How Do We Focus Our Instruction on Comprehension Strategies to Help Our Students Become Proficient Readers?

(Iowa Core Literacy Standard IA.1)

Carol DuehrJune 2012

Reading Standards for LiteratureReading Standards for Informational

Text

IA.1 Employ the full range of research-based comprehension strategies, including making connections, determining importance, questioning, visualizing, making inferences, summarizing, and monitoring for comprehension.

Research-based

• Qualities of Best Practice in Teaching Reading from Best Practice, 4th ed., Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde. (2013)

Reading means getting meaning from print—The essence of reading is a transaction between the words of an author and the mind of a reader, during which meaning is constructed. This means that the main goal of reading instruction must be comprehension.

Reading is thinking--Reading is a meaning-making process: an active, constructive, creative, higher-order thinking activity that involves distinctive cognitive strategies before, during, and after reading. Students need to learn how skillful, experienced readers actually manage these processes.

Teachers should model reading--. . . They must show their students how they think while they read. Using a powerful teaching strategy called “think-alouds,” teachers can read aloud unfamiliar selections in front of their students, stopping frequently to “open up their heads” and vocalize their internal thought processes.

Why These Strategies?. . . Mainstream researchers agree that all skillful readers:• Visualize (make mental pictures or sensory images)• Connect (link to their own experiences, to events in the world, to other

readings)• Question (actively wonder, surface uncertainties, interrogate the text and the

author)• Infer (predict, hypothesize, interpret, draw conclusions)• Evaluate (determine importance, make judgments, weigh values)• Analyze (notice text structures, author’s craft, purpose, theme, point of view)• Recall (retell, summarize, remember information)• Monitor (actively keep track of their thinking, adjust strategies to text at hand)

• Best Practice, 4th ed. By Zemelman, Daniels, & Hyde. (2013)

How should Teachers Teach Strategies to their Students?

• Explicit instructionShowing our thinking and modeling the mental

processes we go through when readingDemonstrate what thoughtful readers doMake our thinking visible• Gradual Release of Responsibility ModelTeacher Modeling—I do, You watchGuided Practice—I do, You helpCollaborative Practice—I help, You do Independent Practice—I watch, You do

Monitoring Comprehension

• Proficient readers. . .Have an inner conversation about what they

are readingHave metacognitive knowledge—an

awareness and understanding of how one thinks

Know how to use strategies during readingMatch strategies to their purpose

Monitoring Comprehension

• Struggling Readers. . . Need explicit instruction demonstrating

metacognition—thinking about what they are thinking while reading

Need NOT ONLY a clear understanding of comprehension strategies BUT ALSO an awareness of when and how to use them

• Gradual Release of Responsibility Model

Making Connections A bridge from the new to the known---Activating and

connecting to background knowledge—schema theory Connecting to personal experience facilitates

understanding Text-to-Self: connections that readers make between the

text and their past experiences or background knowledge Text-to-World: connections that readers make between

the text and the bigger issues, events, or concerns of society and the world at large

Text-to-Text: connections that readers make between the text they are reading and another text

Determining Importance• Nonfiction—focus on important information and merge it with what

we already know to deepen our understanding--Text features that signal importance

• Fiction—focus on character’s actions, motives, problems & personality• Poetry—figurative language, metaphors, & imagery require us to dig

deeper• Importance is determined by our purpose Remember important information Learn new information and build background knowledge Distinguish what’s important from what’s interesting Discover a theme, opinion, or perspective Answer a specific question Determine if the author’s message is to inform, persuade, or entertain

Questioning

• Readers ask questions toConstruct meaningEnhance understandingFind answersSolve problemsFind specific informationClarify confusion

Visualizing

Allows readers to create mental images from words in the text

Infer but with mental images Involves all of your sensesEnhances meaning with mental imageryLinks past experiences to the words and ideas in the

storyStrengthens a reader’s relationship to the textStimulates imaginative thinkingHeightens engagement with text

Making Inferences

• Occurs when text clues merge with the reader’s prior knowledge and questions to point to a conclusion about an underlying theme or idea in a text

• When readers infer, they Draw conclusions based on clues in the text Make predictions before and during reading Surface underlying themes Use implicit information from the text to create

meaning during and after reading Use the pictures to help gain meaning

Summarizing

Pull out the most important information and put it into our own words to remember it

Retelling the information and paraphrasing itNeed to sift and sort through large amounts of

information to extract essential ideas

Resource

• Strategies That Work: teaching comprehension for understanding and engagement, 2nd ed. Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, 2007.