defining comprehension strategies and instructional strategies

Defining Comprehension Strategies and Instructional Strategies

ByMarilyn VelezREAD-6707R-1Reading and Literacy GrowthWalden University

What is Metacognition?

Metacognition is a complex process that involves understanding what literacy learners know about their reading abilities. The learner also needs to know when to apply specific skills in order to comprehend the text (Laureate Education, 2014i).

What is Reading Comprehension?

Reading comprehension is composed of two equally important components. Decoding, or the ability to translate text into speech...The other part is language comprehension, or the ability to understand spoken language. (SEDL, 2013).Students must understand what they are reading to gain knowledge and experience from their reading, to enjoy the process of reading, and to become lifelong readers.

What is Reading Comprehension?

Comprehension involves different levels of thinking, from literal to inferential, critical, and evaluative. (Tompkins, 2010, p. 257).An advanced reader is fluent, accurate, and uses cognitive and metacognitive decoding and comprehension strategies to be successful at understanding the meaning of the text at all levels of thinking.

What are Comprehension Strategies?

Comprehension strategies are behaviors used by the student to aid understanding of the text.Some strategies are cognitive-they involve thinking; others are metacognitive-students reflect on their thinking. (Tompkins, 2010, p. 260).

Examples of Comprehension Strategies

Use schema Activate relevant background knowledge, or schema, before, during, and after reading; use this knowledge to process new information.Synthesize While reading, organize and evaluate understandings, adjusting the main ideas on an ongoing basis. After reading, develop an integrated representation of the text, including significant ideas and details.(Hollenbeck, & Saternus, 2013, p. 560).

Why use Comprehension Strategies?

Comprehension strategies are essential for students to become motivated to read.These successful readers are metacognitive. They plan their reading in relation to specific goals, and they monitor and evaluate their reading as it progresses. These readers are motivated and engaged. (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, & Doyle, 2013, p. 440).


Comprehension strategies are essential for students to become critical thinkers.The readers' epistemic beliefs are developing-they know that authors write for different purposes, that texts can be biased, and that not everything in print is necessarily 'true' (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, & Doyle, 2013, p. 440).


Comprehension strategies are essential for students to become confident readers.Finally, these successful readers have high self-efficacy- they expect to be challenged by different texts and tasks, and they expect to meet those challenges. (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, & Doyle, 2013, p. 440).These affective aspects of reading comprehension motivation, engagement, epistemic beliefs, and self-efficacy emotionally connects students to texts.

What are Instructional Strategies?

Instructional strategies are those strategies that teachers use to aid and support reading comprehension.And so as teachers support reading comprehension ...creating the collaborative, supportive, and cooperative conditions in a classroom that allow children to dialog and talk about texts, ask each other questions and help each other learn from texts in a group team setting. (Laureate Education, 2014g, p. 1-2).

Examples of Instructional Strategies

Teachers placing students in collaborative groups for the purposes of reading comprehension. ...the teacher needs to create the conditions, the procedures, the routines and the understandings necessary in the classroom for productive collaborative and cooperative group work. (Laureate Education, 2014g, p. 1).

Examples of Instructional Strategies

Teachers providing the appropriate text selections or choices of texts for students....it appears that offering students a choice of texts to read is a far more powerful incentive to engage with a text...perhaps three or four literature selections of equal complexity and length from which students may choose will give them a stronger motivation to read and yield better instructional outcomes. (Reutzel, & Cooter, 2016, p. 298-299).

Why use Instructional Strategies?

Using these strategies are essential in aiding students in reading comprehension, motivation, and critical thinking. ...offering students a choice of texts to read resulted in a whopping .32 percentile point increase...Research also indicates that encouraging students to collaborate with each other in structured discussion of assigned literature significantly increases their motivation to read. (Reutzel, & Cooter, 2016, p. 298-299)

Example Lesson Plan

Bright Morning: Exploring Character Development in Fiction. (readwritethink.org.)

The purpose of this lesson is to guide comprehension in critical thinking as to how authors develop and express character traits in texts.

Comprehension Strategy

The synthesize strategy was the comprehension strategy used in this lesson.Synthesize While reading, organize and evaluate understandings, adjusting the main ideas on an ongoing basis. After reading, develop an integrated representation of the text, including significant ideas and details.(Hollenbeck, & Saternus, 2013, p. 560).

Instructional Strategy

The collaborative grouping strategy was the instructional strategy used in this lesson.Teachers placing students in collaborative groups for the purposes of reading comprehension. ...the teacher needs to create the conditions, the proced.sary in the classroom for productive collaborative and cooperative group work. (Laureate Education, 2014g, p. 1).

Modifications for Struggling, Emergent, Transional Readers and/or ELL Students

Graphic Organizers - Graphic organizers are visual representations of key story elements and the interrelationships among these parts. (Reutzel, & Cooter, 2016, p. 314).Sentence Frames - Students often struggle finding just the right words to explain, describe, and clarify what they are thinking. One way to help students, and further engage English language learners in class discussions, is to provide sentence frames. (teachersites.schoolworld.com)

Conclusion

Comprehension strategies are those strategies used by the students to aid them in reading and comprehending texts at multiple levels.Instructional strategies are those strategies used by the teacher to aid students in comprehension, motivation, and critical thinking of texts.Both types of strategies are needed in the classroom to aid students, whether they are emergent, transitional or advanced readers, in becoming successful, lifelong, learners.

References

Afflerbach, P., Cho, B.-Y., Kim, J.-Y., Crassas, M. E., & Doyle, B. (2013). Reading: What else matters besides strategies and skills? The Reading Teacher, 66(6), 440448. Retrieved from the Walden Library databaseshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TlHkkGJjlEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUDigw4LCYEHollenbeck, A. F., & Saternus, K. (2013). Mind the comprehension iceberg: Avoiding titanic mistakes with the CCSS. The Reading Teacher, 66(7), 558568. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.International Reading Association (IRA) and National Council of Teachers of English. (2014a). ReadWriteThink. Retrieved from http://www.readwritethink.org/search/?grade=13&resource_type=6&learning_objective=8Laureate Education (Producer). (2014g). Conversations with Ray Reutzel: Supporting comprehension [Audio file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.Laureate Education (Producer). (2014i). Metacognition: Thinking about thinking [Multimedia file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B., Jr. (2016). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction in an era of common core standards: Helping every child succeed (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.SEDL. (2013). Cognitive elements of reading. Retrieved from http://www.sedl.org/reading/framework/elements.htmhttp://teachersites.schoolworld.com/webpages/Hultenius/sentence.cfmTompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach. Boston, MA:Pearson