Transcript The Comprehension Revolution: Helping Teachers Take a

The Comprehension Revolution: Helping Teachers Take a
Closer Look at the Reader, Text, Activity, and Context
Patricia A. Edwards, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
President-Elect, International Reading Association
September 22, 2009
English/ Second Language Reading is
Complex
Phonological
processing
abilities in
Oral English
language
Print Related
abilities in
abilities/
English
experiences in
Background English
Knowledge in
English
(Genesee, TESOL 2008)
LITERACY IN
NATIVE
LANGUAGE
Factors that Influence Learning to Read for
English Language Learners
Learning context
Reading skills in
L1 & L2
Teacher’s skills
& behaviors
Oral proficiency
in L1 & L2
Instructional
practices
Evidence-based Literacy Instruction for ELLs
Includes explicit instruction in oral
language, phonological awareness, the
alphabetic code, fluency, vocabulary
development, and reading comprehension.
Builds on students’
prior knowledge,
interests,
motivation, and
home language.
Helps students
make connections.
Relevant
Explicit
Includes frequent
opportunities to
practice reading with
a variety of materials
in meaningful
contexts. Promotes
engagement.
Applied
Effective Practices for Teaching EL learners
• Teacher observations data (Baker 2003)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Models skills and strategies
Makes relationships between concepts overt
Emphasizes distinctive features of new concepts
Scaffold use of strategies, skills, and concepts
Changes focus of literacy activities regularly
Adjust speech
Guidelines for Teaching Second Language Learners
• Uses visuals and manipulatives to teach
content
• Provides explicit instruction in English
language use
• Encourages elaborate student responses
• Teaches vocabulary using gestures and
facial expressions
Guidelines for Teaching Second Language Learners
Have high expectations for learning
 Facilitate the development of essential language and
literacy skills at a student’s level of oral proficiency in
English
 Develop literacy through instruction that builds on
language, comprehension, print concepts, and the
alphabetic principle
 Use language during instruction that is comprehensible
and meaningful to the students

Guidelines for Teaching
Second Language Learners

Create an instructional program that meets the needs of your students:
 design a plan for new students
• readjust schedules, make decisions based on data, and make
instruction comprehensible
 provide opportunities for students to engage in extended dialogues
 assess students’ progress frequently
 incorporate community expertise into the curriculum
Guidelines for Teaching
Second Language Learners
 Integrate
ESL strategies in content area
instruction
 Activate background knowledge and
connect content to students’ lives
 Use graphic organizers, charts, and other
visuals to enhance comprehension
Guidelines for Teaching
Second Language Learners
 Provide
opportunities for discussions of
texts
 Recognize and value the different
discourse (speaking) patterns across
cultures
Text Comprehension
Comprehension is the reason for reading. If
readers can read the words, but do not
understand what they are reading, they are
not really reading!
www.nifl.gov
What skills,
knowledge, and
attitudes are
required for good
reading
comprehension?
Reading Comprehension
• What students need to learn
• Before, during and after
strategies
• How to identify main ideas
and supporting details
• Identify text genres/purpose
of text
• How to find information
• Critical thinking
• How we teach it
• Teach before, during and
after strategies
• Build/activate background
knowledge
• Teach predictions
• Use graphic organizers
• Teach metacognitive
strategies
• Teach “fix-up” strategies
• Teach summarizing
• Set up cooperative groups
What is Comprehension?
• Comprehension is the understanding of what
you read
• Comprehension is an active, intentional
process in which the reader engages with the
text to both extract and construct meaning
from written language.
What is Good Comprehension
Instruction?
In effective comprehension instruction, teachers tell students why and when
they should use strategies, what strategies to use, and how to apply them.
• Direct Explanation: Teacher explains why the strategy helps
comprehension and when to apply the strategy.
• Modeling: Teacher demonstrates how to apply the strategy
• Guided Practice: Teacher guides and assists students as they learn how
and when to apply the strategy
• Application: Teacher helps students apply the strategy until they can
apply it independently.
Source: Armbruster & Osborn, 2003
What is Reading Comprehension?
“building bridges from the new to the
known”
Pearson & Johnson (1978)
What is Reading Comprehension?
“the construction of the meaning of a written
text through a reciprocal interchange of
ideas between the reader and the message in
a particular text”
Harris & Hodges
(1995)
What is Reading Comprehension?
“thinking guided by print”
Perfetti (1995)
What is Reading Comprehension?
“the process of simultaneously extracting
and constructing meaning through
interaction and involvement with written
language. It consists of three elements: the
reader, the text, and the activity or purpose
for reading”
Rand Reading Study Group (2002)
Comprehension Strategies
• Specific procedures that guide students to
become aware of how well they are
understanding as they attempt to read
Comprehension is a Process
•Comprehension is a dynamic
process, a transaction between
the reader, the text, and the
context.
Louise Rosenblatt
What we know about the factors that
affect reading comprehension
Proficient comprehension of text is influenced by:
Accurate and fluent word reading skills
Oral language skills (vocabulary, linguistic comprehension)
Extent of conceptual and factual knowledge
Knowledge and skill in use of cognitive strategies to
improve comprehension or repair it when it breaks down.
Reasoning and inferential skills
Motivation to understand and interest in task and
materials
•Life Experience
•Content Knowledge
•Activation of Prior
Knowledge
•Knowledge about
Texts
Knowledge
•Motivation &
Engagement
•Active Reading
Strategies
•Monitoring Strategies
•Fix-Up Strategies
Language
Reading
Comprehension
Metacognition
•Oral Language Skills
•Knowledge of Language
Structures
•Vocabulary
•Cultural Influences
Fluency
•Prosody
•Automaticity/Rate
•Accuracy
•Decoding
•Phonemic Awareness
The Five Essential Components
of Beginning Reading Instruction
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Fluency
Vocabulary
Taught by methods
that are…
Identifying words
accurately and
fluently
Constructing
meaning
Text Comprehension
Engaging, meaningful &
motivating
One of the Big Five: Comprehension
K
1
2
3
Phonemic
Awareness
Phonics
Letter Sounds &
Combinations
Multisyllables
Fluency
Vocabulary
Listening
Comprehension
Listening
Reading
Reading
Adapted from Simmons, Kame’enui, Harn, & Coyne (2003). Institute for beginning reading.
Day 3: Core instruction: What are the critical components that need to be In place to reach
our goals? Eugene: University of Oregon.
LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION
Skilled Reading- fluent
coordination of word
reading and comprehension
SKILLED
processes
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES
VERBAL REASONING
LITERACY KNOWLEDGE
WORD RECOGNITION
PHON. AWARENESS
DECODING (and SPELLING)
SIGHT RECOGNITION
The Many Strands that are Woven into Skilled Reading
(Scarborough, 2001)
3 Moments in the Teaching of Reading
PREPARING LEARNERS
• Activate prior relevant knowledge
• Focus attention to concepts to be developed
• Introduce vocabulary in context
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
INTERACTING WITH TEXT
Task 4
TEXT
Task 5
Task 6
• Deconstruct text, focus on understanding on a chunk
• Reconnect chunk to whole text
• Establish connections between ideas within text
EXTENDING UNDERSTANDING
• Connect ideas learned to other ideas outside the text
• Apply newly gained knowledge to novel situations or problem-solving
• Create or recreate based on new understandings
Task 7
Task 8
Task 9
The Construction-Integration Model
of Comprehension
Reader
Text
(purpose)
Textbase:
Mental Model:
The
The idea units
combined with
the reader’s
knowledge
linking of
idea units
Vocabulary knowledge
Knowledge of syntax
Genre knowledge
Knowledge
 Math
 History
 Literature
 Science
World knowledge/Topic knowledge
Discipline knowledge
- domain specific and domain
general
Comprehension is the result of the interaction between the textbase and
mental model.
Building a mental model from a
text
• “Comprehension occurs as the reader
builds a mental representation of a text
message.”
• ----Perfetti, C. A., Landi, N., & Oakhill, J. (2005).
Text messages are understood (and mental
models are built) word by word
Mental model
Each word is fit into
mental models (multiple
structures) to the extent
possible
Word 1
Text messages are understood (and mental
models are built) word by word
Mental model
Each word is fit into
mental models (multiple
structures) to the extent
possible
Word 2
Text messages are understood (and mental
models are built) word by word
Mental model
Each word is fit into
mental models (multiple
structures) to the extent
possible
Word 3
Text messages are understood (and mental
models are built) word by word
Mental model
Each word is fit into
mental models (multiple
structures) to the extent
possible
Word 4
What Does the Research Say?
Reading Comprehension as a
synthesis of complex skills cannot
be understood without examining
the critical role and importance of
vocabulary instruction.
(National Reading Panel, 2000)
Text Comprehension
• Text comprehension can be improved by
instruction that helps readers use specific
comprehension strategies.
• Effective comprehension strategy
instruction is explicit, or direct.
(Put Reading First, pp. 49, 53)
Old and New Definitions of Reading
Traditional Views
New Definition of
Reading
Research Base
Behaviorism
Cognitive sciences
Goals of Reading
Mastery of isolated facts Constructing meaning
and skills
and self-regulated
learning
Reading as Process
Mechanically decoding
words; memorizing by
rote
Learner Role/Metaphor
Passive; vessel receiving Active; strategic reader,
knowledge from
good strategy user,
external sources
cognitive apprentice
An interaction among
the reader, the text, and
context
Thinking about Reading Comprehension
• Comprehension results from an
interaction among the reader, the
strategies the reader employs, the
material being read, and the context in
which reading takes place.
Important Findings from Cognitive Sciences
Most of the knowledge base on this topic comes from studies of
good and
poor readers. However, some of it is derived from research on
expert
teachers and from training studies.
•
•
Meaning is not in the words on the page. The reader
construct meaning by making inferences and
interpretations.
Reading researchers believe that information is stored
long-term memory in organized “knowledge structures.” The
essence of learning is linking new information to prior
knowledge about the topic, the text structure or genre, and
strategic for learning.
Important Findings from Cognitive Sciences
•
•
•
How well a reader constructs meaning depends in part on
metacognition,
the reader’s ability to think about and control the learning process
(i.e., to
plan, monitor comprehension, and revise the use of strategies and
comprehension); and attribution, beliefs about the relationship
among
performance, effort, and responsibility.
Reading and writing are integrally related. That is, reading and
writing have many characteristics in common. Also, readers
increase their comprehension by writing, and reading about the topic
improves writing performance.
Collaborative learning is a powerful approach for teaching and
learning. The goal of collaborative learning is to establish a
community of learners in which students are able to generate
questions and discuss ideas freely with the teacher and each other.
Students often engage in teaching roles to help other students learn
and to take responsibility for learning.
Characteristics of Poor/Successful Readers
Characteristics of Poor Readers
Characteristics of Successful Readers
Think understanding occurs from “getting
the words right,” rereading.
Understand that they must take
responsibility for construction meaning
using their prior knowledge.
Use strategies such as rote memorization,
rehearsal, simple categorization.
Develop a repertoire of reading strategies,
organizational patterns, and genre.
Are poor strategy users:
•They do not think strategically about how
to read something or solve a problem.
•They do not have an accurate sense of
when they have a good comprehension
readiness for assessment.
Are good strategy users:
•They think strategically, plan, monitor their
comprehension, and revise their strategies.
•They have strategies for what to do when
they do not know what to do.
Characteristics of Poor/Successful Readers
Characteristics of Poor Readers
Characteristics of Successful
Readers
Have relatively low self-esteem.
Have self-confidence that they are
effective learners; see themselves as
agents able to actualize their
potential.
See success and failure as the result
of luck or teacher bias.
See success as the result of hard
work and efficient thinking.
Milestones in Reading Research
• Evidence that meaning in not in the words, but constructed by
the reader.
• Documentation that instruction in the vast majority of
classrooms is text driven and that most teachers do not provide
comprehension instruction.
• Documentation that textbooks were very poorly written, making
information in them difficult to learn; subsequent response of the
textbook industry to include real literature, longer selections,
more open-ended questions, less fragmented skills, and “more
considerate” text.
• Changes in reading research designs from narrowly conceived
and well-controlled laboratory experiments with college students
to (1) broadly conceived training studies using experimenters
and real teachers in real classrooms and (2) studies involving
teachers as researchers and colleagues in preservice and
inservice contexts.
Milestones in Reading Research
Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading (1984)
Publication of A Nation
of Readers reaching out
to parents, policymakers,
and community members
as legitimate audiences
for direct dissemination
of research information.
Important Trends in Reading Instruction
• Linking new learnings to the prior knowledge
and experiences of students. (In contexts
where there are students from diverse
backgrounds, this means valuing diversity
and building on the strengths of students.)
• Movement from traditional skills instruction to
cognitive strategy instruction, whole language
approaches, and teaching within the content
areas.
• More emphasis on integrating reading,
writing, and critical thinking with content
instruction, wherever possible.
Important Trends in Reading Instruction
• More organization of reading instruction in phases with iterative
cycles of strategies: Preparing for reading—activates prior
knowledge by brainstorming or summarizing previous learnings;
surveys headings and graphics; predicts topics and
organizational patterns; sets goals/purpose for reading; chooses
appropriate strategies.
• Reading to learn—selects important information, monitors
comprehension, modifies predictions, compares new ideas
with prior knowledge, withholds judgment, questions self
about the meaning, connects and organizes ideas, and
summarizes text segments.
• Reflecting on the information—reviews/summarizes the main
ideas from the text as a whole, considers/verifies how these
ideas are related; changes prior knowledge according to new
learnings; assesses achievement or purpose for learning;
identifies gaps in learning; generates questions and next
steps.
Brief History of Comprehension
Instruction
• Last Turn of the Century
• Simple view of reading was dominant
• Comp=Decoding times Listening
Comprehension
• Teach decoding via the alphabetic
approach
• Kids could then understand to the
degree that their knowledge and oral
language skill permitted
• The best way to improve comprehension
is, therefore, to increase knowledge
The first paradigm shift
• While the seeds of demise for the
alphabetic approach began in the
1840s, they did not bear fruit until about
1910.
• Two major movements
• Testing (an outgrowth of the scientific
movement in education)
• Silent reading (the transparent evidence
from oral reading was longer available)
Developments from 1915-1970
• The expansion of comprehension
assessment
• Open ended
• Multiple choice
• The development of skills to match the
assessment and the workbook (1930-1970)
• The final straw (skills management systems—
codified the skills)
The Comprehension Revolution:
1970-1990
Impact
of Chall’s book on early reading
The Comprehension Revolution:
1970-1990
• A gnawing feeling that there was something
more to reading than decoding
• Durkin’s embarrassing little (1978)
• Some 4,000 minutes of classroom
observation
• A grand total of 11 minutes devoted to
comprehension instruction
• Lots of testing and lots of questioning
during discussion
The Comprehension Revolution:
1970-1990
• New intellectual tools
• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Text analysis
• Schema theory
• Old instructional ideas
• Direct instruction
• Model-guided practice-independent
practice
Reading Comprehension: What Works
Educational Leadership, Fielding and Pearson
Joint
All Teacher
Responsibility
All Student
Guided Practice
Modeling
Independent
Attempts to achieve a research-based
approach to comprehension instruction
• Determine the skills that are associated with
skilled reading
• In small scale experiments, teach the skills to
kids who do not excel at them and determine
whether learning them leads to improved
comprehension for that skill and for
comprehension more generally construed.
• Build a streamlined comprehension
curriculum of mainline skills/strategies
• By 1985, we had documented the
efficacy of a whole set of instructional
routines and strategies…
• But…
Why did comprehension take a back
seat for a decade?
• Did not really fit either of the big
movements of the late 80s/early 90s.
Why did comprehension take a back
seat for a decade?
• Whole language found the tradition of explicit
instruction in comprehension strategies a little
too “skillsy” in feel.
• Preferred to have comprehension emerge
from genuine encounters with authentic,
engaging texts.
• Provide good texts and good assignments
and it will happen (and if it doesn’t, well at
least…)
Why did comprehension take a back
seat for a decade?
• Does not really fit the new phonics
renaissance either
• Those who champion phonics first and fast
tend to hold a “simple view” of reading
• Reading Comprehension equals the
product of listening comprehension and
decoding prowess
• RC=[LC * Dec]
• If you want to build oral language, fine.
• But comprehension strategies don’t really
matter
We seem to be ready for a
comprehension renaissance
• Realization that no mater how important the
code is, it is not the point of reading
• Suspicion that the simple view (RC =LC x
Dec) will not get us where we want to go
• That we will have to work on strategies
directly.
• RC = [(LC x Dec)] x CompStrat]
• So how do you design a comprehension
curriculum?
What would it take to re-energize our K12 comprehension curriculum?
•
•
•
•
A goal
A supportive context
A model
A comprehension curriculum
1. You need a goal: what is an expert reader
Active
Integrate text with PK
Purposeful
Infer word meanings
Monitor for achievement
Evaluate text quality
Size things up
Fit strategies to text genre
Attend selectively
Plot, setting, character
Evolving summaries
Structural representations
Revise meaning models
2. You need a supportive classroom context
• Opportunity: large amounts of time for actual text
reading
• Authenticity: reading real texts for real reasons
• Range: reading THE range of text genres
• Talk: talking about text with a teacher and one
another
• Words: conceptually driven vocabulary development
• Enabling Skills: solid base of decoding, monitoring
and fluency
• Writing: writing text for others to comprehend
3. You need a model: Cognitive
apprenticeship
You need a model: Cognitive Apprenticeship
Teacher Responsibility
100
0
0
100
Student Responsibility
4. You need a comprehension curriculum:
sure fire strategies and routines.
Individual Strategies
Routines
Making predictions
Reciprocal Teaching
Think-alouds
SAIL/Transactional
Strategies Instruction
Uncovering text structure Questioning the Author
Summarizing
Question-generation
Reciprocal Teaching (Palinscar)
• Premise: teachers who guide students
in the acquisition of a routine that can
be applied iteratively to text segments
help them get to and through texts that
would otherwise baffle them.
• Pick a small set of key strategies and
apply them again and again.
• Gradual release of responsibility
Reciprocal Teaching: The strategies
•
•
•
•
Summarize
Ask and answer a good question
Clarify puzzling parts
Predict the next bit
The evidence
•
•
•
•
Really helps improve comprehension
Works across the grade levels: K-12
Pretty easy to apply
Pretty biased toward a
• Cognitive emphasis
• Meaning-is-in-the-text perspective
Transactional Strategies Instruction
(Pressley and colleagues)
1.
2.
3.
4.
Basic Goals
Using strategies in a flexible and opportunistic manner
(problem-solving).
Acquiring strategies while engaged in authentic reading
Exploring the strategy environment that is created by both
teacher and student.
Broadening strategies to include both cognitive and
interpretive strategies.
For a full treatment of SAIL, a curricular approach to TSI, see
several articles in Elementary School Journal [(1992, 94 2)]
Basic Components of TSI
Cognitive Strategies
•Think Aloud
•Constructing images
•Summarizing
•Predicting (prior knowledge
activation
•Questioning
•Clarifying
•Story grammar analysis
•Text structure analysis
•Italics=also in Reciprocal
Teaching
Interpretive Strategies
•Character Development:
•Imagining how a character might feel;
identifying with a character
•Creating themes
•Reading for multiple meanings
•Creating literal/figurative distinctions
•Looking for a consistent point of view
•Relating text to personal experiences
•Relating text to other texts
•Responding to certain text featurespoint of view, tone, mood
Comparison with Reciprocal Teaching
Feature
Reciprocal Teaching
Transactional Strategies
Instruction
Philosophy
Cognitive apprenticeship
Cognitive apprenticeship
& Explicit teaching
Goal
Cognitive strategies
Cognitive and interpretive
strategies
Questions
Text-based and content
specific
Text-based and content
free
Metaphor
Routine
Tool kit
The evidence for TSI
• Solid evidence of improvement on
• specific strategies
• content of the lessons
• more general comprehension
• Used in grades 1-9, but most of the
research has been conducted in grades
2-4
Questioning the author (Beck,
McKeown and colleagues)
• Basic premise: Try to get inside the
author’s head to ask why (s) he might
have said things the way (s) he did.
• Critical, but within the boundaries of the
intended message.
• Basic strategy: Ask questions that
encourage the reader into questioning
the author’s goals and motives.
Questioning the Author
Goal
Candidate Questions
Initiate the discussion
What is the author trying to say?
What s the author’s message?
What is the author talking about?
Help students focus on the author’s message
That is what the author says, but what does it ,mean?
Help students link information
How does that connect with what the author already told us?
What information has the author added here that connects to
or fits in with…?
Identify difficulties with the way the author has presented
information or ideas.
Does that make sense?
Is that said in a clear way?
Did the author explain that clearly?
Why or why not? What’s missing? What do we need to
figure out or find out?
Encourage students to refer to the text either because
they’ve misinterpreted a text statement or to help them
recognize that they’ve made an inference
Did the author tell us that?
Did the author give us the answer to that?
The evidence for Questioning the Author
• Teachers can learn the techniques
• Students double their participation in
discussions
• Students increase their performance on
higher order comprehension and
monitoring
Teacher-Directed Instruction in
Comprehension Strategies
• Some key aspects of strategy instruction
• Authenticity of strategies (things that real
readers use)
• Demonstration by teachers (what, why,
when, and how): making thinking public
• Genuine apprenticeships: gradual release
of responsibility, learning from one another
• Authenticity of texts (essential that it be
applied to real texts)
Teacher-Directed Instruction in
Comprehension Strategies
• Embedding Strategy Instruction in Text
Reading
• The paradox of generalization: to get
strategies that generalize, we have to
focus on the particular text at hand.
• Situated cognition: what we have to guide
us in new situations are more like
precedents than general routines
The use of visual displays and other
“structural” devices
• Why they work
• Help students “see” relationships and
structure (render the structure of the text
transparent)
• They carry an implicit syntax (help students
see relationships)
• Allow for active “transformation” of
information (Representation)—a summary
yes, but an “interpreted” summary
Four levels of Metacognitive
Knowledge:
•
•
•
•
Tacit readers
Aware readers
Strategic readers
Reflective readers
Tacit Readers
Readers who
lack awareness
of how they
think when they
read.
Aware Readers
Readers who realize when
meaning has broken down but do
not know how to fix the problem.
Strategic Readers
Readers who use
comprehension
strategies to
enhance
understanding.
Reflective Readers
Readers who are reflect on their
thinking and apply strategies
flexibly depending on their
purpose for reading.
We must teach students to:
• Track their thinking
• Notice when they
lose focus
• Stop and go back to
clarify thinking
• Reread to enhance
understanding
• Read ahead to
clarify meaning
• Identify what’s
confusing about the
text
• Think critically about
the text
• Match the problem
with the strategy that
will best solve it
Strategies used by Proficient
Readers:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Making Connections
Asking Questions
Visualizing
Drawing Inferences
Determining Important Ideas
Synthesizing Information
Making Connections
When students have had an experience
similar to that of a character in a story, they
are more likely to understand the character’s
motives, thoughts, and feelings.
A.K.A.
Prior Knowledge
Schema Theory
Three types of connections
• Text-to-self are connections that
readers make between the text and
their past experiences.
• Text-to-text are connections that
readers make between the text they are
reading and another text.
• Text-to-world are connections readers
make between text and the issues,
events, or concerns of society and the
world at large.
Teaching children to make
connections
• Choose stories
close to their own
lives and
experiences
• Move from close to
home to more global
issues
• Model using “thinkalouds”
Asking Questions
Questioning is the strategy that propels
readers forward. When readers have
questions they are less likely to
abandon the text. Proficient readers
ask questions before, during, and after
reading.
Readers ask questions to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Construct meaning
Enhance understanding
Find answers
Solve problems
Find specific information
Acquire a body of information
Discover new information
Propel research efforts
Clarify confusion
Teaching children to question
• Share questions about your own
reading
• Stress that some questions are
answered, others are not
• Demonstrate how to list and categorize
questions
• Use “wonder books” and “question
webs”
Visualizing
Visualizing enables a reader to make
the words on the page real and
concrete. It is the ability to create a
movie of the text in your head. When
students create these “movies” while
reading, their level of engagement
increases and their attention doesn’t
flag.
When readers visualize it…
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Allows them to create mental images
Enhances meaning with mental imagery
Links past experiences to the text
Enables readers to place themselves in the
story
Strengthens a readers relationship to the text
Stimulates imaginative thinking
Heightens engagement with text
Brings joy to reading
Teaching children to visualize
• Use wordless picture books
• Merge prior experience and the text to
create mental images
• Use non-fiction trade books (with
pictures) to make comparisons
• Use all senses to comprehend text
Making Inferences
Inferring is the bedrock of
comprehension. It allows us to “read
between the lines,” to make our own
discoveries without the direct comment
of the author. If readers do not infer
they will not grasp the deeper meaning
of the text.
When readers infer they
• Draw conclusions based on clues in the
text
• Make predictions before and during
reading
• Surface underlying themes
• Use implicit information from the text to
create meaning during and after reading
• Use the pictures to help gain meaning
Teaching children to infer
• Help them better
understand their own
and other’s feelings
• Use all aspects of the
book to infer ( cover,
pictures and text)
• Understand difference
between prediction and
inference
• Differentiate
between plot and
theme
• Using inferring to
better understand
textbooks
Determining Important Ideas
The ability to determine importance in
text often requires us to use related
comprehension strategies. We may
have to infer the lesson or moral in a
fairy tale or summarize the information
in a science text. What we determine to
be important depends on our purpose
for reading.
When determining importance
• Learn new information and build
background knowledge
• Distinguish what’s important from what’s
interesting
• Discern a theme, opinion, or
perspective
• Answer a specific question
• Determine the author’s message:
inform, persuade, or entertain?
Teaching children to determine
important ideas
• Activate prior knowledge
• Determine what to pay
• Note characteristics of careful attention to
text length and structure
• Determine what to
• Note important headingsignore
and subheadings
• Decide to quit when the
• Determine what to read text contains no
relevant information
and in what order
• Decide if the text it
worth careful reading or
just skimming
Synthesizing Information
Synthesizing allows us to make sense
of important information and move on.
It requires the reader to sift and sort
through large amounts of information to
extract the overall meaning.
Synthesizing is the strategy that allows
readers to change their thinking.
When readers synthesize, they
• Stop and collect their thoughts before reading
on
• Sift important ideas from less important ones
• Summarize the information by briefly
identifying the main points
• Combine these main points into a bigger idea
• Make generalizations and/or judgments about
the information they read
• Personalize their reading by combining new
information with prior knowledge to form a new
idea, opinion or perspective
Teaching children to synthesize
• Retelling a story
• Make margin notes
while reading
• Summarize the
content and add
personal response
• Taking notes and/or
highlighting
• Read like a writer
• Asking/Answering
difficult questions
Testing your knowledge…
Making Inferences
This strategy allows us to “read
between the lines.”
Asking Questions
Proficient readers do this before, during,
and after reading.
Synthesizing Information
This allows readers to change their way
of thinking.
Summary: Comprehension improves when
• We support it with other types of instruction
(vocabulary, word identification, fluency,
writing)
• We teach strategies and routines explicitly
• We provide lots of opportunities for just plain
reading
• We contextualize it with engaging discussions
that embrace ideas, feelings, and insights
embedded in clear purposes for reading
Questions?
For More Information...
• Contact:
Patricia A. Edwards, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
Teacher Education Department
304 Erickson Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824-1034
Phone: 517 432-0858
E-mail: [email protected]