Ask and you shall receive
Cognative Engagement Boosts Reading Achievement
BY SARAH ASKARI
Engaged Learners are successful learners. But how do teachers ensure that a classroom filled with beginning readers becomes one filled with enthusiastic, proficient readers? It may be a matter of asking the right questions.
At the Minnesota Center for Reading Research (MCRR), director Barbara Taylor and Deb Peterson, her frequent co-author, discovered a critical difference in outcomes between teachers who use primarily lower-level questioning and those whose questions elicited higher-level cognitive responses. The cognitive engagement model, a framework for reading instruction, encourages teachers to stimulate discussions with high-level questions; to coach and model rather than lecture; to explicitly teach strategies for reading comprehension; and to encourage every child to read, write, and share their work.
In a 2003 study of reading instruction at nine high-poverty schools across the United States, students of teachers who practiced the cognitive engagement model showed more growth in reading fluency and comprehension from fall to spring than those in other classrooms.
“The more [cognitive engagement] occurs, the more achievement students have in reading, and that’s true for all students—the English language learners, the special ed students, the gifted and talented students,” says Peterson. “K–6, the more we see higher-order talk about text, the more growth and achievement students have in reading.”
Even more promising, the use of a cognitive engagement model has helped students who are not reading at grade level to catch up. “In many of the schools we’re working in, children are coming in significantly below national norms. We try to accelerate their growth so they’re making more than a year’s growth in a year’s time,” says Peterson.
Prompting thinking
Low-level questions involve factual recall, explains Peterson, who, along with educational psychology associate professor Matthew Burns, is MCRR acting co-director while Taylor is on sabbatical. When students answer with recitations of fact, only minimal thought or engagement is required. To reach early readers, classroom instruction must also engage higher-level thinking.
“Higher-level questions look at a bigger theme and make connections between what the students are reading and their real lives,” Peterson says. “For instance, friendship might be a story’s theme. Some higher-order questions might be, ‘Have you and your friends been in a situation like the one in the story? How did you resolve it? If you were this character, what would you do, and why?’ ”
Of course if you surprise children with sophisticated questions, you might get blank stares. Teachers can guide their students by modeling possible responses. By thinking out loud, they demonstrate the process that takes place in the critical mind. For example, Peterson says, “You can tell your students, ‘If someone were to ask me that question, I might answer it this way. Now you think about it, and write about it, and we’ll come back and talk.’ ”
The goal is for all students in the classroom to be occupied in reading, writing, or talking in small groups. But to build up their own ideas, they need direction and encouragement. By prompting students to elaborate on their responses and to take the next creative step by making connections to what they have read, teachers can keep their students’ immersed in the learning experience. Eventually, focused students will write their own engaging questions that can be used in student-led discussions or book clubs.
Research in action
Many teachers in Minnesota learned to use the cognitive engagement model in the past eight years through Reading First, a federally funded, reading-reform initiative. As part of their training, they were taught to reflect upon their own classroom instruction, compare their actions to the approach supported by the cognitive engagement model, and make changes accordingly.
Jenny Mortimore, St. Paul’s Reading First district literacy coordinator, observes that students in classrooms where the teacher uses the cognitive engagement model grow at measurable levels in their vocabulary knowledge and comprehension skills. “English language learners also benefit from focused modeling and discussion, expanding their vocabularies and their capabilities to articulate their thinking,” she says. “It is an avenue to the development of life-long critical thinkers.”
At one of the Reading First schools—Woodcrest Elementary School in Fridley—educators have studied higher-level questioning over the past four years. Now the teachers use the method not just in reading instruction, but throughout the day, says Judi Kahoun, Woodcrest’s principal. “We have seen that all students benefit, leading to deeper thinking about the text and an increase in comprehension scores.”
Deepening connections
Schools that have spent the last few years working with MCRR to adopt the Reading First reformation are now in a “sustaining” mode in which they undertake such reflection, comparison, and change on their own, as an ongoing practice.
The MCRR continues to spread the word about its discoveries through professional development workshops for teachers, school teams, and reading coaches. Through its studies on schoolwide reading reform, the MCRR staff can provide schools with information on effective reading instruction and school-wide reading reform that is validated by research and proven in local schools.
“Our mission is to bridge research with practice,” says Peterson.
For more information
Deb Peterson, 612-626-9360, peter328@umn.edu; More information at the Minnesota Center for Reading Research Website