Alphabet Soup

Acronyms abound in the pedagogy of reading. From SQ3R to KWL to QAR to QtA, there is no shortage of shorthand for proven ways to teach cognitive strategies that deepen and consolidate interpretative textual behavior, aka the dance of reading (DoR).

SQ3R, coming first historically, contains the seeds of KWL. Some might argue that they are essentially the same—an argument with merit—but on closer inspection, they have important differences. “S” directs the reader’s attention to the text, to survey the textual abode for its plumbing, its foundation, its rooms; “K” implies at least a cursory survey of the text or at least the title, but its focus is on the reader’s long term memory about or knowledge of the topic. “Q” requires the reader to speculate about the big questions the text will likely address; “W” asks the reader to generate questions the reader would like the text to address. SQ3R is a little funky as an acronym; they don’t usually have digits. KWL is almost phonetic, lacking only a nice round vowel or diphthong.

Once you enter the space between “W” and “L,” you get less explicit help with actually negotiating meaning (doing the interpretive dance). You should have activated a semantic domain in memory and even assessed your level of expertise—as David said in pdp podcast #1, your cognitive “juices should be flowing”—but you are flying solo. Once you land on “3R,” however, cognitive behaviors are fairly well nailed down. First, you read (admittedly a vague instruction, but implying something like “decode and monitor comprehension”); then you “recite” or speak in an inner or outer voice, translating the text into your own language, (resaying the text); then you “review” and test your understanding. KWL is reader-based; SQ3R is text-based.

I’ve found it useful to place content-area reading strategies on a continuum with SQ3R on the left, KWL on the right. The Anticipation Guide, for example, actually a whole category of pedagogical routines in my course, can (but doesn’t always have to) be labor intensive for teachers but very powerful for learners. Closer to the left side of the continuum, the AG consists of words or phrases lodged in the macrostructure of the text or of statements that arouse curiosity about the text. AGs are text-dependent and therefore not exactly generic—hence, labor intensive. A student in my content-area reading course in Fresno designed a brilliant AG for a lesson she was to use in her student teaching placement. The text was a piece of exposition providing information about dairy cattle. Before having her students read, she asked them to agree or disagree with statements like “A productive cow can yield as many as 300 gallons of milk per month.” She demonstrated the lesson in class for her peers; I’d never witnessed so much eagerness to know things about dairy cows.

Over a two year period as I worked to facilitate improvement in reading instruction with a middle school History department, I decided to get into the acronym business myself. I called our system “SMART” and got it as close to the center of the continuum as I could. All of the strategies I would present to the History faculty for their use would fit somewhere in SMART.

S = Survey (survey the text, survey prior knowledge, survey the context, establish curricular purpose)

M = Mark (teach shorthand signals: ! = surprise; ? = question; $ = important. INSERT is a published system of notations. Learners can devise their own. Sticky notes worked wonders.)

A = Analyze (everything from vocabulary to causal chains to arguments to structure).

R = Revise (“re-see” an interpretation large or small; change and tidy up).

T = Talk (check understanding against peers; self-test; discuss; revisit purpose).

As a Department we explored various and sundry pedagogical strategies that addressed specific parts of SMART. For example, where Anticipation Guide is labor intensive as a prereading activity, PReP is generic, a great strategy for substitute teachers. The Pre-Reading Plan (PReP) requires a lot of practice for a teacher to get really good at it, it offers the punch of public brainstorming, the smoothing effect of categorizing, and the deepening effect of reflective analysis—all in an effort to get the cognitive juices flowing just before lacing up the Nikes. FLIP as a prereading strategy can revolutionize how students approach not just one specific reading assignment, but how the take up stances toward texts down the road.

From DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read) to QtA (Questioning the Author), researchers in reading have served up hearty bowls of alphabet soup with crackers. The beauty of acronyms is their usefulness and efficiency in helping teachers tell them apart and hold onto them. I’m sure that my students in my content-area reading courses left with at least a few cans of soup with no expiration date. But nothing has been as powerful in my experience in actually improving pedagogy through developing deep pedagogical expertise as SMART.