Chapter 7 Summary

Summary

Chapter 7 delves deeper into the content area reading requirements of middle and high schools. In particular, the complexity of reading as well as the length of reading assignments is highlighted as a challenge that students must be properly equipped to address as they progress through content area learning at the secondary level. Additionally, content area teachers, whose expertise is a driving factor in their decision to teach the content and whom already have a structured schema of content, also must contend with the schemata construct that students are undertaking in addition to student engagement and interest in the content. Ruddell (2008) notes that this challenge presents three central demands of academic learning that students will need to ultimately master: (1) the ability to learn from text; (2) the ability to satisfy a criterion of knowledge acquisition; and (3) the ability to increasingly become more competent strategic readers of content text

To meet this challenge, content area teachers can focus on strategies that will holistically guide students’ before, during, and after reading (also known as into, through, and beyond). (243). Ruddell (2008) surveys strategies and instructional models that will guide student reading, including: Think Predict, Read, Connect (TPRC); Webquests; KWL Plus; Predict-Locate-Add-Note (PLAN); Three-Level Reading Guides; Anticipation Guides; The Prereading Plan (PReP); Questioning the Author (QTA); Reading Response Groups; Read, Encode, Annotate, Ponder (REAP) and iREAP. Lastly, Ruddell (2008) acknowledges that, while a study skills perspective to teaching reading is overall ineffective, study skills instruction can still be integrated into content learning. Recommendations include connecting study skills to real-life as opposed to worksheet type study skills training, with emphasis on particular strategies such as Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review (SQ3R) and strategic usage of underlining and