Are you looking for new ideas to help your students comprehend texts beyond words? If you are, this episode is for you!
In episode 51 of GWP The Podcast, I’m sharing my biggest takeaways from the AATSP Fall Conference, featuring Dr. Florencia Henshaw, where she shares all about Interpretive Communication and its vital role in language acquisition.
You’ll discover or rediscover highly effective strategies for pre-, during, and post-reading or listening activities. From inferring meaning to using annotations and graphic organizers. It is packed with low-prep strategies to help your students engage with text in a deeper way. In this post, I’ll share highlights of episode 51, but to hear all of the details, listen above or on your favorite podcast player.
Is interpretation the same as comprehension?
Let’s start by distinguishing the two. Comprehension goes beyond the understanding of the meaning of the words. So, in that context, every term that we’re talking about here, comprehension, will refer to the bigger aspect of comprehension, or includes all the aspects of comprehension, not only limited to understanding the words, but going beyond the words.
Why is it so important, and how much weight should it have in our classes?
Comprehension should be at the center of our classes, because it’s when our learners comprehend the language, that they’re building that linguistic system in their brains. Therefore, when we’re talking about interpretive communication in our class, we should be really putting a lot of weight on that, especially at the beginning in our level one and level two classes, because that’s how we build the system.
If we don’t have the input, we will not have the output. We need to be able to acquire the language to develop the proficiency. Without that system in our head, we will not be able to produce it to output the language. And that’s why, the session with Dr. Hanshaw was so important.
So, what are we comprehending? That’s the input. what are the qualities of that input? The first one is it has to be comprehensible. The second one, it has to be compelling and purposeful. The third one, it has to be meaningful. You can learn more about these qualities in Episode 40, and Episode 41.
What factors contribute to comprehension?
The number one factor is linguistic knowledge, how much of the words our students understand. The second one is background knowledge, and the last one is text features. We need to keep that in mind when we are designing the activities before, during, and after reading or listening activities. Pay attention especially to the ones before and during, that is going to help us lead our students to and support our students’ comprehension. Sometimes, we don’t talk enough about the linguistic knowledge or the text features.
Pre-reading or pre-listening activities
The number one goal is going to be activating prior knowledge and engaging students with the topic, but also previewing some essential language structures. This helps our students because when our students listen or read, they’re going to be ready.
In episode 51, I share four activities for this. I’ll share a few here, but hear about all the activities in the podcast episode.
Comprehension activity #1
The first one is so low prep. What you’ll do is to write a few statements about the text you will using with your students. Look at your text and identify four or five sentences that are really important in that text. Next, write them out and have your students answer if they think that it’s probable or not. So simple! The idea is that our students engage with sections, important sections, of the text that they’re going to read or listen.
Comprehension activity #2
The second activity is inferring meaning. One of the most common questions that we have for reading or listening is inferring the meaning of the word based on context clues. However, when we are reading, or when we are listening, that strategy seems very overwhelming for students. We can bring those strategies for a pre-reading or pre-listening activity by only bringing in those sentences where that word is, and have the students read the sentence of that little chunk and decide if that specific word means A, B, or C. Provide three options for students.
Then, students will read those options individually, then in pairs, then in groups and in class discussion, before using the dictionary. Afterwards, we can confirm by using the dictionary. There’s so many great elements to this activity! It looks less daunting for both students and teachers.
Comprehension activity #3
The next activity is dictation with inaccurate information. Basically, as a teachers, we create a summary of the text. We dictate the summary of the text to our students with inaccurate information. We’re going to have to stop and talk about this with our students. Those discussions are active engagement with the text. It’s what is going to create the situation where our students will be exposed not only to the topic, not only to the content, but also to the words and to the language itself. You can also do this in a smaller way with true or false statements.
Listen to episode 51 for another activity that is especially good for AP classes.
During reading or listening activities
Reading annotations
The first thing that we want to know is what do we want to annotate. What do you want your students to annotate? Do you want to annotate things that are interesting to them? Things that are confusing? You provide the text to your students and provide the annotations icon, so students understand exactly how they can annotate and what they need to annotate. Then, individually, they’re going to read the text and do the annotation.
Group annotations
In group annotations, you have four short texts with four groups of four students. So, each student is going to read the text annotated. And then, when they’re finished, they move it to the next student, and then the next student, and then the next student. The idea is that you are going to read different texts, but when you’re doing the annotation, you can also see the annotation of the other students. Then, we can have a great discussion in class afterwards about what is the main idea and what was confusing to the students.
Add one more
In this activity, students read a text, but they read it in parts. So, they would read the first paragraph, and then they have to add a sentence to that paragraph. Why? When they’re adding a sentence to that paragraph, it means that they really understand what’s going on in that paragraph. In novice levels, we can provide them choices. We can provide them three or four choices and say, “Which of these sentence would be a great last sentence for this paragraph?” I talk more about doing this with intermediate and AP students in episode 51. You’ll also hear about walk annotations.
Post reading or listening activities
KWRL chart
The first one is one that we can do with zero prep, you don’t need anything for this activity. I love those activities! After our students read or listen to a text, they can create the KWRL chart; What I Knew, What I Learned, What I’m Still Wondering. So after the reading, or the listening, students will complete the K chart, the section of the chart of things that they already knew about the topic. In the W section, is what they learn about the topic. And then in the L section, is what they are still wondering about the topic. I think it would also be a great formative assessment.
Shrinking takeaways
In this activity, five takeaways will be taken from the text by students individually. Then, the students will pair up and students will look at the five individual takeaways and simplify or narrow it down to four takeaways from both of the students. Then, there will be a four-student group, and in that group ,they will narrow it down to the top three and then discuss with the class.
Create the answers
After reading or listening, students create a multiple choice test, or a test about what they read and what they listened to. We can also create the questions, and then the students come up with the answer. I like this because as a teacher, we create the questions so we can be intentional with the type of questions that we’re going to ask because we’re going to focus on the main things that I want my students to understand or comprehend from this text. You create the questions on that, and then the students will create the multiple choice answers.
In episode 51, I also share a bonus activity or two. Listen above or check out episode 51 here.
Links & Resources
Find all episodes of GWP The Podcast here.
