How to teach comprehension strategies
Now that you have an understanding of the different reading comprehension strategies that readers can use to aid their own understanding of the text they are reading, you can begin thinking about the different ways you could go about teaching these strategies. According to Dymock (2007), there is little teaching of comprehension strategies in primary school despite the fact that there is sufficient evidence stating that students' understanding of a text can be significantly improved with it. there are several different teaching strategies that have been put forward by researchers and current and past teachers. We will now explore some of them.
Explicit teaching
The teaching of comprehension was once mainly focussed on decoding and word recognition, however, with the 'comprehension revolution' (1970s-1990s) came the belief that there was more to comprehension than this. There is now an extensive amount of research arguing that comprehension teaching needs to be explicit in that 1) students are taught explicitly the different ways they can go about comprehending different texts and 2) the teacher provides explicit instruction of strategies through modelling with read-alouds and think-alouds, for example.
Five stages of explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies
There are a few basic steps to teaching explicitly to students which are agreed upon by many researchers. These steps are as follows:
1) Students are given an explicit description of the comprehension strategy and of when and how this strategy should be used.
2) The teacher then models this strategy to their students through a talk-aloud demonstration.
3) The teacher and students then collaborate in their use of the strategy. For example, the teacher and students make predictions together.
4) Students then practice this strategy with guidance from the teacher. The teacher's involvement and control then begins to fade.
5) Students are then encouraged to use the strategy independently.
Specific comprehension strategies
Read-aloud/ Think-aloud teaching strategy
Ortlieb and Norris (2012) suggest this read-aloud teaching strategy. While this example used non-fiction science books, the strategy could also be used for books from other domains. The valuable part of read-aloud/think-alouds is that you are able to demonstrate to students how you are comprehending a text by verbalising your thoughts as you read. Through this, you can talk about your predictions and questions and can demonstrate skimming, scanning, sampling, re-reading, reflecting and visualising. Your end goal should be having your students practice this strategy independently of you, the teacher, and anybody else.
1) The important first step for the teacher to take is to choose a book that is appropriate for the students' grade level, the small group's reading level, or the individual's reading level. This book should also be appropriate for the topic of study.
2) The teacher should then preview the reading material, looking out for any unfamiliar vocabulary or parts of the story that students may find confusing.
3) As had previously been mentioned, building up your students' semantic knowledge of the topic and vocabulary will assist their comprehension. The teacher should therefore give students some background knowledge on the topic and vocabulary, and even flick through some of the pages with students.
4) You can now begin reading the book aloud. While reading, you should try to pause and comment on what you are thinking as you read to give students an idea of how comprehension occurs.
5) Talk about your predictions, confusing parts and connections you can make with your prior knowledge to show students how you are comprehending.
6) Conclude the lesson by making a strong connection to the book or talk about what you think the purpose of the book is.
Specific strategies for building semantic knowledge
Winch et al (2010) suggest that before reading a text students need some knowledge about the topic of the text, the text-type, the structure of the text and the vocabulary. Some possible teaching strategies include:
- Brainstorming and floor-storming with students. Floor-storming involves the teacher creating visual displays related to the topic of the text which are then placed on the floor for students to reflect on. Preferably in small groups, students can infer about the topic of the text they will read and share what they know about the topic or how they would infer relationships.
- Categorising. Here, the teacher could collaborate with students in categorising different ideas, topics, themes, characters, etc.
- Concept mapping. Students could collaborate with the teacher or they could work in small groups to brainstorm their different ideas or prior knowledge about the topic of the text.
- Predicting. The could tell the class their predictions and students could then make their own predictions. Or vice versa.
- Developing a visual text outline. The teacher and students could collaborate to create a visual representation of the outline of the text. This could also be done in small groups or individually. This strategy could be especially helpful for students who struggle with reading and/or writing as it gives them an opportunity to express their understanding of the text through a different method.
- Introducing key vocabulary. Any vocabulary that students may not be aware of or understand needs to be introduced and defined, preferably verbally. Both the teacher and students could pick out words.
Strategies for predicting
The teacher and/or students could:
- Identify the text-type and content by looking at the cover and title of the text.
- Discuss what they anticipate the text will be about or what will happen by looking at the cover and title.
- Make predictions from the table of contents.
- Make predictions after looking at any illustrations within the text.
- Make and record predictions throughout the reading of the text.
Strategies for generating and answering questions
Teachers can generate questions and encourage students to generate and answer questions that are both literal and inferential.
The teacher and/or students could:
- Compile a list of questions before reading.
- Look for answers to questions during reading.
- Practice silent reading.
- Create and use quizzes and games with the questions and answers that have been generated.
- Create questions that draw from different sources, for example a caption.
Strategies for monitoring comprehension
The teacher and/or students could:
- Discuss each page as it is read - what do they understand from this page? What meaning have they gained?
- Try to make links to previous pages.
- Fill in cloze passages - passages of text with words or phrases missing which need to be filled in.
- Re-order a jumbled up text into what they understand the correct order to be.
- Match up illustrations to different parts of the text.
- Re-tell the text in their own words (summarise).
- Follow instructions correctly in an instructional text.
Inferring strategies
Inferring is something that teachers and students can do to think about a certain part of a text more deeply. For example, if the reader came across data or a fact, they could then try to infer meaning from the data or fact. Using their existing prior knowledge, the reader can come to a prediction, conclusion or generalisation, or could infer about character feelings and motives.
The teacher could:
- demonstrate explicitly how they would infer meaning from facts in a text
- ask students for facts to back up their inferences
The teacher and/or students could:
- discuss possible inferences as the text is read
- construct an inferences chart
- match fact cards to likely inferences
Strategies for visualising
Students can visualise using semantic knowledge to create mental images of what they imagine scenes, objects or characters to look like. Visualising can be especially helpful for struggling readers or writers as it gives them another format to convey their understanding.
Teachers and/or students could:
- Draw characters, settings or events based on written descriptions.
- Construct 3D models of book settings
- Use digital animation to recreate sequences or scenes
- Create diagrams or timelines
- Use drama to present a section of a text to the class
- Create a storybook out of certain texts
Strategies for summarising
Summarising is an important tool that readers need to be able to practice to convey their understanding of a text succinctly. In summarising, need to be able to pick out the most important information from a text.
Teachers and/or students could:
-Find important information/topics by looking at the table of contents, the index, headings and subheadings.
-Order the information they have gathered from the text in chronological order.
-Order the information in order of importance according to the reader.
- Make notes on particular topics.
- Retell, rewrite or draw significant information from a text
Strategies for responding to and reflecting on a text
When readers respond to and reflect on a text, they will hopefully come to understand that all texts are written from a certain point of view - the author's point of view.
Teachers and/or students could:
- Discuss issues mentioned in the text from the students' viewpoint.
- Discuss issues mentioned in the text from the characters' points of view or the author's point of view.
- Classify information from the text into groups.
- Research information on a topic from the text.
- Retell or rewrite information from the text from a different viewpoint.
Explicit teaching
The teaching of comprehension was once mainly focussed on decoding and word recognition, however, with the 'comprehension revolution' (1970s-1990s) came the belief that there was more to comprehension than this. There is now an extensive amount of research arguing that comprehension teaching needs to be explicit in that 1) students are taught explicitly the different ways they can go about comprehending different texts and 2) the teacher provides explicit instruction of strategies through modelling with read-alouds and think-alouds, for example.
Five stages of explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies
There are a few basic steps to teaching explicitly to students which are agreed upon by many researchers. These steps are as follows:
1) Students are given an explicit description of the comprehension strategy and of when and how this strategy should be used.
2) The teacher then models this strategy to their students through a talk-aloud demonstration.
3) The teacher and students then collaborate in their use of the strategy. For example, the teacher and students make predictions together.
4) Students then practice this strategy with guidance from the teacher. The teacher's involvement and control then begins to fade.
5) Students are then encouraged to use the strategy independently.
Specific comprehension strategies
Read-aloud/ Think-aloud teaching strategy
Ortlieb and Norris (2012) suggest this read-aloud teaching strategy. While this example used non-fiction science books, the strategy could also be used for books from other domains. The valuable part of read-aloud/think-alouds is that you are able to demonstrate to students how you are comprehending a text by verbalising your thoughts as you read. Through this, you can talk about your predictions and questions and can demonstrate skimming, scanning, sampling, re-reading, reflecting and visualising. Your end goal should be having your students practice this strategy independently of you, the teacher, and anybody else.
1) The important first step for the teacher to take is to choose a book that is appropriate for the students' grade level, the small group's reading level, or the individual's reading level. This book should also be appropriate for the topic of study.
2) The teacher should then preview the reading material, looking out for any unfamiliar vocabulary or parts of the story that students may find confusing.
3) As had previously been mentioned, building up your students' semantic knowledge of the topic and vocabulary will assist their comprehension. The teacher should therefore give students some background knowledge on the topic and vocabulary, and even flick through some of the pages with students.
4) You can now begin reading the book aloud. While reading, you should try to pause and comment on what you are thinking as you read to give students an idea of how comprehension occurs.
5) Talk about your predictions, confusing parts and connections you can make with your prior knowledge to show students how you are comprehending.
6) Conclude the lesson by making a strong connection to the book or talk about what you think the purpose of the book is.
Specific strategies for building semantic knowledge
Winch et al (2010) suggest that before reading a text students need some knowledge about the topic of the text, the text-type, the structure of the text and the vocabulary. Some possible teaching strategies include:
- Brainstorming and floor-storming with students. Floor-storming involves the teacher creating visual displays related to the topic of the text which are then placed on the floor for students to reflect on. Preferably in small groups, students can infer about the topic of the text they will read and share what they know about the topic or how they would infer relationships.
- Categorising. Here, the teacher could collaborate with students in categorising different ideas, topics, themes, characters, etc.
- Concept mapping. Students could collaborate with the teacher or they could work in small groups to brainstorm their different ideas or prior knowledge about the topic of the text.
- Predicting. The could tell the class their predictions and students could then make their own predictions. Or vice versa.
- Developing a visual text outline. The teacher and students could collaborate to create a visual representation of the outline of the text. This could also be done in small groups or individually. This strategy could be especially helpful for students who struggle with reading and/or writing as it gives them an opportunity to express their understanding of the text through a different method.
- Introducing key vocabulary. Any vocabulary that students may not be aware of or understand needs to be introduced and defined, preferably verbally. Both the teacher and students could pick out words.
Strategies for predicting
The teacher and/or students could:
- Identify the text-type and content by looking at the cover and title of the text.
- Discuss what they anticipate the text will be about or what will happen by looking at the cover and title.
- Make predictions from the table of contents.
- Make predictions after looking at any illustrations within the text.
- Make and record predictions throughout the reading of the text.
Strategies for generating and answering questions
Teachers can generate questions and encourage students to generate and answer questions that are both literal and inferential.
The teacher and/or students could:
- Compile a list of questions before reading.
- Look for answers to questions during reading.
- Practice silent reading.
- Create and use quizzes and games with the questions and answers that have been generated.
- Create questions that draw from different sources, for example a caption.
Strategies for monitoring comprehension
The teacher and/or students could:
- Discuss each page as it is read - what do they understand from this page? What meaning have they gained?
- Try to make links to previous pages.
- Fill in cloze passages - passages of text with words or phrases missing which need to be filled in.
- Re-order a jumbled up text into what they understand the correct order to be.
- Match up illustrations to different parts of the text.
- Re-tell the text in their own words (summarise).
- Follow instructions correctly in an instructional text.
Inferring strategies
Inferring is something that teachers and students can do to think about a certain part of a text more deeply. For example, if the reader came across data or a fact, they could then try to infer meaning from the data or fact. Using their existing prior knowledge, the reader can come to a prediction, conclusion or generalisation, or could infer about character feelings and motives.
The teacher could:
- demonstrate explicitly how they would infer meaning from facts in a text
- ask students for facts to back up their inferences
The teacher and/or students could:
- discuss possible inferences as the text is read
- construct an inferences chart
- match fact cards to likely inferences
Strategies for visualising
Students can visualise using semantic knowledge to create mental images of what they imagine scenes, objects or characters to look like. Visualising can be especially helpful for struggling readers or writers as it gives them another format to convey their understanding.
Teachers and/or students could:
- Draw characters, settings or events based on written descriptions.
- Construct 3D models of book settings
- Use digital animation to recreate sequences or scenes
- Create diagrams or timelines
- Use drama to present a section of a text to the class
- Create a storybook out of certain texts
Strategies for summarising
Summarising is an important tool that readers need to be able to practice to convey their understanding of a text succinctly. In summarising, need to be able to pick out the most important information from a text.
Teachers and/or students could:
-Find important information/topics by looking at the table of contents, the index, headings and subheadings.
-Order the information they have gathered from the text in chronological order.
-Order the information in order of importance according to the reader.
- Make notes on particular topics.
- Retell, rewrite or draw significant information from a text
Strategies for responding to and reflecting on a text
When readers respond to and reflect on a text, they will hopefully come to understand that all texts are written from a certain point of view - the author's point of view.
Teachers and/or students could:
- Discuss issues mentioned in the text from the students' viewpoint.
- Discuss issues mentioned in the text from the characters' points of view or the author's point of view.
- Classify information from the text into groups.
- Research information on a topic from the text.
- Retell or rewrite information from the text from a different viewpoint.