Reading comprehension strategies for 5th graders

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​

​

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.

Reading Comprehension Strategies for Upper Elementary Students

In this post, I share my teaching strategies for reading comprehension in my upper elementary classroom. These effective reading strategies are easy to implement and they have been great for helping my students become better readers.

Plus you can grab some FREE reading worksheets below!

*This post contains affiliate links to Amazon for your convenience. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, which do not cost any extra for you. Please see the full disclosure here.*

This post is a part of a series on helpful content geared toward literacy instruction in upper elementary classrooms. Here are the other posts to check out once you’ve read all of this post:

• Why You Need to Have Literacy Centers in Your Upper Elementary Classroom
• 4th Grade Literacy Centers
• Free Literacy Apps
• How I Use Choice Boards to Run Literacy Centers*
• Ideas to Help Older Students Who Struggle with Spelling*
• Read Alouds for Upper Elementary Students*
• 10 Best Novel Studies for 4th & 5th Grade Students*
• 8 Clever Ways to Get Students Writing More*

Posts with * beside their titles have free downloads available!

By the time students reach 3^rd grade and beyond, they are–for the most part–reading in order to learn, rather than learning to read.

Strong reading comprehension skills are essential for upper elementary students.

This post breaks down strategies to effectively teach upper elementary students how to comprehend better when reading.

DISCLAIMER: Students who have barriers to their learning—whether cognitive or behavioral—or students who still struggle with fluency and decoding skills can still benefit from these strategies, but you should still refer to their IEP or learning plan to know what’s best for them.

One major setback for students who struggle with comprehending what they’re reading has to do with whether or not the students ask themselves questions before, during, and after reading.

So I encourage this by constantly modeling it for them when I read out loud. (Yes, I STILL do read-alouds with older students and they LOVE IT!)

My Read Aloud with Rigor Series features printables, guided teacher questions and more–all tailored for building reading comprehension skills. Click HERE or click the image for the full details.

Don’t underestimate the simplicity of this approach. And please don’t assume older students are “beyond” being read to. No matter how cool they try to act, ALL children love a good story!!

As students get more confident using these questions, they develop the habit of stopping as they read to themselves to ask things like:

• “Who is this story/paragraph/chapter about?
• What just happened?
• Why did that just happen? etc.

These basic questions then morph into deeper level questioning skills. This leads directly to my second strategy.

The free reading printables you get with this post offers great practice with this skill!

The second way I help my students develop stronger reading skills is to give chances to talk about their reading.

Once we read a short story, I give students an open-ended discussion question.

They can also talk about their reading with a partner during Buddy Reading.

To keep them on task during Partner Reading, I use Book Talk Prompt Cards like these.

Make your questions complex and thought-provoking on purpose. This will stimulate discussion.

It will force students to ask even more questions and to give more descriptions with their answers. It will also require your budding readers to go back to the story for context clues and text evidence. ALL those are skills that CCSS and TEKS require.

These discussions stimulate deeper thinking skills. Students then rely on these skills once you turn them loose to read independently. Trust me, once you see the process in action, you will be a believer too!

This reading comprehension strategy has been especially helpful in teaching non-fiction reading comprehension.

Teaching students to take notes about what they’ve read feels like pulling teeth for both the teacher and the student when you first begin!

So I encourage my kiddos to pull out their colored pencils or skinny markers to color-code their stories.

This color-coding tip is a 2-for-1 deal: Students must read the questions FIRST, which is a reading strategy that research has shown to improve comprehension skills. Then they go back to the text to mark the evidence/answer by color.

When students write their answers in complete sentences, they can quickly go back and see their visually colorful notes.

FREE Reading Comprehension Printables that help students with reading!

Another really cool and deeply impactful strategy for building reading skills is to use an object lesson.

Object lessons do not have to be time-consuming or complicated. Yet, they connect build background knowledge and increase reading comprehension in amazing ways.

I once used this emojis plush set for a character analysis lesson on the novel The Watson’s Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis. 

Since we were discussing sensitive issues regarding race relations AND the time frame of the story was difficult for some of the students to relate to, the emojis made the reading lesson fun and relatable.

There is no limit to how you can incorporate object lessons into your reading routine.

My favorite book FULL of ideas on building background knowledge with object lessons is Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading by Tanny McGregor.

Let’s face it, if we are boring teachers, we can have all the reading comprehension pedagogy and effective skills in the world and our kids will still hate reading.

Kids who hate reading will struggle to grow stronger developing it.

Here are some ways I’ve made reading fun in my classroom:

• Held contest for gaining reading points
• Hosted an all-day Read-A-Thon to raise “dojo” points as a whole group
• Did character book dress-up days where students had to bring their book and discuss WHY they choose to dress up as that character
• Engaged my students with “book raffles” and “book picnics”

These are just a few of the reading comprehension fun times I’ve had with my students. One search through Pinterest and you’ll be ready to rock and roll.

The point is: find ways to keep the fun infused with your reading time. Your students will be motivated to put into practice all the reading skills you’ve worked hard to teach them.

If you want more information on teaching strategies for reading comprehension in upper elementary classrooms, check out this list of resources:

• Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer’s Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Readers by Donalyn Miller
  
• The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
  
• The Reading Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Readers by Jennifer Serravallo

PLUS, you can still grab your reading comprehension printables to use in the classroom!

What reading comprehension strategies do you use in your classroom?

If so, I would love to hear about your beautiful struggles to transform learning for your kiddos’ reading. Share in the comments below!

Effective strategies for working with text in the classroom at school

The ultimate goal of teaching Russian is practical literacy and language competence. The basis of the content of literature as an academic subject is reading and textual study of works of art.

Work with the text as the main didactic unit allows schoolchildren to combine the activities of developing practical skills of literate writing and speech development.

Every teacher dreams that all students come to the lesson prepared: they have completely read this or that work or paragraph. And not just read, but understood the meaning of the text read. During the final certification, the graduate must also understand the meaning of the read text. Whether it is a task to the text or the text itself.

Teachers working in grades 9 and 11 know that most mistakes are made due to misunderstanding of what is read, as well as when reading the assignment itself.

Teaching a child to read “correctly”, “effectively”, “productively” is an important task for a teacher. That is why the technology of productive reading (PRT), developed by Professor N. Svetlovskaya, acquires a leading role and contributes to the achievement of the results that are mentioned in the new standards.

The technology is universal and can be used in lessons of any cycle.

It is aimed at the formation of all universal educational activities: cognitive, communicative, regulatory, personal.

The technology of productive reading differs sharply from the traditional technology of transferring ready-made knowledge to a student. The teacher organizes the children's research work in such a way that they themselves "think" about solving the key problem of the lesson and can themselves explain how to act in new conditions. The teacher becomes a partner, a mentor, an observer.

The developed technology includes three stages of working with text, a three-stage process.

The goal of is the development of anticipation (the ability to guess, predict the content of the text). Task - to develop motivation for reading the text

1. Strategy "Forecast by headline".

Task: think about what can be discussed in the story of K.G. Paustovsky "Warm bread", in the work of P.P. Bazhov "Mistress of the Copper Mountain", etc.

– Try to predict the content by the first line of the story…Remember the name of the story….Does the content of the story match the title?

Give examples of such discrepancies.

Associative bush (circle, row). Today we will read and discuss the topic… What associations do you have about the stated topic?

2. Strategy "Brainstorm" ("Basket of ideas").

Task: answer the questions before reading the text (fairy tales "Warm bread") - What do you know about K. G. Paustovsky? What do you think the story will be about? Who can be the main character? What event in the story can be described.

3. Strategy "Image of the text".

Task: check your assumptions. Based on the words taken from the text, try to make a short plot story. The title of the story is given.

4. Strategy "Battery of questions".

Task: make up questions to the text according to the title, according to the illustrations.

5. Glossary strategy.

Task: look at the list of words and mark those that can be related to the text. When you finish reading the text, go back to these words and look at their meaning and the use of words used in the text.

6. "Competing with the writer" strategy.

Task: try to predict the content of the book by looking at the illustrations. One student offers his version, the rest complete it.

7. Strategy "True and False Statements".

8. Strategy I know, I want to know, I found out.

Stage 2 - stage of text activity.

The purpose of is to understand the text and create its reader's interpretation, summarizing part of the read text, asking questions of a general nature, making assumptions about the further development of the plot and the role of characters in the composition of the text, etc.).

The main task of is to ensure the full perception of the text. The main strategies at the stage of text activity are dialogue with the author, commented reading.

1. Strategy "Reading in a circle". The text is read in turn (each "circle member" reads a paragraph). After this, a stop follows: everyone asks questions to the read passage. If the question cannot be answered (it does not correspond to the text), then the question is considered incorrect. * All correct questions can be recorded.

2. Silent reading with questions strategy.

3. Strategy “Reading to yourself with notes. (Insert)" . Marginal notes: + - knew; - - new; ? - interesting; V is unclear. Others are possible: B - question; O - answer; Z - I know; N - new; And - interesting; X - I want to know; C - ask; U to clarify.

4. Strategy "Reading with stops". Reading the text with stops, during which tasks are given in the form of questions: some are aimed at checking understanding, others - at predicting the content of the next passage.

5. "Pose a problem - offer a solution" strategy. Remember what problems the heroes of the work face (the problem is formulated and written down in an oval). Next, the children can name several problems, students are divided into groups and offer all kinds of solutions to problems.

6. Strategy "Creating a question plan". The student carries out a semantic grouping of the text, highlights the strong points, divides the text into semantic parts and titles each part with a key question…….

Stage 3 – stage of post-text (post-text) activity.

The purpose of is to correct the reader's interpretation in accordance with the author's meaning.

The main task of is to provide in-depth perception and understanding of the text, to raise a question to the text as a whole, followed by a conversation, the result of which should be an understanding of the author's meaning. Re-addressing the title, illustrations, performing creative tasks.

2. Question tree strategy Crown – what? where? when? Barrel - why? How? Could you? Roots - how to relate the text to life? With current events? What is the author trying to show?

3. Strategy "Bloom's Cube" (Benjamin Bloom is a famous American teacher, author of many pedagogical strategies = technician).

The beginnings of the questions are written on the faces of the cube: “Why?”, “Explain”, “Name”, “Suggest”, “Think up”, “Share”. The teacher or student rolls the die.

It is necessary to formulate a question to the educational material on the side on which the cube fell.

The “Name” question is aimed at the level of reproduction, i.e. at the simple reproduction of knowledge.

Question "Why" - the student in this case must find cause-and-effect relationships, describe the processes occurring with a certain object or phenomenon.

“Explain ” question – student uses concepts and principles in new situations.

All of the above strategies provide for serious work with the text, its deep analysis and understanding, the organization of independent cognitive activity of students on educational material. socially moral experience and makes you think, knowing the world around you.

Technology Advantage:

1. Applicable in the lessons of any cycle and at any level of education.

2. Focused on personal development.

3. Develops the ability to predict the results of reading.

4. Promotes understanding of the text in the lesson.

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Modern strategies for working with educational text

Modern strategies for working with educational text

The future of Russia, its competitiveness in the world market, technological and innovative development of industry and economy depend on those who sit at the school desk today. What competencies should a young person have in order to be able to create new things and be open to progress?

We live in an abundance of information, so extracting the necessary information from the text and transforming it become the most important skills, without which it is impossible to live in society and achieve success.

Unfortunately, today children do not have time to read. The media and the computer form a mosaic, concrete-clip thinking in a modern student. It is easier and faster to watch a movie, to run a summary of books on the Internet. As was said by Vladimir Putin , Russia is rapidly losing its status as the most reading country, there is a crisis of Russian culture and literature, a growing number of Russians who do not read books, and 18% of the population do not have books at all at home!

Based on the results of the comprehensive work and the All-Russian test work, we saw that many 5th grade students find it difficult to isolate basic information and understand the task. Having diagnosed the universal learning activities, we were convinced that most of the children have an average and low level of formation of regulatory and cognitive UUD.

How to teach productive reading in the classroom?

Interest in reading arises when the reader is fluent in conscious reading and has developed educational and cognitive motives. In order for reading to be effective, it is important to teach the child how to use the book. And this skill should be taught not only by teachers of the Russian language and literature, but also by all subject teachers.

In the Federal State Educational Standard, one of the requirements for the educational process in the formation of universal educational activities is the formation of a semantic reading strategy and work with text.

Work on the text involves:

I – information search and reading comprehension.

II - transformation and interpretation

III - evaluation of information.

Professor Natalya Nikolaevna Smetannikova works on these issues. She developed the theory of a strategic approach to teaching reading. These strategies will allow the subject teacher to change the methodology of the lesson, they give the work with the text a dialogue and interactive character.

At school, we deal mainly with educational texts. Work with the text takes place in 3 stages: before reading, during reading, after reading. All strategies for working with text can be divided into three groups:

• pre-text activity strategies;

• strategies for text activity

• strategies for post-text activity

In the traditional methodology, only one task “Read the text” was given, and the main attention was paid to the control of reading comprehension, now, the better the pre-reading stage is organized, the easier it is for the student to read the text and the higher the result achieved by him.