Educator Tameka Cameron Walker was flabbergasted when she was faced with students who weren't making the necessary grade point average (GPA), but who could listen to a song, memorize it and understand it. She could not understand why those same principles weren't being applied to schoolwork and comprehension.
Walker said, if students are reading and not grasping the meaning, they are just calling words. Comprehension is vital, she said. It is not how fast a student can read, but how they take the information off the page and put it into their cognitive scheme and understand it.
With her interest in the idea piqued, Walker, a tourism studies teacher, pursued a master's degree in 2015 to learn about the strategies related to reading comprehension and better help her students. She has been seeing success stories that she and reading specialist, Lakell Johnson, whom she assists, can be proud of at Anatol Rodgers Secondary School.
"There are so many stories I could relay, but my grade 12 class that just graduated, I had students in that class that took the BGCSE [Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education exam] in 11th grade, and one person in particular got a D grade. That student took the exam over and they got a B grade. And there's a little boy who is in seventh grade who is in my reading intervention program, I just looked at his report card and I'm seeing improvement in his English language grade," said Walker during the school's report card day on Monday.
"I have seen where students have improved, and some have moved up a letter grade, and I'm seeing improvement, even though it's marginal for some students, but I see where they're working."
Walker says a reading specialist is like a reading coach. Working with Johnson they look at children who are working below the required 2.00 GPA. If the student is in high school and reading at a primary school level, they pull the student out of their regular language classes twice a week and work with them on comprehension strategies to help them with reading. Both teachers' efforts are needed, the children are receptive and want the help.
Walker and Johnson work in a system with a 1,200-strong student population.
Endowing students with reading comprehension and writing skills are communal goals within every educational system, according to the educator of 17 years. She says students at all grade levels should engage in daily leisure reading in an effort to improve comprehension and writing skills.
"Reading has to be an everyday thing and a way of life. In the primary school, where they might be given a text to read, and given a week or two to complete a text, in the high school, students do not get text to read as a literature text unless they're in the literature class. But if students even stop to buy the newspaper to read, just to be current with information, it will help them in their academic development, but it has to be a daily effort. And when you read daily, you will be able to write better because reading and writing go hand-in-hand."
She encourages parents to purchase newspapers and books for their children to read daily. She said students' afterschool timetable should have a half-hour mapped out for reading.
And while most children are into electronics, she believes they should use technology for more than just fun and games, but to actually do research.
"The challenge we're having is that children like technology, but they're not trying to learn the technology and use it for research. They're just using it for games and fun stuff. Parents also have to look for books that children like," she said.
According to Walker, an active development of comprehensive tips for reading informational texts might prove beneficial for candidates enrolled in school-based as well as national or international examinations.
"Paying close attention to text structure might aid in strengthening reading comprehension among emergent, struggling and exceptional learners," said the tourism studies and reading intervention teacher.
As the text structure is the organization of the text, the structure can be viewed both externally and internally, and teachers should assist students with reading comprehension by reiterating the importance of understanding text structure. This knowledge can assist with students' comprehension of the written material, which may be in the form of fiction/literature and non-fiction materials (leaflets, books, excerpts, research papers, publications, passages, manuals and articles.)
"When a reader has an appreciation for text structure, he is able to read at a glance and gain meaning from what he has read. Also, when a reader understands the purpose of structure in a text, he will always read his external text structure such as the table of contents, chapters title, headings, sub-headings, underlined words, bold, italics, illustrations and definitions in an effort to decipher pertinent information," said Walker.
"For example, the table of contents provide a list of information within the text and bold words suggest important terms that the reader should be able to define. Internal text structure on the other hand focuses on the body of the text and how it is organized. Internal text structure includes sequence order, description, cause and effect, proposition and problem/solution. Internal text structure differs based on the subject area and the topic being communicated, therefore, students should be taught how to sight internal text structure from the get-go. Students' ability to identify text structure will add greater value to their reading comprehension."

Internal text structures
o Sequential order: This involves words such as "during", "next", "first", "following" and "immediately".
o Compare and contrast texts: These have words such as "although", "otherwise", "similarly" and "on the other hand".
o Descriptive texts: These will have words such as "between", "across", "below" and "appear to be".
o Cause and effect texts would have words such as "accordingly", "for this reason", "in order", "is caused by".
Walker said people should be cognizant of the fact that there are texts that might also have a combination of text structures.
"Based on my years of teaching experience, it has been evident that exceptional students observe that there is a difference in the organizational pattern of poetries, plays, stories and novel when compared with the organizational pattern of a language, social studies or science text.
"Many exceptional readers are already acquainted with this strategy of using text structure, however; the emergent reader who might fall in different age groups along the reading spectrum might get turned off from reading if they are not trained to use text structure. However, with practice they, too, will be able to improve their reading comprehension skills," she said.
Walker encourages her students to pay attention to text structure when they read, and said this is advice she would give to everyone.
"By keeping these tips in mind, you will be able to garner relevant information from the material, and strengthen your analytical, problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, all of which are important in understanding informational text," she said.

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