Comprehension Through Conversation

Comprehension Through Conversation

Author: Maria Nichols

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780325007939

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Maria Nichols offers not possible lessons but full descriptions of actual lessons. Here you'll find no ivory-tower examples of what might be, but examples of what is already available in many classrooms. These are classrooms of the sort that we hope our children and grandchildren are lucky enough to encounter - not once in a while but routinely. - Richard L. Allington To say this is an exceptional book about teaching comprehension would be to trivialize it. With superb examples and flawless logic Nichols demonstrates how to orchestrate conversations that build literate habits of mind. - Peter H. Johnston, author of Choice Words Comprehension Through Conversation captures the power and essence of purposeful, engaging instruction...and reminds us of the real purpose for comprehension instruction: to understand the deeper issues in texts and discuss these ideas to construct meaning. - Nancy L. Akhavan author of How to Align Literacy Instruction and Standards When it comes to reading comprehension, talk isn't cheap, it's a valuable way to help children think, articulate their opinions about a text, and get the most from their reading experiences. Comprehension Through Conversation is a practical guide to comprehension, conversation, and collaboration. Maria Nichols invites you to listen in on reading workshops where purposeful book talk leads students to deeper understandings of fiction, nonfiction, and the world beyond. Moving forward from the widely understood concept that exchanging ideas builds students' comprehension, Nichols shows you specific ways to use conversation as a scaffolding that bridges prior knowledge to more advanced reading skills and techniques as well as to big ideas such as themes. Her useful ideas for conversations begin with lesson designs that use read-alouds to spark discussions, lead to suggestions for units of study that support children as they read progressively more complex texts, and ultimately build toward fully independent reading and thinking. Start a new dialogue with your students about reading, thinking, and sharing. Open your curriculum to the types of smart book discussions in Comprehension Through Conversation. You'll discover that when it comes to increasing reading comprehension, encouraging critical thinking, and creating literate habits of mind, purposeful talk is priceless.


Art of Comprehension

Art of Comprehension

Author: Trevor A. Bryan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-10

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1003842623

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The Art of Comprehension' [creates] an invisible thread that stretches across varied professional contexts to connect art, literacy, and all content areas. From the forward by Dr. Mary Howard ' The Art of Comprehension: Exploring Visual Texts to Foster Comprehension, Conversation, and Confidence, Trevor A. Bryan introduces his signature method for enhancing students' understanding and thinking about all textsboth written and visual. By using what he calls 'access lenses (such as faces, body language, sound/silence) you can prompt all your students to became active explorers and meaning-makers. Organically and spontaneously, your classroom will become more student-centered.' ' Discover inventive ways to prompt students to notice, think about, and synthesize visualsusing the same observation and comprehension skills they can bring to reading and writing Learn about ways to unravel layers of meaning in picture books, chapter books, artwork, poetry, and informational text Explore the book's eclectic collection of art and illustration, by acclaimed illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, 19th century masters, and more. Bryan's approach allows all students to engage meaningfully with texts and join the classroom conversation.' With this comes the greatest reward of all: confidence and independence for all kinds of learners.


Building Bigger Ideas

Building Bigger Ideas

Author: Maria Nichols

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9780325098159

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Study after study shows that as students grow, they become increasingly focused on technology-driven communication. Cyber-dialogue replaces face-to-face interactions in all aspects of their lives. And yet, has there ever been a greater need for students to learn the art of "talk," to be able to converse "live" with others, to collaborate, negotiate, and learn from one another? To use talk to think, and to build new ideas? Maria Nichols guides us beyond teaching students to talk politely about books to teaching them to have meaningful conversations-purposeful talk that serves as a tool for constructing understanding with others. She provides a flexible process that gives teachers a solid foundation in facilitating discussions, allowing them to meet the challenges of unpredictable, exploratory talk in the elementary classroom. She shows teachers: strategies to address different talk personalities and the dynamic nature of talk specific teaching moves to use when facilitating talk how to use a cycle of focus, facilitation, and feedback to deepen students' ability with talk important "look-fors" to assess children's talk with an inquiry mindset. The voices of children engaged in meaningful classroom conversations are scattered throughout the book, allowing teachers to see how Maria's strategies work. "What I hope emerges from children's talk," Maria writes, "is their brilliance, the depth of thinking and understanding that becomes possible when they engage in purposeful talk, and the sheer joy of dialogic classrooms."


Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency

Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency

Author: Irene C. Fountas

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 612

ISBN-13:

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A practical guide for teaching comprehension and fluency in the kindergarten through eighth-grade classroom with instruction on reading levels, writing about reading, and interactive read-aloud and literature study; and contains a DVD with over 100 blackline masters, forms, and checklists.


Academic Conversations

Academic Conversations

Author: Jeff Zwiers

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-10

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1003843298

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Conversing with others has given insights to different perspectives, helped build ideas, and solve problems. Academic conversations push students to think and learn in lasting ways. Academic conversations are back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging, and negotiating relevant ideas. In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford address the challenges teachers face when trying to bring thoughtful, respectful, and focused conversations into the classroom. They identify five core communications skills needed to help students hold productive academic conversation across content areas: Elaborating and Clarifying Supporting Ideas with Evidence Building On and/or Challenging Ideas Paraphrasing Synthesizing This book shows teachers how to weave the cultivation of academic conversation skills and conversations into current teaching approaches. More specifically, it describes how to use conversations to build the following: Academic vocabulary and grammar Critical thinking skills such as persuasion, interpretation, consideration of multiple perspectives, evaluation, and application Literacy skills such as questioning, predicting, connecting to prior knowledge, and summarizing An academic classroom environment brimming with respect for others' ideas, equity of voice, engagement, and mutual support The ideas in this book stem from many hours of classroom practice, research, and video analysis across grade levels and content areas. Readers will find numerous practical activities for working on each conversation skill, crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and using conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers an in-depth approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.


Nurturing Narratives

Nurturing Narratives

Author: Lauren Franke

Publisher: AAPC Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 9781934575697

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Accompanying CD-ROM contains assessment tools and worksheets.


Comprehension Going Forward

Comprehension Going Forward

Author: Ellin Oliver Keene

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780325041636

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Examines the characteristics of effective comprehension instruction, explores the range of applications it has for students, and discusses areas for improvement.


The Comprehension Toolkit

The Comprehension Toolkit

Author: Stephanie Harvey

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780325005836

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Grades 3-6 "Active literacy is the means to deeper understanding and diverse, flexible thinking, and is the hallmark of our approach to teaching and learning. Reading, writing, talking, listening, and investigating are the cornerstones of active literacy. The Toolkit captures the language of thinking we use to explicitly teach kids to comprehend the wide variety of informational text they encounter. Through the Toolkit lessons, we demonstrate how the kids adopt and adapt our teaching language as their learning language." - Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis In The Comprehension Toolkit, Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis have created an intensive curricular resource designed to help students understand, respond to, and learn from nonfiction text. By actively engaging students in reading, talking, and writing about information and ideas, The Comprehension Toolkit provides a foundation for developing independent readers and learners across the curriculum and throughout the school year. Framed around the Gradual Release of Responsibility approach, The Comprehension Toolkit provides scaffolded comprehension strategy instruction. First through modeling and guided practice, then releasing responsibility to students through collaborative practice, independent practice, and application, the Toolkit's lessons teach students to use comprehension strategies flexibly in a variety of texts, topics, and subject areas. Professional Support A series of resources introduce, support, and extend the Toolkit's core lessons. The Teacher's Guide outlines the thinking behind the Toolkit and describes its components, instructional design, and assessment options. The Resources for The Comprehension Toolkit CD-ROM provides an array of print and video resources including a photographic overview of an Active Literacy Classroom, downloadable research articles, templates, assessment masters, and full-colour lesson text. Extend and Investigate helps you extend the Toolkit's comprehension strategies across the curriculum and throughout the year. It provides strategies for content area reading and research, textbook reading, test reading, and a variety of practical bibliographies. 6 Strategy Clusters The 26 strategy lessons in The Comprehension Toolkit are organized into six Strategy Cluster books. Informational Text A series of short, engaging, real-world informational texts provide an effective context for using and practising the Toolkit's comprehension strategies. The Source Book of Short Text provides two kinds of nonfiction text: Lesson Text, 24 articles from children's magazines; and Nonfiction Short Text, 43 short informational articles specially written for the Toolkit.


Talking About Text: Guiding Students to Increase Comprehension Through Purposeful Talk

Talking About Text: Guiding Students to Increase Comprehension Through Purposeful Talk

Author: Maria Nichols

Publisher: Teacher Created Materials

Published: 2008-05-15

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 1425891608

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Effective research-based strategies, model lessons, and support is provided for K-8 teachers in this professional guide which defines purposeful talk, why it is important, and how it increases comprehension to help learners better understand text. With this guide, teachers can empower learners to have purpose-driven discussions in order to develop their thinking skills and enhance comprehension. Talking About Text takes a detailed look at the body of behaviors that enable learners to talk in a constructive manner in order to get the talking started. Model lessons demonstrate how to utilize effective strategies to think and talk about text. Suggestions for working through difficulties with purposeful talk are also included, making this resource especially useful for teachers by providing comfort in the realization that such difficulties are predictable and solvable. This resource is aligned to the interdisciplinary themes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and supports the Common Core State Standards. 112pp.


The Fountas & Pinnell Literacy Continuum

The Fountas & Pinnell Literacy Continuum

Author: Irene C. Fountas

Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780325060781

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There has never been a more comprehensive resource available to teachers that does what the continuum does - provide specific behaviors and understandings that are required at each level for students to demonstrate thinking within, beyond, and about the text. These behaviors and understandings describe what students will be expected to do in order to effectively read and understand the text. More in-depth, more intuitive, and more essential than ever-The Fountas & Pinnell Literacy Continuum, Expanded Edition enables teachers to construct a common vision for student achievement that effectively and efficiently engages all students in the robust, authentic and meaningful literacy learning every child deserves. The Literacy Continuum provides a way to look for specific evidence of learning from prekindergarten through grade eight, and across eight instructional contexts. Each instructional context contributes substantially, in different but complementary ways, to students' development of the literacy process. With this indispensable literacy tool, Fountas and Pinnell remind you of The Literacy Continuum's critical role in transforming literacy teaching and learning. (Re)Discover The Fountas & Pinnell Literacy Continuum, Expanded Edition to: elevate your language and literacy expertise develop an understanding of the demands of texts on readers build your understanding of the reading and writing process and how it changes over time hone your observation of students' literacy behaviors teach toward student integration of the Systems of Strategic Actions articulate the literacy curriculum within and across grade levels activate the responsive teaching that meets students where they are and brings them forward with intention and precision build professional learning opportunities with colleagues create a common vision and common language for literacy in your school. Look for these new enhancements inside: Streamlined organization and navigation Expanded behaviors and examples across the continua First appearance of a behavior or goal or text characteristic is indicated by a red square (Behaviors are acquired and then elaborated over time) Clear organization of and explicit links to the Systems of Strategic Actions Four-color design for clarity and focus Also check out our on-demand mini-course: Thinking and Talking About Books Across the Day.