Building Reading Stamina

by Carol Brown Dodson

The beginning of a school year is the perfect time to start preparing your students for the Ohio Graduation Test. It's also a good time to review the standards and to consider how best to help struggling adolescent readers improve their reading skills and confidence. It's fairly easy to immerse students in test-taking tips and strategies such as:

• Read the entire passage
• Look back at the passage before marking an answer
• Underline important details
• Make notes in the margins around the passage

Yet when the test results come back to the school, you might wonder how some students could have followed your advice and still received a low score in reading.

Let's consider some possible reasons for lower-than-expected scores on the reading OGT. If asked, tenth graders are likely to tell you that they read the entire passage before answering questions and that they looked back at the passage to find correct answers. At least, that's what they believe they did.

Sometimes, however, even successful readers lose their focus while reading, drifting away from the passage and into unrelated thoughts. They might focus their full attention on the first part of the passage, then drift into a daydream or think about nearly anything other than the task of reading the full passage.

Students were asked on the March 2006 OGT to read "Wheelchair Flying," a short-to-medium passage of slightly more than 500 words. The beginning clause of the first sentence, "After seeing me do stand-up comedy from my wheelchair," lets the reader glimpse the girl's future. As students continue to read the first two paragraphs of the passage, they learn about a young girl with a dream of skiing on an international ski team, most likely in the Olympics. The third paragraph allows the reader to find out that this young skier gave up competitive skiing and, instead, became a ski instructor until she graduated from college, at which time she began to work with computers.

The fourth paragraph, only one short sentence in length, signals the change in the young woman's life. She had a stroke. Students should have read the remaining six paragraphs, five of which are on the next page of the test booklet, and they should have easily recognized the correct response to the question below.

Ohio Department of Education, Released Ohio Graduation Test, March 2006, p. 6.

Sixty-nine percent did answer the question correctly, choosing response B. But a full 26 percent of the test takers selected response D.

Had they maintained their focus through the rest of the passage, students most likely would have realized that the truly surprising thing for people is the writer's daring behavior while in a wheelchair. Yet many students who expected to read about how the young skier became an Olympic champion may have stopped paying attention to what they were reading after they learned she had a stroke. Response D suggests that people are often surprised to find that this wheelchair-bound young woman is a skier. That response seems quite logical to someone who reads only the first few paragraphs. By reading on to the end of the passage, however, most readers discover that the writer does not ski after her stroke. They learn instead that she is quite daring when "wheelchair flying" at the park.

Of course, it is quite likely that some students simply did not read the entire passage. Many others, however, let themselves drift away from the reading task. You might wonder how it is possible to help students gain the focus and stamina to stick with the reading task throughout an entire passage. Keep in mind that "Wheelchair Flying" is a medium-length passage, barely above the length of a short passage. According to the Ohio Department of Education "Blueprint for Reading," reading passages are selected to meet varying length requirements. The tests are composed of a combination of some of the following passage lengths: short (under 500 words), medium (500—900 words), and long (900—1,200 words).

Every good English language arts teacher knows that immersing students in reading is far more important than teaching test-taking strategies. Many are also familiar with some of the techniques for helping their students monitor their reading throughout a reading task. Some use specific lessons and strategies for helping students maintain focus and gain stamina as they read, but finding the best lessons and other resources for teaching such skills is often time-consuming and difficult, requiring more hours than teachers have for researching new material.

The Ohio Resource Center collection includes peer-reviewed, best-practice lesson plans that reduce the time it takes to find good, appropriate instructional resources. Below is a carefully selected list of instructional resources from the collection to help students build their stamina.

The activities in the following cross-age tutoring lesson from NCTE/IRA include training sessions for high school tutors. The tutors are shown how to help elementary students master reading strategies, including activation of prior knowledge, discussion of key vocabulary words, and predictions about the text.

Exploring Cross-Age Tutoring Activities with Lewis and Clark
In this lesson, cross-age tutoring gives high school students the opportunity to guide elementary students (in grades 3—5) to a deeper understanding of the adventures of Lewis and Clark. Using the book How We Crossed the West by Rosalyn Schanzer, along with interactive activities and websites, students explore the events of this expedition. Social interaction enhances critical thinking and reading comprehension skills as students collaborate to create adventure stories based on the expedition of Lewis and Clark. The lesson culminates in a festival where elementary students share their adventure stories with the high school tutors. (author/ncl)

In addition to lesson plans, ORC also maintains selected content and professional resources which provide suggestions for teaching, professional articles, and research about certain teaching methods. "Character Card Bookmark" is a content resource intended to help students document and thereby focus their thoughts when reading literary text.

Character Card Bookmark
The Character Card Bookmark, developed by noted reading expert Jim Burke, is a "note-making" tool that encourages students to document their thoughts as they read fictional text. One side of the template provides space for students to record their ideas, while the reverse side lists questions to prompt comprehension and reflection. This tool may be used with a variety of texts and adapted to many learning situations. (author/ncl)

An outstanding professional resource for helping students become aware of their own reading strategies is described below. The chart is particularly useful to students for keeping track of what they do when they read.

Before, During, and After Reading: Reading and Thinking Strategies
This resource summarizes widely accepted comprehension strategies that effective readers use to understand a variety of texts. Based, in part, on research related to students' use of prior knowledge, this resource provides a chart describing the strategies used when students are effectively engaged in reading. Organized in a flow chart, the format of this resource makes the strategies easy to review and discuss with students. (author/ncl)

The following excerpt from Graham Foster's book Language Arts Idea Bank is rich with specific charts, activities, and other teaching strategies intended to improve reading comprehension and retention for both good readers and struggling readers.

Language Arts Idea Bank [excerpt]: Instructional Strategies for Supporting Student Learning, Part A: Reading
This excerpt from Graham Foster's Language Arts Idea Bank focuses on methods for teaching reading strategies to engage students in their reading. The "idea bank" is exactly what it sounds like: rich ideas with detailed, classroom-tested activities to support instruction. This professional resource is broken down into five sections: reviewing reading strategies, promoting close attention to the text, responding to reading, exploring vocabulary, and encouraging frequent reading. The activities within each section motivate students and make them more fully engaged in their learning. Each goal-driven activity helps students to develop their skills, while an accompanying sidebar scenario places the activity in a classroom setting. The activities demonstrate how to break down, analyze, and critique information, as well as draw conclusions and improve comprehension. (author/mcg)

These next four professional resources are filled with ways to help students maintain focus and engagement when they read.

Twenty Online Resources on Reading with Comprehension and Engagement
This professional resource details a collection of twenty online resources to inform teachers about methods for helping students read for understanding, develop as strategic learners, and become engaged in their reading. Compiled by Bridget Dalton, one of the editors of Reading Online, these resources include theoretical and practical material from Reading Online and the website of the International Reading Association. Other professional journals are also referenced, including the Journal of Literacy Research, Language Arts, English Journal, and Voices from the Middle. Many of the articles highlighted in this editorial are posted as PDF files. These resources serve as a useful starting point addressing the literacy needs of adolescent learners. (author/mcg/ncl)

Getting Kids into the Reading Game: You Gotta Know the Rules
In this article, Jeff Wilhelm asks, then answers, two compelling questions: what is it that we most want for our students (and what will our student readers need to succeed at meeting these goals), and what do student readers need to overcome their struggles to develop greater capacities and tastes?

The author's detailed analysis focuses on his finding that (1) readers need a personally relevant and socially significant purpose; (2) readers need an understanding of the demands of the text they are reading and the strategies they must use to meet these demands; (3) readers need assistance to take on strategies and stances as they read new kinds of texts; (4) readers need real-world opportunities and reasons to apply what they have learned; (5) readers need to see a connection between their reading, their personal lives, and the world they inhabit; and (6) readers need for what they read to serve a higher purpose, to inform some kind of decision making and social action.

Using a case study from his classroom, Wilhelm discusses in depth the benefit of using think-alouds with adolescent readers. He cites major research studies to support his findings, and details other explicit reading strategies known to help struggling readers who, when asked at the middle levels to read more demanding texts, oftentimes lack the assistance of the reading strategies proficient readers already possess. It is, in fact, through providing the expert strategies of dealing with more complex texts that Wilhelm believes we can best help our struggling adolescent readers. (author/bcbrown)

Adolescents and Literacy Reading for the 21st Century
Based on research that demonstrates we do know enough about adolescent literacy to make positive changes today, this professional article makes clear that policymakers should use such research as a foundation for change in secondary schools. Four major conclusions point to a flexible revisionist approach for policymakers: (1) that methods of maximizing motivation and engagement in adolescents should be a major focus when designing adolescent literacy programs, and that one such focus should include the integration of computer technologies into literacy instruction; (2) that while the focus of much concern in adolescent literacy is on comprehension, at least 10 percent of adolescents still have difficulties with word analysis and related skills, thus calling for policies that encourage the careful assessment of reading skills to be certain that individualized instruction is provided to each student; (3) that English language learners face additional, unique challenges, and that policies that guide instruction need to reflect the research that examines the transfer from first language to second language and ESL teaching strategies; and (4) that research shows that a teacher's professional development can positively affect student achievement, which is sufficiently suggestive to warrant policies that encourage sustained, embedded professional development for teachers in secondary schools. (author/bcbrown)

Reading Happens in Your Mind, Not in Your Mouth: Teaching and Learning "Academic Literacy" in an Urban High School
This article explores one teacher's experience with the Academic Literacy course begun as a ten-unit year-long course for all Thurgood Marshall Academic High School (California) freshmen in the fall of 1996. Its purpose was to help the incoming students become higher-level, strategic readers and to prepare them for the reading tasks they would encounter in high school and beyond. The author delved into her research project knowing that in order for students to become active readers, they had to first believe that reading with comprehension was something that could be learned, that it wasn't just a mystery you either "got" or "didn't get." Using works by Martin Luther King, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Frederick Douglass (all of whom wrote about the role of reading in their lives), author Christine Cziko had her students explore the role reading serves in people's personal and public lives. She incorporated SSR and self-selected texts and used think-alouds, questioning, clarifying, summarizing, predicting, graphic organizers, and sentence chunking as reading strategies. Pre- and post-program survey responses are discussed, as well as the results of the qualitative and quantitative data. (author/bcbrown)

Carol Brown Dodson is the outreach specialist for the Ohio Resource Center. Dodson was an English language arts consultant for the Ohio Department of Education and is past president of OCTELA (Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts). Dodson, formerly a high school English teacher, department chair, and supervisor of English language arts in Columbus Public Schools, serves on the Ohio Graduation Test Reading Content Committee.

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