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.

Once students accept 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 power to embrace their reading at evermore circuitous levels.

One minute they're existence asked to unravel the threads of meaning in a Shakespearean tragedy, the side by side to wrap their brains around the hard science in a Physics textbook.

At that place's no doubt about it, enquiry (not to mention feel) reveals to u.s. that students require more than a unmarried comprehension strategy to become confident and practiced readers.

In this article, we will examine 7 cognitive strategies that you can employ in the classroom to help your students amend their overall reading comprehension.

We'll also look at how these strategies tin exist taught in the classroom and provide you with a straightforward activeness to go your students started using the strategies right away.

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 appoint in intentional, trouble solving and thinking processes.
  • Applying social, cultural and intellectual layers upon text to infer meaning from it.

The teaching of comprehension from the early years of schooling is an important component of whatsoever literacy program as it teaches students to recall about reading more than simply producing sounds and relaying data.

THE 7 ESSENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

The 7 reading comprehension strategies we'll look at in this article are:

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

Now, let'south accept a look at each of these in plow.

i. 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 every bit y'all read information technology. It requires you lot to pay attention to your own thinking every bit you read a text. Equally with all of our reading strategies, this requires students to develop their metacognition – thinking about thinking.

Employing this strategy asks us to notice our own thoughts and filter through them to place what is new in our reading, what questions arise, what background knowledge do we accept and what are inferences that we are making as we read.

Monitoring requires us to do all this and observe how it all weaves together to help usa unravel the meaning of a text.

Substantially, the monitoring comprehension strategy requires u.s. to pay close attention and discover not only the text nosotros are reading, but our own thoughts about 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 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 enlightened of their current level of understanding and ability to answer accordingly.

Though the monitoring comprehension strategy is only one of the strategies we will explore in this commodity, it tin be thought of as a kind of overarching strategy that 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 frequently reading aloud with our students. We encourage interactivity while doing this. Nosotros model thinking about the text equally we read together, eventually passing over the responsibility for thinking about the text to our students.

To do this, encourage your students to read with partners, to enquire questions of each other, and to describe and write about what they've read. This encourages the student to recollect consciously about their reading and their comprehension of information technology.

Exist sure as well to expose them to a wide range of genres; both fiction and nonfiction. With enough practise, your students volition brainstorm 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 structure of mental images with the purpose of drawing significant from a text. When engaged in visualization, students will form pictures in their minds of what they have read every bit they read information technology.

However, visualization is perhaps a poor name for this strategy with its suggestion of 'seeing' solitary. Visualization is really virtually engaging more than merely our sense of sight. Students who are adept at using this strategy will not but make mental images in their minds, but they'll conjure up in their imaginations the smells, sounds, feel, and tastes of what they read too.

How Tin can I Teach the Visualization Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? The best method of teaching this strategy to your students is to use direct modeling. Begin past reading aloud a familiar story. As y'all read, describe to the students the mental images that you form in your mind.

In one case you have given students an insight into your idea processes while reading, and then claiming individual students to have a get themselves with short passages, They should read a sentence or two to begin with, then describe the images in their minds as they read them. They should continue in this fashion until they complete the passage.

With fourth dimension, this too will go 2nd nature to the students every bit some other string is added to their bow.

3. 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 own experiences. In the procedure, the student'south 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 than prior knowledge they have in any given expanse, the better able they'll be to comprehend what they read.

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

How Tin can I Teach the Activating Prior Knowledge Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? This strategy begins even earlier the book is opened. First, ask the students to preview the book. Examine the comprehend and talk over what they encounter in that location. Flip through the pages of the volume together and read the blurb on the back. Discuss with the students what they think the volume might exist about based on their observations.

As you read through the volume, encourage students to signal out when they read something they know already. What else do they know near this topic? Tin they share what they know with the form?

Every bit with all the strategies in this article, activating prior cognition gets us thinking almost reading, information technology is a metacognitive skill too equally a skill that is reliant on the student's own knowledge and experience.

four. QUESTIONING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

What Is the Questioning Comprehension Strategy? This comprehension strategy encourages students to retrieve critically well-nigh what they read, also every bit helps students to develop their own sense of curiosity. Just every bit we inquire our students questions in club to stimulate their thinking, students ask themselves questions virtually a text to kick commencement their exploration of the text in pursuit of understanding. Questioning ensures students engage closely with a text, making reading more than only a passive pursuit in the process.

How Can I Teach the Questioning Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? Instruct students that questioning should accept identify before, during, and after 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 give-and-take hateful? Why did that happen?), to understand 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 particularly 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 educatee to get something of a textual detective. It helps students to empathise things that are non fabricated explicit in the text. It's what we mean when we say to students "Read betwixt the lines!"

Rather than simply relying on what the author has articulated directly in the text, inferring meaning requires the student to look for clues to figure out the pregnant backside the text. This demands critical thinking on the role of the student and pushes the educatee to a higher level of comprehension.

How Can I Teach the Inferring Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? As with previous strategies, learning to utilise inferring as a comprehension strategy begins with instructor modeling. Cull a section of suitable text, brandish the text on a whiteboard or give students copies of it, and read aloud with students. At advisable points in the text, pause and ask the students what they recollect is actually 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 determination.

SOME USEFUL PROMPTS FOR ENCOURAGING INFERENCE INCLUDE:

  • What'south actually going on here?
  • How do y'all think the grapheme feels?
  • Why exercise you think that happened?
  • How do y'all know that?
  • What clues led you to that decision?

half-dozen. 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 demand to be able to pull out the main points of the text and express these in their own words. To summarize effectively, 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 back up these ideas.

How Tin I Teach the Summarizing Comprehension Strategy in the Classroom? There are many activities to assistance students gain valuable do at summarizing their reading. One fun activeness that can be used is the $2 Sum Up. In this activity each word costs 10c and the pupil only has $2, to sum up the primary idea of their reading.

This game is fun, but it also helps push button the student to gain a clear grasp of the material they've been tasked to summarize. Information technology also offers the pupil a expert opportunity for writing practice as it forces the student to go on their writing lean and tight.

7. Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy

What Is the Determining Importance Comprehension Strategy? There is a sorting procedure that students must learn if they are to successfully navigate their way through the bounding main of words that await them. They'll need to larn to continuously prioritize the data that they come across when reading. In the determining importance reading comprehension strategy, students look for clues in the text to help them sort the $.25 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 right downwardly to the word level.

 A unproblematic manner to practice this in form is to provide the students with Post-It notes. After reading a provided text, students should make notes of the diverse bits of data in the text on the Mail-It notes. When they have done this they can sort the $.25 of information co-ordinate to their overall importance relative to each other.

Plow Over a New Leaf

So, in that location nosotros accept information technology, 7 reading comprehension strategies to help students go to grips with even the most circuitous of texts.

Teaching these strategies to your students tin ensure they have enough tools in their toolbox to 'fix' their comprehension of nigh texts they'll be asked to read. If one strategy fails, then they pull out the next one until they have eventually accomplished a solid understanding of the text.

While working on improving student reading comprehension, it is important to remind them that the road to condign a adept reader demands that they don't just surrender at the starting time 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, proficient readers develop competency in a range of strategies that they can alternate between to unlock the meaning of even the most opaque of texts.

Content for this page has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh.  A former principal of an international school and university English language lecturer with 15 years of teaching and administration experience. Shane's latest Book the Consummate Guide to Nonfiction Writing tin can be found here.  Editing and support for this commodity take been provided by the literacyideas squad.