Investigation A

Look again at the Kiwi Conservation Club webpage.

Notice the many different mini-texts on the page: two sets of bulleted points; two coloured texts; one text in a box or frame; and two diagrams (or drawings).

• Identify where information about wētā is located and consider the writer’s purpose.
• What other kinds of information are there? Consider the writer’s purpose for adding this to the information about wētā.
• Do the diagrams relate directly to the text? What is their purpose? Do they make the meaning of the text clearer?

Explore the links to other information about wētā on the Kiwi Conservation Club webpage. How similar are the texts about other types of wētā? Are there similar levels of complexity, or do the levels vary?

What does a good reader do?

When students reading a curriculum-related text recognise challenges in comprehending it, they need to make connections with their prior knowledge (such as previous personal and topic-related knowledge) and with their knowledge of other texts. This also helps them retain the ideas they gain from that text. The more connections a student makes, the more memorable the text becomes. Students also need to be able to focus on the main points in the text.

Making connections with prior knowledge is a key comprehension strategy. Teachers can help their students make connections with their own prior knowledge by:

• using a technique such as brainstorming before and/or after reading
• providing for more than one reading of texts, when appropriate, especially when working with English language learners.

Teachers can help their students make connections across texts by:

• having their students monitor their ongoing learning by keeping a log in which they rewrite their understandings after reading new texts (The purposes and benefits of student learning logs are described in Appendix 1 of Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13: A Guide for Teachers, Ministry of Education, 2004);
• using information transfer charts and inquiry charts to help students select, organise, and evaluate the information in different topic-related texts (see below).

Students need explicit teaching to enable them to recognise the main points in complex texts such as multiply linked texts. For example, teachers can:

• teach students to identify subheadings (in written text) or section headings (in hypertext) and to retrieve the information in them
• teach students to identify the writers’ purposes and the key points made to meet those purposes
• ensure the learning activities they plan and implement require their students to comprehend the information they have, to take responsibility for it, and to share it with others (for example, split information tasks).

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Using information transfer activities

One of the simplest ways of helping students recognise relevant information in written texts is through information transfer activities (Palmer, 1982). In these activities, the information in a text is transferred to a table or diagram (either provided by the teacher or generated by students). In the process, the text content is presented, within categories, in a partly graphic or visual form. You may recognise this as a graphic outline or graphic organiser.

Nation (1988) urges teachers to make the categories generalisable so that students can use the information gleaned from one text when they read other texts. Using the same categories successively with other texts gives English language learners alternative forms of vocabulary and sentence structure, which extends their language-learning opportunities.

Extending bilingual skills

Bilingual students who become familiar with using information transfer activities may like to work in groups to develop their own information transfer grids for texts in their Pasifika languages. They will be able to compare them with similar English texts, and identify differences and similarities. This will enable them to make connections when reading other texts in the future.

Using inquiry charts

We know that activating prior knowledge is an important step in the learning process and that ‘making connections to prior knowledge’ is an important comprehension strategy. Inquiry charts are a way of helping students build on their prior knowledge and use and compare other texts.

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There are three steps in using an inquiry chart. Before students read a text, they record what they already know about a topic, either with other students or with the teacher. They do this in relation to the categories of information they need to focus on in their learning. In the following example, students are learning to retrieve information from a factual report:

Topic: Frogs	What do tadpoles eat?	What do frogs eat?	Where can frogs live?	What eats frogs	Other interesting facts
What we know	fish flies mosquitoes	bees flies mosquitoes sea snails	under the water in the pond in lakes on a lily pad under a lily pad	spider crocodile shark fish eel	Sometimes they dry out. The frog goes up to breathe.

The students then use the same categories of information to guide them in reading a number of different texts or other sources of information. This might look like the example below:

Topic: Frogs	What do tadpoles eat?	What do frogs eat?	Where can frogs live?	What eats frogs	Other interesting facts
Text 1	small water plants	insects	In a fish pond	birds rats hedgehogs	They go down in the mud when the cold comes. Frogs have long tongues.
Text 2	plants	insects worms beetles snails	on plants in the pond on grass	no information available	Some frogs are poisonous.

Finally, the students integrate information and language under each of the headings to produce a summary statement for each.

Topic: Frogs	What do tadpoles eat?	What do frogs eat?	Where can frogs live?	What eats frogs	Other interesting facts
Summary	plants and insects	insects	in damp places	birds and small animals

Using inquiry charts like this help students to link the skills of speaking, reading, and writing. See Inquiry chart for a complete description.

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