Comprehension: In Your Classroom
Comprehension skills are taught from Pre-K through college. A daily lesson on comprehension should be taught. You should be purposefully integrating whichever comprehension skill you are emphasizing in all subject areas when it fits (Morrow, 2009).
Strategies to Use
See below for a variety of comprehension strategies to use with the students in your classroom.
1. Activate background knowledge to make connections between new and known information.
2. Question the text. Proficient readers are always asking questions while they read.
3. Draw inferences. Readers must use their prior knowledge about a topic and the information they have gleaned in the text thus far to make predictions about what might happen next.
1. Activate background knowledge to make connections between new and known information.
2. Question the text. Proficient readers are always asking questions while they read.
3. Draw inferences. Readers must use their prior knowledge about a topic and the information they have gleaned in the text thus far to make predictions about what might happen next.
4. Determine importance by finding the main idea. In the sea of words that is any text, readers must continually sort through and prioritize information.
5. Create mental images. Readers are constantly creating mind pictures as they read, visualizing action, characters, or themes.
6. Repair understanding when meaning breaks down. Proficient readers don't just plow ahead through text when it doesn't make sense - they stop and use "fix-up" strategies to restore their understanding.
7. Synthesize information. Synthesis combines the elements of connecting, questioning, and inferring (Pearson, 1992).
5. Create mental images. Readers are constantly creating mind pictures as they read, visualizing action, characters, or themes.
6. Repair understanding when meaning breaks down. Proficient readers don't just plow ahead through text when it doesn't make sense - they stop and use "fix-up" strategies to restore their understanding.
7. Synthesize information. Synthesis combines the elements of connecting, questioning, and inferring (Pearson, 1992).
"Busy Teacher's Cafe" has a variety of different lesson activities and graphic organizers for each of the different strategies listed above.
Below you will find other websites that also have lessons and graphic organizers that would be helpful in your classroom.
Below you will find other websites that also have lessons and graphic organizers that would be helpful in your classroom.
This article below from "Reading Rockets" discusses seven strategies to teach students text comprehension. Comprehension strategies are conscious plans. They are sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension (Adler, 2007).
Defining, Summarizing and Comparing
Defining
Summarizing
Comparing
- Before the formal definition has been introduced, students should be asked to make connections between their prior knowledge and the term.
- After the term has been defined, students need activities to more deeply process the term.
Summarizing
- Students should be asked to make their own judgments about what’s important to them (instead of just repeating the details the teacher highlights).
- Students will be able to more readily summarize, if they are asked to share what they’ve learned with an audience other than the teacher.
Comparing
- Students should develop the comparison, not simply repeat the model that we present to them.
- Student should be asked to share what they learned from the comparison (Pappas, 2009).