7. Reading Comprehension (informational/expository texts)

A teacher can best help sixth graders draw inferences from informational text by asking them to complete which of the following statements?

• In my opinion...

• The passage suggests...

• In comparison...

• The author's first point is...

A sixth-grade teacher gives students several persuasive essays that present contrasting opinions on a current social issue. The teacher then asks students to consider the following questions as they read the texts.

1. What is the author's opinion on the issue?
2. How might the author's background influence his or her opinion?
3. What evidence does the author use to support his or her opinion?

These questions are likely to be most effective for helping students:

• monitor comprehension of informational texts.

• identify the theme in expository texts.

• draw inferences from informational texts.

• analyze point of view in expository texts.

A third-grade teacher periodically reads aloud from a chapter in content-area textbooks and describes his thought processes as he reads. Following is an example:

"'The moon does not shine on its own. The sun's light reflects off the moon'. Hmm. I'm imagining that the sun is like a flashlight shining on the moon in the dark. 'As moon rotates, only the part that faces the sun is visible from the Earth.' I'm not quite sure what "visible" means, but is sounds kind of like vision, which I know has to do with eyes. It probably means the part that we can see from the Earth. Now, that makes me wonder-- why do we see different amounts of the moon at different times? Let's see if the next part of the chapter explains this..."

This practice is most likely to promote students' reading proficiency by:

• exposing them to new vocabulary in context.

• modeling for them metacognitive comprehension strategies.

• giving them an example of fluent oral reading.

• summarizing for them the main ideas of an expository text.

Skimming is likely to be the most effective strategy for accomplishing which of the following reading tasks?

• evaluating the validity of information on an Internet Web site

• previewing a chapter in a content-area textbook

• synthesizing information from various sources for a research report

• studying specific facts for a content-area exam

A sixth-grade class is working on an Internet research project about various natural resources and their uses. The teacher could best support students' effective use of the Internet for their research by

• providing students with a checklist of questions that prompt critical evaluation of information on Web sites.

• giving students a list of Web sites that have been preapproved based on the sites' reading levels.

• encouraging students to search for Web sites that are easy to navigate and that contain familiar vocabulary.

• teaching students to emply a variety of search engines to locate relevant Web sites.

Which of the following text features are students likely to find most useful when previewing informational texts such as library books for a research project?

• index

• bibliography

• glossary

• table of contents

A third-grade teacher observes that students who read aloud fluently also demonstrate greater comprehension of expository texts. The best explanation for this is that fluent readers:

• possess a self-awareness that allows them to use metacognitive skills efficiently.

• have already developed the base of background knowledge typically covered by textbooks.

• have well-developed skills for decoding any level of text word by word.

• are able to focus their full attention and cognitive resources on the meaning of a text.

A fifth-grade teacher gives students a reading guide for an informational text that they will be reading independently. The reading guide contains various activities, including prompting students to summarize certain passages, to explain relationships between concepts according to specific information in the text, and to determine the meaning of domain-specific words based on appositives or appositive phrases embedded in the text. This reading guide is likely to be most effective for achieving which of the following instructional purposes?

• developing students' ability to read the text evaluatively

• encouraging students to read and interact closely with the text

• supporting students' development of prosodic reading skills

• teaching students to adjust their reading rate based on text complexity

Two proficient readers are answering postreading comprehension questions about a chapter in a content-area textbook.

The first student demonstrates exceptional recall of details from the chapter but has difficulty answering questions about the gist of the chapter.

The second student can give an outstanding summary of the chapter but has difficulty remembering specific facts from the chapter.

Which of the following best explains the most likely reason for the students' varied understanding of the text?

• The first student is more proficient than the second student at using metacognitive comprehension strategies to make sense of the text.

• Each student applied different reading comprehension skills when reading the text.

• The second student is more proficient at reading for literal understanding than for inferential understanding.

• Each student brought a unique set of prior experiences to the reading of the text.

An English Language Learner reads academic texts fluently in her primary language but is struggling to understand her content-area textbooks in English. This student would likely benefit most from engaging in which of the following activities?

• translating textbook reading assignments from English into her primary language

• receiving reading comprehension instruction with texts written in her primary language

• learning to use metacognitive reading strategies with English text

• reading texts in her primary language that cover the same material as her English textbooks