Spotlight on Comprehension
Building a Literacy of Thoughtfulness

(available Fall 2004)

Spotlight on Comprehension presents a tapestry of short, highly practical essays loaded with ready to use strategies for teaching reading comprehension and assessing understanding. Hoyt and an All-Star ensemble of contributors-including Ellin Keene, Tony Stead, Nell Duke, Franki Sibberson, Mike Opitz, David and Yvonne Freeman, Adria Klein, Mary Lee Hahn and Gretchen Owocki-cover the spectrum of comprehension instruction, addressing topics like:

• implementing the latest research on reading comprehension into your instruction
• improving children's comprehension strategies, especially questioning, inferring, and summarizing
• helping emerging, developing, and second language readers improve their comprehension
• using writing to build reading comprehension
• tackling a range of texts and genres across the curriculum, including standardized tests
• organizing instruction around guided reading, the read aloud, and independent reading
• building a robust vocabulary

Best yet, Hoyt and her expert contributors include handy tools like checklists, sample lesson plans, book lists, strategy lists, assessment rubrics, and learning extensions that will help you take their ideas and use them in your own classroom immediately. Each chapter even includes Key Questions designed to stimulate personal reflection and support professional conversations or book-study groups. Read Spotlight on Comprehension-in short segments, or all at once; by yourself, or with friends and colleagues-and gather a wealth of strategies for building a literacy of thoughtfulness which will empower your students to get the most meaning from the varied texts of our world.

Navigating Informational Texts
Easy & Explicit Strategies, K-5
(three-video set)

• make informational texts inviting to all learners
• teach reading skills across content areas
• attend to the needs of English language learners, too.

• Learning to Love Informational Texts
  Follow teachers as they weave nonfiction into every content area, model strategies that help improve reading comprehension and fluency, and make nonfiction more accessible to all learners.
• Guiding Readers and Writers with Informational Texts
  Observe guided reading lessons with informational texts, content-area studies infused with interactive writing, and guided writing blended into writing workshops and guided reading.
• Information Circles and Reciprocal Teaching
  Learn the specifics for conducting literature circles and reciprocal groups with nonfiction through various group-interaction and discussion strategies, including student-led teaching and teacher-modeled discussion.

Instructional Strategies
for Guided Reading
that Enhance Students'
Reading Comprehension
Grades 3-6

Guided reading has the potential to greatly enhance students' reading comprehension. Within guided reading lessons, teachers are able to help intermediate grade students learn and apply new skills and strategies and think about text in new ways - all in the highly supportive context of small group instruction. This training program is not an overview of the complete guided reading process. Instead, it demonstrates powerful instructional strategies that are ideally suited to guided reading in grades 3-6.

You will see the following strategies "in action" with guided reading groups, grades 3-6:

• Word Sorts actively involve students in categorization and classification and strengthen students' comprehension of both fiction and nonfiction text.
• Anticipation Guides not only pique students' curiosity before reading, they also help engage children more deeply in the reading process and cause them to think about content in new ways.
• I Wonder propels children's reflection and discussion out of lower-level recall and into higher levels of thought.
• Good Reader Strategies help students fully utilize what they know about word structure and context as they problem solve difficult words in their reading.
• Making It Real underscores the value of including objects, models, and pictures when introducing new concepts and vocabulary to a guided reading group.
• Key Word Strategy enables children to distill complex content down to critical words and phrases and creates a bridge between reading and summarizing.

• Empower students as thinkers and readers within the context of guided reading
• Help students read for key concepts and main ideas
• Deepen students' comprehension of complex and sophisticated text
• Strengthen children's ability to find and create connections as they read
• Constructively challenge preconceived ideas about content
• Jump-start students' individual reflections about text before, during and after reading
• Activate prior knowledge in ways that enhance children's reading comprehension
• Build important reading comprehension skills
• Expand your teaching repertoire with powerful strategies ideally suited to guided reading lessons in grades 3-6

Make It Real!
Strategies for Success with
Informational Texts

Feeding students a steady diet of fiction is all too common in the classroom. Yet informational literacy is critical to success in school and beyond. In Make It Real, Linda Hoyt provides a practical, classroom-friendly guide to unlocking the treasures of informational text. What’s more, she demonstrates that reading and writing nonfiction can overcome the gender gap, allowing girls and boys to share interests in any subject from bugs and magnets to gardens and cake baking.

Hoyt explains the use of a range of instructional strategies, including shared and guided reading and writing, to help students understand and use nonfiction material to answer questions about the world around them. She shows teachers how to make texts more attainable, scaffold vocabulary, and deal with content-specific words. Her simple suggestions help you get started and maintain your course: having students write about the visuals in their texts, infusing informational texts into guided reading, then using these texts to teach reading strategies. For further help, she includes throughout her book:

• teaching points
• reading strategies
• writing exercises
• checklists, plans, reading logs, and other forms
• vignettes from teachers across the country to serve as real-life models.

Do a better job linking up the curriculum. Teach skills and strategies applicable across content areas. See students’ natural curiosities aroused. Take the tips from Make It Real, teach informational text, and hear comments like one from an enthusiastic first grader, "We’re learning about the world AND learning how to read, too!"

Part I: Move Over Fiction

• Chaper 1
  Through a new Lens: Informational Text at the Heart of Reading Instruction
• Chapter 2
  Read Alouds: Celebrating Information Texts
• Chapter 3
  Shared Reading: Big Books and Overheads On Deck
• Chapter 4
  Independent Reading With Informational Texts: Making It Personal

Part II: Learning to Read AND
Reading to Learn

• Chapter 5
  Yes They Can! Emergent Readers and Informational Texts
• Chapter 6
  Supporting English Language Learners: Building Content Knowledge and Language
• Chapter 7
  Teaching Reading Skills with Informational Texts
• Chapter 8
  Where’s the Door? Finding the Path through Informational Texts
• Chapter 9
  Pre-reading Strategies: Building Understanding for Content and Vocabulary
• Chapter 10
  Taking Time to Wonder: Questioning Strategies to Build Comprehension
• Chapter 11
  Love Those Visuals: Photographs, Diagrams, Learning to Love Captions
• Chapter 12
  Text Features: It Isn’t Just the Words

Part III: Small Group Experiences with Informational Texts

• Chapter 13
  Guided Reading With Info Text
• Chapter 14
  Multilevel Theme Sets: Differentiating Instruction
• Chapter 15
  Literature Circles with Informational Texts
• Chapter 16
  Move Over Guided Reading: Reciprocal Teaching Comes Back

Part IV: Write All About It

• Chapter 17
  Modeled, Shared and Interactive Writing
• Chapter 18
  Guided Writing With Nonfiction
• Chapter 19
  Research Strategies
• Chapter 20
  Investigations

Exploring Informational Texts
From Theory to Practice

by Linda Hoyt, Margaret Mooney, Brenda Parkes

Exploring Informational Texts offers a rich array of perspectives on the role of informational text in today’s classrooms. You will hear voices from the US, New Zealand and Australia in a rich tapestry of practical and reflective pieces which will support your efforts to bring informational texts into the lives of children from kindergarten through middle school. Classroom teachers lend their voices to with reflections on how informational texts have become part of the heartbeat of daily literacy instruction while Hoyt, Mooney, Parkes offer guidance on the WHY and HOW of informational texts.

Table of Contents

Part I: Setting the Stage for Guided Reading and Writing With Information Texts

• The Power of Informational Texts, Brenda Parkes
• Nurturing Wonder, Margaret Mooney
• Teaching Children to Think Critically, Linda Hoyt
  

Part II: Guided Reading and Writing with Information Texts

• Guided ReadingWith Informational Texts, Linda Hoyt
• Tips for Getting Started, Cheryle Ferlita
• Guided Writing, Margaret Mooney
• Linking Guided Reading and Guided Writing, Linda Hoyt
• Voice in Informational Text, Margaret Mooney

Part III: Looking Closely At Informational Texts and Instruction

• Thinking as A Reader/Writer of Informational Text, Margaret Mooney
• Understanding Text Structures, Linda Hoyt
• Text Structures Reference Chart, Teresa Therriault
• The Why of Some Text Features of Informational Text, Margaret Mooney
• Navigating Informational Texts, Janine Batzle
• Oral Reading: Let’s Keep It In Perspective, Michael Opitz
• Taking Stock of Our Practices, Linda Hoyt

Part IV: Classroom Voices

• Support for Students Writing Informational Text in Writer’s Workshop, Jerry Miller
• Coming to Terms With a Table of Contents, Jodi Wilson
• Guided Reading With Math Texts, Jerry Miller
• Supporting ELL Students, Norma Gibbs
• The Expository Pyramid, Teresa Therriault
• Using Text Features As Tools for Learning, Jan McCall
  

Snapshots
Literacy Minilessons Up Close

Jump to Free Lessons & Tools to print sample exercises from this book:

from Chapter 3:
Fast and Slow Reading

from Chapter 5:
Little Words in Big Words

from Chapter 6:
Discussion Starters and Stoppers

from Chapter 9:
Parents as Partners in Reflection

Visualizing during reading. Choosing just-right books. Using a table of contents. Peer editing.
What do these strategies have in common? They’re all tools of skilled readers and writers. And there’s no better way to teach them than through minilessons. Minilessons provide strategic, focused instruction that children can put to immediate use. They capture interest without risking boredom.

Linda Hoyt, author of the popular Revisit, Reflect, Retell, returns with the definitive guide to conducting minilessons across the literacy spectrum. Linda covers oral reading, guided reading, independent reading, and writing, providing more than 170 of her best minilessons for understanding individual words and whole texts, fiction and nonfiction.

For each “Snapshot,”Linda guides you through a process for gradually handing over
responsibility to your students:

• Demonstration: It’s important to communicate the goal of the lesson to your students. Then, using one of the book’s many reproducibles or your own text, model what you want them to do, explaining how you arrive at decisions. Make your thinking as transparent as possible so students will understand how to apply the strategy.
• Guided and Independent Practice: Give students the chance to try the strategy, perhaps in pairs, small groups, or teams—with you as coach. From there, allow them to apply the strategy in their personal work as you assess them for what they’re doing well and where they need support.
• Reflection: Students must think about the strategy, to promote its long-term use. What did we learn? How did the strategy work for us? How else might we use it? Linda includes “Key Questions” within each Snapshot to get you and your students started.

Snapshots is essential for making the most of even the shortest moments of your day. It will help you broaden your students’ vision so they can see the many functions of literacy and apply them in real and meaningful ways.

Contents

1. Getting Started with Minilessons
2. Developing a Strategic Stance Toward Print; Or, Reading Strategies Alive! Knowing What to Do and When to Do It
3. Showtime! A Celebration of Oral Reading
4. Playing with Phonemic Awareness: Using Our Ears to Make Sense of Sounds
5. Building Knowledge of Print: Sounds, Symbols, and Sight Words in Action
6. Minilessons for Guided Reading and Literature Discussion
7. Independent Reading: Personalizing the Learning in Books I Choose Myself
8. Informational Text: Strategies for Success in All Content Areas
9. Writing: Collecting My Thoughts, Telling My Stories, Moving Forward as a Write

Snapshots
the video

With Snapshots the book, Linda Hoyt changed the way tens of thousands of teachers viewed and used literacy minilessons. Now, with Snapshots the video, Linda demonstrates how minilessons unfold in read aloud and guided reading, creating a model that can empower instruction across all curricular areas.

Linda takes viewers inside the classroom so they can see for themselves how she conducts
minilessons with children. Working in both whole and small groups, she moves from explicit demonstrations and think alouds into guided and independent practice. In the process, she demonstrates:

• a complete lesson from start to finish
• key components of a literacy minilesson, including length
• a model of how minilessons can strengthen read alouds and guided reading
• ideas for whole-class and small-group instruction.

Teachers and staff developers alike will benefit from this unique look at a master teacher and children at work.

Revisit, Reflect, Retell
Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension

Jump to Free Lessons & Tools to print sample exercises from this book:

from Chapter 1:
Have a Book Party

from Chapter 2:
Interactive Journals

from Chapter 5:
Parent Page:
Plan a Story, Write a Story, Make a Book

How can we be certain that students are making sense of print? What can we do to improve comprehension? Linda Hoyt, a reading specialist and staff developer, is convinced that thoughtful reflection and retelling are the keys. When readers reflect upon and retell what they know about a text, they experience deeper levels of understanding and increased communicative competency.

This highly practical collection of more than 130 strategies and 90 reproducibles is the perfect resource for any teacher attempting to evoke high-quality responses to literature. It provides a detailed look at why to respond to text, when to respond to text, and how readers might be invited to respond in authentic ways. All of the strategies are classroom tested, and the blackline masters offer powerful incentives for creative interactions.

Each chapter is loaded with assessment tools for teachers, student self-reflection forms, observation guides, and parent activities that are ready for immediate use. You and your students will laugh together in Game Show, explore graphophonic understandings through Alphaboxes and AlphaAntics, engage in inferential reasoning with V.I.P., and stretch your understanding with Interactive Journals.

Revisit, Reflect, Retell is firmly grounded in constructivist reading theory, offering support across a range of genres and learning styles. Teachers will find it a valuable resource for creating meaningful and authentic learning experiences. The book will be equally useful as a workshop manual, discussion starter for teacher study groups, and support for staff developers.

“Revisit, Reflect, Retell contains an incredible amount of useful information and ready to use strategy sheets for students. Includes wonderful pre, during, and post reading strategies to help students with their comprehension...”
— Teacher in Palo Alto, California

 

Contents

1. Conversations About Books
2. Oral Retelling
3. Written Reflections
4. Informational Text
5. The Arts

   plus Assessment Tools for each chapter

Comprehension Strategies
...to Help Your Struggling Students Be More Successful Readers, Grades 2-5

All young readers benefit from good
comprehension strategies, and struggling
readers benefit most of all. While some readers interact with text easily, grasping main ideas and dealing with difficult words, struggling readers often need specific strategies that will help them predict, self-monitor, summarize, and cope with complex material.

In this videotape training program, Linda Hoyt, a recognized expert in the field of reading, demonstrates outstanding comprehension strategies with groups of children, grades 2-5. The strategies are helpful to all readers, but they are especially useful to readers who struggle to construct meaning from text. These strategies give children a set of useful tools that enables them to approach printed material with increased competence and confidence. You will easily be able to incorporate these techniques into your existing reading instruction whether you teach in a classroom or special program.

You will see the following dynamic strategies demonstrated in actual classroom settings:

• Reciprocal Teaching helps students apply the skills of predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing.
• Read-Cover-Remember-Retell focuses children's attention on retaining information from printed text.
• When using V.I.P., struggling readers are able to identify main indeas in a tangible way.
• Good Readers Strategies make an array of practical, useful reading techniques accessible to young readers who struggle over difficult text.
• Two Words is a nonthreatening approach to summarization perfect for children who are overwhelmed by traditional techniques.
• The Alphaboxes strategy provides struggling readers with a structure for brainstorming key elements of stories and articles.
• Sketch to Stretch encourages readers to use visual images to express their understandings of printed material and is also well-suited to children who benefit from supportive prewriting activities.

These strategies and more are modeled and explained in this practical training program.

Learn how to:

1. teach your struggling readers powerful comprehension strategies that will help them work through printed text with deeper understanding
2. strengthen struggling students' ability to predict and summarize
3. increase children's recognition of key words and ideas
4. help young readers monitor their understanding of what they are reading with greater accuracy and
   confidence
5. promote the transfer of comprehension strategies into individual reading for even your most reluctant readers