What is it about?
Vygotsky posited that all higher psychological processes, like reading comprehension, are first social processes, between individuals (and cultural activity). Reading comprehension is generally thought of as something "in your head"--a private act between reader, text, and context. Yet, the origins of that dialectic between the reader, text, and context has to begin somewhere----the actual "discussion in our head". In this study, we tried, through an apprenticeship process of a skilled teacher and other students, to help students "try on" the discourse of more able comprehenders.
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Why is it important?
Students with disabilities have been characterized as being relatively passive and inactive readers. Expert readers, on the other hand, are very active readers---they are constantly asking questions, summarizing, predicting, clarifying, marking up text, and connecting the text with what they already know. When we arm students with the language using practices, including cognitive strategies, annotating strategies, discussion strategies---we can simulate and make "visible" versions of the dialogues we hope that they will use later, on an internal plane of development. Historically, there may be limitations placed on many students with disabilities about their ability to comprehend text---maybe especially informational text and with young learners. If we do not provide the more direct, explicit, and strategic instruction with our younger learners with disabilities, they may be at a disadvantage in later years as the expectation shift towards expecting that students have generally learned to decode---so should be able to comprehend. Rather, what we know is that students also need excellent comprehension instruction, in addition to direct, explicit instruction in phonics, vocabulary, and fluency.
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This page is a summary of: Comprehension Instruction for Tier 2 Early Learners: A Scaffolded Apprenticeship for Close Reading of Informational Text, Learning Disability Quarterly, July 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0731948719861106.
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