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 like shooting fish in a barrel 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 comprehend their reading at evermore complex levels.

One infinitesimal they're being asked to unravel the threads of significant in a Shakespearean tragedy, the adjacent to wrap their brains effectually the hard scientific discipline in a Physics textbook.

At that place'southward no doubt about it, inquiry (not to mention experience) reveals to us that students require more than a unmarried comprehension strategy to become confident and proficient readers.

In this article, nosotros volition examine 7 cerebral strategies that you tin utilise in the classroom to aid your students improve their overall reading comprehension.

We'll as well expect at how these strategies tin exist taught in the classroom and provide you with a straightforward activity to get your students started using the strategies right abroad.

WHAT IS READING COMPREHENSION?

Comprehension is the process of understanding text: spoken, written and/or visual. Comprehension is an agile and complex process 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 information technology.

The education of comprehension from the early years of schooling is an of import component of any literacy program equally it teaches students to call back about reading more than but producing sounds and relaying information.

THE 7 ESSENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

The vii reading comprehension strategies nosotros'll look at in this commodity are:

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

Now, let's take a look at each of these in plow.

1. MONITORING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

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What is the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy? Put simply, monitoring refers to the process of assessing your understanding of something as y'all read it. Information technology requires you lot to pay attention to your own thinking as you read a text. Equally with all of our reading strategies, this requires students to develop their metacognition – thinking near thinking.

Employing this strategy asks u.s.a. to detect our own thoughts and filter through them to identify what is new in our reading, what questions arise, what background knowledge do we take and what are inferences that we are making as we read.

Monitoring requires united states to practice all this and observe how it all weaves together to help us unravel the significant of a text.

Essentially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires united states of america to pay close attention and observe non but the text we are reading, but our ain thoughts about and observations on the text too.

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

This allows them to make adjustments to their arroyo to a text as necessary, ensuring they don't mindlessly scan 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 understanding and ability to respond appropriately.

Though the monitoring comprehension strategy is just 1 of the strategies we will explore in this article, it tin can be idea of as a kind of overarching strategy that can encompass aspects of all the other strategies within information technology.

How Can I Teach the Monitoring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The earliest method of employing this strategy is most oft reading aloud with our students. Nosotros encourage interactivity while doing this. We model thinking about the text as we read together, eventually passing over the responsibility for thinking most 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 student to recollect consciously most their reading and their comprehension of it.

Be sure likewise to expose them to a broad range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With enough do, your students will begin to employ 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 pregnant from a text. When engaged in visualization, students will grade pictures in their minds of what they accept read as they read it.

However, visualization is mayhap a poor proper noun for this strategy with its proposition of 'seeing' alone. Visualization is really about engaging more than just our sense of sight. Students who are adept at using this strategy volition not just brand mental images in their minds, but they'll conjure upwards 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 education this strategy to your students is to utilise straight modeling. Begin by reading aloud a familiar story. As you lot read, depict to the students the mental images that y'all form in your listen.

Once yous have given students an insight into your idea processes while reading, and so challenge individual students to have a go themselves with curt passages, They should read a sentence or 2 to brainstorm with, then describe the images in their minds equally they read them. They should continue in this manner until they complete the passage.

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

three. ACTIVATING PRIOR Knowledge COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Activating Prior Knowledge Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to brand connections between what they're reading and their ain experiences. In the procedure, the student'southward reading becomes more personally meaningful.

Prior knowledge is the noesis that students take already. It's what the pupil 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.

As students larn to brand connections betwixt the things they read and their own lives, they volition brainstorm to develop a scaffold on which they 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. First, ask the students to preview the book. Examine the encompass and discuss what they see there. Flip through the pages of the book together and read the blurb on the dorsum. Discuss with the students what they think the book might be about based on their observations.

As you read through the book, encourage students to bespeak out when they read something they know already. What else practise they know about this topic? Can they share what they know with the form?

Equally with all the strategies in this commodity, activating prior knowledge gets us thinking about reading, it is a metacognitive skill as well as a skill that is reliant on the student's own cognition and feel.

iv. QUESTIONING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Questioning Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to think critically about what they read, as well equally helps students to develop their own sense of curiosity. Simply every bit we ask our students questions in society to stimulate their thinking, students inquire themselves questions about a text to boot get-go their exploration of the text in pursuit of understanding. Questioning ensures students appoint closely with a text, making reading more than than just a passive pursuit in the process.

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

Asking questions is especially of import when a educatee finds themself not understanding what is happening. Request clarification questions helps the pupil 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 empathise things that are not fabricated explicit in the text. It'due south what we hateful when we say to students "Read between the lines!"

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

How Tin I Teach the Inferring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? As with previous strategies, learning to apply inferring every bit 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 advisable points in the text, suspension and ask the students what they recall is really going on. Teachers should then provide their answer, modeling for the students equally they do so which clues in the text led them to their conclusion.

SOME USEFUL PROMPTS FOR ENCOURAGING INFERENCE INCLUDE:

  • What'southward actually going on here?
  • How exercise you lot think the character feels?
  • Why exercise you remember that happened?
  • How practice y'all 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 information in the text they've read in their own words. To do this successfully, they need to be able to pull out the main points of the text and express these in their ain words. To summarize finer, 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? In that location are many activities to aid students gain valuable practice at summarizing their reading. 1 fun activeness that can be used is the $2 Sum Up. In this action each discussion costs 10c and the student only has $2, to sum up the chief idea of their reading.

This game is fun, but information technology also helps push the educatee to gain a articulate grasp of the material they've been tasked to summarize. Information technology too offers the student a good opportunity for writing exercise as it forces the pupil to keep their writing lean and tight.

7. Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy? At that place is a sorting procedure that students must learn if they are to successfully navigate their manner through the ocean of words that wait them. They'll need 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 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 educatee pays attention to all elements of the text. They must clarify everything from headings and bullet points, to the linguistic communication used in the text right down to the word level.

 A simple way to practice this in class is to provide the students with Mail-Information technology notes. After reading a provided text, students should make notes of the various bits of information in the text on the Mail-Information technology notes. When they have done this they tin sort the bits of information co-ordinate to their overall importance relative to each other.

Turn Over a New Leaf

So, there we have information technology, 7 reading comprehension strategies to assistance students get to grips with fifty-fifty the most complex of texts.

Teaching these strategies to your students tin ensure they have enough tools in their toolbox to 'fix' their comprehension of most texts they'll be asked to read. If 1 strategy fails, 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 route to becoming a expert reader demands that they don't just requite up at the first hurdle to understanding. Nor should they plough onwards regardless of the fact the meaning of the text has eluded them either.

With do and over time, good readers develop competency in a range of strategies that they can alternate betwixt to unlock the meaning of even the nearly opaque of texts.

Content for this page has been written past Shane Mac Donnchaidh.  A old master of an international school and university English lecturer with 15 years of teaching and assistants experience. Shane's latest Volume the Consummate Guide to Nonfiction Writing tin exist institute hither.  Editing and support for this article have been provided by the literacyideas team.