What Do We Know about Reading Comprehension?
Every worthwihle educational practice has a strong theoretical foundation. So we begin our quest to understand reading's role in content area teaching by examinging its roots- the theories and beliefs that support it. As Brian Cambourne (2002, p.25) notes, "There is nothing so practical as a good theory.'
When teaching struggle readers, we should check to ensure that the students know and can use the skills that underpin the rading comprehension strategies and the strategies themselves. For example, these students need to know the elements of narrative text and to recognize the various patterns associated with informational text. It is helpful for us to preteach struggling readers, so they will have some knowledge prior to the whole-class instruction. This often enable these students to gain a better udnerstanding and participate in class discussion in more meaningful ways.
To help students think through the comprehension process, we can teach them reading comprehension strategies. We use a repertoire of these strategies as needed when we read text. The comprehension strategies that we use include these:
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Preview.
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Making connections.
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Monitoring/clarifying.
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Self-questioning.
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Visualizing.
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Summarizing.
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Evaluating.
Making Connections to Multiple Literacies
Making Connections to Struggling Readers
Good readers read both narrative or story-based text and informational or fact-based text. They have ideas about how to figure out unfamiliar words. They often preview what they are about to read and use their knowledge of text structure to efficiently and strategically think through text. This knowledge develops from experience with different genres and is correlated with age and time spent in school (Goldman & Rakestraw, 2000)
How Can We Teach Students to Think through the Comprehension of Text?
