Comprehension strategies

1. Comprehension strategies Reading is thinking!

2. Why incorporate them into our teaching? • Effective readers learn to use a number of comprehension strategies as they process a text. • It is important to build students’ knowledge and use of strategies.

3. There are a range of comprehension strategies…and I’m going to discuss 4 of them • Making connections to prior knowledge • Making predictions • Visualising • Inferring

4. Making connections to prior knowledge • Helps students make sense of new information before, during and after reading. • They can draw on: • knowledge, beliefs and understanding of a topic they are reading about • knowledge of the kind of text structure they are reading about • world experiences • knowledge of how authors write for different purposes

5. Possible activities Brainstorm before reading – what they know about a topic. After reading each section, stop and ask students to make links between what they already know and what they have read. eg How did what you already know help you to understand what you’ve read?

6. Predicting • Reader tries to determine future ideas and events before they appear in the text. • Good readers anticipate and predict to make educated guesses about what will be in the text. • Use clues eg cover, title, sub-headings, illustrations, glossary • As students read they test their predictions, monitoring and asking questions as they do so.

7. Possible activities • Provide one or more key words from each section of the text. Students use these key words to predict what each section will be about. Check and repredict. • eg look at a chapter’s contexts. Earth’s oil – prediction: will be about where oil comes from. Big business – prediction: will be about the huge size of the industry

8. Visualising • Strategy used to create a visual image of what they have read. • Visualising helps students to learn to use their senses and their imagination to help make the text come alive. Helps them remember what they are reading. “Creating a movie in your head.”

9. Possible activities • Model “The picture I get is… because…” “When I read this, I saw… because…” • Sketching: students read a section of text and then complete a simple sketch of what they have read. • Charting images – what do I see, hear, or how do I feel as I read? Why is this? (words, phrases, structure).

10. Inferring • Based on implied information – information that the author has not stated explicitly. • Based on reader’s prior knowledge, information gained from the text, word and vocabulary knowledge. • Reader works with the clues the author provided to gain deeper meaning. • Learn to search for clues to confirm deeper meaning.

11. Possible activities • Teaching how to infer eg “water dripped off the leaves and landed as puddles on the already sodden ground.” I can refer that it is raining, using clues and other strategies: Clues from text : water, dripped, landed, puddles, sodden Prior knowledge: that rain forms puddles Visualisation: I can see the rain hitting the leaves, bouncing off and splashing on the ground – there must be a lot of rain to make so many puddles. eg2 “The letter was written on thin, yellowing paper and rustled when she unfolded it.”

12. Rich questions to ask your students: What do you think the author is trying to tell use? What do you think the author means by this? How did you work this out? Literal and inferred meanings. What I know Evidence He is a dog Use of “dog” “the pound” He is male Use of “his” and “her” What I feel He is a nuisance The vet thinks Joe is crazy for keeping him Is funny looking The vet isn’t sure if he is a dog or not