Improving Reading Comprehension Through Metacognitive Reading Strategies Instruction by Mokhtari Kouider;

Author:Mokhtari, Kouider;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated

Chapter 7

Improving Adolescents’ Reading Comprehension and Engagement through Strategy-based Interventions

Susan Chambers Cantrell, Janice F. Almasi, and Margaret Rintamaa

Abstract

In this chapter, we share lessons learned from two statewide evaluations of supplemental strategy-based reading interventions for adolescent readers. We first describe the interventions and provide a synthesis of research findings, including both quantitative student outcomes and perspectives on student engagement drawn from interviews with students themselves. Based on these lessons, we offer critical foundational elements of strategy-based interventions for students in middle and high schools. These insights, supported by our own work as well as the extant literature on strategy-based instruction, provide practical guidance for literacy educators and classroom teachers who wish to engage in strategy-based instruction as a curricular intervention.

Introduction

The ability to read, understand, and apply complex text is critical for success in postsecondary education and in the workforce; yet significant numbers of youth are not able to meet the challenges of school reading. Most recent results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that more than one quarter of eighth-grade students do not reach basic levels of achievement on NAEP and do not demonstrate basic abilities to locate information, identify the main idea, theme, or purpose of a passage, make simple inferences or interpret word meanings from text. Similarly, just 36 percent of eighth-grade students who participated in NAEP scored at or above the proficient level and demonstrated strong abilities to read, infer, and analyze complex texts (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013). Although these assessment results are concerning, they represent some improvements nationwide over previous assessment years. In the past decade, policy-makers and educators have focused greater attention on reading at the secondary level, funding programs and implementing practices to improve youth’s reading achievement. Strengthened emphases on preparing more students for college, reducing the need for college remediation, and raising the dropout age in many states has caused secondary schools to develop systems of interventions for students who do not meet certain benchmarks in reading at particular points in their secondary schooling (Mellard, McKnight, & Jordan, 2010). Still, implementing interventions at the secondary level can be quite challenging, due to many constraints and considerations ranging from scheduling to meeting the wide-ranging needs of secondary students (Brozo, 2009/2010; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2010; King, Lemons, & Hill, 2012).

In our own work, we have been involved with the federally funded Striving Readers program, which initially was created as a research-focused initiative designed to study targeted interventions for middle- and high-school students who were reading at lower levels as measured by standardized assessments. As evaluators of two Striving Readers interventions in one state, we learned a great deal about supplemental interventions for middle- and high-school students, and we present the models we evaluated and the results of those evaluations in this chapter. The recommendations we make are grounded, in part, in what we learned from those Striving Readers studies. In addition, they are informed by Susan’s more recent work on the Culturally Responsive Instruction Observation Protocol (CRIOP), a framework for

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