Reading Comprehension

In this week's readings, Pardo (2004) describes comprehension as a "complex process."  It is a product of the transaction between the text and the reader at a particular moment in time.  A readers' background knowledge, skills, culture, and cognitive development all influence their comprehension of text.  Teachers have a key role in supporting their students and improving their comprehension abilities, and there are several ways in which teachers can do this.  A few really stood out to me, though, because I remember my teachers doing these.

1.  Teach decoding skills.  

Students need to be able to decode words automatically in order to have leftover energy to put towards thinking about what they are reading.  Teachers can do this through teaching phonics, vocabulary, and high-frequency words.  One way to teach high-frequency words is to give each student a word booklet including words they are likely to see often.  Anytime they see a word or use it correctly, they get to put a sticker beside the word in their booklet.

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2.  Build and activate prior knowledge.

Help students build background knowledge by showing them how to make connections to the text.  They can make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections.  This helps students think deeper about what they just read and aids in creating meaning if they can tie it to their own personal understandings.  After reading a story, you could have each student write down some sort of connection they made.  Sort their connections into one of the three categories and show the results like below.  This also makes me wonder if there are other types of connection that students could make? Text-to-media connections? 

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3. Provide explicit instruction of useful comprehension strategies.

Teachers should teach students strategies that will help them understand their readings like predicting, questioning, connecting, organizing, and summarizing.  A good way to show these strategies, especially to younger students, is through modeling.  Cunningham and Allington (2011) suggest using think-alouds as a way to do this.  I love this idea and think it's an easy way to add extra instruction into read-alouds which also aid in teaching fluency.  Check out this video showing how to do a think-aloud.