Podcast Transcript
Sometimes, a passage is told in order, or sequence. Different things happen at the beginning, middle and ending of a passage. Questions about sequence ask you to remember and put events or details in order. Questions about sequence often contain key words such as first, then, last, after or before.
In the previous episode, we focused on the second reading strategy – Recalling Facts and Details.
This episode of the CARS & STARS Online podcast is about Understanding Sequence, which is one of the main reading strategies that underpins the entirety of CARS & STARS Online.
But what are reading strategies, and why should you know about them?
Those elements that are most important for advanced reading comprehension, such as applying prior knowledge, building an extensive vocabulary, and developing critical-thinking capabilities, are skills that are learned and developed on an ongoing basis over time. They are essential in enabling students to engage in close textual analysis and deep, thoughtful reading comprehension across a range of texts and subject areas.
Comprehension can also be enhanced for many students through a set of specific, targeted strategies. Comprehension strategies are conscious plans, steps that many good readers can use to better make sense of texts, regardless of subject or genre. Comprehension strategies help students become purposeful, active readers that are in control of their own reading comprehension and able to think critically about text in any context.
CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading program designed to turn every student into a proficient and capable reader, with advanced levels of reading comprehension. The core reading strategies that underpin the entirety of the CARS & STARS Online digital reading comprehension program form an underlying instructional framework that recurs throughout every level and provides consistency of understanding and instruction for students and teachers alike.
The twelve reading strategies progress from simpler, lower-order thinking skills such as Finding the Main Idea and Recalling Facts and Details to more complex, higher-order concepts such as Identifying Author’s Purpose and Summarising. Initial questions determine students’ mastery of the text at a literal level, while later questions build on this understanding to get to the heart of their conceptual understanding. In this way, in every reading passage across every reading level, students are being asked to perform the same essential tasks – with their difficulty and complexity increasing as the student progresses through the reading levels.
These research-proven strategies, taken together, offer a complete recipe for increased student awareness of textual features and concepts, and provide a direct and understandable pathway to improving reading comprehension for every student
And now, onto our main strategy for this episode: Understanding Sequence!
The sequence in which ideas are presented in a text is one of the first things students must be able to ascertain in order to be able to fully derive meaning from it, and so the notion of Understanding Sequence is a crucial factor in reading comprehension and one of the 12 central reading strategies in CARS & STARS Online.
Texts at a low level might be more inclined to relay information or events in a linear order – this happened, which led to that, which then caused this to happen, etc. This is understandably easier to comprehend than when information or events are laid out in a non-linear fashion – that is, when something is presented first and only later connected to the cause of it, for example. We would generally think that information laid out in a linear A-B sequence requires less concentration than that which occurs nonlinearly and requires further work on the part of the reader to re-order sequentially.
Texts at a lower reading level would be more likely to present information directly, in a sequence in which the order of events is linear and easier to follow. Questions about Understanding Sequence in regard to a text at this level would simply ask students to perhaps identify what happened first or last, with the answer being intelligible because the item that occurred first, for example, clearly happened first in the passage.
As students progress throughout the reading levels, however, the sequence of events may become less directly obvious and something that requires re-ordering in the student’s mind as they read. Questions would still ask the student to choose where an event occurred, but the way the information was presented in the reading passage would mean that this would not be as self-evident, with something that happened second on the page, for example, actually occurring first in the plot of the story.
What this means is that the ability to understand the sequence of events or ideas presented in a text – whether they be straightforward or out of order in this way – is a vital part of reading comprehension and thus an important part of the reading strategies that underpin CARS & STARS Online. A student who cannot accurately piece together the sequence in which events or ideas are relayed in a story or passage would find it difficult to understand that text, because they have not been able to keep track of how the ideas or events within it have related to each other. A student who has followed the passage will have understood this order, and thus have demonstrated an understanding of the text as a whole.
Here are some tips for Understanding Sequence in any text.
Look for clue words such as first, next, last, finally, before and after to tell when events happen in a passage.
Look for clues such as time of day, month, year and season.
For a story, think about what happens in the beginning, middle and ending.
For an article, think about the order in which things happen.
Now that we’ve talked about what this strategy is and how it works, let’s have a go at using Understanding Sequence in a passage ourselves: and answering questions the way students do in CARS & STARS Online!
First, I’ll read the passage:
For over 100 years, the Hall family had been living on Strawberry Hill Farm. As Liddy Hall stood on the top of Strawberry Hill and looked out over the farm’s fields and pastures, she felt as if she had been living on Strawberry Hill for at least 100 years herself. Simply thinking about the endless round of work that was life on a farm made Liddy weary. The cycle began in the spring, with sheep shearing and clearing fields. In the summer, crops were planted and wood was chopped. In the autumn, there was the harvesting of crops. Then there was the drying and preserving of food for the winter. Next, during the long, cold winter months, there was spinning, weaving, sewing and knitting to do. There were candles to be made. The first warm days meant it was time to gather sap from maple trees and boil it down to make syrup and maple sugar. Then it was shearing time again. Liddy pushed her pencil and paper deep into her pocket and started down the hill. Perhaps after the pumpkins were gathered, there would finally be time for drawing.
What happens on Strawberry Hill Farm after the harvest in that yearly cycle?
Is the answer:
Food is dried and preserved for winter.
The fields are ploughed and planted.
The sheep are sheared.
Or: Wood is chopped.
The correct answer was: Food is dried and preserved for winter.
This answer is correct because, according to the passage, it states what happens after the harvest: “In the autumn, there was the harvesting of crops. Then there was the drying and preserving of food for the winter.”
And which clue word or phrase told you what happened during the winter months?
Was it:
then
for over 100 years
next
Or: finally
The correct answer here was: next
This answer is correct because, according to the passage, “Next, during the long, cold winter months, there was spinning, weaving, sewing and knitting to do.”
Understanding Sequence is such an important reading strategy, and so central to being a good reader, that it features in every level of the CARS & STARS Online program. It’s called “Putting Things in Order” in Level AA, which is for pre-readers.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created many new and unprecedented challenges for people in all walks of life, and none more so than for teachers. Faced with school closures and student withdrawals, traditional education found itself in a position that merely a generation ago would have resulted in a crisis. Fortunately, today’s teachers and school systems have access to technologies that make it possible for instruction and learning to continue when daily face-to-face schooling cannot.
While email and web services allowed the distribution of work to students directly without physical contact, social media enabled direct and ongoing contact between classmates and staff. Perhaps most radically of all, video conferencing enabled teachers and students to interact – and actually see and hear each other while doing so – from anywhere!
At least, that was the dream. Any teacher knows that software use with parents and students can often lead to them assuming the mantle of tech support worker as well as educator. And most importantly, state-of-the-art software is all well and good when every student has equal access to state-of-the-art technology on which to use it. Video conferencing, for instance, comes with a whole slew of new problems – not least of which is the heavy requirements for internet bandwidth, computing power and expensive video hardware needed to use it!
Fortunately, not all vital educational software requires a home supercomputer or a hefty investment in hardware upgrades to make sure students aren’t left behind. CARS & STARS Online is a digital reading comprehension program based around the repeated application of twelve core reading strategies to make students better readers who can analyse and interpret any text at a high level of understanding. The multi-level program is designed to be entirely paper-free, with all student answers being entered directly into the software, and results being instantly recorded and corrected automatically, requiring no teacher marking.
The CARS & STARS program requires very little bandwidth, especially compared to video conferencing and other higher-demand applications that might be in use while working or learning from home. The program is also designed to work on any relatively modern device, with options to enable and disable certain higher-quality features on slower or older hardware for maximum compatibility and usability.
CARS & STARS Online is designed to work on any device with an internet connection, with no special requirements or additional hardware needed. It puts every student back into the classroom – without making their computer load the whole classroom first!
If you are interested in learning more about the CARS & STARS Online subscriptions and how they can help children to achieve better results, then sign up for a free trial to be an integral part of your child’s reading success.
If you have missed out our previous episode, please click here. The next episode will be focused on the fourth reading strategy – Recognising Cause and Effect.
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See you in the next episode, and thanks for listening!
