Teaching comprehension strategies

1
Teaching comprehension strategies

• Jan Turbill
• University of Wollongong 2008

2
Reading strategies metacognition

• Comprehension strategies need to be taught
• Knowing what, how and when to use these
  strategies is known as metacognition
• Students need opportunities to learn, practise,
  reflect and discuss these strategies
• Thus metacognition needs to be taught

3
Broad comprehension strategies

• Knowing how texts work
• Knowing how reading works
• Knowing that reading is about making sense -
  often referred to as active reading
• Knowing that different texts require different
  strategies for reading - reading a narrative,
  reading a recipe, reading to find specific
  information

4
Lets examine our comprehension strategies

• Work in pairs to read and respond to the Reading
  Texts in your handout. Start wherever you wish.

5
Specific comprehension strategies

• Skimming text to get a general sense
• Predicting meaning
• Rereading when meaning is lost
• Sounding out words, using first letter to
  predict, reading on to confirm
• Using other clues such as illustrations, photos
• Reading ahead
• Reading aloud
• Matching what I read to what I already know
• And what else did you do?

6
Teaching strategies that work

• Model read
• Think aloud - let them into your strategies
• Building the field
• Teach how to find - contents page, indexes,
  glossary, circle unknown words, phrases
• Graphic organisers - model how and when to use
• Asking questions of the text

7
Asking quality questions

• Literal- reading the lines
• Inferential - reading between the lines
• Application - reading beyond the lines

8
Explicit instruction about questions and answers
(Raphael Au 2005)

• Question answer relationships (QAR)
• See article in your handouts for details

9
QAR Core Categories

• In the Book
• In My Head

10
In the Book
11
In My Head
12
Why Use QAR?

• A language for ALL to use in talking about
  strategies and their use in context
• A developmental progression that is visible to
  students and teachers across grade levels
• A logical way to organize comprehension
  strategies
• A valuable approach to test preparation

13
Final comment
Reading, making sense of text, is invisible
Make it and all the strategies we use VISIBLE
14
Your turn (if time)
Share in your group useful strategies you use in
your teaching