Comprehension is the last and most important component of reading.
Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, and Vocabulary are all building blocks to Reading Comprehension.
Metacognition
Thinking about your Thinking....and reading.
Information on Metacognition:
From the Book
How People Learn Brain, Mind,
Experience, and School “A ‘metacognitive’ approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them” (p. 18). They describe ways of fostering many of the most effective metacognitive strategies that are used by experts, such as predicting outcomes, explaining to oneself, noting failures to comprehend, activating background knowledge, planning ahead, and apportioning time and memory.
Reading Comprehension Strategies:
Monitoring Comprehension- the ability to check to see if one is understanding what is being read.
Main Idea- What a given text is mostly about, the "gist".
Supporting Details- The parts of the text that support the main idea of the text.
Summarization- A summary states the main idea or parts of a text. Consider the beginning,
middle, and end of a text.
Synthesis- The ability to take information about a topic (from different sources) and compare it. Taking the summary of new information and merge it with prior knowledge to develop a new understanding of the topic.
For Example: if a teacher gave a student a fiction story, an information book, and a list of facts (from the internet) about tornadoes....the student would read all 3 resources plus any prior knowledge/personal experience about tornadoes and have a better understanding about what tornadoes are. Putting all the info together for a better understanding.
Inferring/Drawing Conclusions- Figuring out something that the author doesn't actually say. You can use clues that are in the text, and things from your own mind. To read between the lines, make an educated guess.
Prediction- To consider information you know and make a guess about what might happen in the future.
Sequencing - To place things or events in order. Beginning, Middle, End.
Charts/Graphs/Tables
More Reading Comprehension Skills:
Below are links to edhelper.com for more info.
Graphic Organizers/Thinking Maps
Graphic Organizers are used to organize thoughts and learning.
Thinking Maps/Graphic Organizers are visualizing tools to organize your thoughts while/after reading information.
Bubble Maps, Double Bubbles, Tree Maps, Venn Diagrams, Circle Map, Brace Map, Flow Map, Multi-Flow Map, Bridge Map - they can be utilized to help with the different Comprehension Strategies. Several of them can be interchangeable (used with several comprehension strategies).
Example: Both Bubble Map and Tree Map can be used with Main Idea.
Teaching Students to Read/Use Textbooks:
When students begin receiving textbooks (2nd grade and up usually)...it is important to teach them how they work. Introduce the different parts of textbooks to better help students to read and understand the information they contain.
Table of Contents
Glossary
Indexes
Charts
Maps
Graphs
Pictures/Captions
Reading Stances:
Efferent Reading- Reading to Learn. (Informational/Nonfiction Text) - Lots of Notetaking/Coding.
Aesthetic Reading- Reading for Entertainment. (Fiction Text) - Notetaking/Coding when necessary.RESOURCE BOOK: Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement. - By Harvey and Goudvis
