Week 10 – Chapter 8 – EngEd 275 – Nicole Kavajecz
“Comprehension is a creative, multifaceted thinking process in which students engage with the text (Tierney, 1990)” (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 255). A process by nature is more complicated than a single action. It is a series of events that happen over time. The comprehension process usually starts with pre-reading activities, such as creating a mental picture of the ideas and activation of their background knowledge, and it continues as they begin to read the text. When readers are comprehending what they are reading, they are thinking many things such as connections to prior experiences, how the text is organized, making predictions for what will happen next, drawing inferences, notice symbols and other literary devices, and monitoring their own understanding. Early readers rely on teacher support heavily within a classroom to develop these skills, while more experienced readers need only simple check-ins to stay on track. The level of the reader with reference to the list of comprehension factors above determines how well they are accurately understanding the text they read.
Text complexity is a fairly new way of determining how well a person will comprehend the meaning of the words they read (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 256). The Common Core Standards identified three components to determine text complexity: qualitative dimensions, quantitative measures, and reader and task considerations. Qualitative dimensions refers to the teacher making judgments about the book’s appropriateness by examining all the literary elements. Quantitative measures refer to the use of readability formulas to determine the book’s grade. Reader and task considerations means a teacher reflects on how they expect students to interact with the book.
For the reader, there are six comprehension factors that need to be taken into consideration when choosing a text (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 256). Background knowledge is the experiences from their world and link it to what they are reading. Vocabulary refers to the words they know as well as ability to apply word-learning strategies to understand what they are reading. Fluency means students have the focus available to understand what they have read. Strategies put to use when students read include monitoring their understanding, troubleshooting problems as they happen, and ability to self direct their reading. Skills, such as making notes and remembering sequence of events, are varied for each reader. Motivation can affect engagement, confidence, and overall success. For the text, in reference to comprehension factors, Genre, text structure, and text features influence the readers’ ability to understand and make connections.
Further on strategies that readers use for comprehension, some are cognitive (students involve thinking) and some are metacognitive (students reflect on their thinking) (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 259). Teachers directly and indirectly affect the students’ skills in these strategies through modeling. Various strategies can include predicting, drawing inferences, and monitoring. The teacher can use various ways to assess the students’ levels on these skills, including mini lessons and journaling.
Activation of background knowledge is a skill that comes naturally, but needs to be honed in for students to reach the highest levels of comprehension skill (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 260). Tools such as anticipation guides, exclusion brainstorming, graphic organizers, KWL charts, and pre-reading plans are all ways to scaffold student learning. Making connections between the background knowledge and what they are reading is vital. There are three types of connections that can be made: text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text. Using strategies such as reading logs, interviews with a hot seat, and open-mind portraits to help students make connections can be useful for a teacher.
Determining importance of what they are reading can be challenging, exciting, or dull for students (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 261). Through practice and teacher implemented strategies, students learn to sift through the information they read to distinguish between big ideas, fine details, and other information in order to create good summaries. The ability to summarize leads to the skill of drawing inferences. This type of connection is very beneficial in a classroom setting because this is the level at which students take the material they are reading and begin to have morals jump out at them.
Teachers can evaluate readers, or they can have readers evaluate themselves (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 263). The aspects in either instance which should be considered are ease of reading the text, adequacy of background knowledge, use of comprehension strategies, how they solved problems, their interest and attention during reading, if they liked the text, their opinions on the author, the world knowledge they gain, and how they will use what they’re learning. Reading logs may be the most preferred method to measure all these aspects in a classroom setting. Silent sustained reading and grand conversations are two great ways to develop comprehension skills in a classroom.
Engaging students and promoting a love of reading is one of the most vital models a teacher can provide for any student. Developing the motivation to learn within the reluctant readers can be a challenge. In the classroom, encouraging students to express their own ideas and opinions, allowing students to choose their books, talk about their books, share their thoughts, and pursue authentic activities other than worksheets are great ways to foster this motivation (Tompkins, Smith, Campbell, & Green, 2019, p 283). Notable author James Patterson has an exceptional quote for this very topic “There’s no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books” (Patterson, 2021).
Resources
Tompkins, G. E., Smith, C., Campbell, R., & Green, D. (2019). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (Seventh ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Pearson Australia.
Patterson, J. (2021). Retrieved on 27 March 2021 from https://kids.jamespatterson.com/
