Teaching Comprehension
What is Comprehension?
- Comprehension is the act of understanding what you are reading and includes readers awareness and understanding of phonemes, phonics, and vocabulary knowledge. Comprehension is influenced by perceptions, beliefs, motivation, and problem solving strategies.
Comprehension
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Comprehending
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"The development of reading comprehension is a lifelong process that changes based on the depth and breadth of texts the person is reading."
Three Themes in the Development of Comprehension Skills:
1. Vocabulary Instruction
2. Text Comprehension Instruction
3. Teacher Preparation and Comprehension Strategies Instruction
Modeling their thinking processes
Encouraging student inquiry
Keeping students engaged
1. Vocabulary Instruction
- Must be appropriate for the student's age.
- Should be rich in context!
- Incidental learning and computer technology can help improve vocabulary.
- Taught directly and indirectly.
- Remember, everyone learns differently!
2. Text Comprehension Instruction
- Readers are actively connecting to ideas and creating mental images.
- Use of graphic and semantic organizers.
- Question answering and questions generating!
- Summarization
- Cooperative learning
3. Teacher Preparation and Comprehension Strategies Instruction
- Direct Explanation is the teacher’s ability to explain the reasoning and mental processes involved in successful reading comprehension.
- Transactional Strategy Instruction emphasizes the ability of teachers to facilitate student discussions where students collaborate to form joint interpretations of a text.
- Teachers required instruction in:
Modeling their thinking processes
Encouraging student inquiry
Keeping students engaged
Effective Comprehension Instruction
- Literacy is an active process and it must set a tone that values the students curiosity and thinking. It also respects all voices and visions.
- Teach strategies one at a time but, encourage students to use multiple strategies together.
- Model the strategies for a few minutes and then quickly engage students in guided practice.
- Teach the reader, not the reading!
- Give students time to think.
- Provide opportunities for guided and independent practice allow students to respond by writing and drawing.
- Show students how comprehension strategies apply in a variety of texts, genres, and contexts.
Think Alouds and Read Alouds
Teach a “line of thinking” and model successful reading techniques.
Making Predictions
Readers get meaning from a text by making informed predictions. Good readers predict ways to connect their existing knowledge to new information from a text.
Visualizing
Visualizing is taking the words of the text and mixing them with the reader’s background knowledge to create pictures in the mind. This leads to the reader forming a personal relationship with the text, enabling her to better comprehend it. 1. Drawing visual images with small groups After reading a passage, have students close their eyes and visualize what they see then draw their visualization 2. Using all the senses to comprehend text I see…, I hear…, I can feel…, I smell…, I can taste… chart Inferring
Inferential thinking is the bedrock of comprehension; it is about reading faces, body language, expression, tone, and text. 1. Using context clues Chart that includes: Word/Inferred Meaning/Clues/Sentence 2. Inferring Equation BK+TC=I – (Background Knowledge + Text Clues = Inference); 3 column chart 3. Facts/Inferences Chart 4. Sticky Notes for “Questioning” and “Inferring” use different colored sticky notes while reading and create a chart |
Activating Prior Knowledge
Students use their personal and collective experience to construct meaning from text. 1. “R” sticky notes – “This reminds me of…” helps students make connections to their prior knowledge as they read 2. “L” sticky notes – “L” is for “New Learning…” 3. “T-T” sticky notes (Text-to-Text) 4. “T-W” sticky notes (Text-to-World) 5. “K-W-L” Charts 6. Chart titled “Questions/What We Think We Know/New Learning” Questioning Strategies
Questions are the master key to understanding; they clarify confusion, stimulate research efforts, and propel students deeper into comprehending what they’re reading. 1. “Sticky notes coded with Questions” 2. Categorizing Questions A—answered; BK—background knowledge; I—inferred; D—discussion, RS—research, C—confused 3. “Thick” and “Thin” Questions Thick questions on GREEN and Thin questions on YELLOW – students attempt to answer on back Summarizing
At its core, comprehension is based on summarizing—restating content in a succinct manner that highlights the most crucial information 1. Clarifying what’s important Emphasize the text structure 2. Familiarize students with multiple text structures. Descriptions, Generalizations, Argument, Definition, Comparison, Problem/Solution, etc. 3. Help students recognize layers For extended expository structures (subtopics; headings; details) 4. Encourage graphic representations 5. Review essential terminology |
Fun Resources and links!
The below link will take you to a great resource that talks about the seven strategies to promote highly effective readers. It goes through different strategies and gives definitions for each. It also provides lesson templates and much more information!
Reading Rockets is also a great outlet, but this link directs you to the comprehension section. On this site, you will find strategies to teach text comprehension. This webpage goes into depth about seven different strategies that will be helpful in the classroom or at home.
Newsela is an awesome link that allows students to read current events in article form and this website is unique because the student can choose their Lexile number and the article will adjust. This is great for comprehension and allows the student to read to their capabilities and understand fully!
Into the book is a great resource for educators and students! There are teaching tools and professional tools that can be used at home or in the classroom!