strategies that promote comprehension
Most literacy experts agree that comprehension strategies should be MODELED. Students often do not know HOW to apply a strategy unless they see it in action and understand it's purpose. So often, we just expect them to Predict! Infer! Summarize! without giving them the tools to do so. The process involved in predicting for example, can be made clear through teacher Think Alouds. Comprehension strategies should be used throughout the curriculum no matter the subject area. We often think that "Language Arts" is where students learn these strategies, however students need them in mathematics, social studies, science etc. All teachers are literacy teachers and that of course includes learning how to understand. Modeling is the vehicle for teaching understanding. You will see a sample of leading students to understanding through the inferencing problem below. This can be modeled through a Think Aloud strategy. Each step of the simple math problem is analyzed aloud to demonstrate how the problem is thought-through. Many students NEED this strategy and the guidance of how a teacher would think through a problem or information.
Many comprehension strategies are easily found on the internet so I will illustrate a few of the ones that I have found really helpful in promoting understanding at all elementary/junior high levels.
Many comprehension strategies are easily found on the internet so I will illustrate a few of the ones that I have found really helpful in promoting understanding at all elementary/junior high levels.
Activating Background Knowledge-Research has established that a reader's existing knowledge is important in determining their ability to understand what they read. That is one reason that teachers typically tap into a child's prior experiences before reading a text in guided reading-to create connections and build upon schema that the student has, deepening his knowledge and therefore understanding around a topic. Schemas that are related to text organization are especially important to comprehension. When students understand how a text is organized,, it enhances their understanding of that text. Invite the group or class to brainstorm their knowledge on an event or topic. This can be accomplished through using graphic organizers such as a KWL chart, using anticipation guides, picture walks, webbing, Word Sorts and Making it Real to name a few.
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Making Inferences- Author's do not always provide explicit information about a topic, character or event, however they often leave clues that reader's can use to "read between the lines." This allows the reader to use these clues along with their own background information in order to make inferences. Students need to be taught how to infer, using the context clues, in combination with their background knowledge or from other parts of the text in order to draw conclusions. Finally, students need to be able to support those inferences. Keep in mind, there can be more than one correct answer.
Sticky Note Strategy: ( by Becky Binks) Sticky notes help students focus their reading on specific goals such as finding inferences. Sticky notes are one way to help students keep track of their thinking while reading. Teachers can have the students jot down questions or thoughts during reading. Students then can refer to the sticky notes during class discussions, conferences, or writing assignments |
inferencing sample-model how to analyze a problem
summarization
This involves the reader pulling together all the information from a text and explain what the text is about using their own words. it requires the reader to determine which information is most relevant, focusing on the main ideas of that text. It often requires the students to condense information such as the steps in a scientific process, a timeline major events in a story etc. It’s
important to teach children to summarize a variety of texts and genres for a
variety of purposes and to assist the students through the process through
modeling. Summarizing is a strategy that enables the
reader to identify and organize essential information by putting together key elements
of what they are reading. These key elements are continually
reorganized as we read, while we filter out less significant details. Research
suggests that we can improve a student’s overall comprehension with instruction
in How TO summarize. It includes selecting
important information, making generalizations and succinctly reducing the
passage into a compilation of facts. Try this-Key
Words:
Strategy #1: Key Words: Is a strategy that helps to define the important ideas from those that are not so important. Consider it the BIG idea of each section of text. Distribute a short non-fiction article. Taking one paragraph at a time, determine what is the key word or big idea in this section of text and write it on a sticky. Discuss the selection of their word. Repeat for each paragraph, posting stickies for each paragraph that uses a key word or phrase summarizing the content of that paragraph. Again, this strategy is designed to boost comprehension as students must slow down and think about what the text is offering them and students learn to identify the key words or ideas for each paragraph. When the article is completed, students hould be able to use the stickies to summarize the main points in the article.
Strategy # 2: Getting the Gist The way to make sense of a passage is to try to Summarize it. GIST ( Generating interaction between schema and text) is a technique for letting students internalize a passage by selecting important words from it and writing a summary using those words. As with most strategies, it should be done altogether before students work in smaller groups or individually. Example: A reading passage on the Titanic. Have everyone read it together. Now have students select important words( avoid, ice, warning, dangerous, not concerned, sea lanes ) Then as a class, create a summary statement such as;
The ship received warnings about dangerous ice in the sea lanes but the captain wasn’t concerned. To avoid the ice, he headed the ship farther south than normal.
Now once the class sample has been done, try a sample from social studies, science or another content class. Everyone reads the passage. Then, each group of 3, gets a section of a passage. They identify key words and ideas and write one summary statement. Then read them all aloud. Together, create a summarization of the article, which can be discussed as a class. This technique can greatly enhance comprehension for those students who struggle with identifying the main ideas in a text.
Strategy #1: Key Words: Is a strategy that helps to define the important ideas from those that are not so important. Consider it the BIG idea of each section of text. Distribute a short non-fiction article. Taking one paragraph at a time, determine what is the key word or big idea in this section of text and write it on a sticky. Discuss the selection of their word. Repeat for each paragraph, posting stickies for each paragraph that uses a key word or phrase summarizing the content of that paragraph. Again, this strategy is designed to boost comprehension as students must slow down and think about what the text is offering them and students learn to identify the key words or ideas for each paragraph. When the article is completed, students hould be able to use the stickies to summarize the main points in the article.
Strategy # 2: Getting the Gist The way to make sense of a passage is to try to Summarize it. GIST ( Generating interaction between schema and text) is a technique for letting students internalize a passage by selecting important words from it and writing a summary using those words. As with most strategies, it should be done altogether before students work in smaller groups or individually. Example: A reading passage on the Titanic. Have everyone read it together. Now have students select important words( avoid, ice, warning, dangerous, not concerned, sea lanes ) Then as a class, create a summary statement such as;
The ship received warnings about dangerous ice in the sea lanes but the captain wasn’t concerned. To avoid the ice, he headed the ship farther south than normal.
Now once the class sample has been done, try a sample from social studies, science or another content class. Everyone reads the passage. Then, each group of 3, gets a section of a passage. They identify key words and ideas and write one summary statement. Then read them all aloud. Together, create a summarization of the article, which can be discussed as a class. This technique can greatly enhance comprehension for those students who struggle with identifying the main ideas in a text.
Sketch to Stretch is a strategy to assist in retelling or summarization, and is similar to the Key Words strategy mentioned above. For students who struggle, sketching an image for each segment of a story, or information when reading non-Fiction text helps students to recall the key details of a story or informational book. From these visuals, students can write or re-write a text using these key ideas.
Predicting
Good readers use predicting as a way to connect their existing knowledge to new information from a text to get meaning from what they read. Before reading, they may use what they know about the author, the topic or the pictures to predict what they will find out in a text. Students predict during reading as well and proficient readers do this automatically-making adjustments as we go. Early readers especially need these processes brought alive through teacher think-alouds before they learn to make them automatic. Students learn to predict and adjust those predictions as they read, confirming their ideas or forming new ones.
determining author's point of view or intent
questioning
Many students become proficient at answering questions generating from a teacher, however, the most important questions are their own. Asking questions provides a purpose for reading and provides a reason to read the book. Questioning- asking and question- answering have a solid scientific basis. Both give students a purpose for reading, encourage meta-cognition and assist students in making connections between their background knowledge and new material. When students question what they are reading, they are interacting with the text, motivating themselves, clarifying, and inferring beyond the literal meaning of the text. Like all other comprehension strategies, teacher modeling is important. Doing think alouds where the teacher asks questions of herself related to clarifying a concept in a story, to understand vocabulary, to find specific information in a text, to connect ideas to understand author's choices, to understand the text organization and structure, to summarize sections of the text, to understand a character and to predict is the first step in teaching students to create their own questions. By modeling the process of self-questioning and making it visible to students, they come to an understanding and practice comprehension-monitoring.
Strategy: ( from Comprehension Shouldn't Be Silent, Kelley and Clausen-Grace, 2007) Have students use the tally sheet below while observing you do a Questioning Think Aloud. Begin by having them read through the tally sheet, and facilitate a discussion on each of these questioning components. Then do the Think Aloud where you clearly model the different ways that you question during a text and have them tally your use of the questions.They can then work through monitoring themselves as they read a text on their own. Later, teach students to write questions that represent each type of questions. These activities foster the meta-cognition required to become automatic with questioning in order to further their comprehension.
Strategy: ( from Comprehension Shouldn't Be Silent, Kelley and Clausen-Grace, 2007) Have students use the tally sheet below while observing you do a Questioning Think Aloud. Begin by having them read through the tally sheet, and facilitate a discussion on each of these questioning components. Then do the Think Aloud where you clearly model the different ways that you question during a text and have them tally your use of the questions.They can then work through monitoring themselves as they read a text on their own. Later, teach students to write questions that represent each type of questions. These activities foster the meta-cognition required to become automatic with questioning in order to further their comprehension.
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clarifying
Clarifying or monitoring comprehension includes more than just figuring out difficult words in a text. Knowing how to apply a fix-up strategy when reading breaks down is a complex strategy and one that needs modeling. We clarify words when we are not sure of their meaning as well as when we are trying to understand a difficult portion of text. Lori Oczkus ( Reciprocal Teaching, 2010) says clarifying involves both identifying that you are stuck on a word or concept and figuring out how to remedy that. To clarify an idea you might model how to re-read the part that you didn't understand, read ahead to look for clues to the idea, think about what you already know or talk to a friend. To clarify a word, you could model how to re-read the word, look for meaning considering the surrounding context of the piece, apply a decoding strategy, read on to find clues, try another word that makes sense. Modeling what YOU do to understand a tricky word or idea is a critical step in having student learn how to clarify for understanding.