Reading First Teacher Education
Network (RFTEN): Teaching
Teachers Strategies for Reading
Success
Ioney James, Ph.D.
North Carolina A&T State University
What does Research say about
Comprehension?
Comprehension is an active process
by which the reader uses his/her
background knowledge to construct
meanings from texts (Alexander &
Jetten, 2000).
What does Research say about
Comprehension and Students
For students to become lifelong learners
they must be able to comprehend a
variety of texts.
Comprehension Contd.
Comprehension involves the
Reader
Text
Context
What does Research say about the
Teaching of Comprehension Strategies
and Skills
Durkin’s (1978/ 1979) studies found
that although teachers often
recognize the importance of
comprehension, they offer their
students very little explicit
instruction on how to comprehend
texts (contd.).
Comprehension, contd.
Durkin’s study also found that in most
classrooms, comprehension instruction
often required of students to answer
questions, complete workbook pages or
take tests.
Quite often teachers ask students to complete
various comprehension tasks, such as find the main
idea, the supporting ideas, but they do very little
modeling.
Comprehension- contd.
In James’ (2005) survey, in-service
and pre-service teachers were asked
to identify the skills that they found
most challenging to teach during
student internship. Most of the
students’ responses indicated the
teaching of comprehension skills and
strategies as most challenging.
How Can Teachers Successfully Teach
Comprehension Strategies?
Direct explanation by the teacher
Modeling- verbalize his/her thought process
Guided Practice
Provide opportunities students to practice.
Scaffolding Students’ Comprehension
Monitor students’ responses
Intervene and lead students to basic understanding
of concept/s through skillfully chosen questions leads.
Prepare children with carefully crafted pre-reading,
during reading and post reading activities.
Direct explanation
Help student to recognize text features and story
structure – fiction and non-fiction; expository,
narratives
Help students to summarize the most important
elements in a text. Clark & Graves (2004)
Comprehension Strategies
Setting purposes
Model Think- aloud
Questioning
Graphic Organizers-
Reading Types of texts- expository, narratives
Writing
Setting Purposes
Pre- Reading
Motivating-
Activating Prior Knowledge,
Preteaching Vocabulary,
Questioning
During – Reading
Silent Reading, or Reading to students.
Post Reading
Answering Questions
Discussions
Writing
Drama
Modeling Think-aloud
Teacher –talk
Modeling the strategy in action
I am going to make predictions while I read
this book. I will start with just the cover here…
I see a picture. This is the question I will ask. I
predict that . . .
Questioning
Taxonomies- Levels of Comprehension
Literal
Inferential
Critical
- Barrett’s Taxonomy, Bloom’s Taxonomy
Barrett’s Taxonomy
Literal – Recall and Recognition of Ideas
Reorganization- classifying, organizing,
summarizing
Inferential – information implicitly stated
Evaluation – making judgments
Appreciation- psychological aesthetic
approach
Recognition
Recognition requires the student to locate identity or information explicitly stated in
the reading selection itself or in exercises which use explicit ideas and information
presented in the reading selection.
Recognition tasks are:
Recognition of details.
Recognition of main ideas.
Recognition of sequence.
Recognition of comparison.
Recognition of cause and effect relationships.
Recognition of character traits.
Inferential
is demonstrated by the student when he uses Comprehension
is demonstrated by the student when he uses ideas and
information implicitly state in the passage, his intuition, and his
personal experience as a bases for conjectures and
hypotheses.
Inferring main ideas.
Inferring sequence.
Inferring comparisons.
Inferring cause and effect relationships.
Inferring character traits.
Predicting outcomes.
Interpreting figurative
Graphic Organizers
Show conceptual relationships.
Examples
webbing
Mapping
Semantic feature analysis
Writing
Writing and Reading are reciprocal process.
Similar to reading, writing engages students,
extends thinking, deepens understanding and
energizes the meaning-making process
(Kipper & Duggan (2006).
Teachers can use writing to enhance
students comprehension.
Writing activities to enhance students
comprehension
Free-Write –
Quick write -
Student-Generated Questions -
Reading response journal
Character journals
