What Do Good Readers Do? Teaching Reading Comprehension

Many of us watch with keen interest as children begin to show phonemic awareness and decode words. Much harder to observe, however, is how children comprehend what they read. How do we know if a child understands the material? Traditionally, our only tool was assessment, often in the form of those multiple choice questions that would follow a passage in a workbook: “The best title for this story…” or “We can infer that….” Current research in best practices shows that teaching comprehension is completely different from testing comprehension.

Comprehension can only be observed indirectly. We talk about achieving flow, that moment when we are completely absorbed in text, when there is a meeting of minds between author and reader, but we rarely know when that moment occurs for others. Often students don’t know when they are not comprehending, even when their oral reading is accurate and fluent. Without comprehension, reading words is reduced to mimicking the sounds of language. One study found that only 20% of first graders understand that reading is a cognitive activity that helps learning. Another study found that up to 30% of middle elementary students read passages without any idea of what they were reading and showed no self-monitoring to check their comprehension: they just continued to plow doggedly through the text in a fog. Proficient readers, on the other hand, are metacognitive. They think about their own thinking during reading. They notice when they are comprehending and when they are not. Our goal is to help children develop the habits of mind of avid readers, to use strategies to remedy comprehension problems independently. We need to acknowledge to our students and our children – often – that all of us, even the most brilliant adults, have breakdowns in our reading comprehension. We can convey the message, “I can control my own thinking as a reader.”

So, how do we teach children about what goes on in the mind of a reader who is comprehending? Reading research shows that all readers -- and listeners -- use the same handful of basic strategies (to see them click here) to understand text. By modeling these strategies when we read aloud to children, or when we talk about our own reading, we can make children more mindful of their reading. Parents and teachers need to talk about these habits of mind when reading aloud to children; by telling them explicitly what is going on in your own mind as you try to make sense of a story, your children can learn to do it better and better. Adults use reading strategies subconsciously; in order to help a developing reader, we must learn to articulate what we have been doing automatically for years.

By using a common language about reading strategies that remains consistent from one grade level to another, we give our students tools to become metacognitive, to notice breakdowns in comprehension and employ strategies to deepen understanding. Children as young as 5 – who are just beginning to decode – have embraced this language during read aloud. One little girl exclaimed excitedly, “Ooh! I just made a text-to-text connection!”

Recently, during a read-aloud, I asked a class, “Are you making a prediction in your head?” A six year old boy answered proudly declared, "I’m making a prediction AND I’m making an inference!” We all need to model our own process of understanding text as we read aloud to our children throughout the grades.

Sources:

Comprehension Instruction: Research-Based Practices, 2nd ed. Cathy Collins Block and Shari R. Parris, eds. Guilford, 2008.

Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension. Susan E. Israel and Gerald G. Dubby, eds. Routledge, 2009..

Harvey, Stephanie and Anne Goudvis. Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement. Pembroke, 2007.

Keene, Ellin Oliver. Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Reading Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop. Heinemman, 1997.