If you're a teacher, chances are that reading always came naturally to you as a child and young adult. As you've undoubtedly noticed, this is not the case for many kids. Students may lack the background knowledge or decoding skills to make sense of a text. You can help your students better understand what they read by using strategies that address comprehension before, during and after reading. You'll find that when students are not left to struggle alone with a passage, they gain more confidence in their reading skills along with knowledge of the subject about which they are reading.
Step 1
Teach decoding skills before the reading begins. Students who struggle to decode words will often miss the larger meaning of the passage. Decoding skills are an important part of any reading program. You can help students comprehend reading passages better by reviewing words that are challenging to decode before students begin reading.
Step 2
Activate students' background knowledge about the text they are about to read. If the story is about a tree house, for example, ask students what a tree house is, where they have seen tree houses and other related questions. A simple passage about tree houses might be difficult for inner-city readers to comprehend without a related discussion. Strong readers develop the habit of thinking about what they are about to read before they read it.
Step 3
Use a KWL chart, which stands for "what we know, what we want to know and what we've learned." These charts provide readers with opportunities to write down what they already know about the topic and think about what they want to learn. After kids have read the passage, they complete the charts by writing what they learned. This technique works best for high-interest readings.
Step 4
Encourage students to take notes as they read, or provide students with a reader's guide. This is an artificial way to help students to develop the habit of questioning as they read. Students check their knowledge of difficult words and evaluate their own understanding of the text as they read. Later, when students read independently, these thinking habits transfer over, increasing comprehension.
Step 5
Ask students to explain what they've read to a partner. This practice helps increase comprehension after kids have read the text. You can do this quickly on a regular basis by using a technique called "Think, Pair, Share." Students think about an aspect of what they've read for a minute, talk about it with a partner for a minute and then share their observations with the class.
