Teach Comprehension

In recent years there has been a strong push for a return to phonics in the classroom.  Teachers are now concentrating on having students decode words.  We are creating a generation of decoders who can read words, but they cannot necessarily understand what they are reading. 

Strategies which proficient readers exhibit include:

·         Making connections within this text, to another text, from known information to new information, to your life and to the world.

·         Monitoring your reading for meaning.

·         Determining what’s most important in the story, distinguishing main ideas from details.

·         Visualizing the story.

·         Asking questions.

·         Making inferences, predicting, wondering and assessing what’s going on.

·         Synthesize and applying new knowledge to what is known and generating new ideas.

When teaching reading comprehension strategies, do not just teach the strategy, but teach students how to use the strategies.  Routman states, on average students need 20 percent of the classroom time on explicit strategy instruction and 80 percent on applying the strategy.  Effective strategy is developing readers who can monitor and regulate comprehension through predicting, questioning, creating images, seeking clarification and constructing summaries.

Know What You Do As a Reader

Take an article or passage that you have been reading and read it.  Identify what you took away from the reading of the article.  Notice and write down the strategies you used to help you comprehend as you read the text.  With a partner or a small group talk about what you found.  Listed below is a list of strategies which you may have used:

·         Reread (This is always the most frequently mentioned strategy.)

·         Highlight

·         Write comments or questions in the margins.

·         Survey the first paragraph, the first pages to get an idea of what will be mentioned.

·         Connect to past experiences or prior knowledge in order to understand ideas or figure out vocabulary.

·         Monitor your reading (adjust pace, pause and think, subvocalize, read aloud, talk to yourself).

Take what you just learned about your own reading comprehension and model it for your students.  Students and especially struggling students are more likely to increase their reading comprehension when we show them how to comprehend what they are reading.

Teach Rereading as the Single Most Useful Strategy

To do this:

·         Read aloud a short but challenging piece of nonfiction.  Retell what you read in front of the students.  Reread the piece, retell it again and rate your comprehension.  The students will witness your comprehension increasing. 

·         During shared reading and writing as well as during guided reading, demonstrate how you reread to monitor and maintain comprehension.

·         Model rereading with a partner.  Encourage partners to ask a peer to reread when meaning is lost.

·         Demonstrate how you reread charts, graphs and captions to improve comprehension of a text.

Teach Self-Monitoring as Crucial to Understanding

Have students ask themselves, does this make sense? Does this sound like language?  Do I know what is happening?

Provide students opportunities for students to talk with others about what they read through interactive reading, shared reading, and literacy conversations.  Ensure that students and not the teacher are doing a majority of the talking and model what conversations about text sound like.