Inside CSI

Stunning teacher turnout for seminars

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 03:44:00 GMT

This autumn, more than 1000 teachers turned out across New Zealand for the Teaching Comprehension Strategies seminar series run by South Pacific Press.

Kyran Smith, from Miramar South School, and Neale Pitches from South Pacific Press spoke about the impressive gains in comprehension achieved by students learning in the “CSI” way – using digital, shared reading followed by book-based co-operative learning. Maori and Pasifica students, including boys, were of special interest to the teacher audiences, as their reading scores rose remarkably in some cases.

Teachers were given practical teaching approaches – the theory in plain English – and they saw video of students in action at Miramar South School. Many teachers remarked at the engaged, vibrant faces of the (so-called) struggling readers in the video, and marvelled at the way students could read, respond and think their way through texts, familiar and unfamiliar in content.

Student Voices

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:41:00 GMT

What do today's 'digital natives' make of CSI? Roslyn School's Room 22 is a completely digital classroom. The students there have recently been using CSI's Kit 6, and here's what they have to say about it.

Ten Tips for Teaching Comprehension

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Neale Pitches is co-author of CSI - Comprehension Strategies Instruction, and is a very experienced teacher, principal, author, and publisher. Here are his ten tips for teaching reading comprehension:

See each of your students as capable young people, merely lacking in experience – this mindset will help you (and them) with the remaining nine tips!
Think of how you teach a skill, such as kicking a ball. Having modeled how to kick a ball you then ask the students to try, and you give them feedback on their efforts. Do the same in teaching comprehension! Research says feedback is hugely important in learning.
Build your students’ reading confidence by offering them many short, interesting texts from diverse places. Students will have wide interests regardless of how much they normally read. For this reason, you will find they can make many connections to the texts you show them, even – or especially – poetry.
Include texts from across the content areas. Students will have to read material in all content areas as they progress through school. Research says that as the content load grows, some students fall behind.
Model, by thinking aloud, how you read actively to understand and enjoy texts. Model also how you use comprehension strategies to build your own understanding of texts.
As you model, make it clear that comprehension is not an “all-or-nothing” process. Students often think comprehension is about answering questions with a “right” or “wrong” answer. Show them how even a teacher like you doesn’t always understand everything in a text, especially at a first read-through. Comprehension is as much about asking questions as answering them.
As you model, involve the students, perhaps through think-pair-share. This will stave off the boredom and disengagement that can come with “stand-and-deliver” teaching. Also have students place an acetate sheet onto a text and annotate it with an erasable pen where they are having challenges or using strategies. This makes their thinking explicit to you.
As you model, discuss vocabulary with the students. Have them try to figure synonyms or short definitions for challenging vocabulary (encourage them to be “deTEXTives”). Building vocabulary is crucial to comprehension.
Display texts on a digital interface using an interactive whiteboard or a data projector. Your students are digital natives and they will welcome your efforts to use “their” technologies in their learning.
Be a reader yourself and notice your own use of comprehension strategies as you read. Read different books as they challenge you to use different strategies (I find the author Haruki Murakami great for putting my strategies to the test!). Research also shows that the deeper our knowledge as teachers the better we may teach.

Neale Pitches talks about comprehension to educators in Auckland, New Zealand

Digital Shared Reading

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:51:00 GMT

Digital Shared Reading is gaining momentum.

Many hundred of schools across the USA, New Zealand and Australia are studying CSI texts using the UMAJIN digital interface for Shared Reading. The UMAJIN interface was developed by Unlimited Realities in New Zealand in tandem with South Pacific Press, the developer of CSI. (CSI is co-published by Pacific Learning in the USA, making it a unique collaboration across the Pacific Ocean).

Leveled texts?

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:52:00 GMT

How much should we control the level of students’ reading materials?

Neale Pitches, co-author of CSI, writes: “CSI students ‘read beyond their interest and ability levels’ say Hagley High teachers. One challenge for teachers and librarians is how much to control students’ reading choices. In an era of leveled texts and ‘leveled’ students, how literally do we take Lev Vygotsky’s notion of scaffolding and ‘zone of proximal development’? Do we restrict students to texts we believe they can read, thereby restricting their reading experience? I have been concerned for some time about the trend to over-label students according to their reading ‘level’. I know my own reading ‘level’ varies according to three vital factors:

My interest in the text (and therefore my background knowledge)
My engagement with the text, (i.e., how much I want to read and apply myself to it)
The type of text (I’m notoriously troubled by icons in digital texts – unlike 10-year-olds!)

It seems to be the same with students, so I think it’s wrong to limit their access to ‘difficult’ texts, especially if they are struggling readers (or ESL/ELL students). I think CSI shows this. As students encounter the diverse range of nonfiction and fiction in CSI, across the content areas of English, science, mathematics and social studies their interest ‘brightens’ (Kyran Smith’s word, referring to her Miramar South students). Kids like challenge and diversity – so let’s give it to them.

We want your opinion…please.

Newport News "goes live" with CSI adoption

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:00:00 GMT

The Newport News, Virginia, USA, school district will “go live” with the first major adoption of CSI in the US, in the fall of this year.

Neale Pitches, CSI co-author, has just spent two days there working with the reading coaches under the direction of Lori Wall and Theresa McKee. “What a treat!” says Neale. “These coaches are smart and dedicated. We spent part of each day working on our personal knowledge of the comprehension strategies using texts for ‘grown-ups’ – e.g., Billy Collins’ beautiful poem The Lanyard. The rest of the day was spent on CSI texts. We watched the video from Miramar South School and the data showing stellar improvements in comprehension scores from both Miramar South and Hagley High schools. I reckon we formed a ‘learning community’ of our own.”

Audio Scaffolding in CSI

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:03:00 GMT

Why does CSI have an audio component and how is it best used?

Most classrooms are comprised of students with varied strengths, needs and levels of reading and comprehension. Few teachers would debate the importance of catering for the range of students’ needs, either in a composite class of mixed abilities or with struggling readers and ELL students. Even fewer teachers would dispute how difficult it can be to cater for all needs in a busy classroom environment.

In some classrooms, students with reading difficulties are likely to get instruction that focuses primarily on decoding rather than on meaning and comprehension. They are exposed mainly to text that is simply written and often correspondingly simple to comprehend. While there is a place for students to read text at their independent and instructional reading levels, it is wrong to assume that struggling readers, who may have limited ability to decode the words, are incapable of thinking about text in complex ways. Students who are denied any access to age-appropriate text are at a high risk of falling even further behind their peers and never catching up. This applies not only to their reading skills, but to all subjects across the curriculum; students’ skills in questioning, visualising, making inferences, determining important ideas and synthesising information remain underdeveloped or limited to the below-year-level text they have been reading.

It is becoming more commonly recognised that struggling readers need access to year-level material. A way of providing this that is effective for students and manageable for teachers is to use a variety of scaffolded experiences. During the CSI whole-class lesson, the students who are unable to decode the text used for instruction (either because they are struggling readers or ELL students, or they are reading on-year-level but they are in a composite class with classmates who are older and more skilled) are scaffolded by their teacher and their peers in a shared-reading context. During the cooperative learning activities, appropriate pairing of students can allow the struggling reader to be scaffolded by their partner and/or by the audio recording of the text.

The audio version of each text in the cooperative learning activities provides a good model for all students, regardless of their skill level, to emulate. Audio-assisted reading is widely accepted as especially beneficial for ELL students and struggling readers, as it improves their reading performance. It is also a useful support for students who find the on-year-level text too difficult to decode, as it enables them to read text that would otherwise have been inaccessible. Audio support helps to develop students’ fluency by freeing their attention so they can give maximum concentration to comprehension rather than just “getting the words right”.

The audio recordings of the texts are read by professionals (males and/or females) who have been trained to read fluently and at a range of targeted paces. Each pace is, as indicated by research, appropriate for students of a specific age group.

A group of students can listen to the audio recording on a CD together at a listening centre, or individual students can listen to it on a personal CD player or computer. The listening should take place at the same time as the ‘Interacting with the text’ or ‘During reading’ phase of the cooperative learning activity.

One listen of the recording is usually sufficient to make the text accessible to students, especially if they follow the text as they listen. They should, however, be allowed to revisit the text with the support of the audio if the need arises during later phases of the activity, such as ‘Reflecting on text’, ‘After reading’ or ‘Writing activity’. There is also convincing evidence of the value of repeated readings of the same text, with and without the audio for support and modelling.

CSI Case Study Video!

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:06:00 GMT

Click here to see students at Miramar South School using CSI! These students made notable gains in reading comprehension after using the program.

Short, engaging, and diverse texts

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:12:00 GMT

CSI offers 40 diverse, contemporary short texts across the content areas of English language arts, science, math, and social studies.

They can be displayed using acetate sheets on an overhead projector, but it is preferable, to highlight the interaction, that they are projected from the CD-ROM. This can be done using a data projector projected onto an interactive whiteboard or any other suitable screen-like surface. This method is much more likely to engage and motivate students.

Students are able to encounter grade-level texts and reading challenges from a diverse range of materials, including magazines, popular contemporary novels, and classic texts.

Text types include:
Persuasive, recounts, reports, essays, narratives, explanatory, procedural, articles, biographies, and autobiographies, compare and contrast, sequential, cause and effect, problem and solution, enumerative, and descriptive.

CSI offers 80 texts per grade level, 32 of which are for English language arts (16 fiction and 16 nonfiction), 16 for math literacy, 16 for science literacy, and 16 for social studies literacy.

CSI includes a Whole-Group Interactive Texts CD-ROM, which provides teachers with an easy-to-use, attractive interface with embedded functions (such as glossaries, picture glossaries, video clips, and tools to mask and highlight specific areas of text) that aid instruction and support students during reading. This technology supports the needs of 21st-century students, yet takes into account that not all classrooms have access to the same level of technology.

Each piece in CSI has been specifically linked to national content standards.

Metacognition in CSI

Fri, 14 May 2010 03:56:00 GMT

There are 5 ways students who use CSI learn metacognition.

1. Though modeling. Students are exposed to the teacher’s metacognitive thinking through “think aloud.”

2. Through interaction in a learning community. Students talk about their own thinking and hear other students talking about theirs.

3. Through the cooperative learning activities. Students reflect on their thinking as they complete tasks with a partner before reading, during reading, and after reading. Using acetate sheets, students record their thinking over the top of the text (annotation) and then discuss their thinking with each other.

4. Through the use of graphic organizers. Students record their thoughts in graphic organizers.

5. Through a student reflection rubric. Students assess themselves and then discuss their assessments with their teacher. This is done in a conference-type situation, where the student is asked to ‘justify’ their thoughts.

New texts and more in Members' Area!

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:43:00 GMT

There are now a number of free, downloadable digital texts available in the members' area.

Text topics include a crocodile wrestling grandma, global warming, and what it was like to be in a boy's prison in the 19th century. Download instructions can be found in the members' area.

You can also download some wonderful poems by Grade 7/Year 8 students at Miramar South School. The students wrote these poems after reading the whole-group text "My Brother" (Kit 5).

Don't forget about the CSI community forum in the members' area. You can post any questions or comments about CSI in the forum. We welcome feedback or questions you have about CSI, the components, the pedagogy, how it works in the classroom, the results, etc.

Welcome to the new CSI website!

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:31:00 GMT

Whether you're already using CSI in your classroom, you simply want to find out more about CSI, or are a member of the wider CSI - Comprehension Strategies Instruction community, welcome to the new website!

Here you will find an online community where you can learn more about the product and see what's currently happening in the world of CSI. You will have the opportunity to ask questions, share tips and ideas, and even upload CSI content that you or your students have made, to share with others around the world!

As time goes by we, the developers, will upload new supplementary content for members to download for free. Sign up for CSI newsletters so we can keep you in the loop with what's going on. Membership is free for anyone, whether you are using the product or not.

Please get in touch with us, we look forward to hearing from you!

Neale Pitches
CSI co-author

Academic and General Vocabulary Learning in CSI

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:14:00 GMT

We have included academic vocabulary words in CSI Kits 3, 4 and 5. Why?

Leading researcher Robert Marzano (2006) summed it up, in his evaluation of the ASCD Building Academic Vocabulary program: “students who participated in the [Building Academic Vocabulary] program exhibited greater ability to read and understand grade appropriate materials in mathematics, science and general literacy…” CSI has general vocabulary words featured too, and it has a unique approach to linking vocabulary to students’ background knowledge – using hypertext to provide word definitions (glossaries), pictures, and video to make CSI text more accessible, especially to ELL students and struggling readers.

CSI's approach to vocabulary instruction is modeled on the National Reading Panel Report, which states that vocabulary should be taught both directly and indirectly, with an emphasis on repetition and seeing vocabulary words several times. The panel stressed, "Learning in rich contexts, incidental learning, and the use of computer technology all help children develop larger vocabularies. A combination of methods, rather than a single teaching method, leads to best learning." CSI supports this approach by providing vocabulary support to teachers and students both indirectly and directly, with repetition of key terms and the use of computer technology and traditional hardcopy glossaries.

More information can be found in the CSI teachers' guide, or feel free to post comments and questions below.

Neale Pitches
CSI co-author

The Strategies in CSI

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:52:00 GMT

Research reports since 2000 have confirmed both the need for comprehension instruction in the middle years and at high school, and its urgency.

CSI revolves around several key strategies for direct comprehension instruction:

These strategies are matched with a variety of text types across four major content areas: English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.

CSI enables students to practice using a variety of strategies in combination across diverse, authentic and engaging texts.

For detailed information on each strategy used in CSI, please see the Teachers' Guide, or download the research report here

Differences Between the Kits

Mon, 25 May 2009 04:38:00 GMT

Kits 3, 4, and 5 have now been released!

There are some key differences you should know about Kits 3–5, compared to Kits 6–8:

Image of Kit 3:

Kits 3–5 are packaged according to STRATEGY, rather than content area. Many grades 3–5 teachers instruct across all four content areas of English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. To make it easier for these teachers, we packaged all of the strategy folders in one box, and all of the cooperative activity books in the other box. Each teaching folder is color coded with content areas and strategies down the spine.

Kits 3–5 include new features, such as academic vocabulary, embedded videos and picture glossaries, and marker pens and transparencies for students to use during cooperative activities.

Image of Kit 6:

Kits 6–8 are packaged according to CONTENT AREA. Many grades 6–8 teachers don't teach all four content areas, so we separated the strategy folders and student cooperative books into their respective content areas to make things easier. This makes it simple for a team of teachers to implement the CSI program by taking a box each to their class. Please note that one teacher (particularly an English language arts teacher) may still want to use all content area texts, and they are perfectly able to do so with the kits packaged this way.

We are currently enhancing the digital texts for Kits 6–8,by adding picture glossaries and video content. These updated digital texts will be available to existing CSI customers free of charge from early 2009.

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Packaging Kits 3–5 and Kits 6–8 in different ways was a direct result of advice and feedback we received from teachers during the early development of CSI, and helps to serve a specific purpose.

The CSI development team members all have previous teaching experience. This is a resource designed for teachers, by teachers. We welcome your comments - they enable us to continue to make the product enjoyable and easy to use.