reading comprehension strategies

Essential Reading Comprehension Strategies for students and teachers

Learning to read is a circuitous skill that demands a lot from our students.

In one case 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 power to encompass their reading at evermore circuitous levels.

One minute they're beingness asked to unravel the threads of pregnant in a Shakespearean tragedy, the next to wrap their brains effectually the hard science in a Physics textbook.

In that location's no doubt nigh it, inquiry (not to mention experience) reveals to u.s.a. that students require more than a single comprehension strategy to become confident and good readers.

In this commodity, we volition examine 7 cognitive strategies that you can use in the classroom to assistance your students amend their overall reading comprehension.

We'll also wait at how these strategies tin can be taught in the classroom and provide yous with a straightforward activity to get your students started using the strategies correct abroad.

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 it.

The didactics of comprehension from the early years of schooling is an important component of whatever literacy program as information technology teaches students to call up virtually reading more than merely producing sounds and relaying information.

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, permit's accept a expect at each of these in turn.

1. MONITORING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What is the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy? Put simply, monitoring refers to the procedure of assessing your understanding of something as you read information technology. It requires you to pay attending to your ain thinking as you read a text. Every bit with all of our reading strategies, this requires students to develop their metacognition – thinking about thinking.

Employing this strategy asks us to detect our own thoughts and filter through them to identify what is new in our reading, what questions arise, what groundwork knowledge exercise we accept and what are inferences that we are making every bit nosotros read.

Monitoring requires us to practise all this and detect how it all weaves together to aid us unravel the meaning of a text.

Substantially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires united states to pay close attention and find not only the text nosotros are reading, but our own thoughts almost and observations on the text too.

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

This allows them to make adjustments to their arroyo to a text every bit 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 aware of their current level of understanding and ability to respond accordingly.

Though the monitoring comprehension strategy is but ane of the strategies we will explore in this article, it tin can be thought of as a kind of overarching strategy that tin 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. Nosotros encourage interactivity while doing this. We model thinking virtually the text every bit nosotros read together, eventually passing over the responsibility for thinking well-nigh 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 about what they've read. This encourages the educatee to call up consciously about their reading and their comprehension of information technology.

Be sure besides to expose them to a broad range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With enough practice, your students will begin to utilize 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 take read equally they read it.

Yet, visualization is peradventure a poor name for this strategy with its suggestion of 'seeing' alone. Visualization is actually most engaging more than simply our sense of sight. Students who are expert at using this strategy will not only brand mental images in their minds, but they'll conjure upward 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 utilize directly modeling. Begin by reading aloud a familiar story. As you read, depict to the students the mental images that y'all form in your mind.

One time you accept given students an insight into your idea processes while reading, so challenge individual students to have a become themselves with brusk passages, They should read a sentence or 2 to brainstorm with, and so describe the images in their minds every bit they read them. They should go on in this way until they complete the passage.

With time, this likewise will get 2nd nature to the students as another cord is added to their bow.

iii. ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Activating Prior Noesis Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to brand connections betwixt what they're reading and their own experiences. In the procedure, the student's reading becomes more than personally meaningful.

Prior knowledge is the knowledge that students have already. It's what the student brings to their reading. The more prior knowledge they have in any given area, the better able they'll be to comprehend what they read.

Every bit students acquire to brand connections between the things they read and their own lives, they will begin to develop a scaffold on which they tin hang new ideas and concepts.

How Can I Teach the Activating Prior Knowledge Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? This strategy begins fifty-fifty before the volume is opened. Starting time, ask the students to preview the book. Examine the comprehend and hash out what they come across there. Flip through the pages of the book together and read the blurb on the back. Discuss with the students what they think the volume might be most based on their observations.

Equally you read through the volume, encourage students to point out when they read something they know already. What else do they know most this topic? Can they share what they know with the form?

As with all the strategies in this commodity, activating prior knowledge gets us thinking almost reading, it is a metacognitive skill every bit 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 recall critically about what they read, as well equally helps students to develop their own sense of curiosity. Just as we ask our students questions in society to stimulate their thinking, students ask themselves questions about a text to boot start their exploration of the text in pursuit of understanding. Questioning ensures students appoint closely with a text, making reading more than than only a passive pursuit in the process.

How Tin I Teach the Questioning Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Instruct students that questioning should take place earlier, during, and afterwards 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 hateful? 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 especially important when a student finds themself not understanding what is happening. Asking clarification questions helps the student 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 become something of a textual detective. It helps students to empathize things that are not made explicit in the text. It'south what we mean when we say to students "Read between the lines!"

Rather than merely relying on what the writer has articulated directly 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 office of the pupil and pushes the student to a higher level of comprehension.

How 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 section of suitable text, display the text on a whiteboard or give students copies of it, and read aloud with students. At appropriate points in the text, suspension and ask the students what they think is actually going on. Teachers should and then provide their answer, 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'due south actually going on here?
  • How do you think the character feels?
  • Why do you lot think that happened?
  • How do you lot know that?
  • What clues led you lot to that determination?

vi. 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 practice 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 finer, the student must express the gist of the text. This requires them to place the essential ideas and consolidate the near of import elements of the text that support these ideas.

How Tin 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 can exist used is the $ii 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, but it also helps push the pupil to gain a clear grasp of the fabric they've been tasked to summarize. It also offers the student a good opportunity for writing do as it forces the student to keep their writing lean and tight.

vii. 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 ocean of words that await them. They'll demand to learn to continuously prioritize the information that they see when reading. In the determining importance reading comprehension strategy, students wait 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 language used in the text correct downwardly to the discussion level.

 A simple manner to practise this in class is to provide the students with Post-It notes. Afterward reading a provided text, students should make notes of the diverse bits of information in the text on the Mail-Information technology notes. When they accept done this they can sort the bits of data according to their overall importance relative to each other.

Plow Over a New Leafage

So, in that location we have information technology, 7 reading comprehension strategies to help students become to grips with even the well-nigh circuitous of texts.

Teaching these strategies to your students tin ensure they have plenty tools in their toolbox to 'fix' their comprehension of most texts they'll be 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 student reading comprehension, it is of import to remind them that the road to becoming a skillful reader demands that they don't only give upward at the starting time hurdle to agreement. Nor should they plow onwards regardless of the fact the meaning of the text has eluded them either.

With practice and over time, skilful readers develop competency in a range of strategies that they can alternating between to unlock the significant of fifty-fifty the most 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 xv years of didactics and administration experience. Shane'due south latest Book the Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing can be found hither.  Editing and support for this article accept been provided by the literacyideas team.