COMPREHENSION

Comprehension is making meaning from written text, or understanding what we read. Comprehension can include using strategies, text referencing, discussion, and written response. Comprehension is the reason for literacy instruction.

Comprehension is the reason we teach all other reading components and the overall goal of reading!

Comprehension is facilitated through reading strategies. Good readers use these strategies when they read. Teachers need to teach and support the learning and use of comprehension strategies. (Read on to HOW TO TEACH comprehension!)

Effective comprehension is taught through explicitly teaching reading strategies before, DURING, and after reading. Effective strategies are: summarize, question, prediction, clarify & monitor, inference, visualize, evaluate & comment, and text structure (nonfiction). A highly effective teacher uses these strategies to meet core standards and teach content.

Explicit Comprehension Strategy Instruction should include scaffolding to release the responsibility of the thinking, a graphic organizer to provide a visual representation of what is being learned or thought about, a teacher think-aloud to help model the thinking, cooperative opportunities to read and think together, reading and responding opportunities. All of these must be embedded in TEXT READING with a READ, STOP, THINK, TALK, WRITE, REPEAT format.

Integrating Oral Language into Comprehension is important to allow students the opportunity to talk about what they have read and thought about. Students can discuss as a whole class, in small groups and with partners about what they have read, written, and thought about the text they have read. Students read to prepare for discussion, listen to prepare for discussion, write to prepare for discussion, and then they discuss!