Domain Reading vs Content Reading

Readers employ different reading strategies and prior knowledge based on the genre (type of reading) and topic of the text. For this reason it is important that teachers help students learn how to “tackle” their particular content area’s texts.  Content reading is the general ability to glean meaning from text.  The reader does not need specific knowledge in order to understand what s/he is reading.  The knowledge or details needed to understand the text are there.

Domain reading is the reading of specific, generally technical text - science texts for example.  To extract meaning from technical text the reader must have specific knowledge of vocabulary and content.  The author assumes the prior knowledge needed to grasp the concepts is already present.   

Kuhara-Kojima, Keiko; Hatano, Giyoo:  Domain-Specific Knowledge and General Skills in Reading Comprehension. 1985

Joelle Brummitt-Yale: What is Content Area Reading?  2011

Diagnosis: The Missing Ingredient in RTI Assessment by Marjorie Y. Lipson

This is a well written and informative article.  I was fully prepared to find fault with whatever the contents.  I have sat through countless meetings where people have extolled the virtues of RTI.  Most classroom teachers with whom I have discussed RTI have many negative feelings for it.  The main complaint is the "Well, this child's problem can be fixed with ____ intervention"  response, whatever weakness is indicated.  Then we end up with small groups of children with widely diverse problems  using a single intervention. 

I very much enjoyed the article because it addressed this problem.  It also addressed the practice of using screening instruments that do not clearly identify a reading problem.  Both practices, standard protocol and the use of  screening instruments with too general or too narrow a focus, are common in the education community.  Marjorie Lipson tells us that research is confirming what good teachers have known - reading problems are as diverse as the children who have the problems.

Lipson and her colleagues, Pam Chomsky-Higgins and Jane Kanfer, began work at a Vermont school that had a large number of children with literacy problems.  Despite having  qualified and committed reading teachers the school was having little success.   When Lipson's group began collaborating with the school the first step was to reexamine the assessment data.  They used the data and developed profiles of  the most common types of student difficulties.  Using the profiles they developed intervention strategies that targeted the deficit areas for each child.  In less than two years each student who had received the targeted interventions were at benchmark or above.

Lipson made the point that many times the data needs to be looked at more closely to determine the area of need - fluency, word recognition, or comprehension and any underlying weaknesses within those areas.  The group developed a student profile form that  aids teachers in looking at multiple areas of possible difficulty.    When a true picture is developed of a child's difficulties an effective intervention plan can be developed.