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 take 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 embrace their reading at evermore circuitous levels.

One minute they're being asked to unravel the threads of significant in a Shakespearean tragedy, the side by side to wrap their brains around the hard science in a Physics textbook.

There's no doubt about information technology, research (non to mention experience) reveals to us that students require more than a unmarried comprehension strategy to become confident and proficient readers.

In this commodity, we will examine vii cerebral strategies that you tin can use in the classroom to help your students better their overall reading comprehension.

We'll likewise look 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 circuitous procedure that encompasses.

  • Simultaneously extracting and amalgam 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 it.

The teaching of comprehension from the early on years of schooling is an important component of any literacy programme as it teaches students to call back about reading more than simply producing sounds and relaying data.

THE 7 ESSENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

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

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

Now, let's have a look at each of these in plough.

1. MONITORING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What is the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy? Put simply, monitoring refers to the process of assessing your agreement of something equally you read it. It requires you to pay attention to your ain thinking every bit you read a text. As with all of our reading strategies, this requires students to develop their metacognition – thinking about thinking.

Employing this strategy asks us to notice our own 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 every bit we read.

Monitoring requires us to exercise all this and observe how it all weaves together to aid us unravel the pregnant of a text.

Substantially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires the states to pay close attending and observe non only the text we are reading, but our own thoughts almost and observations on the text likewise.

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

This allows them to make 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 student aware of their current level of agreement and ability to respond appropriately.

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

How Tin can I Teach the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The primeval method of employing this strategy is nearly often reading aloud with our students. Nosotros encourage interactivity while doing this. We model thinking well-nigh the text equally nosotros 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 ask questions of each other, and to draw and write near what they've read. This encourages the student to recall consciously about their reading and their comprehension of it.

Be sure as well to expose them to a broad range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With enough practice, your students will brainstorm to employ this strategy independently and automatically each fourth dimension 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 volition form pictures in their minds of what they have read as they read information technology.

Withal, visualization is peradventure a poor proper noun for this strategy with its suggestion of 'seeing' alone. Visualization is actually nigh engaging more than just our sense of sight. Students who are skillful 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 too.

How Tin I Teach the Visualization Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The best method of teaching this strategy to your students is to use direct modeling. Begin past reading aloud a familiar story. As you read, draw to the students the mental images that you form in your heed.

Once you have given students an insight into your thought processes while reading, then challenge private students to have a become themselves with curt passages, They should read a judgement or two to begin with, then describe the images in their minds equally they read them. They should proceed in this manner until they complete the passage.

With time, this too will become second nature to the students as 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 pupil's reading becomes more personally meaningful.

Prior cognition is the knowledge that students have already. Information technology'due south what the student brings to their reading. The more prior knowledge they have in any given surface area, the ameliorate able they'll be to embrace 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 before the book is opened. Offset, ask the students to preview the book. Examine the embrace and discuss what they see there. Flip through the pages of the book together and read the blurb on the back. Discuss with the students what they think the book might be nearly based on their observations.

As y'all read through the volume, encourage students to point out when they read something they know already. What else do they know nearly this topic? Can they share what they know with the course?

As with all the strategies in this article, activating prior knowledge gets us thinking about reading, it is a metacognitive skill likewise every bit a skill that is reliant on the pupil's own cognition and experience.

four. QUESTIONING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Questioning Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to call up critically about what they read, also as helps students to develop their own sense of curiosity. Merely as nosotros ask our students questions in guild to stimulate their thinking, students ask themselves questions about a text to kicking get-go their exploration of the text in pursuit of understanding. Questioning ensures students engage closely with a text, making reading more than just a passive pursuit in the process.

How Can I Teach the Questioning Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Instruct students that questioning should have identify earlier, 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 sympathize the events and characters better (Why did she do that? What would happen if…?), and to understand the writer'due south purpose (Why did they write that?).

Asking questions is especially of import when a pupil finds themself non agreement what is happening. Request clarification questions helps the educatee to seek out the information required to make their comprehension clearer.

5. INFERRING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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

Rather than merely relying on what the writer 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 critical thinking on the function of the student and pushes the student to a higher level of comprehension.

How Can I Teach the Inferring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? As with previous strategies, learning to use inferring as a comprehension strategy begins with instructor modeling. Cull a section of suitable text, brandish the text on a whiteboard or give students copies of it, and read aloud with students. At advisable points in the text, pause and ask the students what they remember is really going on. Teachers should and then provide their answer, modeling for the students as they practice so which clues in the text led them to their conclusion.

SOME USEFUL PROMPTS FOR ENCOURAGING INFERENCE INCLUDE:

  • What'southward really going on here?
  • How do you recollect the character feels?
  • Why practice yous think that happened?
  • How do you lot know that?
  • What clues led you to that determination?

6. Summarizing Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Summarizing Comprehension Strategy? Summarizing means 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 principal points of the text and express these in their ain words. To summarize effectively, the educatee 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 gain valuable practice at summarizing their reading. One fun activity that tin can be used is the $2 Sum Up. In this activity each word costs 10c and the educatee only has $2, to sum upward the principal idea of their reading.

This game is fun, only it as well helps push the student to gain a clear grasp of the cloth they've been tasked to summarize. It also offers the student a good opportunity for writing exercise as it forces the student to go on their writing lean and tight.

7. Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy? There is a sorting process that students must learn if they are to successfully navigate their style through the body of water of words that await them. They'll demand to learn to continuously prioritize the information that they come up across when reading. In the determining importance reading comprehension strategy, students look for clues in the text to assist 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 down to the word level.

 A uncomplicated way to practise this in class is to provide the students with Post-It notes. After reading a provided text, students should make notes of the various bits of information in the text on the Mail service-It notes. When they have done this they can sort the bits of information according to their overall importance relative to each other.

Turn Over a New Leaf

And then, there we have it, 7 reading comprehension strategies to assistance students go to grips with even the most complex of texts.

Education these strategies to your students can ensure they have plenty tools in their toolbox to 'fix' their comprehension of most texts they'll exist asked to read. If 1 strategy fails, and then they pull out the next one until they have eventually achieved a solid understanding of the text.

While working on improving pupil reading comprehension, it is important to remind them that the road to condign a skilful reader demands that they don't simply requite upward at the starting time hurdle to understanding. Nor should they plough onwards regardless of the fact the meaning of the text has eluded them either.

With practice and over fourth dimension, proficient readers develop competency in a range of strategies that they can alternating between to unlock the pregnant of even the nearly opaque of texts.

Content for this folio has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh.  A former master of an international school and university English lecturer with 15 years of education and assistants experience. Shane'south latest Book the Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing can be found here.  Editing and support for this article take been provided by the literacyideas team.