Reading Comprehension Strategies
From the desk of Carol C…
Recently I worked with a bright middle school child who needed some support with reading and writing. We were working on what I thought was a difficult poem, but it was a suggested exemplar from the Common Core for the grade below this child’s. At first I thought my student’s difficulty lay only in the poem’s complexity. But when I asked him to read one of the verses aloud hoping that a little work on intonation might help with the comprehension, I was greatly surprised. He (my student) omitted words, mispronounced them, and inserted others. At no point did he stop to make sense of what he read. After he had finished I asked him if what he had read made sense. Of course he said that it didn’t. I then chose one of the easier lines and read it as he had with omissions and mispronunciations. “Did you realize that didn’t make sense when you read it?” Yes was the reply, but he added, “I didn’t know what to do, so I kept on going.” Wake up call for me! Didn’t know what to do? How could that be?
Reading strategies were taught in elementary school. When I pressed him further he did admit that sometimes he reread if he didn’t understand but “that never helps.” Honestly, I was so flabbergasted that I couldn’t think of any other reading strategies except for “put your finger on the word and get your mouth ready to say it”. Not quite appropriate I didn’t think. We worked on how to reread the rest of the time.
Later when I had time to think I realized that I shouldn’t have been that surprised. Certainly something as important as understanding what we read isn’t as simple as “teach a few strategies in elementary school and then move on”. Using these strategies is so important, vital really, to comprehension that they must be taught or reinforced every year by every teacher. Most students have to be taught how to read a science, math, or history book. Different texts require different ways to apply reading strategies. Also, higher level science texts may need to be read in a slightly different way than those from lower grades.
So what are these strategies and what is the best way to teach them? First, we all need to model our own thinking as we teach the strategies. Students need to see real life application. It’s as simple as reading part of a piece of text from your classroom and stopping to ask yourself aloud some questions about what you just read or deciding what’s important in what you read. Some readers do this automatically (only to themselves), but many others need extra support when it comes down to using the strategies. That’s where modeling yourself really helps.
Now on to the strategies themselves which by any other name still smells as sweet. (Translation: the names of the strategies may change but they’re still the same strategies.)
STRATEGIES
1. Ask questions of the text. Effective readers constantly ask themselves questions such as “What point is the author making?” or “What makes a gas inert?” “Am I understanding this?” and then making predictions as they read.
2. Reread in a different way than was read originally. Many times this means reading slower and thinking about the meaning of each word or phrase.
3. Create mental images…Successful readers create pictures in their minds as they read and reread the material. When their pictures become blurry they know it’s a sign that they don’t understand the material. Making mental images of the text help readers to add another dimension to their understanding of what they are reading.
4. Prior knowledge (schema) is important as it helps readers link what they are learning to what they already know. Brain research has shown that memory increases when new learning is attached to previous knowledge.
5. Analyze Text Structure to increase comprehension. Different types of reading material may have different text structures. For instance in an informational article there may be a table of contents, subheadings, captions, bolded words, and definitions. Transition words may be found frequently in explanatory pieces. Recognizing these structures helps students better understand an author’s craft.
6. Infer…Inferring is required of all readers whether they are in kindergarten or college. It simply differs in the level of sophistication. Inferring means looking beyond the literal meaning of the text. It requires clues from the text as well as prior knowledge.
7. Determine importance…everything read cannot be remembered and quite frankly doesn’t need to be but what should be remembered? Strategic readers focus on topic sentences, headings, themes, plots and conclusions to determine importance.
8. Synthesize…This is a difficult one for many people to grasp. Tanny McGregor states that “…synthesizing is simply an understanding of how knowledge grows and changes over time”. She goes on to suggest that thinking stems such as Ï used to think….., but now I think…..” and KWL charts can help students synthesize what they have learned. Simply reading a few pages and discussing it “prompts an understanding of how knowledge can change as a result of reading”.
My student and I are now working through the reading strategies above. I’m careful not to present them as separate entities but rather as interconnected. Also, I’m expecting him to discover how when used together these strategies will help him to greatly increase his understanding of text. After all time, practice, and deep thought are what’s needed in order to make a real difference in comprehension.
* For more information on these comprehension strategies, ERG recommends getting familiar with P. David Pearson’s research, and the texts written by Stephanie Harvey, Cris Tovani, Debbie Miller and Kelly Gallagher.