Dé juiste lezing bestaat niet! Hoe je vanuit een open houding tot dialogisch leesonderwijs komt

Vaak behandelen we teksten in de klas ten onrechte alsof er maar één mogelijke interpretatie is, waarbij leraren het als hun taak zien om hun leerlingen mee te nemen in die ene ‘ juiste lezing’. Vaak zijn er echter meerdere interpretaties mogelijk en kan de visie die uit de tekst spreekt kritisch benaderd worden. Dat zou leerzame gesprekken opleveren. Dit artikel bespreekt hoe een dialogische aanpak in het leesonderwijs ook al op basisscholen kan helpen om leraren en leerlingen gelijkwaardig en kritischer te laten nadenken over tekstbetekenissen. Hierbij is de benadering die leraren (en leerlingen) tegenover teksten aannemen cruciaal. Welke benadering stimuleert een goede dialoog over een tekst? En wat betekent dit voor de tekstkeuze en voor wat leraren moeten weten en kunnen

Text structure instruction in primary education: Effects on reading, summarization, and writing

Although knowledge of informational text structures can promote text comprehension, this topic receives little attention in the Dutch primary school curriculum. 201 Dutch students in grades 4-6 participated with their teachers (n = 10) in this quasi-experimental study with a switching-panels replication design. Students either first followed a text structure intervention (TOP) and then went back to business-as-usual, or the other way around. During the intervention, teachers taught their students about the characteristics of four informational text structures, and how to use structure-specific graphic organizers to organize main ideas for each structure. In addition, several writing tasks related to the different text structures were included. At three measurement occasions, students completed text structure tests, reading comprehension tests, summarization tasks, and writing tasks. Only the fourth graders in one iteration of the intervention showed immediate effects over and above the effect of business-as-usual lessons on the text structure test (d = 0.50), the reading comprehension test (d = 0.53), the summarization task (d = 0.48). In both iterations of the intervention, an immediate effect was found on writing (d = 0.33 and d = 0.39). These findings are discussed in the light of test-related issues and implementation fidelity data

Narrative Production in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD):Similarities and Differences

The present study focuses on the similarities and differences in language production between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In addition, we investigated whether Theory of Mind (ToM), working memory, and response inhibition are associated with language production. Narratives, produced by 106 Dutch-speaking children (36 with ASD, 34 with ADHD, and 36 typically developing) aged 6 to 12 during ADOS assessment, were examined on several linguistic measures: verbal productivity, speech fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical semantics, and discourse pragmatics. Children were tested on ToM, working memory, and response inhibition and parents filled in the Children's Communication Checklist (CCC-2). Gold-standard diagnostic measures (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schema [ADOS], Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised [ADI-R], and the Parent Interview for Child Symptoms [PICS]) were administered to all children to confirm diagnosis. Regarding similarities, both clinical groups showed impairments in narrative performance relative to typically developing children. These were confirmed by the CCC-2. These impairments were not only present on pragmatic measures, such as the inability to produce a narrative in a coherent and cohesive way, but also on syntactic complexity and their production of repetitions. As for differences, children with ADHD but not children with ASD showed problems in their choice of referring expressions and speech fluency. ToM and working memory performance but not response inhibition were associated with many narrative skills, suggesting that these cognitive mechanisms explain some of the impairments in language production. We conclude that children with ASD and children with ADHD manifest multiple and diverse language production problems, which may partly relate to their problems in ToM and working memory. General Scientific Summary This study on narrative production shows that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) manifest multiple and diverse language production problems, which may partly relate to their problems in Theory of Mind and working memory. The results of the present study emphasize the need to investigate language abilities not only of children with ASD, but also of children with ADHD

A Meta‐Analysis on the Effects of Text Structure Instruction on Reading Comprehension in the Upper Elementary Grades

In this meta‐analysis, the authors synthesize results from 44 (quasi‐)experimental studies on informational and narrative text structure interventions involving students in grades 4–6 in regular school settings. Findings show that text structure instruction had positive immediate effects on students’ reading comprehension but that effect sizes varied largely across outcome measures: questions (Hedges’ g = 0.25), summarization (g = 0.57), recall (g = 0.37), and knowledge about text structure (g = 0.38). However, students who received text structure instruction no longer outperformed control groups at delayed posttests. Content‐related features, such as a focus on paragraph‐level structure, active construction of graphic organizers, and teaching rule‐based summarization techniques, moderated the effectiveness of text structure instruction, but these effects also varied across outcome measures. Instructional features moderated delayed effects: Interventions with opportunities for individual student practice resulted in higher delayed effects for comprehension questions. The authors argue that text structure instruction deserves a place in the primary school curriculum so the positive effects on reading will be maintained