What is Reading Comprehension?
Comprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words, but not understand the meaning of what they are reading, they are not really reading. Gifted readers, because they are capable of thinking with more maturity and complexity, will make the step from fluency to comprehension very quickly. It is important to provide instruction for comprehension, not only to help gifted readers understand and remember what they read (which may come easily), but to also teach them how to communicate with others about what they read (which may not come as easily).
Strategies to Improve Comprehension
The first six strategies appear to have firm, scientific basis for improving comprehension. The final two strategies have some support from research and should also be considered for use, particularly for gifted readers.
1. Monitoring Comprehension
Metacognition is defined as "thinking about thinking" and is generally a strong capability of gifted readers. Gifted readers often use metacognition instinctively as they think about why they want to read certain materials and clarify their purpose before they begin. During reading they are likely to monitor how well they are understanding the material and adjust their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text or "fix up" any comprehension problems they might feel they are having as they read. After reading, they might check their understanding of what they read by "having conversations with themselves".
Monitoring Comprehension is a critical piece of metacognition, and is an important skill to teach to gifted readers. The steps that they can be taught to help them monitor their comprehension and "fix" any comprehension problems are:
- Identify where their difficulty occurs ("I don't understand the second paragraph of this page.")
- Identify what the difficulty is ("I don't get what the author means in this sentence, 'Arriving in America was a milestone in my grandmother's life'.")
- Re-state the difficult sentence or passage in their own words ("Oh, so the author means that coming to America was an important event in my grandmother's life.")
- Look back through the text ("The author talked about Mrs. Williams in Chapter 3, but I don't remember anything about her. Maybe I should re-read the chapter and find out why Mrs. Williams is now acting the way she is toward the grandmother.")
- Look forward in the text for information that may help them with their difficulty ("The text says that people are concerned about whether they will be able to stay in America. I'm not sure why they would be concerned. The next chapter is about Ellis Island, maybe I will read that to see why they might be worried.")
2. Using Graphic and Semantic Organizers
Graphic Organizers are known by many names, such as maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, or clusters. They illustrate concepts, and inter-relationships among concepts, using diagrams. Semantic Organizers, also called semantic maps or semantic webs, are a specific type of graphic organizers that look somewhat like a spider web. Lines connect a central concept to a variety of related events and ideas.
Graphic organizers can help readers focus on concepts and their relationships with other concepts. They provide tools to gifted readers to visually represent relationships in a text.
3. Answering Questions
Research shows that teacher questioning strongly supports and advances students' learning from reading. Questions
- 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.
By using this strategy, gifted readers learn to answer questions from explicit text they have read, from implicit information in the text presented across many sentences, or from information combined from the text they have read and their prior knowledge.
4. Generating Questions
The intent of this strategy is to teach readers to ask their own questions. Gifted readers are complex thinkers and can ask astounding questions. This is a capability that should be encouraged, and a skill that should be developed. Gifted readers should learn to ask themselves questions that require them to integrate information from different segments of text and from multiple sources.
5. Recognizing Story Structure
"Story structure" is the way that content and events in a story are organized into a plot. Gifted readers who can recognize story structure have greater appreciation, understanding, and memory for stories. With this strategy, readers learn to identify the categories of content (setting, initiating events, internal reactions, goals, attempts, and outcomes) and how this content is organized into a plot. Readers can use a story map, a type of graphic organizer, to show the sequence of events in simple stories.
7. Making Use of Prior Knowledge
Gifted readers often draw upon prior knowledge and experience to help them understand what they are reading. Before reading, ask gifted readers what they already know about the content of the selection, what they know about the author, and how the author is likely to present the information. Discuss important vocabulary used in the text and show readers pictures or diagrams to prepare them for what they are about to read. They will get more out of the reading selection by using these preview techniques that review their prior knowledge.
8. Using Mental Imagery
Gifted readers, especially those that have strong capabilities as visual thinkers, often form mental pictures and images as they read. Readers who visualize during reading understand and remember what they read better than readers who do not visualize. Help your gifted reader learn to form visual images of what they are reading. Urge them to picture a setting, character, or event described in the text.
Guidelines How to Teach Comprehension Strategies
Effective Instruction is Explicit and Direct
Teachers tell readers why and when they should use these strategies, what strategies to use, and how to apply them. The steps to explicity instruct these strategies are:
- Direct Explanation: Explain to your gifted reader why the strategy helps comprehension and when to use it.
- Modeling: Demonstrate, or model, how to use the strategy.
- Guided Practice: Guide and assist readers as they learn how to use the strategy.
- Application: Help gifted readers practice the strategy until they can use it independently.
Cooperative Learning
Having students work together as partners or in small groups on clearly defined tasks is an excellent method of teaching the comprehension strategies.
Help Readers Use a Combination of Strategies
Teach gifted readers how to use the strategies in combination and in appropriate situations. For example, gifted readers can
- Ask questions about the text they are reading, and
- Summarize parts of the text, and
- Clarify words and sentences that they don't understand, and
- Predict what might occur next in the text, and
- Visualize the setting during reading.
Next Article: Reading Strategies Part I: Academic Development
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