reading comprehension strategies

Essential Reading Comprehension Strategies for students and teachers

Learning to read is a complex skill that demands a lot from our students.

Once students accept moved on from the relatively like shooting fish in a barrel process of decoding the words on the folio and are able to read with a level of fluency and automaticity, increasing demands are made upon their power to cover their reading at evermore complex levels.

Ane minute they're beingness asked to unravel the threads of significant in a Shakespearean tragedy, the next to wrap their brains around the hard science in a Physics textbook.

There's no doubt most information technology, research (not to mention experience) reveals to usa that students crave more than than a single comprehension strategy to become confident and proficient readers.

In this article, we will examine seven cognitive strategies that you tin can utilise in the classroom to help your students improve their overall reading comprehension.

We'll also look at how these strategies can be taught in the classroom and provide you with a straightforward activity to become your students started using the strategies right abroad.

WHAT IS READING COMPREHENSION?

Comprehension is the procedure of understanding text: spoken, written and/or visual. Comprehension is an active and circuitous procedure that encompasses.

  • Simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning from text.
  • Enabling readers to derive meaning from text when they appoint in intentional, problem solving and thinking processes.
  • Applying social, cultural and intellectual layers upon text to infer meaning from it.

The teaching of comprehension from the early years of schooling is an of import component of whatsoever literacy program as information technology teaches students to think about reading more than but producing sounds and relaying data.

THE 7 ESSENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

The 7 reading comprehension strategies we'll await at in this commodity are:

  • Monitoring
  • Visualising
  • Activating
  • Questioning
  • Inferring
  • Summarising
  • Determining Importance

At present, let's take a look at each of these in plow.

one. MONITORING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What is the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy? Put simply, monitoring refers to the process of assessing your understanding of something as you read it. Information technology requires you to pay attention to your own thinking equally you read a text. As with all of our reading strategies, this requires students to develop their metacognition – thinking almost thinking.

Employing this strategy asks united states to notice our ain thoughts and filter through them to place what is new in our reading, what questions arise, what background knowledge practice we accept and what are inferences that we are making equally we read.

Monitoring requires us to practice all this and notice how it all weaves together to help the states unravel the significant of a text.

Essentially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires united states of america to pay shut attention and observe non only the text we are reading, but our own thoughts about and observations on the text too.

Done diligently, the monitoring comprehension strategy encourages the reader to assess their agreement of a text on an ongoing basis.

This allows them to make adjustments to their arroyo to a text equally necessary, ensuring they don't mindlessly scan through a text without agreement what they've read. A educatee who is using this strategy will be an engaged educatee aware of their current level of understanding and ability to respond appropriately.

Though the monitoring comprehension strategy is simply one of the strategies we will explore in this commodity, it tin can be thought of equally a kind of overarching strategy that tin embrace aspects of all the other strategies within it.

How Can I Teach the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The primeval method of employing this strategy is most often reading aloud with our students. We encourage interactivity while doing this. We model thinking about the text every bit we read together, eventually passing over the responsibility for thinking about the text to our students.

To do this, encourage your students to read with partners, to inquire questions of each other, and to draw and write about what they've read. This encourages the educatee to think consciously most their reading and their comprehension of it.

Be certain also to betrayal them to a broad range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With enough practice, your students will begin to utilize this strategy independently and automatically each time they read.

2. VISUALIZATION COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What Is the Visualization Comprehension Strategy? Visualization involves the construction of mental images with the purpose of drawing meaning from a text. When engaged in visualization, students will course pictures in their minds of what they have read as they read it.

Still, visualization is maybe a poor proper name for this strategy with its proposition of 'seeing' solitary. Visualization is actually almost engaging more just our sense of sight. Students who are adept at using this strategy will not merely make mental images in their minds, but they'll conjure up in their imaginations the smells, sounds, feel, and tastes of what they read likewise.

How Tin I Teach the Visualization Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The all-time method of teaching this strategy to your students is to use direct modeling. Begin by reading aloud a familiar story. Equally you read, describe to the students the mental images that you lot grade in your mind.

One time you lot have given students an insight into your thought processes while reading, then challenge individual students to have a become themselves with brusque passages, They should read a sentence or two to begin with, so describe the images in their minds equally they read them. They should continue in this way until they complete the passage.

With time, this too will become 2nd nature to the students as some other string is added to their bow.

3. ACTIVATING PRIOR Noesis COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Activating Prior Knowledge Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to make connections between what they're reading and their own experiences. In the process, the student's reading becomes more personally meaningful.

Prior knowledge is the knowledge that students have already. It'south what the student brings to their reading. The more prior knowledge they take in whatever given surface area, the better able they'll be to comprehend what they read.

As students learn to make connections between the things they read and their ain lives, they will brainstorm to develop a scaffold on which they tin hang new ideas and concepts.

How Can I Teach the Activating Prior Knowledge Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? This strategy begins even before the book is opened. First, ask the students to preview the volume. Examine the cover and hash out what they see there. Flip through the pages of the volume together and read the blurb on the back. Discuss with the students what they think the volume might be about based on their observations.

As you read through the volume, encourage students to betoken out when they read something they know already. What else exercise they know virtually this topic? Can they share what they know with the class?

As with all the strategies in this article, activating prior noesis gets u.s. thinking almost reading, it is a metacognitive skill also equally a skill that is reliant on the student's own knowledge and experience.

4. QUESTIONING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Questioning Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to think critically about what they read, as well every bit helps students to develop their own sense of curiosity. Just as we ask our students questions in order to stimulate their thinking, students ask themselves questions about a text to kick start their exploration of the text in pursuit of understanding. Questioning ensures students engage closely with a text, making reading more simply a passive pursuit in the process.

How Can I Teach the Questioning Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Instruct students that questioning should take identify before, during, and afterward their reading. It will provide them with purpose and focus for their reading. In this strategy, students will enquire questions for several reasons, including to clarify significant (What does this discussion hateful? Why did that happen?), to understand the events and characters better (Why did she do that? What would happen if…?), and to empathize the writer's purpose (Why did they write that?).

Asking questions is especially of import when a student finds themself not understanding what is happening. Asking clarification questions helps the student to seek out the information required to brand their comprehension clearer.

5. INFERRING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What Is the Inferring Comprehension Strategy? Using this strategy requires the educatee to become something of a textual detective. It helps students to empathise things that are not made explicit in the text. It'due south what nosotros mean when we say to students "Read betwixt the lines!"

Rather than simply relying on what the author has articulated direct in the text, inferring meaning requires the student to look for clues to figure out the meaning behind the text. This demands disquisitional thinking on the part of the student and pushes the student to a higher level of comprehension.

How Tin I Teach the Inferring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Equally with previous strategies, learning to use inferring equally a comprehension strategy begins with teacher modeling. Choose a section of suitable text, display the text on a whiteboard or give students copies of it, and read aloud with students. At appropriate points in the text, pause and ask the students what they think is really going on. Teachers should then provide their answer, modeling for the students as they do so which clues in the text led them to their decision.

SOME USEFUL PROMPTS FOR ENCOURAGING INFERENCE INCLUDE:

  • What's really going on here?
  • How do you think the graphic symbol feels?
  • Why do you think that happened?
  • How do y'all know that?
  • What clues led you to that conclusion?

6. Summarizing Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Summarizing Comprehension Strategy? Summarizing means that students retell the story or data in the text they've read in their own words. To practice this successfully, they demand to be able to pull out the main points of the text and express these in their own words. To summarize effectively, the student must express the gist of the text. This requires them to identify the essential ideas and consolidate the most important elements of the text that support these ideas.

How Can I Teach the Summarizing Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? At that place are many activities to help students proceeds valuable practice at summarizing their reading. One fun activity that can be used is the $2 Sum Up. In this activity each word costs 10c and the student only has $ii, to sum up the main idea of their reading.

This game is fun, but it also helps push button the student to gain a clear grasp of the material they've been tasked to summarize. It likewise offers the educatee a proficient opportunity for writing practice as information technology forces the educatee to go on their writing lean and tight.

vii. Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy? There is a sorting procedure that students must larn if they are to successfully navigate their fashion through the ocean of words that expect them. They'll need to larn to continuously prioritize the information that they come beyond when reading. In the determining importance reading comprehension strategy, students look for clues in the text to assistance them sort the bits of information in the text into a hierarchy of relative value.

How Can I Teach the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Determining importance demands that the student pays attention to all elements of the text. They must analyze everything from headings and bullet points, to the language used in the text right downwardly to the word level.

 A uncomplicated fashion to practice this in course is to provide the students with Mail-Information technology notes. After reading a provided text, students should brand notes of the various bits of information in the text on the Mail service-It notes. When they have washed this they can sort the bits of information according to their overall importance relative to each other.

Turn Over a New Leaf

So, there we accept it, seven reading comprehension strategies to help students get to grips with even the near complex of texts.

Teaching these strategies to your students can ensure they accept enough tools in their toolbox to 'prepare' their comprehension of most texts they'll exist asked to read. If one strategy fails, then they pull out the next one until they have somewhen achieved a solid understanding of the text.

While working on improving pupil reading comprehension, it is of import to remind them that the road to becoming a expert reader demands that they don't simply surrender at the first hurdle to agreement. Nor should they plough onwards regardless of the fact the meaning of the text has eluded them either.

With do and over time, skilful readers develop competency in a range of strategies that they can alternate between to unlock the meaning of even the most opaque of texts.

Content for this page has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh.  A former principal of an international schoolhouse and university English lecturer with 15 years of instruction and administration experience. Shane's latest Book the Consummate Guide to Nonfiction Writing can be institute here.  Editing and back up for this commodity accept been provided by the literacyideas team.