Strategies+to+Teach+Comprehension


 * Strategies for Effective Comprehension Instruction for All Students **
 * The process of comprehending text is influenced by many factors, including:
 * the text that is being read
 * the task that the student is trying to accomplish in reading (may affect motivation)
 * who is reading the text (the student or someone else)
 * the background knowledge of the student
 * the context in which the text is being read
 * All of these elements should be considered when teaching comprehension
 * Text factors that influence comprehension include
 * text readability
 * text structure (fiction vs. nonfiction)
 * text organization (the number of big ideas in the text)
 * Again, these should all be considered when teaching comprehension
 * Students who can read accurately and fluently are more likely to comprehend text. These students have more working memory to focus on comprehension because decoding has become a more automatic task. Thus, teach decoding and fluency!
 * Oral reading fluency, oral language (use of sentence structures, questions, and pronouns), sentence repetition (the ability to hold items in working memory), and background knowledge are all skills that help students comprehend text. Teach these skills!
 * Strategies to build background knowledge include:
 * Have classroom libraries with half fictional books, half non-fiction books
 * Teach vocabulary
 * Teach about the “outside” world
 * Teach deeply about subject areas/themes
 * Weave background knowledge into all activities – take activities “a step farther” by talking about “deep” concepts
 * Use strategies to activate prior knowledge
 * Have students select from a wide range of books for independent reading or when work is finished
 * Teach students metacognition (thinking about thinking). Students need to think about their thinking to effectively monitor comprehension.
 * Teach comprehension strategies. The following strategies are supported by research:
 * Comprehension monitoring – students realize when and what the difficulty is and how to use repair strategies to fix it
 * Cooperative learning – working together in groups with each student having a slightly different role
 * Graphic and semantic organizers – helps students organize critical concepts
 * Self-questioning – actively engages the reader in generating and answering questions as they read text
 * Story structure analysis – using maps to provide a visual for understanding and retelling the story
 * Summarizing – choosing the main points of a story and placing them in the student’s own words
 * Answering questions – answering inference and concrete answer questions
 * Effective comprehension instruction includes think-alouds of the teacher modeling the various strategies
 * Model think-alouds both for text that is at student’s independent reading level and text that is above student’s independent reading level
 * Assessment of comprehension may include the DIBELS Oral Retell Fluency assessment
 * Teachers should increasingly emphasize comprehension strategies once students reach a fourth or five grade reading level
 * Make sure to teach comprehension strategies at students’ independent reading level (where students read 95% of the words independently the first time)
 * Teach signal words such as “because”, “for example”, and “like” to help students understand and link events together
 * Use writing to increase comprehension skills through taking another character’s perspective, summarizing, linking items to background knowledge, etc.

** How do I adapt these skills for learners with Special needs? **
 * Model different comprehension strategies using think-alouds
 * Examples: not understanding a concept and utilizing repair strategies, predicting, questioning the text, retelling the story in the student’s own words
 * Use simple words, if needed
 * Use aided language stimulation on student’s device to show students the vocabulary they can use to participate in these activities
 * Teach students vocabulary related to comprehension and comprehension strategies
 * Wh- question words
 * Yes/no questions
 * Words such as predicting, summarizing, etc.
 * Signal words such as first, last, because, for example, like
 * Have students practice comprehension strategies with feedback
 * Ensure active participation
 * Provide ample wait time
 * Consider prompting levels – utilize least to most prompting, maintain high expectations, ensure that students are not overwhelmed but also have some level of challenge
 * Help students ask questions about the text
 * Provide students with choices to help scaffold instruction with differentiated levels of support
 * Teach background knowledge
 * Ensure students have exposure and opportunities to read both non-fiction and fictional text (independently and in groups)
 * Put books in digital text; utilize digital text
 * Put books in students’ devices
 * Show short video clips to teach background knowledge (see Don Johnston Inc. as well as United Streaming and Discovery Ed.)
 * Use pictures to provide visuals of different concepts
 * Create activity memoirs to help students remember concepts that they have learned
 * Teach comprehension strategies systematically
 * Teach skills in easier text first
 * Start with smaller segments of text
 * Start with text with only a few main ideas (possibly repeated lines or concepts)
 * Move to stories that follow a set structure
 * Allow students to fully develop skills and be successful before moving to different story structures
 * Utilize multi-modal learning
 * Highlight concepts visually – charts, pictures, connection to self experiences
 * Act out predictions, retellings, main ideas, etc.
 * Teach students to visualize the information – see it in their head, think about it more deeply, think about what might happen next
 * Provide students adapted access to comprehension tools, including dictionaries, post-it notes, graphic organizers, etc.
 * Integrate the tools into students’ communication systems
 * Utilize programs such as Clicker 5, Intellitools Classroom Suite, Kidspiration, Inspiration, etc. that provide access to these supports in a variety of ways
 * Encourage motivation by integrating comprehension tasks with known likes of the student
 * Music
 * Video
 * Art
 * Sharing information with others – younger students, peers, siblings, etc.
 * “Playing the teacher”
 * Spend more time working on these strategies and highlighting them across content areas and classes
 * Use adapted text to ensure that comprehension strategy instruction is at student’s instructional reading level
 * Don Johnston Inc. books
 * Intellitools books
 * Powerpoint books
 * Books that can be read-aloud (possibly text-to-speech) so students can work on comprehension strategies without having to decode the text