Reading comprehension skills and strategies

Strategies for Reading Comprehension :: Read Naturally, Inc.

Comprehension: The Goal of Reading

Comprehension, or extracting meaning from what you read, is the ultimate goal of reading. Experienced readers take this for granted and may not appreciate the reading comprehension skills required. The process of comprehension is both interactive and strategic. Rather than passively reading text, readers must analyze it, internalize it and make it their own.

In order to read with comprehension, developing readers must be able to read with some proficiency and then receive explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies (Tierney, 1982).

​ Strategies for reading comprehension in Read Naturally programs

​General Strategies for Reading Comprehension

The process of comprehending text begins before children can read, when someone reads a picture book to them. They listen to the words, see the pictures in the book, and may start to associate the words on the page with the words they are hearing and the ideas they represent.

In order to learn comprehension strategies, students need modeling, practice, and feedback. The key comprehension strategies are described below.

Using Prior Knowledge/Previewing

When students preview text, they tap into what they already know that will help them to understand the text they are about to read. This provides a framework for any new information they read.

Predicting

When students make predictions about the text they are about to read, it sets up expectations based on their prior knowledge about similar topics. As they read, they may mentally revise their prediction as they gain more information.

Identifying the Main Idea and Summarization

Identifying the main idea and summarizing requires that students determine what is important and then put it in their own words. Implicit in this process is trying to understand the author’s purpose in writing the text.

Questioning

Asking and answering questions about text is another strategy that helps students focus on the meaning of text. Teachers can help by modeling both the process of asking good questions and strategies for finding the answers in the text.

Making Inferences

In order to make inferences about something that is not explicitly stated in the text, students must learn to draw on prior knowledge and recognize clues in the text itself.

Visualizing

Studies have shown that students who visualize while reading have better recall than those who do not (Pressley, 1977). Readers can take advantage of illustrations that are embedded in the text or create their own mental images or drawings when reading text without illustrations.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Narrative Text

Narrative text tells a story, either a true story or a fictional story. There are a number of strategies that will help students understand narrative text.

Story Maps

Teachers can have students diagram the story grammar of the text to raise their awareness of the elements the author uses to construct the story. Story grammar includes:

• Setting: When and where the story takes place (which can change over the course of the story).
• Characters: The people or animals in the story, including the protagonist (main character), whose motivations and actions drive the story.
• Plot: The story line, which typically includes one or more problems or conflicts that the protagonist must address and ultimately resolve.
• Theme: The overriding lesson or main idea that the author wants readers to glean from the story. It could be explicitly stated as in Aesop’s Fables or inferred by the reader (more common).

​ Printable story map (blank)

Retelling

Asking students to retell a story in their own words forces them to analyze the content to determine what is important. Teachers can encourage students to go beyond literally recounting the story to drawing their own conclusions about it.

Prediction

Teachers can ask readers to make a prediction about a story based on the title and any other clues that are available, such as illustrations. Teachers can later ask students to find text that supports or contradicts their predictions.

Answering Comprehension Questions

Asking students different types of questions requires that they find the answers in different ways, for example, by finding literal answers in the text itself or by drawing on prior knowledge and then inferring answers based on clues in the text.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Expository Text

Expository text explains facts and concepts in order to inform, persuade, or explain.

The Structure of Expository Text

Expository text is typically structured with visual cues such as headings and subheadings that provide clear cues as to the structure of the information. The first sentence in a paragraph is also typically a topic sentence that clearly states what the paragraph is about.

Expository text also often uses one of five common text structures as an organizing principle:

• Cause and effect
• Problem and solution
• Compare and contrast
• Description
• Time order (sequence of events, actions, or steps)

Teaching these structures can help students recognize relationships between ideas and the overall intent of the text.

Main Idea/Summarization

A summary briefly captures the main idea of the text and the key details that support the main idea. Students must understand the text in order to write a good summary that is more than a repetition of the text itself.

​K-W-L

There are three steps in the K-W-L process (Ogle, 1986):

1. What I Know: Before students read the text, ask them as a group to identify what they already know about the topic. Students write this list in the “K” column of their K-W-L forms.
2. What I Want to Know: Ask students to write questions about what they want to learn from reading the text in the “W” column of their K-W-L forms. For example, students may wonder if some of the “facts” offered in the “K” column are true.
3. What I Learned: As they read the text, students should look for answers to the questions listed in the “W” column and write their answers in the “L” column along with anything else they learn.

After all of the students have read the text, the teacher leads a discussion of the questions and answers.

 Printable K-W-L chart (blank)

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers provide visual representations of the concepts in expository text. Representing ideas and relationships graphically can help students understand and remember them. Examples of graphic organizers are:

Tree diagrams that represent categories and hierarchies

Tables that compare and contrast data

Time-driven diagrams that represent the order of events

Flowcharts that represent the steps of a process​

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Teaching students how to develop and construct graphic organizers will require some modeling, guidance, and feedback. Teachers should demonstrate the process with examples first before students practice doing it on their own with teacher guidance and eventually work independently.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension in Read Naturally Programs

Several Read Naturally programs include strategies that support comprehension:

Bibliography

Honig, B. , L. Diamond, and L. Gutlohn. (2013). Teaching reading sourcebook, 2nd ed. Novato, CA: Arena Press.

Ogle, D. M. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher 38(6), pp. 564–570.

Pressley, M. (1977). Imagery and children’s learning: Putting the picture in developmental perspective. Review of Educational Research 47, pp. 586–622.

Tierney, R. J. (1982). Essential considerations for developing basic reading comprehension skills. School Psychology Review 11(3), pp. 299–305.

Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

1. Monitoring comprehension

Students who are good at monitoring their comprehension know when they understand what they read and when they do not. They have strategies to "fix" problems in their understanding as the problems arise. Research shows that instruction, even in the early grades, can help students become better at monitoring their comprehension.

Comprehension monitoring instruction teaches students to:

• Be aware of what they do understand
• Identify what they do not understand
• Use appropriate strategies to resolve problems in comprehension

2. Metacognition

Metacognition can be defined as "thinking about thinking." Good readers use metacognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Before reading, they might clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text. During reading, they might monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and "fixing" any comprehension problems they have. After reading, they check their understanding of what they read.

Students may use several comprehension monitoring strategies:

• Identify where the difficulty occurs

  "I don't understand the second paragraph on page 76."

• Identify what the difficulty is

  "I don't get what the author means when she says, 'Arriving in America was a milestone in my grandmother's life. '"

• Restate the difficult sentence or passage in their own words

  "Oh, so the author means that coming to America was a very important event in her grandmother's life."

• Look back through the text

  "The author talked about Mr. McBride in Chapter 2, but I don't remember much about him. Maybe if I reread that chapter, I can figure out why he's acting this way now."

• Look forward in the text for information that might help them to resolve the difficulty

  "The text says, 'The groundwater may form a stream or pond or create a wetland. People can also bring groundwater to the surface.' Hmm, I don't understand how people can do that… Oh, the next section is called 'Wells.' I'll read this section to see if it tells how they do it."

3. Graphic and semantic organizers

Graphic organizers illustrate concepts and relationships between concepts in a text or using diagrams. Graphic organizers are known by different names, such as maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, or clusters.

Regardless of the label, graphic organizers can help readers focus on concepts and how they are related to other concepts. Graphic organizers help students read and understand textbooks and picture books.

Graphic organizers can:

• Help students focus on text structure differences between fiction and nonfiction as they read
• Provide students with tools they can use to examine and show relationships in a text
• Help students write well-organized summaries of a text

Here are some examples of graphic organizers:

4. Answering questions

Questions can be effective because they:

• Give students a purpose for reading
• Focus students' attention on what they are to learn
• Help students to think actively as they read
• Encourage students to monitor their comprehension
• Help students to review content and relate what they have learned to what they already know

The Question-Answer Relationship strategy (QAR) encourages students to learn how to answer questions better. Students are asked to indicate whether the information they used to answer questions about the text was textually explicit information (information that was directly stated in the text), textually implicit information (information that was implied in the text), or information entirely from the student's own background knowledge.

There are four different types of questions:

• "Right There"

  Questions found right in the text that ask students to find the one right answer located in one place as a word or a sentence in the passage.

  Example: Who is Frog's friend? Answer: Toad

• "Think and Search"

  Questions based on the recall of facts that can be found directly in the text. Answers are typically found in more than one place, thus requiring students to "think" and "search" through the passage to find the answer.

  Example: Why was Frog sad? Answer: His friend was leaving.

• "Author and You"

  Questions require students to use what they already know, with what they have learned from reading the text. Students must understand the text and relate it to their prior knowledge before answering the question.

  Example: How do think Frog felt when he found Toad? Answer: I think that Frog felt happy because he had not seen Toad in a long time. I feel happy when I get to see my friend who lives far away.

• "On Your Own"

  Questions are answered based on a student's prior knowledge and experiences. Reading the text may not be helpful to them when answering this type of question.

  Example: How would you feel if your best friend moved away? Answer: I would feel very sad if my best friend moved away because I would miss her.

5. Generating questions

By generating questions, students become aware of whether they can answer the questions and if they understand what they are reading. Students learn to ask themselves questions that require them to combine information from different segments of text. For example, students can be taught to ask main idea questions that relate to important information in a text.

6. Recognizing story structure

In story structure instruction, students learn to identify the categories of content (characters, setting, events, problem, resolution). Often, students learn to recognize story structure through the use of story maps. Instruction in story structure improves students' comprehension.

7. Summarizing

Summarizing requires students to determine what is important in what they are reading and to put it into their own words. Instruction in summarizing helps students:

• Identify or generate main ideas
• Connect the main or central ideas
• Eliminate unnecessary information
• Remember what they read

Effective comprehension strategy instruction is explicit

Research shows that explicit teaching techniques are particularly effective for comprehension strategy instruction. In explicit instruction, teachers tell readers why and when they should use strategies, what strategies to use, and how to apply them. The steps of explicit instruction typically include direct explanation, teacher modeling ("thinking aloud"), guided practice, and application.

• Direct explanation

  The teacher explains to students why the strategy helps comprehension and when to apply the strategy.

• Modeling

  The teacher models, or demonstrates, how to apply the strategy, usually by "thinking aloud" while reading the text that the students are using.

• Guided practice

  The teacher guides and assists students as they learn how and when to apply the strategy.

• Application

  The teacher helps students practice the strategy until they can apply it independently.

Effective comprehension strategy instruction can be accomplished through cooperative learning, which involves students working together as partners or in small groups on clearly defined tasks. Cooperative learning instruction has been used successfully to teach comprehension strategies. Students work together to understand texts, helping each other learn and apply comprehension strategies. Teachers help students learn to work in groups. Teachers also provide modeling of the comprehension strategies.

6 Key Skills for Reading Comprehension

For some people, reading is like a walk in the park on a warm summer day, an enjoyable activity that is easy to master. In fact, reading is a complex process that involves many different skills. Together, these skills lead to the ultimate goal of learning to read: comprehensive reading comprehension.

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Text comprehension can be difficult for children for many reasons, but regardless of them, knowing what underdeveloped skills this is due to, you will be able to provide your child with the best help.

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Let's take a look at the six reading comprehension skills and how you can help your child develop them.

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1. Decoding

Decoding is an extremely important step in the reading process. Children use this skill to sound out words they have heard before but not seen written. The ability to decode is the foundation of all other reading skills.

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Decoding relies on one of the first language skills to develop, phonemic comprehension (this skill is part of a broader set of skills called phonological comprehension). Phonemic awareness allows children to hear and distinguish individual sounds in words (also known as phonemes). It also allows them to "play" with sounds in syllables and words.

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Decoding also relies on the ability to match individual sounds and letters. For example, to read the word "sun", the child must know that the letter "s" sounds like "s". Understanding the relationship between letters and sounds is an important step towards "voicing" words.

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How to help: Many children learn phonological awareness naturally by reading books, listening to songs and poems. But for some children it is not so easy. In fact, one of the earliest signs of reading difficulty is trouble with rhyming, counting syllables, or identifying the first sound in a word.

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The best way to help your child improve these skills is to guide them with precise instructions and lots of practice. Children need to be taught how to correctly identify sounds and work with them. You can also develop phonological perception by playing with words, reading poems aloud to your child, or using special computer techniques aimed at developing phonemic perception and decoding.

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2. Reading fluently

To read fluently, children must recognize words immediately, including words that do not read as they are written. By developing reading fluency, the child increases not only reading speed, but also reading comprehension.

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Decoding and reading each word can be a lot of work. Word recognition is the ability to recognize a word instantly just by looking at it, without having to read it out loud. When children can read quickly and with almost no errors, they are said to be able to read "fluently".

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People who can read fluently read fluently and rhythmically. They use the context to understand the meaning and change the intonation in their voice depending on what they are reading about. The ability to read fluently is critical to a good understanding of the text.

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How to help: Word recognition can be a big hurdle for beginning readers. Usually a person needs to see a word from 4 to 14 times in order to learn to automatically recognize it. But, for example, children diagnosed with dyslexia may need to see the word up to 40 times.

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Many children have difficulty reading fluently. To improve word recognition and other reading skills, children need help and a lot of practice. The best way to strengthen these skills is to practice reading books. It is important to choose books that are appropriate for the child's reading level.

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3. Vocabulary

To understand what you read, you need to understand at least most of the words in the text. A rich vocabulary is a key component of text comprehension. Students can learn new words during class, but they usually learn the meaning of words through everyday situations and while reading.

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How to help: The more new words children learn, the more their vocabulary grows. You can help your child develop vocabulary by talking to him often about different topics, introducing him to new words and concepts. Word games and funny jokes are also fun ways for children to reinforce these skills.

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Daily reading together also helps to build vocabulary. When reading aloud to your child, stop when you encounter new words and explain their meaning. But it is also important that the child reads independently. Even if there is no one to explain the meaning of a new word, the child can guess its meaning from the context, and also learn with the help of a dictionary.

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Teachers can also help by choosing interesting words to study and learning them all together in class. To practice vocabulary, the teacher can engage students in dialogue during the lesson, or play word games to make learning new words fun.

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4. Sentence construction and cohesion

Understanding how sentences are built can seem like a skill necessary for writing. The same can be said about the connection of ideas within and between sentences, which is called cohesion. But these skills are also important for reading comprehension.

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Knowing how ideas connect at the sentence level helps children make sense of passages and entire texts. This also leads to what is called coherence, or the ability to relate ideas to other ideas in a common work.

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How to help: Explain the basics of sentence construction to your child. Work with him to connect two or more thoughts, both in writing and orally.

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5. Expanding horizons and reasoning

read. It is also important to teach the child to “read between the lines” and find meaning where it is not literally written.

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How to help: Your child can broaden their horizons through reading, socializing, watching movies and TV shows, and exploring art. Also many things come with years of personal experience.

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Open up opportunities for your child to gain new useful knowledge in different areas and discuss with him what you have learned from the experience gained, both together and separately. Help your child make connections between new and old knowledge and ask questions that require extended answers and thoughtful explanations.

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You can also read these tips on how to use cartoons to help your child learn to judge for themselves.

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6. Working memory and attention

These two skills are part of a group of skills also known as executive functions. They are different, but closely related.

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When children read, attention allows them to absorb information from the text. Working memory helps them retain this information and use it to make sense and gain knowledge from what they read.

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The ability to control oneself while reading is also related to executive functions. The child must be able to recognize when he does not understand something, stop, go back and reread, so that there is no doubt about the understanding of what he read.

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How to help: There are many ways to help your child improve working memory, and it doesn't have to look like a lesson. There are many games and daily activities that can help develop working memory in a way that your child won't even notice!

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To improve your child's concentration, look for reading materials that interest and/or motivate your child. For example, some children love graphic novels. Teach your child to stop and reread the text when something is not clear to him. And show him how you “think out loud” when you read to make sure it makes sense.

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More ways to help with text comprehension

When children have difficulty learning the above skills, they may find it difficult to fully understand what they read.

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Find out what might be causing your child's reading difficulties. Remember, if a child has difficulty reading, it does not mean that he is not smart. But some children need extra support to successfully develop reading skills. The sooner you contact a specialist or start applying a special corrective technique, the less stress and lag in learning and development your child will receive. Pay attention to the Fast ForWord computer technique aimed at developing the skills of phonemic perception, decoding, memory, concentration and other executive functions.

Pins

• Decoding, reading fluency and vocabulary are key skills needed for reading comprehension.

• Understanding how ideas connect within and between sentences helps children understand the entire text.

• Reading aloud and discussing experiences can help a child develop reading skills.

Quickly and permanently develop reading skills: decoding, reading comprehension, extracting meaning from context, reading fluency, etc. , as well as concentration, memory, information processing - classes using the Fast ForWord online method will help you.

Don't delay helping your child!

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Source

7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Reading Comprehension • BUOM

By the Indeed Editorial Team

June 9, 2021

This article has been approved by an Indeed Career Consultant.

Comprehension is an important aspect of reading. When you read, try to understand and extract the meaning for a better understanding of what you are reading. By learning and implementing reading strategies and changing the way you read, you can improve your reading comprehension and make reading easier and more enjoyable.

In this article, we look at what reading comprehension is and the best strategies you can use to improve your reading skills.

What is reading comprehension?

Reading comprehension is the ability to comprehend or understand what you are reading. This is the intentional and active part of reading that happens before, during, and after you read something. By being able to understand what you read, you can make sense of the text and better understand what the author is trying to convey.

There are two components of reading comprehension: text comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary knowledge is the ability to understand the language being used, while text comprehension uses that language to develop an understanding of the text's meaning.

Why is reading comprehension important?

Reading comprehension is important for several reasons and can provide many benefits. The ability to read effectively can improve both your personal and professional life and increase your overall reading enjoyment. Knowing how to understand text can help improve your knowledge in certain areas and help you pick up new skills and information more quickly.

Additional benefits of good reading comprehension skills include:

• Ability to understand, analyze and respond to documents and written communication in the workplace

• Improved your ability to write clearly and effectively

• Ability to understand and participate in current events which are presented in written form, for example, in newspapers.

• Increased ability to focus on reading for extended periods of time.

• Better Reading Enjoyment and Motivation

Related: The Value of Expanding Your Business Vocabulary

7 Reading Strategies You Can Use to Improve Your Comprehension Skills today to improve your reading comprehension skills. The more you practice, the better you will understand what you read. Below are seven simple strategies you can use to work on your comprehension skills:

1. Improve your vocabulary.

2. Make up questions about the text you are reading.

3. Use context clues.

4. Find the main idea.

5. Write a summary of what you read.

6. Break the reading into smaller parts.

7. Walk yourself.

Related: The Complete Guide to Strategic Planning

1. Improve your vocabulary

Knowing what the words you read means can improve your ability to understand the meaning of a text. To expand your vocabulary, you can:

• Take the online vocabulary test to assess your current level of vocabulary understanding.

• Use flashcards to test yourself for words you don't know once or twice a week.

• Be sure to use the newly learned words in oral and written communication.

• Read as much as you can to improve your ability to guess the meaning of a word in a particular context.

• Make a list of unfamiliar words as you read and look them up in a dictionary.

Read more: 10 easy ways to improve your vocabulary

2. Make up questions about the text you are reading

By asking questions about what you are reading, you can improve your reading comprehension by allowing you to immerse yourself in the text. It can also expand your general understanding of what you are reading, allowing you to explore themes, motifs, and other components of the text that you might not otherwise know about. The following are examples of questions you could ask as you read:

• Why did the author start the book from this point?

• What is the relationship between these two characters?

• What do we know about the main character up to this point in the book?

• Are there any themes that keep popping up throughout the book? If yes, what do they mean?

The more specific your questions, the more likely you are to understand the text and its meaning.

3. Use context prompts

Using context clues is a great way to understand what you're reading, even if you don't know all the vocabulary involved. Context clues can be found in the words and sentences surrounding a word you are unfamiliar with. To use context clues, you can focus on key phrases or ideas in a sentence and infer the main idea of ​​a sentence or paragraph based on that information. You can also search for nearby words that are synonyms or antonyms for a word you don't know.

4. Look for the main idea

Determining the main idea of ​​a paragraph or article can help you determine the importance of the article. Understanding why what you read is important will help you better understand what the author is trying to convey. When reading, pause every few paragraphs and see if you can decipher the main idea. Then try to state the main idea in your own words for even greater understanding.

5. Write a summary of what you read

A great way to expand your reading knowledge is to write a resume. Summing up requires you to decide what is important in the text and then express it in your own words. Summing up allows you to determine if you really understand what you read and remember what you read better in the long run.

6. Break your reading into smaller parts

If you are reading a longer or more complex text, consider breaking it up into smaller parts. For example, you can read two paragraphs at a time and then pause to quickly summarize what you just read in your mind. Sharing what you read will help you feel less overwhelmed and give you a better chance of really understanding the information in the text.

7. Keep up the pace

Tempoing yourself is also an effective way to work on your reading comprehension skills by allowing you to set realistic goals for your reading practice and habits. This is especially true for books or other literature that you find difficult. Set yourself a goal that you know you can achieve every day. For example, instead of saying that you want to read the entire book in two days, say that you will read three chapters a night. This allows you to achieve your goals and also gives you enough time to process what you read between each session.

Tips for getting the most out of your reading comprehension practice

Reading is a fundamental part of everyday life. The more you include and prioritize reading and comprehension of what you read, the better your overall reading comprehension will become. These tips will help you make the most of your time as you practice your reading skills.

Eliminate distractions

When you are distracted, your ability to understand what you read is impaired. When reading—even if it's just an email—eliminate distractions and focus solely on the text. This will help you learn to pay attention to what you are reading and will let you know if you understand what you are reading.

Read a book below your reading level

Starting with books below your reading level, you will be able to develop and build on a basic level of reading comprehension. Instead of starting with books or other text that you find difficult, read what is comfortable for you and what you can easily understand. You can take an online test to determine your current reading level.

Reread the text to make sure you understand it

If you finish a sentence or paragraph and find that you don't understand what it is trying to convey, take the time to reread it until you understand.

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