Models for reading - supporting vocabulary knowledge and building inferences

Last year, I was part of a project with a research school on reading. We were looking at transition from primary to secondary school with a focus on developing reading. For the project, we decided to focus on Geography. How could we support reading in Geography? 

Two things we felt needed building on were vocabulary and inferences. Students lacked these, at times, and we wanted something that would support them in both areas. Therefore, we came up with a model for approaching things. It followed a clear structure: 

[1] Step 1 - Stimulus 

We decided to focus on an image, for Geography, because it helped to start the thinking for the lesson. At this point, we just wanted the student to think about the picture and, internally, see if it jogged their memory of something.   

[2] Step 2 - Vocabulary 

Often, when it comes to vocabulary, we often ask students to generate the words to describe the text. However, rarely is there a level of precision in the language used and even more rare is the use of precise subject specific terminology. It's a beach! Often, the teacher uses questions to draw that terminology out. We wanted to build a model for students to use when faced with a stimulus. Rather than a random ‘pin the donkey’ approach of word retrieval, we build precision in the words to be used. By providing students with binary options, we helped students to be precise in their description of the topic. What we noticed was that students were quicker and more articulate with their explanations.

In one example, we have the option of flora or fauna, which then led to some interesting discussions on plant and animal life. The pair of words became a lense to focus the thinking. From the beginning, students were making inferences around the topic and these words were the source. 

[3] Step 3 - Elaborating inferences 

The problem often isn’t the attachment of words to describe an aspect, but elaboration. Therefore, we decided to share a small text to work as a springboard for thinking. Students would then expand on the word / inference by using possible reasons in the text. There’s lots of flora because …. It is urban because… One thing students don’t often use are cohesive inferences which refer to the whole text (Global Inferences). Largely, students focus on local inferences in one word or phrase. So, we used the combination of text and image to help build those elaborating inferences.   

[4] Step 4 - Rationalising 

The next step involved rationalising. This is an area that can really lift an explanation. What are the causes, the consequences or reasons behind it? Working out the cause of something takes knowledge from outside the text  and inference from the text. What has caused the area to be urban? We used the ‘The Writing Revolutions’ use of ‘because / so / as’ to frame this level of the explanation.  

Overall, this is how it looked. We revealed the sections one step at a time. 

We also explored how it could be used in other subjects, such as English. 

In English, we used a text rather than a picture for the initial stimulus. What we noticed with the English is that we could frame the words around opinions or interpretations of the text. This allowed us to channel the exploration of the text to where we wanted to go. 

Overall, we found the level of vocabulary and inferences improved with the groups because they were building familiarity with the words but building an internalised model for reading a text. When faced with another picture or text, they were using those internalised words. Questioning is always cited as an aspect of reading that good readers do, but that relies on students asking the right questions. All too often, the emphasis is placed on Who / What / Where / When / How. The questions in the head when reading need to be stronger questions. Think about how we read a novel. There is a lot of orienting in the initial stages of reading. Male or female? Present or past? Honest narrator or secretive narrator? That’s what good readers do.    

Vocabulary is really important, but I do feel we are getting to the stage where we are getting vocabulary bloat. We found that working on a few select words to help create inferences was much more effective than providing glossaries of words. By selecting a few words, you are looking at the relationship between words and ideas. It is all about connections and relationships. Words need anchoring, connecting and sticking to ideas and thoughts. Otherwise, teaching would be simply reading through the dictionary every lesson. 

Below are the models we played around with and developed over time. Feel free to adapt and share any adaptations you make. 

Thanks for reading, 

Xris 

Model 1 

Model 2 

Model 3