Reading Skills And Strategies Pdf
Gifford Brickley
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Wow, Half of this stuff is in DCPS's Teaching and Learning Framework, which is partner of the IMPACT teacher evaluation instrument, i.e. activities that teachers are expected to have the students do in class every day.
Good thing the creators didn't see the chart; otherwise all of those items would have been included
HI Daniel, much to think about in this blog. I agree that teaching comprehension as an end in itself can destroy appreciation of a great story. BUT when you teach comprehnsion it has to be based on careful observation of the reader. I have often noticed in struggling readers that they don't have many strategies that they can call on consciously. So teach them at point of need... not as a lesson plan to tick off a comprhension strategy.
Interesting points about reading comprehension Dr.Willingham. I think you're making the point that teaching kids to deeply analyze text by asking questions about it gives little to no benefit and that doing so removes the joy from reading.
I don't understand what you mean about students not getting any benefit from being taught decoding strategies after 7th grade. I teach in a school that has a high proportion of ELL students past grade 10. Is teaching them decoding text not something I should be teaching them?
Is the list of strategies what you mean by teaching reading comprehension? I find these very useful (or thought I did) in teaching high school science. Summarizing, active reading by asking questions and having students try to figure out the meaning of words in context are things I thought were useful. Data says otherwise?
@Jason--I don't mean to say that teaching kids to deeply analyzing text by asking questions about it gives little to know benefit." To me, deep analysis implies that shallow analysis--you can give some account of what the text means--is more or less in place. The effectiveness of reading comprehension strategies are usually assessed by reading tests, which typically don't probe very deeply. They measure whether or not you got the gist. It's by that metric that the research shows they "work" and it's by that metric that I claim "yes, they work, but it's a one-time boost and the benefit is inconsistent or absent for younger kids and older kids."
I agree that the activities listed as reading comprehension strategies might be useful as ways of probing deeper into a text. That's what I meant when I said a teacher might think it a good idea to use a graphic organizer to understand narrative arcs. There's no research base for this as far as I know--I'm just saying a teacher may think its effective (and it sure sound reasonable to me).
Thanks for the reply Dr.Willingham. I missed the points about the limited measures of effectiveness. It makes sense now.
Data on effectiveness of the strategies in the figure you posted on reading comprehension would be interesting.
I don't think you answered the question that Jason which is, are these strategies useful for sub-groups like ELs. I've recently moved from teaching in a high EL to almost no EL environment. I use fewer of these strategies than I have in the past just because they don't need them.
Also, can you clarify, in the post you say there is not much benefit for students after 7th grade, but in this response, you say the benefit is inconsistent or absent for younger kids and older kids. Is there any benefit in primary student (under 9), or upper elementary (under 12)
Alice, I think up el is where you most consistently see a good boost: grades 3, 4, 5 and perhaps 6; you see a positive effect in almost every study. In lower or higher grades "inconsistent" is probably the most accurate characterization--you see an effect in some studies, but in many you do not. So one interpretation is that comprehension strategy instruction is implemented inconsistently, and kids in those grades need it to be implemented in just the right way--in other words, you could say " I still think that comprehension strategies are a good idea in those grades, so let's figure out why they work less consistently there." I'm suggesting that the inconsistency is in line with the interpretation I'm offering. At lower grades comprehension strategies don't work because kids working memory is pretty well full with the task of decoding, so most can't take advantage of the strategies. For older kids, I'm arguing that most of the boost comes from recognizing that the *function* of reading is communication--a recognition that most kids will have come to, one way or another, by 7th grade.
I'm glad Dan is paying attention to exactly how the research defines "effectiveness." But even more important is his other point: Does this kind of teaching turn kids off to reading over the long term? Any research that doesn't factor that question into its definition of "effectiveness" is meaningless.
Extended rant here.
Sorry, the HTML link didn't work. Link here:
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The idea that "effectiveness" equals "raising short-term test scores, without regard to any other effects" is now so thoroughly ensconced that questioning it is like playing Whack-a-Mole.
I developed my own strategy as a part of my approach to teaching science. I found that students in my 7th and 8th grade classes had learned to 'read' words and could do so, but also the information simply went in and made no cognitive impression whatsoever. They could also appear to be listening while thinking about something totally at odds with my class presentation. So I devised an exercise that got all the students involved. And it became a worthwhile part of my approach, teaching reading/thinking/learning/test taking as an integrated approach which could apply to science as well as other classes.
This is how I did it. I picked a page from the science text and asked for a volunteer to read a paragraph aloud. You'll get lots of volunteers, but some won't volunteer and it's important not to select them for this exercise. They'll be the ones you talk to privately later to see if they can, in fact, read. I didn't want to humiliate them.
As soon as the selected student finishes reading the paragraph and looks up, I would then say "Stop! Now look at me." Lots of puzzled looks the first time. I would then direct the reader to cover the paragraph he/she had just read with their hands, and then ask them to explain what they had just read. Astonishingly, most of them could not.
I would then select another volunteer to repeat the exercise with a different paragraph. After three or more of these, the students could tell you what they'd read. The next step after once again telling them to stop was to select a student (usually from the ones who gravitate toward the back of the classroom for their seating choice) and ask HIM what the reader had just read. Again, the first two or three couldn't tell me. But by the time I finished one class, about an hour in duration, they were reading, able to restate what the paragraph was about, and able to discuss what had been read aloud. The lesson got reinforcement later in the form of 10-minute review activities that I could use to get a class off to a good start.