Comprehension: Part 4: Teaching Strategies

Students Can Be Taught To Use Comprehension Strategies In addition to identifying which comprehension strategies are effective (monitoring comprehension, using graphic and semantic organizers, answering questions, generating questions, recognizing story structure, summarizing), scientific research provides guidelines for how to teach comprehension strategies.

Effective Comprehension Strategy Instruction Is Explicit, or Direct
Research shows that explicit teaching techniques are particularly effective for comprehension strategy instruction. In explicit instruction, teachers tell readers why and when they should use strategies, what strategies to use, and how to apply them. The steps of explicit instruction typically include direct explanation, teacher modeling ("thinking aloud"), guided practice, and application. 1. Direct explanation. The teacher explains to students why the strategy helps comprehension and when to apply the strategy. 2. Modeling. The teacher models, or demonstrates, how to apply the strategy, usually by "thinking aloud" while reading the text that the students are using. 3. Guided practice. The teacher guides and assists students as they learn how and when to apply the strategy. 4. Application. The teacher helps students practice the strategy until they can apply it independently.

Effective Comprehension Strategy Instruction Can Be Accomplished Through Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning involves students working together as partners or in small groups on clearly defined tasks. Cooperative learning instruction has been used successfully to teach comprehension strategies in content-area subjects. Students work together to understand content-area texts, helping each other learn and apply comprehension strategies. Teachers help students learn how to work in groups. Teachers also provide demonstrations of the comprehension strategies and monitor the progress of students.

Effective Instruction Helps Readers Use Comprehension Strategies Flexibly and In Combination
Although it can be helpful to provide students with instruction in individual comprehension strategies, good readers must be able to coordinate and adjust several strategies to assist comprehension. Multiple-strategy instruction teaches students how to use strategies flexibly as they are needed to assist their comprehension. A well-known and powerful example of multiple-strategy instruction is Reciprocal Teaching. In reciprocal teaching, the teacher and students work together so that the students learn four comprehension strategies: 1. Asking questions about the text they are reading; 2. Summarizing parts of the text; 3. Clarifying words and sentences they don't understand; and 4. Predicting what might occur next in the text. Teachers and students use these four strategies flexibly as they are needed in reading literature and informational texts.

When should text comprehension instruction begin?
Because reading is a complex process that develops over time, preschool and primary grades teachers begin building the foundation for reading comprehension. Through big book and guided reading activities, they explore story structure, literary elements and genre, and build their children’s background knowledge, word recognition, and vocabularies. Although the basics of reading—word recognition and fluency—can be learned in a few years, reading to learn subject matter does not occur automatically once students have "learned to read." Teachers should emphasize text comprehension from the beginning, rather than waiting until students have mastered "the basics" of reading. Instruction at all grade levels can benefit from showing students how reading is a process of making sense out of text, or constructing meaning. Beginning readers, as well as more advanced readers, must understand that the ultimate goal of reading is comprehension. When Angi conducts a kindergarten guided reading group, she makes sure the children put their fingers under the words. They are just developing their concepts about print, one of them being the one-to-one correspondence between the written text and the spoken word. Once she knows that the children know the sentence, she asks them to read it together. This repeated reading reinforces the words and helps the children with fluency. You can highlight meaning in all interactions with text. Talk about the content, whether reading aloud to students or guiding them in reading on their own. Model, or "think aloud," about your own thinking and understanding as you read. Lead students in a discussion about the meaning of what they are reading. Help students relate the content to their experience and to other texts they have read. Encourage students to ask questions about the text.

Has research identified comprehension strategies other than the six described here?
The six strategies described have received the strongest scientific support. The following strategies, however, have received some support from research. You may want to consider them for use in your classroom.

Making Use of Prior Knowledge
Good readers draw on prior knowledge and experience to help them understand what they are reading. Before your students read, preview the text with them. Ask them what they already know about the content of the selection (for example, the topic, the concept, or the time period). Ask them what they know about the author and what text structure he or she is likely to use. Discuss the important vocabulary used in the text. Show students some pictures or diagrams to prepare them for what they are about to read.

Guided Reading

Guided reading uses small-group instruction and developmentally appropriate books called leveled readers. This approach recognizes that a wide range of reading ability exists within any grade level or age group, and that reading at the appropriate levels ensures success. Each session, 15 to 25 minutes, begins with introducing a book, eliciting prior knowledge, and building background. A child is placed in a small group with other children of similar ability and given a developmentally appropriate book to read. The teacher monitors and guides the reading of each child as needed. Discussion of the book follows, and the child keeps the book to read repeatedly. Subsequent lessons at the lower levels usually use an entirely new book. -from Reading A-Z website: http://www.readinga-z.com/guided/index.html For the Four Block description of the Guided Reading Block, see http://www.wfu.edu/academics/fourblocks/block1.html. Also, the following is a description of how to spend your time during guided reading from http://www.k111.k12.il.us/lafayette/fourblocks/guided_reading_block.htm:

Guided Reading Overview Focus: 1. Expose children to wide range of literature 2. Teach comprehension strategies 3. Teach children to read in materials that become increasingly more difficult 4. Teach vocabulary, word recognition, phonics, and fluency within the context of leveled books. Dr. Gay Su Pinnell is a guru of Guided Reading and author of Scholastic’s Guided Reading Program. See http://teacher.scholastic.com/reading/bestpractices/guidedreading.htm for her description of guided reading on the Scholastic website. Also see: Guided Reading : Good First Teaching for All Children by Gay Su Pinnell, Irene C. Fountas (Heinemann, 1996). Another good resource for guided reading is http://208.183.128.8/read/guidedr.html. There are many links to teaching resources and lesson ideas on this website. Depending on what resource you look at, there are additional comprehension strategies that can be explicitly taught. These include, but are not limited to: • Looking for details • Sequencing • Compare and Contrast • Summarizing • Main character • Drawing conclusions • Making inferences • Cause and Effect • Making predictions • Reader/Text Connections • Point of view For guided reading opportunities using good literature, see Carol Otis Hurst’s website: http://www.carolhurst.com/profsubjects/reading/guided.html. For kindergarten-level guided reading suggestions, see http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/guided_reading.html. This is from the Hubbard’s Cupboard website (http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/index.html), a site for early childhood educators.