How to Teach Reading Comprehension
SCRIP Comprehension Strategy Questions
Teachers struggle with how to teach reading comprehension. Note the spectrum, exaggerated a bit to make the point: The implicit-instruction teachers hope that reading a lot really will teach comprehension through some form of reading osmosis. The explicit-instruction teachers teach the skills that can be quantified, but ignore meaning-making as the true purpose of reading.
The die-hard implicit-instruction teachers want to believe that reading comprehension is something caught, and not taught. They want to believe this “feel-good” saying because it removes them from the bulk of responsibility for teaching students to read. These same teachers spend tremendous amounts of time reading out loud and enjoying literature with their students. Occasionally, these “sages on their stages” may drop pearls of literary wisdom to their enraptured audiences. Of course, students enjoy this implicit, spoon-fed “instruction” because it keeps them from having to read challenging text on their own.
The die-hard explicit-instruction teachers believe that every instructional moment must be planned as part of the teachers’ instructional objectives. If the reading skill cannot be measured and put on a progress monitoring chart, then it is simply not worth teaching. Unfortunately, these teachers focus on the appetizers of reading and not the main course. The appetizers of discreet reading skills are easily diagnosed and are frequently easy to teach. Think phonemic awareness, phonics, syllabication, and fluency. The main course of reading comprehension is difficult to diagnose, even more difficult to teach, and just cannot be quantified on traditional recording matrices.
Perhaps all of us we need to shift our focus: from teaching reading comprehension to practicing reading comprehension. This paradigm shift will help teachers strike the balance between implicit and explicit instruction and turn their students into capable, independent readers. If fact, I might go so far as to advise teachers: Don’t Teach Reading Comprehension. Here’s why and how to help students improve reading comprehension through assessment-based practice.
1. The explicit direct instruction advocates are right: the appetizers are necessary to enjoy the meal. But the appetizers are not the meal; reading comprehension is the meal. The Simple View of Reading reminds us that word recognition x language comprehension = skillful reading (reading comprehension). So, as efficiently as possible, teach the pre-requisite reading and language skills and help students unlearn their bad reading habits.
How? Know your readers. Each comes to your class with different skill-sets and deficits. Each needs mastery of phonemic awareness, phonics, syllabication, sight words, and grade-level fluency to master the reading automaticity that will allow them to attend to meaning-making.
Effective whole-class diagnostic assessments that won’t take up all of your teaching time and differentiated reading skills instruction are crucial to setting the main course. However, students need to understand the purpose behind the appetizers. Teachers accomplish this by helping all students “catch up” in their areas of reading skill deficits, while they concurrently “keep up” with challenging reading comprehension strategies instruction and practice. Read about the value and purpose of reading assessments and get the free diagnostic reading assessments that will inform your instruction. Learn about the importance and role of phonemic awareness, phonics, syllabication, sight words, and fluency in shaping reading comprehension for you readers.
2. Use shared reading to model the synthesized process of reading. Shared reading means that the teacher reads stories, articles, poetry, songs, etc. out loud to students to model the whole reading process. Students need to see and hear modeled reading that integrates all of the reading skills with a focus on meaning-making. Without this “whole to part” modeling, isolated reading skills instruction will fail to develop readers who read well on their own. The teacher shares the reading strategies as she reads that help her understand, interpret, and enjoy the text. She models self-questioning strategies and problem solving. Learn how to do a reading think-aloud and teach self-questioning skills.
3. Use guided reading to teach discreet reading comprehension strategies. Guided reading means that the teacher reads or plays an audio book and stops to help students practice a pre-selected reading comprehension strategy. Notice that I did not define guided reading as using the three-cueing system to analyze student comprehension, and I did not suggest using running records and miscue analyses to move students up or down a reading level. My kind of guided reading employs complex text, in which the teacher guides readers into inferences, analogies, double-meanings, foreshadowing, etc. through activities such as close readings, re-reading, questioning, and writing. In my guided reading, students do not read out loud (as they are generally poor models for listening comprehension), and the reading discussion may take place in small groups or whole class. In my guided reading, we use the same language of instruction to cue textual analysis, using the SCRIP reading comprehension strategies: Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict.
4. Teach independent reading by getting students to practice guided reading strategies on their own. Teach students to make personal connections with the text. This does not mean that students relate aspects of the reading to their own experience. Instead, readers access their prior knowledge and experiences to understand and interpret the reading. The focus is on the author-reader relationship. Learn how to teach students to visualize and connect their lives and knowledge to the text to increase reading comprehension.
Assign reading homework with required parental discussion, even at the middle school level. We have to get students practicing reading for at least two hours weekly at 5% unknown word recognition with accountability. SSR in the classroom won’t get this done, even with response journals. Immediate discussion at the summary and analytical levels builds comprehension. Parents can quite capably supervise this independent activity. Learn how to develop a successful independent reading homework component.
5. Teach the reading and writing connection. Reinforce the reading/writing connection by showing how expository and narrative texts are organized and how each should be read according to their own characteristics. Wide experience across many reading genres will help build comprehension and writing ability. Learn the reading-writing strategies that “kill two birds with one stone” and learn how to teach an effective read-study method for expository text.
6. Teach vocabulary explicitly and in context. Vocabulary acquisition is essential to reading comprehension. Teachers need to expose students to challenging text, teach context clues, teach the common Greek and Latin word parts, teach vocabulary strategies such as semantic spectrums, and practice “word play” and memory tricks to increase vocabulary proficiency.
7. Teach content. Teaching content is teaching reading comprehension. Good readers bring content, prior knowledge, and experience to their side of the author-reader relationship. Content-deficient readers can’t make relevant personal, literary, or academic connections to the text and comprehension suffers. Pre-teaching story background is essential to build comprehension. For example, why not show the movie first, once in awhile, before reading the novel? Pull aside a group of struggling readers and pre-teach key concepts to scaffold meaning.
Remedial readers often practice reading skills ad nauseum, but grow more deficient in content. For example, a seventh grade student who is removed from an English-language arts class for remedial reading will probably lose the content of reading two novels, learning grade level grammar and vocabulary, missing the speech and poetry units… you get the idea. Not to mention, the possibility of losing social science or science instruction if placed in a remedial reading class… Both content and reading strategies are critical for reading development.
*****
The Science of Reading Intervention Program
The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Word Recognition includes explicit, scripted instruction and practice with the 5 Daily Google Slide Activities every reading intervention student needs: 1. Phonemic Awareness and Morphology 2. Blending, Segmenting, and Spelling 3. Sounds and Spellings (including handwriting) 4. Heart Words Practice 5. Sam and Friends Phonics Books (decodables). Plus, digital and printable sound wall cards and speech articulation songs. Print versions are available for all activities. First Half of the Year Program (55 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)
The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Language Comprehension resources are designed for students who have completed the word recognition program or have demonstrated basic mastery of the alphabetic code and can read with some degree of fluency. The program features the 5 Weekly Language Comprehension Activities: 1. Background Knowledge Mentor Texts 2. Academic Language, Greek and Latin Morphology, Figures of Speech, Connotations, Multiple Meaning Words 3. Syntax in Reading 4. Reading Comprehension Strategies 5. Literacy Knowledge (Narrative and Expository). Second Half of the Year Program (30 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)
The Science of Reading Intervention Program: Assessment-based Instruction provides diagnostically-based “second chance” instructional resources. The program includes 13 comprehensive assessments and matching instructional resources to fill in the yet-to-be-mastered gaps in phonemic awareness, alphabetic awareness, phonics, fluency (with YouTube modeled readings), Heart Words and Phonics Games, spelling patterns, grammar, usage, and mechanics, syllabication and morphology, executive function shills. Second Half of the Year Program (25 minutes-per-day, 18 weeks)
The Science of Reading Intervention Program BUNDLE includes all 3 program components for the comprehensive, state-of-the-art (and science) grades 4-adult full-year program. Scripted, easy-to-teach, no prep, no need for time-consuming (albeit valuable) LETRS training or O-G certification… Learn as you teach and get results NOW for your students. Print to speech with plenty of speech to print instructional components.
SCIENCE OF READING INTERVENTION PROGRAM RESOURCES HERE for detailed product description and sample lessons.
FREE DOWNLOADS TO ASSESS THE QUALITY OF PENNINGTON PUBLISHING RESOURCES: The SCRIP (Summarize, Connect, Re-think, Interpret, and Predict) Comprehension Strategies includes class posters, five lessons to introduce the strategies, and the SCRIP Comprehension Bookmarks.
Get the SCRIP Comprehension Strategies FREE Resource:
Get the Diagnostic ELA and Reading Assessments FREE Resource:
I am a speech language pathologist in an a rural and economically deprived elementary school. I spend the majority of my day supporting my language impaired students in the classroom. Since my state (FL) instituted the FL Comprehensive Assessment Test (F-CAT), the students are forced into completing endless practice tests. Often, the teachers don’t have the time to go over and discuss the reading passages with the students. The teachers cry out that the students are just not comprehending what they have read. Your article succinctly states what I have tried for years to express. Thank you. Hopefully seeing it from another source will add power to my words. Brenda Pardee