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.

One time students have moved on from the relatively easy process of decoding the words on the page and are able to read with a level of fluency and automaticity, increasing demands are made upon their ability to comprehend their reading at evermore complex levels.

One infinitesimal they're being asked to unravel the threads of meaning in a Shakespearean tragedy, the next to wrap their brains around the hard science in a Physics textbook.

There'south no dubiousness about it, enquiry (not to mention experience) reveals to u.s. that students require more than a single comprehension strategy to go confident and proficient readers.

In this article, nosotros volition examine 7 cognitive strategies that y'all can use in the classroom to help your students amend their overall reading comprehension.

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

WHAT IS READING COMPREHENSION?

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

  • Simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning from text.
  • Enabling readers to derive significant from text when they engage in intentional, trouble solving and thinking processes.
  • Applying social, cultural and intellectual layers upon text to infer significant from information technology.

The pedagogy of comprehension from the early on years of schooling is an important component of any literacy plan equally it teaches students to think about reading more than than simply producing sounds and relaying information.

THE vii ESSENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

The 7 reading comprehension strategies we'll look at in this article are:

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

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

1. MONITORING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What is the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy? Put merely, monitoring refers to the process of assessing your understanding of something every bit you lot read information technology. It requires you to pay attending to your own thinking equally you read a text. As with all of our reading strategies, this requires students to develop their metacognition – thinking nearly thinking.

Employing this strategy asks us to notice our ain thoughts and filter through them to place what is new in our reading, what questions arise, what groundwork knowledge practice we have and what are inferences that we are making as we read.

Monitoring requires united states to practise all this and detect how information technology all weaves together to help us unravel the significant of a text.

Essentially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires us to pay close attention and observe non only the text we are reading, merely our own thoughts about and observations on the text too.

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

This allows them to brand adjustments to their approach to a text as necessary, ensuring they don't mindlessly browse through a text without understanding what they've read. A student who is using this strategy will be an engaged pupil aware of their current level of agreement and ability to reply accordingly.

Though the monitoring comprehension strategy is only 1 of the strategies we will explore in this article, it can be thought of as a kind of overarching strategy that can encompass aspects of all the other strategies within it.

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

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

Be sure as well to expose them to a wide range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With plenty practice, your students will brainstorm to employ 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 form pictures in their minds of what they have read as they read it.

However, visualization is perchance a poor name for this strategy with its suggestion of 'seeing' alone. Visualization is actually most engaging more just our sense of sight. Students who are good at using this strategy will non only brand mental images in their minds, only they'll conjure up in their imaginations the smells, sounds, feel, and tastes of what they read too.

How Can I Teach the Visualization Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The best method of teaching this strategy to your students is to apply direct modeling. Begin by reading aloud a familiar story. Equally you read, describe to the students the mental images that you course in your heed.

One time you accept given students an insight into your thought processes while reading, then challenge individual students to have a go themselves with short passages, They should read a sentence or two to begin with, then depict the images in their minds as they read them. They should proceed in this mode until they consummate the passage.

With time, this too will become second nature to the students as another cord is added to their bow.

3. ACTIVATING PRIOR Cognition COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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

Prior cognition is the noesis that students have already. It'due south what the student brings to their reading. The more than prior knowledge they have in any given surface area, the better able they'll be to encompass what they read.

As students acquire to make connections between the things they read and their own lives, they volition begin to develop a scaffold on which they can hang new ideas and concepts.

How Tin 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 book. Examine the cover and discuss what they run across at that place. 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 nearly 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 almost this topic? Can they share what they know with the class?

As with all the strategies in this article, activating prior noesis gets united states thinking about reading, it is a metacognitive skill as well as a skill that is reliant on the pupil's ain noesis and experience.

4. QUESTIONING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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

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

Asking questions is specially important when a pupil finds themself not understanding what is happening. Asking description questions helps the student to seek out the data required to make their comprehension clearer.

v. INFERRING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What Is the Inferring Comprehension Strategy? Using this strategy requires the educatee to get something of a textual detective. It helps students to sympathise things that are non made explicit in the text. It's what nosotros mean when nosotros say to students "Read between the lines!"

Rather than simply relying on what the writer has articulated direct in the text, inferring meaning requires the student to wait for clues to effigy out the meaning backside the text. This demands critical thinking on the part of the pupil and pushes the student to a higher level of comprehension.

How Tin can I Teach the Inferring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Equally with previous strategies, learning to use inferring as a comprehension strategy begins with teacher modeling. Choose a department of suitable text, display the text on a whiteboard or requite students copies of it, and read aloud with students. At appropriate points in the text, intermission and ask the students what they retrieve is really going on. Teachers should then provide their respond, modeling for the students every bit they exercise then which clues in the text led them to their decision.

SOME USEFUL PROMPTS FOR ENCOURAGING INFERENCE INCLUDE:

  • What's really going on hither?
  • How do you think the character feels?
  • Why practise yous remember that happened?
  • How do you know that?
  • What clues led you to that conclusion?

6. Summarizing Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Summarizing Comprehension Strategy? Summarizing ways that students retell the story or information in the text they've read in their own words. To do this successfully, they need 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 Tin I Teach the Summarizing Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? At that place are many activities to aid students gain valuable practise at summarizing their reading. I fun activity that can be used is the $2 Sum Up. In this action each word costs 10c and the pupil only has $2, to sum up the main thought of their reading.

This game is fun, just it too helps button the educatee to proceeds a clear grasp of the material they've been tasked to summarize. It besides offers the pupil a good opportunity for writing practise as it forces the educatee to keep their writing lean and tight.

7. Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy? In that location is a sorting process that students must learn if they are to successfully navigate their way through the ocean of words that await them. They'll need to learn to continuously prioritize the information that they come across when reading. In the determining importance reading comprehension strategy, students await for clues in the text to help 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 pupil pays attending to all elements of the text. They must analyze everything from headings and bullet points, to the linguistic communication used in the text right down to the word level.

 A simple way to exercise this in class is to provide the students with Post-Information technology notes. Later reading a provided text, students should make notes of the diverse bits of data in the text on the Post-Information technology notes. When they have washed this they can sort the bits of data according to their overall importance relative to each other.

Turn Over a New Leaf

And then, in that location we have it, 7 reading comprehension strategies to aid students become to grips with even the nigh complex of texts.

Teaching these strategies to your students tin can ensure they have enough tools in their toolbox to 'fix' their comprehension of near texts they'll be asked to read. If one strategy fails, then they pull out the next ane until they take somewhen achieved a solid agreement of the text.

While working on improving student reading comprehension, it is important to remind them that the route to condign a proficient reader demands that they don't just give up at the commencement hurdle to understanding. Nor should they plough onwards regardless of the fact the meaning of the text has eluded them either.

With practise and over time, proficient 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 chief of an international schoolhouse and university English lecturer with 15 years of teaching and administration experience. Shane'due south latest Book the Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing can exist establish here.  Editing and support for this article accept been provided by the literacyideas squad.