Part 2: More Ways to Address Teaching Reading Comprehension!

As promised, we are continuing our blog conversation on strategies to support reading comprehension instruction.  Previously we have talked big picture research and introduced one strategy, Monitoring.  Today we will proceed with our discussion with a few more instructional innovations, Metacognition and Graphic Organizers!

• Monitoring
• Metacognition
• Graphic Organizers
• Question-Answer-Relationship
• Generating Questions
• Classroom Discussion
• Annotating Text

Metacognition

Metacognition can be defined as "thinking about thinking." Good readers use metacognitive strategies to think about and have control over their reading. Teachers can help students understand how to use metacognition by talking about what good readers during reading. Research notes that effective readers use at least two metacognitive strategies when reading all types of text. 

·     Before reading, they might clarify their purpose for reading and preview the text. 

·     During reading, they might monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and "fixing" any comprehension problems they have. 

·     After reading, they check their understanding of what they read.

Metacognition strategies that have proven to be effective for reading comprehension are:

·     Ask and answer where the challenges occur in the text.

·     Ask and answer the specific difficulty in what the text says.

·     Restate a difficult piece of text in their own words.

·     Look back through the text to find content that supports overall comprehension.

·     Look forward in the text to identify text that might help them solve their problem. 

·     Reciprocal Teaching: questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting.

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers illustrate concepts and relationships between concepts in a text. Graphic organizers are known by different names, such as maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, or clusters.  Graphic organizers can help readers focus on concepts and how they are related to other concepts. Graphic organizers help students read and understand both informational and literature text.

Graphic organizers can:

• Help students focus on text structure 
• Provide students with tools they can use to examine and show relationships in a text
• Help students prepare well-organized narrative, informational/explanatory, or argumentative writing. 

A common misuse of graphic organizers is that they become the end product- that because one completes an organizer, they then comprehend the text.  Research is very clear that the graphic organizer is the means to the end, not the end itself.  Teachers can help students use the completed organizer to then complete a more challenging task that forces the learner to use the organizer to demonstrate understanding. 

Graphic Organizer strategies that have proven to be effective for reading comprehension are:

·     Compare and Contrast

·     Storyboard

·     Chain of Events

·     Sequencing

·     Story Structure

·     Cause and Effect

·     Problem and Solution

·     Text to Self

·     Character Map

·     Close Reading

·     Word/Concept Map

·     Cornell Notes

·     Progress Map

 Want to learn more?  Reach out to us to talk Reading Comprehension!  We love it! Stay tuned for more information and great ideas in the week ahead!