstch, 1998)
“When we read, we use our knowledge along with our perceptions of what we think the text says to literally build, or construct, mental representations of what the text means. Once those representations are constructed, we can merge, or integrate, the information in those models with the knowledge stored in our minds. When we achieve that integration, we call it learning; we literally know more than we did before the reading” (Duke et al., 2011, p. 53.)
- Surface – the exact wording
- Text-based representation – what the text says: meanings of words and clauses
- Situation model – what the text means or the state of affairs described in a text beyond the text itself; prior knowledge is needed.
III. Background and Prior Knowledge
A. Students’ prior knowledge supports comprehension and learning
- Students require adequate background knowledge or know to access relevant prior knowledge.
- Attention redirection through relevance instructions
B. Why prior knowledge matters
- Increases processing speed
- Focuses attention
- Enhances inferencing
- Facilitate comprehension
- Promotes transfer
When students do not have the knowledge necessary to comprehend a particular text, such knowledge needs to be built; one cannot activate what is not there, and one cannot strategize about things one does not know.” – Dr. Julie Learned, Dr. Darin Stockdill & Dr. Elizabeth Moje “Integrating Reading Strategies and Knowledge Building in Adolescent Literacy Instruction”
Learning is the result to constructing and integrating information with prior knowledge.
IV. Transfer and Relevance
Transfer is the students’ ability to “treat” a new concept, problem, or phenomenon as similar to one(s) experienced before. Transfer can also consist of two sets of processes: Initial learning followed by reusing or applying what was learned.
Relevance: Information can be applied to personal interests, contexts, or cultural experiences of students (personal relevance). Information can be connected to real-world issues, problems, and contexts (life relevance)
V. Application – Concepts in Social Studies
Pre-Reading (fourth grade children's text) - used for discussion
- ReadWorks, A Tea Party in Boston
- What does the text say?
- What does it mean?
- What prior knowledge do students require to access meaning?
Meeting Materials
- Graphic
- Glossary
- PowerPoint
Additional reading
- Building Knowledge Article (unpublished, By Kathleen Lord)
- The Science of Learning
- Essential Elements of Fostering and Teaching Reading Comprehension
References
Bransford, J.D. (1984). Schema activation and schema acquisition: Comments on Richard C. Anderson’s remarks. In Learning to read in American Schools: Basal readers and content texts (pp. 259-272). Lawrence Erlbaum Publisher.
Chi, M. T. H. & VanLehn, K. A. (2012). Seeing deep structures from the interactions of surface features. Educational Psychologist, 47, 177 – 188.
Donovan, M.S. & Bransford, J.D. (2005). Introduction. In M.S. Donovan & J.D. Bransford (Eds.), How students learn: History in the classroom (pp. 1-26). Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Duke, N.K., Pearson, P.D., Strachan, S.L., & Billman, A.K. (2011). Essential elements of fostering and teaching reading comprehension. In S. J. Samuels & A.E. Farstrup (Eds.). What research has to say about reading instruction (4th ed., pp. 51 – 93). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Lord, K.M. (under revision). Disciplinary concepts: Fourth graders’ comprehension of recurring history concepts. Journal of Research in Childhood Education.
Lord, K.M., Noel, A.M., & Slevin, B. (2016). Social studies concepts: An analysis of the NAEP and states’ standards. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 30, 389-405.
McCrudden, M. T., & Schraw, G. (2007). Relevance and goal-focusing in text processing. Educational Psychology Review, 19, 113– 29.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018). How people learn II: Learners, contexts, and cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/24783.