6. Reading Comprehension (Imaginative/literary texts)

Which of the following strategies would be most appropriate to use to promote second-grade students ability to analyze key ideas and details in a literary text?

• explicitly teaching students the key features and conventions of different literary genres

• prompting students to evaluate the significance of a story's setting with respect to its theme

• helping students create a story map of the main characters in a story and the events with which they are involved

• encouraging students to clarify their understanding of a story by reflecting on their personal experiences

After students in a sixth-grade class finish reading a historical novel about the U.S. Civil War, the teacher asks each student to bring in an object, or a picture or illustration of an object, that, to them, represents the book. The students must also identify a passage or passages from the book that they can use to support their choices when they present their objects to the class. This activity is most likely to promote students' reading development by helping them understand the importance of:

• determining an author's stated or implied main point of view.

• using text structure to develop a general summary of a literary work.

• identifying a novel's mood by analyzing the author's use of figurative language.

• basing interpretations about a literary work on textual evidence.

A fifth grade teacher guides students in reading a complex literary text. First, the teacher reads aloud the beginning of the text as the students follow along silently in their copies. Next, the teacher rereads key phrases and sentences, asking students what the author meant by certain words. Finally, the teacher and students reread the section aloud together with expression. The teacher repeats these steps with each section of the text. This activity promotes reading proficiency primarily by:

• modeling for students how to engage in close reading of academic texts.

• developing students' word consciousness and love of interesting new words.

• helping students achieve grade-level fluency benchmarks for accuracy and rate.

• encouraging students to apply metacognitive comprehension strategies as they read.

Sixth-grade students have just finished reading a chapter in a novel and are getting ready to write an entry in their response journals. The teacher could most effectively develop students' literary response skills by assigning which of the following journal prompts?

• What new vocabulary words did you learn when reading this chapter? List and define the new words from the chapter.

• What happened in the chapter? Describe two or three events from the chapter.

• What do you think is the main idea or theme of the novel? Relate specific events in this chapter to the theme you suggest.

• Which characters are mentioned in this chapter? List each of the characters.

A second-grade teacher reads a trade book aloud to the class. Which of the following post-reading activities would be most likely to promote the students' comprehension of the story by enhancing their literary analysis skills?

• encouraging the students to identify the key vocabulary words in the story

• discussing with the students how the characters in the story respond to major events and challenges

• asking the students to reread the story silently and respond to several literal comprehension questions

• having the students "freewrite" about the story in their reading response journals

A fifth-grade class is about to read a play about the life of Harriet Tubman called "Travels on the Railroad." Which of the following pre-reading activities would best promote students' comprehension of the text?

• introducing the common elements of plays as a genre and looking at sections of a printed play as a class

• asking students to generate several questions about the play based on the play's title

• asking students to share what they already know about the time period during which the play takes place

• encouraging groups of students to create and perform their own short skits about the same subject

A second-grade teacher notices that one of her students lacks fluency when reading aloud. The first thing the teacher should do in order to help this student is assess whether the student also has difficulties with:

• predicting

• inferring

• metacognition

• decoding

Read the passage below; then answer the question that follows.

For the second time that week, Saul forgot to wash his hands after working on his painting. He had gotten so involved filling in the ocean in his picture that he had barely even heard the teacher telling everyone it was time to put away their easels and wash up for lunch. He had put his supplies away, but, still thinking about the ocean, he had gone straight to his desk. Now he saw that he was leaving blue paint handprints on his desk, on his shirt, on his books--even on his lunchbox. Estella looked over at him and joked, "Hey Saul!"You're the new King Midas! Only you turn everything to blue!" Saul rolled his eyes at her as he got back up to go to the sink.

This passage would be most suited for helping students:

• recognize a literary allusion.

• analyze story elements.

• predict future events.

• analyze an author's point of view.

Students in a third-grade class are working on an interdisciplinary unit on Native Americans of the Northeast. The teacher has selected a historical novel for students to read during the unit to help them gain insight into people's daily lives in a particular Native American nation at a particular point in time. However, the teacher is aware that the novel's text complexity may make comprehension difficult for a group of struggling readers in the class. Which of the following strategies would be most effective for the teacher to use to support struggling readers' comprehension of the novel and their purpose for reading?

• engaging the students in guided reading and rereading of key passages in the novel

• having the students stop after reading each chapter and try to summarize the key events of the plot in their own words

• asking the students to rewrite the story from the perspective of a different character in the novel

• encouraging the students to read key chapters of the novel aloud together by taking turns reading specific pages

Use the information below to answer the question.

Before reading aloud a book about a farm to a group of beginning readers, a first-grade teacher has the students brainstorm and briefly discuss words related to farms. Next, the teacher reads the text aloud from a big book, pointing to each word being read. Periodically, the teacher stops to discuss with students key concepts or events described in the text and to guide students in relating the text to the illustrations. After finishing the read-aloud, the teacher puts the book in the classroom library and encourages the students to read it on their own.

The students are most likely to be successful in their independent reading of the book if:

• the students can decode and understand the meaning of at least 95 percent of the words in the text.

• the text does not include compound sentences joined by coordinating conjunctions such as and, or, or but.

• the students come from homes where silent reading is extensively modeled and encouraged by caregivers.

• the text primarily deals with fictional rather than factual accounts of characters and/or events