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 have moved on from the relatively easy procedure 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 power to comprehend their reading at evermore complex levels.

I 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.

At that place's no incertitude most information technology, research (not to mention experience) reveals to united states of america that students require more than than a unmarried comprehension strategy to become confident and expert readers.

In this article, we will examine 7 cerebral strategies that you can apply in the classroom to assist your students improve their overall reading comprehension.

Nosotros'll also look at how these strategies tin be taught in the classroom and provide you with a straightforward activity to go your students started using the strategies correct away.

WHAT IS READING COMPREHENSION?

Comprehension is the process of agreement text: spoken, written and/or visual. Comprehension is an agile and complex procedure that encompasses.

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

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

THE seven ESSENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

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

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

At present, let's accept a look at each of these in turn.

i. MONITORING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What is the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy? Put only, monitoring refers to the procedure of assessing your understanding of something as you read information technology. It requires you to pay attention to your ain thinking as 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 u.s.a. to notice our own thoughts and filter through them to identify what is new in our reading, what questions ascend, what background knowledge exercise we take and what are inferences that we are making as we read.

Monitoring requires us to practise all this and discover how it all weaves together to help usa unravel the meaning of a text.

Essentially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires the states to pay shut attention and discover not only the text we are reading, but our own thoughts about and observations on the text besides.

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

This allows them to brand 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 student enlightened of their current level of agreement and power to respond accordingly.

Though the monitoring comprehension strategy is only one of the strategies nosotros will explore in this commodity, it can exist thought of equally 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 nigh often reading aloud with our students. We encourage interactivity while doing this. Nosotros model thinking about the text as we read together, eventually passing over the responsibility for thinking nearly 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 almost what they've read. This encourages the student to think consciously virtually their reading and their comprehension of it.

Be sure too to expose them to a broad range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With enough practise, your students will brainstorm to employ 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 volition form pictures in their minds of what they accept read as they read it.

However, visualization is perhaps a poor name for this strategy with its suggestion of 'seeing' alone. Visualization is really almost engaging more than just our sense of sight. Students who are adept at using this strategy will not only make mental images in their minds, but they'll conjure up in their imaginations the smells, sounds, experience, and tastes of what they read as well.

How Can I Teach the Visualization Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The best method of instruction this strategy to your students is to employ direct modeling. Brainstorm by reading aloud a familiar story. As y'all read, describe to the students the mental images that you form in your mind.

Once you lot take given students an insight into your idea processes while reading, then claiming individual students to have a go themselves with brusque passages, They should read a sentence or ii to begin with, then depict the images in their minds as they read them. They should continue in this fashion until they complete the passage.

With time, this too volition go 2nd nature to the students as another string is added to their bow.

3. 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 noesis is the knowledge that students have already. Information technology's what the student brings to their reading. The more than prior knowledge they have in any given area, the amend able they'll exist to comprehend what they read.

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

How Can I Teach the Activating Prior Cognition Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? This strategy begins even before the volume is opened. Get-go, ask the students to preview the volume. Examine the encompass 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 recall the book might exist about based on their observations.

Equally you read through the book, encourage students to point out when they read something they know already. What else do they know about this topic? Tin they share what they know with the class?

Every bit with all the strategies in this article, activating prior knowledge gets us thinking about reading, it is a metacognitive skill as well as a skill that is reliant on the student'southward own 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, also equally helps students to develop their own sense of curiosity. Just as we inquire our students questions in society to stimulate their thinking, students ask themselves questions about a text to kick starting time 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 procedure.

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

Request questions is especially important when a student finds themself not understanding what is happening. Asking clarification questions helps the educatee 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 get something of a textual detective. Information technology helps students to understand things that are not made explicit in the text. It'due south what we mean when we say to students "Read between the lines!"

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

How Tin can I Teach the Inferring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Every bit with previous strategies, learning to use inferring as a comprehension strategy begins with instructor modeling. Choose 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 inquire the students what they think is really going on. Teachers should and so provide their respond, modeling for the students as they do so which clues in the text led them to their conclusion.

SOME USEFUL PROMPTS FOR ENCOURAGING INFERENCE INCLUDE:

  • What'southward really going on hither?
  • How do yous call up the character feels?
  • Why exercise you lot call up that happened?
  • How do you know that?
  • What clues led you to that conclusion?

half-dozen. 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 ain words. To practice this successfully, they need to exist able to pull out the main points of the text and express 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 almost important elements of the text that back up these ideas.

How Can I Teach the Summarizing Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? There are many activities to help students gain valuable do 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 up the main idea of their reading.

This game is fun, merely it too helps push the educatee to gain a articulate grasp of the material they've been tasked to summarize. It also offers the student a skillful opportunity for writing do as it forces the student to keep their writing lean and tight.

7. Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy? There is a sorting procedure that students must learn if they are to successfully navigate their way through the ocean of words that wait them. They'll need to larn to continuously prioritize the data that they come across when reading. In the determining importance reading comprehension strategy, students look 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 student pays attention to all elements of the text. They must analyze everything from headings and bullet points, to the linguistic communication used in the text correct down to the word level.

 A unproblematic fashion to practice this in class is to provide the students with Post-Information technology notes. After reading a provided text, students should make notes of the various bits of information in the text on the Post-It notes. When they accept done 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 have it, 7 reading comprehension strategies to help students get to grips with even the most complex of texts.

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

While working on improving student reading comprehension, it is important to remind them that the route to becoming a proficient reader demands that they don't just 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 practice and over fourth dimension, good readers develop competency in a range of strategies that they can alternate betwixt to unlock the meaning of even the most opaque of texts.

Content for this folio has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh.  A former primary of an international school and university English language lecturer with fifteen years of teaching and assistants experience. Shane's latest Book the Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing can be constitute hither.  Editing and back up for this article accept been provided by the literacyideas team.