Teaching metalinguistic awareness and reading comprehension with riddles

The article reports on multiple meanings in sentences and metalinguistic awareness in education. Comprehension of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are presented as key components of reading education. The author explores the use of riddles in teaching language comprehension and having students develop their own riddles. The author concludes that riddles can encourage metalinguistic skill development and awareness. Other topics include homonyms, ambiguous sentences, riddle books, and brainstorming

Challenging the Status Quo: Campus Community School

Campus Community School is a 300-student charter school in Dover, DE, which serves children in grades 1 through 8. As a new charter school the founders have had the opportunity to build our ideal school, from designing a constructivist project-based curriculum, to implementing site based management, and focusing heavily on parent participation. This essay illustrates how well the charter school model can work. As the administrator and one of the founding members of CCS, I describe our challenges and hurdles as well as successes

Teachers’ thoughts on e-readers in the elementary school classroom

Despite the popularity of e-readers and the enthusiasm of some for their use in secondary education, their utility in elementary education has not yet been systematically explored. Some advantages and disadvantages to teaching elementary literacy with e-readers are identified here. A convenience sample of ten teachers from a variety of different types of elementary schools and classrooms who were e-reader novices read a chapter of a grade-appropriate book on a Kindle and evaluated its use for their students. The teachers gave their opinions and ideas on how the devices could be implemented. Three specific technological affordances of an e-reader that carry pedagogical implications are discussed: the text-to-speech and dictionary functions, and the idea of unlimited access to books

Using Semantic Ambiguity Instruction to Improve Third Graders\u27 Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Comprehension: An Experimental Study

An experiment examined whether metalinguistic awareness involving the detection of semantic ambiguity can be taught and whether this instruction improves students\u27 reading comprehension. Lower socioeconomic status third graders (M age = 8 years, 7 months) from a variety of cultural backgrounds (N = 46) were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Those receiving metalinguistic ambiguity instruction learned to analyze multiple meanings of words and sentences in isolation, in riddles, and in text taken from the Amelia Bedelia series (Parish, 1979, 988). The control group received a book-reading and discussion treatment to provide special attention and to rule out Hawthorne effects. Results showed that metalinguistic ambiguity instruction was effective in teaching students to identify multiple meanings of homonyms and ambiguous sentences and to detect inconsistencies in text. Moreover, this training enhanced students\u27 reading com prehension on a paragraph-completion task but not on a multiple-choice passage-recall task, possibly because the two tests differ in the array of linguistic or cognitive correlates influencing performance. Comprehension monitoring was not found to mediate the relationship between ambiguity instruction and reading comprehension. Results carry implications for the use of language-based methods to improve reading comprehension in the classroom

Teaching metalinguistic awareness and reading comprehension with riddles

The article reports on multiple meanings in sentences and metalinguistic awareness in education. Comprehension of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity are presented as key components of reading education. The author explores the use of riddles in teaching language comprehension and having students develop their own riddles. The author concludes that riddles can encourage metalinguistic skill development and awareness. Other topics include homonyms, ambiguous sentences, riddle books, and brainstorming

Review of The Kindergarten Book: A Guide to Literacy Instruction

Reviews the book The Kindergarten Book: A Guide to Literacy Instruction

First-graders receive instruction in homonym detection and meaning articulation: The effect of explicit metalinguistic awareness practice on beginning readers

An experiment examined whether beginning readers can successfully learn to detect and define homonyms, and whether this ability correlates with vocabulary and/or phonological awareness. First graders received ambiguity instruction involving homonyms in isolation, in riddles, and in text. A control group received reading lessons without a metalinguistic component. Results showed that a very brief training program was effective in teaching students to identify multiple meanings of homonyms in isolation. No correlation existed between the ability to learn about homonyms and pretest oral language ability, indicating that this instruction is appropriate for all learners

Challenging the status quo: Campus Community School

Campus Community School is a 300-student charter school in Dover, DE, which serves children in grades 1 through 8. As a new charter school the founders have had the opportunity to build our ideal school, from designing a constructivist project-based curriculum, to implementing site based management, and focusing heavily on parent participation. This essay illustrates how well the charter school model can work. As the administrator and one of the founding members of CCS, I describe our challenges and hurdles as well as successes

The role of metalinguistic awareness in the reading comprehension of sixth and seventh graders

While it is generally acknowledged that metalinguistic awareness plays a role in decoding ability (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000), less is known about the role metalinguistic awareness plays in comprehension. In the present study, structural riddles and ambiguous sentences differing in the source of linguistic ambiguity were used to study the importance of metalinguistic awareness in reading comprehension. One hundred sixth and seventh graders were tested on 25 structural riddles and 40 ambiguous sentences. Performance was correlated with scores on the reading comprehension and vocabulary subtests of the GMRT4 (MacGinitie, MacGinitie, Maria, & Dreyer, 2000). It was found that both tasks correlated significantly with reading comprehension and vocabulary. A multiple hierarchical regression found that riddle solving explained unique variance in the reading comprehension scores, after vocabulary was statistically controlled. This is interpreted as evidence that metalinguistic awareness is an ability separate from general linguistic intelligence, which contributes to reading comprehension. The implications for instruction are discussed

Comprehension: Awareness of homonyms, riddles, and word play

Dr. Baker and Dr. Marcy Zipke discuss comprehension: awareness of homonyms, riddles, and word play. Additional information can be found in Dr. Zipke’s article published in Reading Research Quarterly 44 number 3