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

There'south no uncertainty about it, research (non to mention experience) reveals to u.s. that students require more a unmarried comprehension strategy to become confident and proficient readers.

In this article, we will examine vii cognitive strategies that yous can utilise in the classroom to assist your students improve their overall reading comprehension.

We'll besides wait at how these strategies can be taught in the classroom and provide you 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 active and complex process that encompasses.

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

The educational activity of comprehension from the early on years of schooling is an important component of any literacy program as it teaches students to think about reading more than only producing sounds and relaying information.

THE 7 ESSENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

The vii reading comprehension strategies we'll expect at in this article are:

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

Now, permit's have a look at each of these in turn.

1. MONITORING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What is the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy? Put but, monitoring refers to the process of assessing your agreement of something as you read it. Information technology requires you to pay attention to your own thinking as 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 identify what is new in our reading, what questions arise, what background knowledge do we have and what are inferences that we are making as nosotros read.

Monitoring requires us to do all this and observe how it all weaves together to assist us unravel the significant of a text.

Essentially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires the states to pay close attention and observe not simply the text nosotros are reading, merely our own thoughts well-nigh and observations on the text likewise.

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

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

Though the monitoring comprehension strategy is but one of the strategies we volition explore in this article, information technology can be thought of as a kind of overarching strategy that can encompass aspects of all the other strategies within it.

How Tin I Teach the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The earliest method of employing this strategy is nearly oft reading aloud with our students. We encourage interactivity while doing this. Nosotros model thinking near the text as we read together, eventually passing over the responsibility for thinking virtually the text to our students.

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

Be certain likewise to expose them to a wide range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With enough practice, your students volition begin to use this strategy independently and automatically each time they read.

ii. 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 information technology.

Nonetheless, visualization is perhaps a poor name for this strategy with its proffer of 'seeing' solitary. Visualization is actually near engaging more than just our sense of sight. Students who are skilful at using this strategy will not simply make mental images in their minds, simply they'll conjure up in their imaginations the smells, sounds, experience, and tastes of what they read besides.

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. As you read, depict to the students the mental images that you form in your listen.

Once yous have given students an insight into your thought processes while reading, then challenge individual students to accept a go themselves with curt passages, They should read a sentence or two to begin with, so describe the images in their minds every bit they read them. They should continue in this manner until they complete the passage.

With time, this also will become 2d nature to the students equally another string is added to their bow.

iii. ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE 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. Information technology's what the educatee brings to their reading. The more prior noesis they have in whatever given 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 own lives, they will begin to develop a scaffold on which they tin can hang new ideas and concepts.

How Can I Teach the Activating Prior Knowledge Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? This strategy begins even earlier the book is opened. First, ask the students to preview the book. Examine the cover and discuss what they see there. Flip through the pages of the book together and read the blurb on the dorsum. Talk over with the students what they remember the book might be about based on their observations.

Every bit yous read through the volume, encourage students to point out when they read something they know already. What else do they know about this topic? Can they share what they know with the class?

As with all the strategies in this commodity, activating prior knowledge gets united states of america thinking about reading, it is a metacognitive skill as well equally a skill that is reliant on the pupil'due south own knowledge and experience.

4. QUESTIONING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Questioning Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to think critically almost what they read, also as helps students to develop their own sense of curiosity. But as we ask our students questions in club to stimulate their thinking, students inquire themselves questions about a text to kick kickoff their exploration of the text in pursuit of understanding. Questioning ensures students engage closely with a text, making reading more just a passive pursuit in the process.

How Tin can I Teach the Questioning Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Instruct students that questioning should accept identify before, during, and after their reading. It will provide them with purpose and focus for their reading. In this strategy, students volition ask questions for several reasons, including to clarify meaning (What does this word mean? Why did that happen?), to understand the events and characters better (Why did she exercise that? What would happen if…?), and to sympathize the writer'southward purpose (Why did they write that?).

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

five. INFERRING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What Is the Inferring Comprehension Strategy? Using this strategy requires the student to become something of a textual detective. Information technology helps students to understand things that are not made explicit in the text. It's what we mean when we say to students "Read between the lines!"

Rather than simply relying on what the writer has articulated straight in the text, inferring significant requires the student to look for clues to figure out the meaning behind the text. This demands critical thinking on the part of the student and pushes the educatee to a college level of comprehension.

How Can I Teach the Inferring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? As with previous strategies, learning to utilise inferring as a comprehension strategy begins with teacher modeling. Choose a section of suitable text, display the text on a whiteboard or requite students copies of it, and read aloud with students. At advisable points in the text, pause and enquire the students what they think is actually going on. Teachers should then provide their answer, modeling for the students every bit they practise so 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 y'all think the graphic symbol feels?
  • Why do yous think that happened?
  • How practice you 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 do this successfully, they demand to be able to pull out the primary points of the text and limited these in their ain 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? There 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 pupil only has $2, to sum upwards the main idea of their reading.

This game is fun, just it also helps push the educatee to gain a clear grasp of the cloth they've been tasked to summarize. It also offers the student a good opportunity for writing practice as it forces the student to go along 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 acquire if they are to successfully navigate their manner through the sea of words that expect them. They'll need to learn to continuously prioritize the information that they come beyond when reading. In the determining importance reading comprehension strategy, students expect for clues in the text to help them sort the bits of information in the text into a hierarchy of relative value.

How Tin I Teach the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Determining importance demands that the pupil 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 down to the give-and-take level.

 A simple way to practice this in class is to provide the students with Post-It notes. After reading a provided text, students should make notes of the various $.25 of information in the text on the Post-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

And then, at that place nosotros accept it, seven reading comprehension strategies to aid students become to grips with even the most complex of texts.

Teaching these strategies to your students tin can ensure they take enough tools in their toolbox to 'fix' their comprehension of virtually texts they'll be asked to read. If 1 strategy fails, and so they pull out the next ane until they have eventually achieved a solid understanding of the text.

While working on improving educatee reading comprehension, it is important to remind them that the road to condign a skilful reader demands that they don't merely give up at the offset hurdle to agreement. 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 tin 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 one-time principal of an international schoolhouse and university English lecturer with 15 years of teaching and administration experience. Shane's latest Book the Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing can exist found here.  Editing and support for this article have been provided by the literacyideas squad.