Higher order thinking and the teaching of reading in the middle years

Hi everyone

Kylie here from Ripper Reading Resources.  Today I am going to share with you some of my favourite ideas for supporting higher order thinking when teaching reading.

I am passionate about the teaching of reading and it is the focus of my research.

High yield active comprehension strategies

Firstly, it is important to explicitly teach the high yield active comprehension strategies.  Some teachers introduce each strategy in isolation and then integrate each of the strategies as they are introduced.  These are some of my favourite resources for explicit comprehension strategy instruction:

I also like to include the high yield active comprehension strategies in literacy rotations.
I do this in a number of ways, including the use of hands-on resources.  These include my reading comprehension die for guided reading groups, reading comprehension strategy keys for literacy stations and the reading comprehension dice game.  

You can download the dice game for free by clicking on the image below:

4H Reading Strategy

I love the 4H reading strategy.  It's an innovation on Question-Answer-Relationships (QAR), however I have found that the children find the language much easier.  QAR is an evidence-based approach developed by Taffy Raphael.  The 4H reading strategy is an innovation on QAR and Three Level Guides.  

The 4H reading strategy is also an innovation on the 3H reading strategy, developed by Prof. Lorraine Graham, Professor of Learning Intervention at the University of Melbourne. See:  

Graham, L. & Wong, B.Y.L. (1993). Comparing two modes in teaching a question-answering strategy for enhancing reading comprehension: Didactic and self-instructional training.  Journal of Learning Disabilities, 26 (4), 270-279.

The 4H strategy is really simple - is the answer literal, right here in the text? Is the answer hidden, do I need to think and search? Is the answer my own opinion or based on my past experience; so is it in my head?  Or, is the answer how I feel and therefore in my heart?

I have created many resources based on the 4H reading strategy using picture books as a focus.  

For the next two weeks, you can download a free copy of my detective 4H reading strategy bookmarks by clicking here.  Find out about the complete resource by clicking on the image above.

If your students struggle with the categories and language of QAR, give the 4H reading strategy a whirl :)

Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching is another evidence-based approach developed by Palinscar and Brown that is proven to improve reading comprehension through small group discussions.  

A few years ago I extended the traditional four strategies in reciprocal teaching (i.e. predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising) to include more of the high yield active comprehension strategies.  You can read my published articles about this approach here - in English (guided reading) and Mathematics.  My latest versions of this work are my best (I think) and include interactive notebook pages and graphic organisers to support each of the high yield active comprehension strategies in English and Mathematics.  You can read more about this approach at my blog post here.   

When I introduce reciprocal teaching for the first time with a class or within a school, I usually begin with the Connectors or Into Connectors series from Scholastic.  Jill Eggleton, the author, wrote the Connectors series first (for Years 5-7) and it consists of non-fiction titles with the four prompts for predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising.  She then wrote the Into Connectors series for Years 3-4 and it includes both fiction and non-fiction texts and more reading strategies integrated into each text as prompts.  You can view a short YouTube clip about the Into Connectors series by clicking on the image below.

One caution from the clip above though.  Jill mentions that the Connectors and Into Connectors can be used for small group independent reading.  I always have an adult (teacher, teacher aide or parent) work with the group, so they can assist the students to "suck" as much meaning as possible out of each page - it's not a race to get through the book - and in fact, in one 20-30 minute reading group, we may only actually work on the one double page spread.

I then introduce the role cards in small group guided reading sessions, with each student taking on one or more of the reading roles.  

I was working with a group of teaching principals here in southern Queensland earlier this year and have created an even better version now!  I am unsure about you, but I find as a teacher I am constantly thinking, re-thinking, re-developing etc.  

I think this is my best version of my work in this area to date, but I have only developed a HOT Reciprocal Teaching kit for guided reading in English so far. Click on the image below to find out more:

This version also includes graphic organisers and introduces five different questioning options for teachers - the 5W and 1H (who, what, where, when, why and how); thick and thin questions, the 4H reading strategy; QAR; and the Question Creator (sometimes called the Question Matrix or Q Chart).   

You can see in the image above that there are eight role cards, with each student in a reading group responsible for one of the roles.  Teachers may remove a couple of the role cards if they work with six students in a reading group, or two students may take on two of the roles.

To celebrate the launch of our new Australian Teachers' collaborative blog, I am going to give away one free copy of my HOT Reciprocal Teaching Bundle to one lucky blog reader who enters via the Rafflecopter at the end of this post.  

Perhaps you could also share in the comments how you have used reciprocal teaching in your classroom or other ways that you support higher order thinking in the teaching of reading?  

Collaborative Reading Workshop

Sometimes the simple things can be the most effective and this is the case for my Collaborative Reading Workshop approach.  

You can read my published article about this approach here.  I much prefer the published version, but I can't seem to find a copy of that for free online.

If you are a middle or upper primary school teacher, or a secondary teacher, please go to the back of the article where you can read my students' responses to the lyrics of Michael Franti's song, "You Can Bomb the World to Pieces, But You Can't Bomb it Into Peace" - I still get goosebumps when I read the depth of their thinking :)

On the left, you can see my old daggy version of the charts that I used in my classroom and on the right my lovely new digital version :)

Collaborative Reading Workshop is a really simple process where the teacher and students annotate the text together, marking their thinking and then the students share their burning questions, wonderings and connections (individually with the whole class).  The thinking that is generated just snowballs!  The students then work together to find the answers to their questions.  The process supports the students to move from literal, to inferential and evaluative comprehension.

Hopefully you have picked up something new from this blog post.  

I would love to hear about how you support higher order thinking in your teaching of reading, so please leave me a message in the comments below.

Happy teaching :)

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