The Threads of Reading Blog » Comprehension

Visual Text Can Increase Student Comprehension

The Weaver — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 11:54:33 +0000

Helping students comprehend what they are reading can sometimes be a challenge when we are working with non-fiction or informational text. A great way to help students deeply think about what they are reading and “visualize” the information and the relationships in the content is by using visual texts. Ask students to read two or more articles or pieces of informational text on the same topic. Once they have completed this task, ask them to summarize the information they have learned into one visual text graphic. For example, students might create a flow chart to explain a cycle or how something works. They might create a diagram to show the relationships that exist in the material. They could create a time line to show where key events occurred over time. They could create a table to categorize various items from the text or even create a story map to summarize the key events or main points of the texts. We have all heard the old saying, “A picture is worth a 1,000 words.” Students love to create visual texts and having them create visual representations of their understandings is a great way for students of all ages to show what they know.

Using Retelling to Strengthen Comprehension

KTankersley — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:28:06 +0000

If you want to make sure that your students are really comprehending the text they are reading, one of the easiest and best ways of doing this is to ask them to do a paired retelling of the text. This strategy can be used with text the student either reads himself or, for younger children, listens to as the teacher reads the text orally. Students are given a short guide that tells them what they should be listening for when their partner retells the text. To introduce the concept, the teacher reads the text and then models how to retell the details of the narrative or expository text briefly and in his own words. The children practice listening and recording the details they hear on their “listening guide.” The teacher may want to model retellings that focus on the characters and setting, the narrative or even the main ideas and details in an expository piece. Students then practice reading text and pairing up with a partner to retell the text they have read in their own words. The partner student takes notes on the retelling form If the partner cannot remember a part of the text, the partner can prompt him or her with questions like, “Can you tell me about the main characters of the story?” or “Where did the story take place?” or “What was important about (topic)?” The guides can be customized to the specific text or can be generic to allow students a bit more freedom in their retellings. After students become skilled at oral retelling, the teacher can ask them to write down their retelling summaries to raise the skill to a higher level. This strategy can be used at all levels and with all content material to increase comprehension and clarify understandings.

Helping Children Increase Comprehension

KTankersley — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:26:33 +0000

One of the ways we can help our students improve their comprehension is by teaching them to identify “signal” words in text. For example, sequence words such as “first, second, after, next, initially, before” and similar type words, indicate that several things are being discussed in a particular order or sequence in the text. Words such as “earlier, later, and now” can help identify time relationships in text.

We can also point out words that are used to make comparisons to our students such as “although, less than, similarly, and unlike.” These phrases help students understand that people, things, places or ideas may be compared or contrasted in the text. This helps them better identify the relationships that the author is establishing. Words that indicate cause and effect like” because, if…then, consequently, as a result and since” help us connect the concepts as we are reading. The last group of words indicate a problem or solution relationship. Words like “reason for, conclude, research shows, evidence is or a solution is…” help students see a problem and then consider a solution that might be proposed to address the problem. When students better understand word relationships, they improve their comprehension and can better use their prediction skills while reading.

Building Deep Thinking With Content Instruction

KTankersley — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:00:16 +0000

A great way to help students increase their understanding of content text is to get them talking and sharing with one another about a text. Instead of asking simple knowledge and comprehension questions about the text, have students work with partners or small groups to answer 3-4 process or reaction types of questions over the assigned text. Allow students time to both discuss the question, form a response and then share out to the class. Since both types of questions require students to think more deeply and demonstrate deeper levels of comprehension, the whole class benefits from rich discussions that take place with these types of questions. You will also benefit from hearing your students report out and may uncover confusions, misunderstandings or areas where students made connections that you never expected.

Some examples of process questions include the following:

1. What didn’t you understand or what was confusing about this section of the reading assignment?

2. What text in this section was interesting to learn or gave you some new ideas?

3. What is the most difficult part of this concept and what could you do to better understand it?

Some examples of reaction types of questions include the following:

1. If you were the teacher, what questions would you ask your students about this concept or idea?

2. What kind of a picture or doodle does this concept make you think of?

3. What 3 ideas or concepts that you have learned before could be connected to this topic/concept?

Reading Response Journals

KTankersley — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:00:01 +0000

Reading response journals can be a great way of helping students of all reading abilities think about the things that happen in a story they are reading. I like to use a spiral binder for this purpose. When students start a new text, they write the details such as title, author, publication date and so forth at the top of a new page. They then divide the page into 3 columns with 1 small and 2 larger columns. The first column will contain the page or pages where they read this information, the second column will be “the event” or a short description of what happened in this section of the text, with the third column labeled, “My Reaction to This.” To introduce journaling to your students, model your thinking aloud for a short passage and demonstrate how to record thoughts and reactions to the text. In addition to being a great tool to get students thinking more deeply about what is happening in the story, journaling helps students improve comprehension and participate in discussions about the text after reading.

Organizing Information and Linking Key Facts

KTankersley — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:00:24 +0000

A great way for students to think about and organize what they are reading is to make a bubble map showing the main topics of the chapter and then listing linking information that belongs to each category as they find it in the text. I like to have kids use either Inspiration or my favorite, free, bubble making tool from http://bubbl.us/ to have students build a relationship grid. Students put the topic in the center with linking bubbles for the sub-topics. As they find facts and information that relate to the sub-topics, they can either create additional linking bubbles or just put the key information under the topic heading. Students can quickly and easily see the relationships and linking information. Here is a sample grid that could be used on the topic of different animals. Students would create a different graph for each animal studied so that they could easily compare and contrast key features and traits.

Content Relationship Graph