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The PRIMALS Compendium of Teaching Resources This compendium was published with support from the Australian Government through the Basic Education Sector Transformation (BEST) Program. Permission to use or reproduce this publication or parts of it in hard or digital copies for personal or educational use is granted free, provided that the copies are not reproduced or distributed for commercial purposes, and that proper credit is given to the Austraian government. Printed in the Philippines First Printing, 2019
Literacy Compendium Kit
We cannot understand new information unless we can connect it to something we already know. The spoken or written text does not in itself carry meaning. Prior knowledge (in the reader’s memory) interacts with and shapes incoming information (from the text) and how this knowledge must be organized to support this interaction, resulting in comprehension. ENGLISH LESSON PLANS FILIPINO LESSON PLANS LITERACY STRATEGIES READING PURPOSE^ PRIOR KNOWLEDGE/ Table of Contents: Background/Research Base 2 Purpose/Benefits 3 Description/Procedure 4 How Teachers Can Make the Strategy Work 6 Applications Across the Curriculum 6 This guide describes how teachers can provide students with advance organizers such as the Structured Overview, which is a visual summary of the text to be read. Activating Prior Knowledge/Establishing Reading Purpose: Structured Overviews
Prior Knowledge/Reading Purpose | Structured Overviews 3 Literacy research reveals that the use of advance organizers like the structured overview provides learners with a framework that guides them in understanding the lesson for the day. The structured overview prepares students for the demands of the reading lesson by activating their prior knowledge, unlocking some difficult words or concepts, and summarizing the major points of the text. Studies dating as far back as Ausubel’s 1960 research point to the importance of advance organizers in reading comprehension and retention of meaningful ideas from the text. Chen (2007) arrives at a similar finding in analyzing the effects of using advance organizers in a fully web-based class. Shihusa and Keraro (2009) also reiterate the significance of visual overviews in enhancing motivation, this time, in Biology class. An online site on English for Speakers of Other Languages or ESOL (esolonline.tki.org.nz) in New Zealand contends that using structured overviews not only helps in vocabulary development, but they also guide students as they link new information to existing knowledge; think about relationships between ideas; categorize ideas; and clarify their thoughts in the process. These reading and thinking skills explain why students who use structured overview more frequently are better able to articulate higher levels of learning than students who do not. Purpose / Benefits SO provides students with a bird’s eye view of the reading selection since it already shows an outline of the main topic and subtopics to be discussed in the text. It also helps students activate their prior knowledge and connect those to new ideas in the text. The presentation of the SO not only motivates the students, but it also creates a valuable purpose for reading because students are encouraged to read on since they have already seen the important concepts in the preview facilitated by the teacher. Also, the visual outline of the text makes the reading easier since students can already anticipate the key concepts to be discussed in the selection. SOs are especially useful for teaching struggling readers who are unable to distinguish main topics from subtopics and their details since the teacher already provides these in the overview. They are equally important in teaching longer and more complex texts especially in the content areas where technical terms and extended definitions, descriptions, and explanations appear. The SOs provide a visual summary of the longer texts, so students can monitor key concepts as they read.
4 The PRIMALS Compendium of Teaching Resources |^ LITERACY STRATEGY GUIDES Examples of the Strategy Templates and other examples of structured overviews are shown in Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3, respectively. Description / Procedure Structured overviews start with some preparation, followed by presentation, reading, and follow up.
1. Preparation. Select words and concepts that students should know after reading the text. Arrange the concepts in a diagram to show the interrelatedness between the main topic, the sub topics, and supporting details. 2. Presentation. Show the SO to the students and present an overview of the topic starting with the main heading, subheadings and them some details about each subheading. 3. Read. Ask students to read the selection, but as they do so, ask them to refer to the SO for guidance. 4. Follow-up. Ask comprehension questions about what was read. Consider the different impressions on what was read and relate the new information to prior experiences and insights of the students. Direct students’ attention to the details in the SO completed prior to the reading. Ensure that the students relate their prior knowledge to the text. 5. Variation. When teaching older and higher ability students, the structured overview may be presented with some parts of the tree diagram left blank. The students try to complete the blanks based on their prior knowledge. After which, they read the selection and as they do so, they complete the diagram with details from the text. Source: Structured Overview. Retrieved on 15 January 2019 from http://carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/ modules/strategies/gorganizers/HGO/17H.PDF Example: Food Nutrients
Carbohydrates Fats Proteins Vitamins Minerals Figure 1: Structured Overview Sample : Nutrition
6 The PRIMALS Compendium of Teaching Resources |^ LITERACY STRATEGY GUIDES SOs are particularly useful for content areas like mathematics, science, history, and the humanities where reading materials, especially in textbook units, tend to be complex and lengthy. For instance, a textbook article on living things may have a structured overview written like the one shown in Figure 4. Applications Across The Curriculum To make the strategy work, you need to be strategic during the preparation and the follow-up stages. Preparation stage
- The structured overview is best with informational texts. Choose a text that matches the reading ability and interest of your learners.
- During the preparation of the structured overview, start with the topic or main heading at the top of the page. Determine how many subheadings are going to form the next layer since you have to plot the number of boxes and link them with lines.
- For added visual appeal, you can have colored boxes, colored lines and letters. You can also use different weights (light or heavy) for the lines such that the lines connecting the main heading and the subheadings are heavier and darker compared to the lines connecting the subheadings and their details. How Teachers Can Make The Strrategy Work Presentation Stage
- Remember that this is just an overview you are giving to the students. As such, you need to focus on the main and subtopics alone including some details related to the headings. You are not going to summarize everything for the kids before they even read the text.
- As you present the overview, ask students what they know about the key words to also gauge their prior knowledge of the concepts.
- Provide more motive for reading by highlighting what students will learn from the selection. Motive for reading can be presented though questions. Reading Stage
- Just before students do the silent reading, remind them to refer to the structured overview for main and sub topics. Remind them to jot down notes on the concepts in the overview as they read the selection.
- As students silently read, monitor their reading behavior. Keep an eye on students who do not take down notes. Encourage them to use the overview in noting details about the main heading and sub headings. Source: Living Things. Retrieved on 29 January 2019, retrieved from http://oldschool.com.sg/module/PublicAccess/action/Wrapper/ sid/9595afb87c8cf767f034c3ae53e74bae/cmbn_id/1727/coll_id/ Feed on other living things Live on land Live in water Live on land Living Things Make their own food Live in water Water hyacinth Water moss fern W Rose Palm tree X Molly Swordtail Y Pony Prraying mantis Z Figure 4: Structured Overview Sample: Living Things
Prior Knowledge/Reading Purpose | Structured Overviews 7 References Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in learning and retention of meaningful material. Journal of education psychology, 51 -267-272. Barron, R. (1969). The use of vocabulary as an advance organizer. Research in reading in the content areas: First year report. Harold L. Herber and Paul L. Sanders (eds). Syracuse, NY: Reading and Language Arts Center, Syracuse University. Chen, B. (2007). Effects of advance organizers on learning and retention from a fully web-based class. Electronic Theses and Dissertations.
- Retrieved from http://stars.library.ucf. edu/etd/3114. A structured overview for an article on different sources of energy might look like the one shown in Figure 5. Here’s another example from mathematics. A chapter on real numbers might have this structured overview (see Figure 6).. ESOL Online. Structured overview. Retrieved on 2 February 2019 from http://esolonline. tki.org. nz/ESOL-Online/Planning-for-my-students- needs/Resources-for-planning/ESOL-teaching- strategies/Reading/Structured-overview Manzo, A. (1990). Content area reading: A heuristic approach. Columbus: Merrill Pub. Co. Public.callutheran.edu. Structured overview. Retrieved on 27 January 2019 from http://public. callutheran.edu/ ~mccamb/ structuredoverview. htm ThoughtCo. Structured Overview. Retrieved on 27 January 2019 from https://www.thoughtco.com/ types-of-graphic-organizers- Sources of Energy Non-renewable solar wind geothermal water biomass oil coal natural gas nuclear Renewable Real Numbers Rational Numbers Irrational Numbers Integers Fractions Positive Zero Negative Positive^ Negative Figure 5: Structured Overview Sample: Sources of Energy Figure 6: Structured Overview Sample: Real Numbers
