What to Teach with Comprehension Comprehension draws from several other reading components: phonics, vocabulary, and oral language. If you are focusing on helping students improve their comprehension skills, you will also need to provide instructional activities in phonics, vocabulary, and oral language at the same time. The activities for those components should apply to the…
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What Does Not Work for Comprehension Instruction Regardless of the strategies and activities you use, keep in mind the goal of comprehension instruction and make sure that what students do helps them achieve that goal. Not everything will. Listed below are some common strategies that do not help students develop a justifiable, personal interpretation of…
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The Number One Strategy for Teaching Comprehension: Discussion Remember, the definition of comprehension is the ability to develop a justifiable, personal interpretation of text. It is the ability to say, “Here is what this means to me, and this is the reason why.” You can approach comprehension instruction in many ways (and you should), but…
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What Works for Comprehension Instruction If you were to ask me what is one thing you can do to help students develop comprehension if you could only do one thing, I would say read with students and talk about what you read. Although that would be an exceptional beginning, it would not be enough, nor…
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Instructional Principles for Comprehension Comprehension seems like a big, vague concept because it depends so heavily on personal interpretation of text. There might not be a single correct answer to the question “What does it mean?” Rather, students, like all readers, may have differing responses, interpretations, and reactions to the text they read. If they…
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The 4 Sub-Skills of Comprehension Reading comprehension has four sub-skills, three that lead to comprehension and one that occurs throughout the reading process. They are as follows. Understanding: knowing the content Making Sense: considering the content and message Applying: deciding what to do with, and using, the information Self-Monitoring: reflecting on whether or not you…
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What Is Comprehension? Comprehension is the goal of reading programs. Teachers often ask students, “What does it mean?” Sometimes, they tell students, “This is what it means.” Most often, though, they ask the who, what, when, where, and why types of questions. Through these questions, teachers want to know the same thing: does the student…
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