For Other Professionals
Make Reading Count: Effective Strategies
for Teaching Comprehension
Isabel Beck, Nanci Bell, and Sharon Walpole discuss the essential components for developing good reading comprehension skills in young children.
Click below for the following:
For general information about our webcasts or to be part of our studio audience in Washington D.C., please click here.
Program description
We've all had the experience of reading something — an IRS form, a New Yorker cartoon — and not having a clue what it means. There's more to reading than recognizing words. We need to grasp the meaning behind what we read in order for reading to be of any use. For some young readers, good decoding skills and a deep vocabulary lead to understanding. But a lot of kids need explicit instruction in how to decipher the meaning of what they read. This webcast discusses the essential components for developing good reading comprehension skills in young children, identifies some of the potential stumbling blocks, and offers research-based comprehension strategies teachers can use in the classroom to teach all children to become better readers.
Make Reading Count is available for purchase at our online store, LearningStore.
Presenters
Isabel Beck is a professor of education and senior scientist at the University of Pittsburgh. She is an award-winning researcher who has done extensive work on decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension. She has published more than 100 articles and several books and is an author of the educational bestseller Bringing Words to Life.
Nanci Bell is director and CEO of Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes. Nanci has a background in the field of reading, with a Masters in Education from Cal Poly and course work at Harvard. She also has extensive experience in the clinical treatment of language and literacy disorders. She is the creator of the acclaimed program, Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking, which aims to stimulate gestalt imagery in order to aid in language comprehension and analytical thinking. She is also the author of Seeing Stars: Symbol Imagery for Phonemic Awareness, Sight Words & Spelling.
Sharon Walpole is assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. She teaches courses in literacy education, with research interests that include the design, implementation, and evaluation of schoolwide reading programs. Her work has included collaboration with literacy coaches across the country as part of the Reading Excellence Act and Reading First reforms and research for the Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement.
Moderator
Delia Pompa is the moderator of this webcast. She is the Vice President of the Center for Community Educational Excellence, at the National Council of La Raza.
Recommended resources
Article about reading comprehension
- View article abstract: Effective Schools and Accomplished Teachers: Lessons about Primary-Grade Reading Instruction in Low-Income Schools, by Barbara M. Taylor, P. David Pearson, Kathleen Clark and Sharon Walpole (Elementary School Journal)
Books by our presenters
The links below to Amazon.com are provided for your convenience. A portion of your purchase helps support Reading Rockets. Thank you!
- Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction
by Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, and Linda Kucan - Improving Comprehension with Questioning the Author: A Fresh and Expanded View of a Powerful Approach
by Isabel L. Beck and Margaret G. McKeown - Seeing Stars: Symbol Imagery for Phonemic Awareness, Sight Words and Spelling
by Nanci Bell - Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking
by Nanci Bell - The Literacy Coach’s Handbook: A Guide to Research-Based Practice (Solving Problems In Teaching Of Literacy)
by Sharon Walpole and Michael C. McKenna
Other resources
- Assessment of Reading Comprehension
- Comprehension Instruction: What Works
- Fluency: The Bridge from Decoding to Comprehension (161K PDF)*
- Assessing Reading Comprehension with Second Language Learners
- Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge of Words and the World (391K PDF)*
- Text Comprehension Instruction
Related products from LearningStore
Launching Young Readers: 10 Part Series
This series of half-hour PBS programs looks at different reading strategies to help young children learn to read. The programs also feature practical advice for parents and interweave the personal stories of children, families, and teachers.
learn more >>
Building the Reading Brain, PreK-3
This unique guide demonstrates how the brain of a child masters the reading process of decoding print and reading with fluency and comprehension and addresses related literacy skills of writing and spelling.
learn more >>
Literacy for Young Children: A Guide for Early Childhood Educators
Based on the author's work in Early Reading First classrooms, this resource includes evidence-based, easy-to-implement activities to develop oral language, phonological awareness, print awareness, emergent writing, and early comprehension skills.
learn more >>
Please visit our Reading Resources section of LearningStore to discover how you can help a child learn to read.
Discussion questions
- After listening to the panelists, discuss the things you are already doing in your classroom that reflect evidence-based practices for teaching comprehension. What concepts and strategies discussed were new to you?
- Is there a school wide vision of comprehension instruction where you teach? If so, talk about how the expectations of students evolve across the years. If there is no school wide vision, discuss what steps could be taken to develop a school wide plan that includes a shared vocabulary.
- As an educator, have you experienced the fourth grade slump or something similar? If so, describe what that was like and how you handled it. Would you do anything differently now?
- Discuss what you learned about Dr. Beck's approach to teaching vocabulary. Talk about ways you could incorporate some of her ideas into your classroom.
- How might you be able to implement some of Ms. Bell's visual imagery techniques into the work you do?
The Reading Rockets Professional Development Webcast Series is a production of WETA. The Reading Rockets project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
This program was produced by WETA/Reading Rockets, which is solely responsible for its content. The views expressed in the program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of WETA/Reading Rockets, our funders, or our partners.
* To view this file, you'll need a copy of Acrobat Reader. Most computers already have it installed, or you can download it now.
