1. An Overview of Reading
Comprehension Strategies for
Practical Application in the
Classroom.
Presented by Dr. Christine Ybarra
2. Session Outcomes
Become familiar with the four most common
comprehension strategies
Understand how to use these strategies within the
Balanced Literacy framework
Connect current classroom practices to
strategies for immediate implementation
Classify strategies by their effectiveness in whole
and small group instruction
3. What is Comprehension
The process during which students
Clarify words, sentences, or paragraphs they do
not understand
Generate questions about any element found in
text
Use clues in the text to predict what will happen
next
Connect the text to their own experiences,
the world, and other text
Monitor their understanding
4. How Do We Help Students
Comprehend
Explicitly teach comprehension strategies
through modeling
Allow students ample opportunity to practice
applying the strategies with guidance
Allow students many opportunities to listen and
observe other students using comprehension
strategies
Teach students to monitor their use of
comprehension strategies
5. Successful Comprehension
Strategy Instruction Should Include:
Large amounts of time for actual text
reading
Teacher-directed instruction in
comprehension strategies
Opportunities for peer and
collaborative learning
Occasions for students to talk to
one another and the teacher about
their responses to reading
Fielding, Pearson, 1994
7. Predictions Can Be Made
Based On...
Logical next events
Pictures and graphic information
Questions within the text
Headings, captions, titles and sub-titles
Implied items
Big ideas introduced at the beginning of the text
Topic sentences
8. Why Teach Predicting?
Assists students in setting a purpose for reading
Helps students monitor their own comprehension
and interact with the text
Heightens interest in the reading material and
improves understanding
9. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Predicting
Teacher Role
Review elements of
structures
Preview book covers
Discuss headings,
illustrations and maps in
non-fiction books
Stop periodically to ask
students to gather
clues
Student Role
Look for clues and key
events in the story
Stop to check the
accuracy of predictions
and make new
predictions
Support predictions with
evidence from the text
(clues)
12. We Clarify Information by ...
Re-reading
Decoding or pronouncing the word
Skipping a word in order to get the “big idea”
Looking for familiar root words or word parts
Using a dictionary or glossary
13. Explicitly demonstrates self-monitoring and
problem solving during reading
Develops additional strategies students can use
to make meaning of difficult material
Why Teach Students to
Clarify?
14. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Clarifying
Teacher Role
Model how to figure out
difficult text
Ask students to share
methods of strategies used
for clarifying difficult text
Share strategies that help
to construct meaning of
unclear text
Student Role
Identify unclear words,
sentences, passages,
and chapters
Develop and share
strategies that help to
construct meaning of
unclear text
16. Why Teach Questioning?
Motivates students to read with an awareness of
a text’s important ideas
Allows students to process a text’s information
in a sequential manner in order to formulate a
question
17. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Questioning
Teacher Role
Model how to ask a
question
Teach students how to
ask several types of
questions
Allow students
opportunities to share
their questions with
others
Student Role
Generate different
types of questions after
reading text,
processing meaning,
making inferences and
connecting to prior
knowledge
Formulate questions by
focusing on main ideas,
and important details
20. Summarizing Includes ...
Identifying the main idea
Rereading the material
Locating the topic sentence
Identifying the most important words in a
passage
Eliminating less important words
Avoiding retelling
21. Why Teach Summarizing?
Helps students construct an overall meaning of a
text
Facilitates the determination of important points
in a text
Requires students to recall and arrange the
important parts of a text sequentially
22. Comprehension Strategy
Instruction: Summarizing
Teacher Role
Model summarizing
with both fiction and
non-fiction text
Point out differences
between fiction and
non-fiction as well as
how summarizing
changes when working
with different text types
Provide frequent
opportunities of
students to summarize
and listen to others
summarizing
Student Role
Determine important
points and arrange
them in a logical order
Determine the
needed arrangement
of the events in the
summary based on the
type of text
24. How Can I Work on These Strategies
While Using Balanced Literacy?
Weave these strategies into your lessons
everyday
Explicitly teach the strategies and their purposes
Give students the time they need to practice
these strategies
Use them to set the purpose of your lessons
27. Text:---------
Making Predictions
Making Predictions
Write two predictions about
what you
think will happen next.
Book Discussion Notes
Name: _ _
Making Connections
Find two points in thetext where you
made connections
l .
2.
Clarifying
List words or ideasthat you arenot sure
about
Questioning
AByou read,note at least two questions
thatyou arewondering about.
Summarizing
Use one or two sentences to summarize
themain ideas ofllie text.
2.
Clarifying
Writeyour own definitionsherewhen
you areableto clarifywords.
Questioning
I f you find the answer in the text, record
the answer.
Other Thoughts
• Did you like the book?
• Wherethere any
surprises?
• Do you have a favorite
part?
28. Prompts for Comprehension Strategies
Predicting
I think…
I’ll bet…
I wonder if…
I imagine… I
suppose… I
predict...
Questioning
Clarifying
I didn’t understand the part
where…
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?
What if?
This [word, sentence, para-
graph, page, chapter] is not
clear.
I can’t figure out…
This is a tricky word be-
cause...
The most important ideas in
this text are…
This part was about…
This book was about…
First,...Next,...Then,...Finally,
…
The story takes place…
The main characters are… A
problem occurs when… The
way the problem in the
story is solved is...
29. Name_
_
Chapter _
Book Title _
Literature Response Journal
Finish the following sentences as you read.
1. I wonder
2. Why did
3. I was surprised
4. I can't really understand
5. When I finished reading I thought
6. I can't believe
7. This chapter was about
8. My predictions for the next chapter are
30. Comprehension Chart - Whole Group
Adapted from Reciprocal Teachingal Worlc Strategiesfor Improving ReadingComprehension by Lori 0 . Oczkus C 2003.
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