Mindprint Toolbox

Search Results

Please wait...

Structured Reading Comprehension

Tags

ELA: Reading K-8 Strategy

Skills

Abstract Reasoning Processing Speed

Structured Reading Comprehension

All students, particularly those who are not well above grade level in reading comprehension

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Students will learn formal comprehension strategies, build awareness of when to apply strategies and learn how to self-correct to get the most out of a text.
  2. Teacher Takeaways: While students normally acquire reading comprehension strategies informally, research shows that formal instruction in comprehension strategies is valuable. Teachers can model the strategies (next slide) using a reading passage and provide ongoing reinforcement as needed.

Comprehension Strategies

  1. Comprehension Monitoring: Starting in 3rd grade, students should notice and address their own comprehension gaps by re-reading, paraphrasing, looking ahead in the reading, or asking for help.
  2. Cooperative Learning: Students discuss the reading in pairs or small groups. They increase understanding by working together, which also frees up the teacher to support struggling learners.
  3. Question Generation and Answering: Students ask themselves what, where, when, what will happen, how and who questions to ensure they understood and remember the main idea and key details.
  4. Summarization: Student identifies the main ideas and key supporting ideas, including eliminating less important details.
  5. Visualization: Students focus on understanding the overall storyline, or specific words, sentences or paragraphs by creating a mental image of what they read. Particularly useful for remembering key details.
  6. Activate prior knowledge: Before beginning to read, the student considers what she already knows on the topic in order to make it easier to understand the new material.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Good readers need to monitor their comprehension and make adjustments, often using multiple strategies concurrently. While teachers can ask students questions to test comprehension, it is critical that students learn to do this independently. (National Reading Panel). Slowing down reading on encountering inconsistent information is a significant predictor of comprehension. (Comprehension Instruction, Research-Based Best Practices, Block & Parris)

Best-suited for students with weaker: Attention, Inhibition, Self-Regulation, Long-term Memory, Metacognition, Short-Term Memory, Working Memory, Processing Speed (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)