Linda Kucan

Thinking Aloud and Reading Comprehension Research: Inquiry, Instruction, and Social Interaction

This is a review of research on thinking aloud in reading comprehension that considers thinking aloud as a method of inquiry, a mode of instruction, and a means for encouraging social interaction. As a method of inquiry, the analysis of verbal reports provided by readers thinking aloud revealed the flexible and goal-directed processing of expert readers. As a mode of instruction, thinking aloud was first employed by teachers who modeled their processing during reading, making overt the strategies they were using to comprehend text. Subsequently, instructional approaches were developed to engage students themselves in thinking aloud. Such endeavors revealed facilitation effects on text understanding. Current efforts to engage students in constructing meaning from text in collaborative discussions seem to indicate a new direction for thinking aloud research, one in which social interaction assumes increased importance.

Insights From Teachers Who Analyzed Transcripts of Their Own Classroom Discussions

Ms. Bestin (all student and teacher names are pseudonyms) was a student in a special topics course that I taught for teachers in a master’s program at a southern regional university in the United States. The course focused teachers’ attention on discussion as a context for teaching and learning about comprehending texts. The teachers read about discussion and comprehension, watched video clips of text-based discussions, and participated in discussions themselves. These experiences provided a context for a major project that required teachers to tape record, transcribe, and analyze two transcripts of their own classroom discussions: one at the beginning of the course and one at the end. This article describes the transcript analysis process and provides specific examples of the insights that teachers gained as a result of their analysis. It also provides resources that teachers can use to engage in transcript analysis

What Is Most Important to Know About Vocabulary

This article makes use of Perfettis Lexical Quality Hypothesis as a perspective for thinking about vocabulary instruction in terms of semantics (meaning), phonology (pronunciation), orthography (spelling), morphology (meaningful word parts), and syntax (how words function in sentences). Examples are presented of how these aspects of vocabulary instruction can be addressed in lessons related to reading, decoding, spelling, and grammar.

Teachers’ Specialized Knowledge for Supporting Student Comprehension in Text-Based Discussions

This article describes the development and initial implementation of the Comprehension and Learning from Text Survey (CoLTS), an instrument designed to assess teachers’ specialized knowledge for comprehension instruction in the context of discussion. CoLTS is a paper-and-pencil test that engages teachers in analyzing a text to identify the most important ideas, as well as those text features that might challenge readers’ comprehension. Teachers are also asked to respond to scenarios of teacher-student dialogue about the text in order to reveal (a) their analysis of student responses to questions and comments about the text and (b) their understanding of specific discourse moves designed to engage students in making sense of text ideas. Analysis of teacher responses to the CoLTS tasks provides important information for those who work with teachers to develop their understanding about how to support student comprehension in text-based discussions.

Validating Craft Knowledge

This longitudinal study investigated childrens performance on several informal reading and spelling tasks. Students (n = 274) in a rural North Carolina county were assessed across grades 2 to 6 on the following measures: isolated word recognition (timed and untimed), oral reading accuracy, reading comprehension, reading rate, and spelling. Statistics (means and standard deviations) were reported for each measure each year. Overall, the results tended to support traditional performance criteria in reading diagnosis. Two findings that deserve further study were (1) word recognition–timed proved to be a good predictor of oral reading rate at each grade level (median r = .68), and (2) both oral and silent reading rates, after increasing steadily from grade 2 to 4, began to taper off between grades 4 and 6. This second finding is in contrast to previous reading-rate data reported by Hasbrouck and Tindal and by Taylor.

“I” Poems: Invitations for Students to Deepen Literary Understanding

“I” poems are motivating invitations to write that can engage students in preparing for or responding to reading. In composing “I” poems, students assume the identity and voice of a person, place, or object and write from that perspective. The first-person narrative point of view is the most important feature of an “I” poem. “I” poems can rhyme, but a rhyme scheme is not a necessary or critical feature. The article includes models of “I” poems as well as examples written by preservice teachers and fourth-grade students. Specific suggestions for writing “I” poems before reading and after reading are described.

The Role of Reading Rate in the Informal Assessment of Reading Ability

This article, which focuses on oral reading rate, reports findings from a large assessment study in rural North Carolina. Students in grades 2 to 6 were assessed on the following measures: isolated word recognition (timed and untimed); oral reading accuracy, reading rate, and reading comprehension. Overall, the results (1) support traditional “instructional-level” criteria in reading diagnosis (e.g., word recognition-timed = 75%; oral reading accuracy = 95%); (2) provide tentative oral reading rate minimums for each grade level, 2 through 6; and (3) suggest that a word recognition-in-isolation measure, if timed (½ second), is an excellent predictor of oral reading rate or fluency. Practical implications accompany each of these findings.

Engaging Teachers in Investigating Their Teaching as a Linguistic Enterprise: The Case of Comprehension Instruction in the Context of Discussion

Although text-based discussions are considered by many literacy researchers and educators to be optimal contexts for teaching students how to comprehend text, a discussion is an ill-structured instructional space with complicated demands. A challenge for teacher educators is to acknowledge this complexity and provide ways for teachers to learn how to manage it. In the present study, a group of teachers in a masters-level methods course was supported in learning about comprehension instruction through analyzing transcripts of their classroom discussions, a form of practical inquiry.

A professional development initiative for developing approaches to vocabulary instruction with secondary mathematics, art, science, and english teachers

Abstract During a yearlong collaborative effort to enhance vocabulary instruction in secondary classrooms, high school teachers and university faculty developed and implemented a variety of approaches to support students in building rich representations of word meanings as well as an understanding of word features such as roots, affixes, and parts of speech. This article describes those approaches and provides specific examples.

Approximating the Practice of Writing the Dissertation Literature Review

This article is an attempt to join the conversation about doctoral preparation that has been a persistent but intermittent topic of interest in educational journals. Previous articles have focused on the format of the dissertation, the purpose of the literature review, and approaches to supporting doctoral students in acquiring professional writing skills. The present article focuses on writing the literature review as an example of professional practice and uses the constructs of representation, decomposition, and approximation (Grossman et al., 2009) to analyze a seminar designed to support doctoral students in learning how to engage in the practice.