DIRECTED READING ACTIVITY
(DRA)
The DRA is a reading
comprehension/critical thinking activity for the Building Knowledge part of a
reading lesson with either narrative or informational text.
RATIONALE: The DRA or DRTA method is
designed to support students’ reading comprehension by guiding them to key
points in the text and providing opportunities to discuss its meaning with
their classmates.
GROUP SIZE: This activity can be done with
eight to twenty-five students. It is possible
to do with more, but their
opportunities for participation are diminished.
RESOURCES: The method requires a
sufficient number of texts for all students to read.
They also need paper and
pencils.
TIME REQUIRED: This type of lesson can be
completed in 30 to 40 minutes (anticipation
phase: 5 to 10 minutes;
building knowledge phase: 15 to 20 minutes; consolidation phase:
5 to 10 minutes). A lesson can
be extended over several days, with perhaps anticipation
activities the first day,
building knowledge activities over the second and third days, and
consolidation activities on a
fourth day.
ACTIVITY:
Step 1: Begin with one or two
anticipation activities designed to motivate students and to
activate or install needed
background knowledge, including new vocabulary: semantic
map to gloss (introduce) the
term yacht and activate background knowledge, and prediction from terms
to apply knowledge of additional vocabulary from the story.
Step 2: Before beginning the Directed
Reading Activity, the teacher should chunk the text by
dividing it into manageable
pieces for the students to read silently. Then the teacher should prepare one
or two comprehension-level questions for each chunk to be read by the students.
1. Chunk text with stops to
support comprehension
2. Directed Reading Activity
(DRA) to guide silent reading with higher order questions
3. Discussion of responses to
questions, with evidence provided through brief oral reading
Step 3: Provide a culminating activity
that allows students to review their understandings of the text and to apply
them. In many lessons, this may be provided as a home task.
1. Think-Pair-Share activity
to share new knowledge about characters
2. Completion of character map
to share new knowledge (graphic organizer)
3. Predictions about
characters based on character traits
REFLECTIONS: Teachers will notice that
comprehension improves quickly when students
focus on finding answers to
comprehension-level questions instead of just reading aloud.
They enjoy the discussion of
their answers because there is usually more than one correct
answer or more than one
opinion about the correct answer.
ABOUT THE QUESTIONS USED IN
THE DIRECTED READING ACTIVITY
What kinds of questions should
the teacher ask in the Directed Reading Activity to guide the
readers’ thinking? Research has
shown that questions are most helpful when they follow the
contours of the format and
genre of the text. That is, the questions should help readers follow the
presentation of information that is particular to the kind of text the students
are reading. The Directed Reading Activity presented in this core lesson used a
work of fiction, so the following discussion of questions will focus on
fictional or narrative texts.
Narrative Texts
Narrative texts come in
subcategories such as realistic fiction, historical fiction, folk stories,
fantasies, legends, and works
of magical realism or science fiction. It can be useful to remind
readers of the category of
story they are reading, and what kinds of possible actions they can expect from
it. For example, in realistic fiction the events will be drawn from what is
possible in real life, but in a work of fantasy or a folk tale magic can
happen. In science fiction, impossible actions may occur, so long as they are
derived from a logical extension of what is possible.
Narrative texts usually
contain a predictable set of elements: the setting, the characters,
the
problem, attempts at solutions,
the consequences of the actions, and the theme or
message of the story.
Questions about settings may
lead students to visualize the setting, to notice how the author
created it in her or his
imagination, and to reflect on what kinds of actions and issues the author expects
from the setting.
Questions about characters similarly
call attention to how the author helps the reader know the characters, sense
the tensions between the characters, and understand the kinds of problems the main
character might have, as well the resources with which that character faces the
problems.
Questions about the problem,
the attempts at solutions, and the consequences of the
actions can guide readers to follow
the plots of stories. Readers can be asked to note the maincharacter’s problem
and to predict how she or he will attempt to solve it, given what they know about
the character (and what they could predict from the kind of story they are
reading). They can also be asked about the consequences of the actions, and how
the situation at the end of the storydiffers from the situation at the
beginning.
Themes or messages of stories can be asked about
in several ways. Students can be asked whatthe story meant to them. They can
also be asked why they would or would not agree with themessage the story seems
to convey—because many popular stories suggest ways of living to which we
shouldn’t readily subscribe, that one must be beautiful or very aggressive in
order to be successful, for instance.
Questions about Other Genres
Teachers may ask questions
when using the Directed Reading Activity with other genres of text, such as
informational and persuasive texts. Questions for these kinds of texts are
described in the core lessons that follow in this guidebook.
VARIATIONS AND RELATED METHODS
THE DIRECTED READING-THINKING ACTIVITY (DR-TA) AND CHART
The Directed
Reading-Thinking Activity (Stauffer 1969) is a popular method for engaging
students in reading narrative texts for understanding. It is similar to DRA in that
students read silently under the direction of the teacher, but the question
prompts are less specific and provide less support for comprehension than DRA.
It is suitable for students who have had good success with DRA, because it
encourages them to make their own predictions.
GROUP SIZE: From four to forty.
RESOURCES: Copies of text to be read;
paper and pencils for students.
TIME REQUIRED: The activity can be done in 15
to 30 minutes.
ACTIVITY:
Step 1: Prepare the text by marking
four or five good stopping points. Plan stopping
points to fall at moments of
suspense in the story.
Step 2: On the chalk board or on chart
paper, prepare a chart like the one below. Explain to the students that they
will be reading the story, one bit at a time. Remind them that it is important
not to read beyond the stopping points. They will be making predictions and
reading to confirm those predictions.
Step 3: Ask the students to read the
title of the story. Talk about the genre. Name the author.
Show the cover illustration,
and read the title. Then ask for their prediction about what will happen in the
story. Write those predictions in the space labeled “What do you think will
happen?” after the title. Ask the students why they think so. Then enter their
reasons under “Why?”
Step 4: Now, ask the students to read
to the first stopping point, and when they have reached it, they should go back
and consider the prediction they made before, and say what actually happened.
You should record their ideas
in the space called “What did happen?”
Step 5: The teacher reviews the
predictions and asks which ones are coming true so far. The
teacher asks them to read
aloud parts of the text that confirm or disconfirm their predictions.
Step 6: Then, the students should
predict what they think will happen in the next block of text, and offer new
predictions, with the evidence that led to their making those predictions to be
entered in the spaces provided. Then they should read on, check their
prediction against what didhappen, make new predictions, dictate evidence for
those predictions, and read the last section.
Step 7: Finally, they should check
their last predictions against what actually happened in the story, and dictate
their findings about what happened, to be recorded in the space on the form.
