What We Need to Understand About Reading Comprehension (And 8 Instructional Strategies)

Hey, there and Happy Monday. This is our final episode in our big five pillars of literacy instruction series. For the last five weeks, we have been talking about the five pillars of reading. So we’ve covered things like phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and today, we are going to wrap it up with talking all about comprehension.

And this episode is going to be a little bit like a literacy charcuterie board, there’s going to be a variety of strategies that I’m going to share. And ultimately, I hope that you can take away a few of your favorite things from this episode, and really put them in place in your classroom.

Now, back in episode 177, which was really the first episode in this series, I talked about how the five pillars of reading came from the National Reading Panel, and really the research that they have done. And according to the National Reading Panel, reading comprehension is defined as the construction of meaning of a written text through a reciprocal interchange of ideas between the reader and the message in a particular text.

So while that might seem like a straightforward definition, the reality is, is that reading comprehension is kind of complex, it can be difficult to teach and difficult to assess. But there are definitely strategies and instructional practices that help us effectively teach it to our students. So yes, reading comprehension is the construction of meaning. And we want to make sure that we are giving our students strategies to help with that. And I’m going to talk more about specific strategies that support comprehension.

But before we get into those specific strategies, I think it is really important that we keep a few things in mind as it relates to reading comprehension. So first of all, I think it’s really important for us to recognize that comprehension is not a product or a result. And it really is more of a process. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of times the way our standards and our testing is set up, we tend to treat comprehension as the product as the end result.

You know, we teach main idea and focus on students mastering the main idea standard, rather than teaching main idea as a tool to help students understand and extract meaning from a text. You know, we don’t teach our comprehension standards and strategies, just so our students can learn the strategies. We ultimately teach these strategies and standards so our students can understand what it is that they are reading.

But I think sometimes we put way too much emphasis on teaching comprehension, in isolation, versus really thinking about what strategies are going to help our students understand the text that they’re reading.

I think another thing that is really important to keep in mind when thinking about comprehension, is really recognizing that comprehension is significantly influenced by background knowledge and vocabulary. You know, if you don’t have the background knowledge or vocabulary really necessary to fully understand a topic in depth, then you’re going to understand that text at a deeper level.

And really a perfect example of this and the importance that background knowledge and vocabulary plays has to do with my own research about the science of reading. You know, when I first started learning more about the science of reading, it was three or four years ago, and the very first book that I ever read about the science of reading was Nancy Hennessey’s the Comprehension Blueprint, which is a fabulous book, and I would highly suggest it.

But as I was reading it, I had very little background knowledge about the science of reading, which made that first text really hard for me to comprehend. And it’s funny because I’ve gone back to the Comprehension Blueprint many times and I’m like, Oh, this makes so much more sense now. But right now, my team and I are doing a book study on Shifting the Balance, which is another science of reading book.

But through the past few years, I’ve probably read 20 Different PD books. I’ve attended many different science of reading trainings and webinars. And you know, as a result, I have so much more background knowledge. So when I read things like phonemes, and graphemes, and implicit and explicit vocabulary instruction, I actually have the background knowledge and the vocabulary to understand what those things are so I’m not struggling to understand the text in the same way that I struggled through my first science of reading book that I read.

So, you know, comprehension isn’t necessarily as straightforward as sometimes we want to treat it. And I think it’s really important for us to understand that comprehension is a process. And there’s a lot of things that really impact comprehension. And ultimately, the reason why I’m putting this episode at the very end, is because all of those other pillars really need to be in place if we want to set our students up for success.

So before we can really focus on the comprehension, we need to make sure that our students have that foundation of phonemic awareness and phonics, and that they’re able to fluently read a text and they have the vocabulary, because if they’re missing one of those other pillars, comprehension is going to be a lot more challenging for them.

So just a few things to keep in mind when we really think about comprehension, especially in the upper grades. However, with that being said, there are some very specific instructional practices that do improve comprehension when they are really, you know, implemented consistently in your classroom. And the National Reading Panel has identified eight different instructional practices. And I briefly mentioned them in that first episode back in episode number 177.

But one of the things that I thought was really interesting is they talk about how these strategies appear to be the most effective and promising for classroom instruction and when these comprehension strategies are consistently used, in combination, they showed general gains on standardized tests. So I thought that was very applicable.

And I know, we’re starting to enter a test prep season. And I think a lot of times when we get to test prep, we start to get nervous and anxious. And we really want to, you know, focus a lot on test prep, but reminding yourself that these eight strategies that we’re really going to dig into what I’m going to share specific examples of things that you’re going to do, they can really be a great way to help students improve their comprehension. And so these strategies, I would encourage you to incorporate and include in your test prep practice.

So I’m going to share eight strategies, kind of some specifics about them. Again, these come from the National Reading Panel. And while you can try to put all of them in place, and at some point, you could, I would encourage you to pick a couple of them this week to really focus on. I’m going to give you a challenge for each of them. You don’t have to do all of them. But like I said, pick two or three things to really try out this week.

So the first comprehension strategy is monitoring comprehension. So really, the goal with monitoring comprehension is that students become aware of their own understanding of the text while they are reading. So we want our students to have this self awareness that they are understanding what they’re reading. And if all of a sudden they become aware that meaning is breaking down, and you know, they just read a paragraph or a page, and they’re like, I have no idea what I just read that they understand that they’ve got some strategies that they can do to help clear up confusion that they might have.

And I’m sure this happens to you, as an adult who is a skilled reader, you’ll be reading something and all of a sudden, you’re like, wait a minute, I’m thinking about dinner, or I’m thinking about my grocery list or laundry list, I need to back up and read the page that I just sort of skimmed through, but didn’t actually comprehend. So we want that same thing for our students.

So a few things that you can do to help students develop this habit of monitoring their comprehension, is, first of all, you can teach students to really pause periodically throughout the text and just check in with their comprehension. So we’re building this habit.

And this could be something you know, depending on the age of your students, and the length and complexity of text, maybe you have your students stop at the end of every sentence. Maybe you have them stop at the end of every paragraph at the end of every page or at the end of every chapter. And they simply ask themselves, do I understand what I am reading?

And if they do, they should really be able to restate what they read in their own words. And if they don’t, or if they can’t do that, then we want them to understand that they need to go back and do something differently so that way they can get the intended meaning before moving on.

You know, we don’t want students just to keep on reading for the sake of reading. We want them to actually comprehend what they’re reading. So if students recognize that they don’t understand and they need to put some strategy in place, you could have them back up, and they could reread a text, chunk by chunk, so break it up into smaller chunks; you can have them annotate. So as they’re reading, they’re also taking notes. So that way they’re aware of what they’re reading.

You can have them pay attention to vocabulary words that might be unfamiliar. And maybe you have them, underline them. So there is awareness to the words. And you know, if the option is available, you could also prompt your students to ask a friend or a classmate or a parent or a teacher to help clarify the meaning. So we want students to recognize that there are several things that they can do to you know, make sure that they are understanding what they’re reading.

And we really want our students to understand that their main job as a reader is to monitor their own comprehension, and make sure that they are understanding the text. And if they aren’t, then they need to slow down, back up, reread, try some of the things that I just mentioned.

You know, and monitoring comprehension is something that we do automatically as adults. But it’s not always something that our students do automatically. So this is something that we want to make sure that we are modeling to our students on a consistent basis that they’re seeing us as adults, monitor our thinking and showing them what that looks like.

So my challenge for you this week, is to plan one think aloud, where you are going to model what it looks like to monitor your own comprehension to your students. And maybe you’re going to show them that when you don’t understand something, you’re going to backup and reread, or you’re going to annotate, or you’re going to ask a friend to help clarify. So that’s the first strategy monitoring comprehension.

The second comprehension strategy that was mentioned in the National Reading Panel is cooperative learning. And I love this because we don’t often think of this as a comprehension strategy. But it really is. And ultimately, the goal with cooperative learning is to give students opportunities to engage with their classmates in a really purposeful way that centers around a text.

And there are a ton of different ways that you can really bring in cooperative learning into your literacy block. You could do a turn and talk, you could do a think pair share anything that gets your students talking with their classmates about a text. So however you decide to bring in cooperative learning, you just really want to make sure that it is purposeful, and that it is centered on the comprehension of the text.

So what that could look like is maybe you give students a specific set of questions that you want them to discuss with a partner, maybe doing a turn and talk, maybe you have students read a text together and pause after every section of the text to summarize, and, you know, they can take turns reading and summarize. Or maybe you have your students complete a written response about a text.

One of the things that I often did in my classroom, and I really loved doing with my students, and they enjoyed it, too, is that I would have my students do a reading response to a text individually on a sticky note. So they’re going to read a question and they’re going to answer it themselves on a sticky note. And then they would have to work with a partner to combine the individual ideas and their individual responses to come up with a collective response.

So they each answered it together, but then they’re hearing somebody else’s response. So ultimately, they’re going to get to improve upon their response. And they’re going to get to work together to combine their ideas. So that is such an easy way to bring in cooperative learning into your classroom.

And, you know, I think so often because we know that at the end of the year, students are going to have to take the reading test on their own, that we can fall into the habit of having students practice on their own. But I think it’s important for us to recognize that learning can be so powerful when it is done in collaboration. And not everything that we do has to exactly mirror the end of your test or be set up in that exact same way.

So my challenge for you this week to put some cooperative learning in your classroom is to plan one opportunity where your students can work collaboratively, either with a partner or a small group on a reading task, super simple. Just plan one cooperative learning opportunity during your literacy block this week.

Okay, the third strategy that was mentioned in the National Reading Panel is using graphic and semantic organizers. And hopefully you’re thinking yes, I’m already doing this with my students, which I think is wonderful. You know, we give students a graphic or semantic organizer to help them organize their thoughts or their understanding of a word. And when we do this, it really allows them to represent the text or their ideas graphically, by either writing or drawing the meanings of relationships or ideas in a text.

And this can really help students in the comprehension process. You know, a lot of times cop prehension is something that is abstract. And when students use a graphic organizer, it makes it a little bit more concrete. So a graphic organizer could be a story mountain that students fill out as they’re reading a fiction story. It could be a Venn diagram that students use to compare and contrast to characters or ideas in a text. Or it could be a timeline that students fill out with events that happen in the text.

Now, a semantic organizer or a semantic map is maybe something that you don’t use as often as a graphic organizer, but is still such a great tool. And I would encourage you to use it. It is a tool that you can use to really help students dig into vocabulary words. So there are a lot of different semantic fields that you could have students fill out or include on their semantic organizer.

So if you’re looking at a vocabulary word, you could have them include things like the definition of that word, the origin, the spelling, the synonyms, antonyms, specific examples, sentences, you know, a sentence that uses that word, you know, you could have students fill out a semantics map for a word before you begin reading. Or this could be something that students do if they are reading, and they notice a word is unfamiliar or confusing to them.

You know, as they’re monitoring their comprehension, they might become aware of a word and they’re like, Okay, I’m going to do a little word study here, I’m going to fill out a semantics map or a semantics organizer for this word, and help me develop my understanding and knowledge of the word. So both graphic and semantic organizers are a great tool for students to use, because it helps them see ideas in a text in a much more concrete way.

And a really quick tip that if you take the time to teach students how to draw and create their own graphic organizer, then they’re going to have the option of using this comprehension strategy, even if they don’t have access to a pre printed graphic organizer template. You know, I know, we always want to have things that look so pretty and have, you know, nice lines and are ready to go.

But it can be really effective to teach your students how to draw a Venn diagram to teach them how to create a timeline, to teach them how to draw a story mountain, because then they have the ability to create their own graphic organizer and use it to monitor their own comprehension as they’re reading, whether they have access to a pre printed graphic organizer or not.

So my challenge for you this week, is to give your students at least one graphic organizer, or semantic map or if you’re an overachiever, you can do both. sometime this week, for one of the texts that you’re working through. It could be fiction or nonfiction, but be intentional about giving your students a graphic organizer, and really teaching them how to fill that out as a tool to you know, monitor and really complete their thinking about a text.

Okay, the next comprehension practice that is mentioned in the National Reading Panel is to focus on story structure. And you know, story structure or text structure is so important. We see this in Scarborough’s reading rope, it shows up in our state standards, we know that this is really important knowledge for our students to have. And we want our students to understand how stories and really all texts are organized.

So this means that if a student is reading a fiction text, that they’re going to be aware that there’s going to be a beginning, a middle and an end, and that they’re going to understand you know that there are specific events that happen at each place in the story. So we want them to understand, you know, the traditional story, mountain and all the different elements of plot.

So we want them to understand that most stories begin with an exposition, where they’re going to be introduced to the characters and the setting, they’re going to find out the problem, there’s going to be these events that fall into the category of rising action, where usually the characters are trying to solve the problem or overcome the challenge, there’s going to be the climax, which is kind of like the big turning point and the most exciting part of the story, then there’s going to be falling action which lead to the resolution.

So we want students to know that these events happen within a story and know how to identify them as they’re reading. And then of course, we want them to be familiar with nonfiction text structures as well.

Now, two things that you can do to help your students become more confident with understanding story structure is first of all, to teach your students to ask and answer different questions about the plot. The five w plus h questions work great for this. And if you think about it, you know, they really match up well with plot structure.

So asking your students who is the story about? When and where does the story take place? What is the problem? Why is that problem significant? How do the characters try to solve the problem or how is the problem solved? So all of those five w plus h questions can also match up with the different events in plot structure. So that’s one thing that you can do.

The second thing that you can do is you can have students map out the timeline, and the characters and the events in the story. Because if they really have to identify the specific, you know, order of events in a story, it’s going to make sure that they understand what they are.

So my challenge for you this week is to really highlight the story structure, or the general text structure of at least one text. And sort of as a bonus here, practice with your students mapping out the timeline of the characters and events in that story. So it’s not just, you know, highlighting the text structure or the story structure, but it’s really helping your students get in the habit of mapping out the timeline of events, the characters, and you know, what’s happening at the different stages of the plot within the story.

Okay, so the next two are very closely related. And again, I bet as you hear these, you’re like, Yes, I’m already doing that, which is awesome. So keep doing these things.

Now, the next strategy is question answering. This is something that we want our students to do on a very regular basis when it comes to, you know, comprehending a text. And it is pretty straightforward. You know, we want our students to be able to answer key questions about a text.

So ideally, our students can answer questions that have been generated by the teacher, you know, and then in the instructional setting, the teacher is able to give them feedback on the correctness of their answer, and really help guide the students to a deeper understanding if something is missing in their response.

This specific strategy, getting students to answer questions is usually relatively easy for teachers to incorporate into their literacy lessons. Because we naturally ask students questions as we’re reading, you know, we do a read aloud and as we’re reading aloud, we are asking questions, and they’re answering. So it’s pretty easy to give our students opportunities to practice this.

However, sometimes we tend to rush through the question process. And we don’t really take the time to come up with thoughtful questions, or really key questions for our students to answer. And we kind of just think about whatever pops into our mind, as we’re reading, at least I know, I fell into that habit, when I was in the classroom, I would just pick up a book and I’d be like, cool. We’re talking about characters. So let me ask a few character questions, or I know, we need to practice inferencing. And so let me ask some inferencing questions.

But I didn’t really think about how I can strategically plan questions to support students. So one thing that you can do is really identify the key understanding or that central idea that you want your students to get as a result of the text. You know, so maybe what is the theme of the text? What’s the life lesson? What’s the central idea? What’s the main point?

Really think about you know, what is the purpose for students reading this text? And then craft your questions around that central idea. So you’re going to, you know, create some scaffolded questions that lead your students to this central idea. And ultimately, that is going to give your questions a lot more meaning, it’s going to give your discussion a lot more purpose. And it’s going to just make answering those questions a lot more meaningful for your students, because you’re not just asking random questions, you’re asking questions that really guide them to understanding the main point of the text.

So my challenge for you this week is to pick one read aloud and pre plan your questions ahead of time so that your questions are all connected to the main point, or the central idea of that text.

The next strategy is kind of connected to that. And the next comprehension strategy that we want our students to get in the habit of doing is question generation. So obviously, in addition to having our students answer questions about a text, we really want them to be able to generate their own questions about a text.

And honestly, this is something that we probably don’t do enough of, you know, we really focus on getting students to answer our questions that sometimes we forget to teach them to generate their own questions. And question generation is also another great way for students to monitor their own comprehension.

So an easy way to prompt students to generate their own questions is to teach them again, the five w plus h question stems. So having them ask questions that get to the who, the what the when, where, why, and how of a story. But we also want them to know when to ask questions. So not only do we want them to know, the types of questions to ask, but we want them to get in the habit of asking questions before, during and after reading.

And a really easy way that you could have students practice this is to assign question generation as some form of reading response. So rather than have students answer a question, you could ask them to generate questions about a specific section of the text. You know, you could ask them, What are questions that you asked before you read this while you read this after you read this? And so question generation would basically become their exit ticket or their reading response. So you kind of flip it up.

So, my challenge to you this week is to either pick one time to model question generation to your students, or pick one time to assign question generation to your students as a reading response.

Okay, the next comprehension strategy that we want to focus on is summarization. And honestly, summarization is probably something that you already focus on with your students. And when a reader summarizes they are attempting to identify and write the main, or most important ideas that really integrate or unite the other ideas in a text.

And summarizing is probably explicitly stated somewhere in your state standards. If you are a third, fourth or fifth grade teacher, I know the Common Core RL 4.2 says determine the theme of a story drama or poem from details in the text and then summarize the text.

So where some of these comprehension strategies that I’ve shared aren’t necessarily explicitly listed as standards, you might not have a standard that talks about cooperative learning, but we know it effectively leads to greater comprehension. So we still want to incorporate it. Summarization is actually listed in your state standards.

But I think sometimes, when we think about our standards, we want to treat them as a checklist. So we want to make sure that we’re not treating summarization as a checklist standard, where we teach it, and then move on. And then you know, think about the next standard. But really, we want summarization, to be a habit that our students get into almost every time that they read.

So even though it’s a standard, it is a habit that we want to really develop with our students. And one thing that you can do to support your students in the practice of summarization is to give them a framework that they can follow to summarize the text. So for example, you could give them the somebody wanted, but so then framework to help them summarize some fiction stories. And you could teach them to use text structure as a framework for summarizing nonfiction texts.

So my challenge to you this week, is to prompt your students to summarize the text, even if it is not the standard you’re focusing on because we want it to be a habit that they are building.

And then the last strategy is a really easy one that is mentioned in the National Reading Panel, and that is the use of multiple strategies. And, you know, maybe as I was going through and sharing these different comprehension strategies, you realize that there’s a lot of overlap and places where you can double dip. But ultimately, we really want to be intentional about incorporating two or three of these strategies at the same time within our literacy block.

So an example of that would be prompting your students to monitor their comprehension by stopping each time they get to a new plot element. And they’re going to, you know, stop and jot down what it is that they’re reading on a graphic organizer. So they’re going to be using a graphic organizer to map out really the timeline of events in a story. And that is going to help them actively monitor their thinking.

So we want our students to realize that these, you know, comprehension strategies that I talked about, are really habits that we want them to develop, and that they can use several of them at the same time to help them interact with a text.

So my challenge for you this week is to plan a reading experience where you intentionally incorporate two to three of the strategies that I mentioned in this episode.

So to recap this very specific episode on comprehension, there are eight effective comprehension practices that the National Reading Panel identifies as really being influential and helping students improve their comprehension. And those are comprehension monitoring, cooperative learning, using graphic and semantic organizers focusing on story structure, question answering, question generating, summarizing, and then using multiple strategies at once.

And then just to wrap up our entire series, you know, we want to be intentional about making sure that we are incorporating all five pillars of reading into our literacy block. So hopefully, as a result of this series, you are feeling a lot more knowledgeable and confident in your ability to focus on phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

And of course, let me just remind you that you are amazing. I always get so inspired. You know, each week when I see our podcast audience growing, it is just a reminder that there are so many literacy teachers out there that are wanting to be the absolute best for their students.

And I know that if you have made it all the way to this point in the episode that you truly care about becoming the best teacher so your students can experience maximum success. So kudos to you. I hope you are feeling confident to tackle this next week of instruction. Have a stellar week and I will see you back here next Monday.