Reading and Comprehension

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You can read as many texts as you want about any particular subject, but how much of the information do you actually a take away?

For me personally, this is where I have always struggled. You find yourself reading along in a text, and suddenly you stop and think- "Wait, what did I just read!?"

This is called comprehension.

What is Comprehension? 

According to the Ontario Curriculum, an effective reader is one who not only grasps the concepts communicated but also builds upon them in new contexts. To do this the reader must be able to think clearly, analyze and absorb new materials. Students become effective readers through a range of comprehension strategies by utilizing a variety of texts. 

The reading strands four overall expectations are as follows:

1. read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning;
   
2. recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate understanding of how they help communicate meaning;
   
3. use knowledge of words and cueing systems to read fluently;
   
4. reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading. 
   

Comprehension is the ability to understand something. It is the ability to take away meaning from a text. As stated in the Literacy Essential Learning Network, comprehension is a complex practice involving knowledge, thinking, teaching and experience. In order for students to comprehend, effective instruction is necessary.

Comprehension is the difference between being able to read text and understand the meaning of it. 

The K12 Reading Instruction Resources provide a great example of this difference. 

"Apple banana blue walk tree happy sing. Surely you were able to read each of the words in that sentence and understand what they meant independently. An apple is a fruit that is usually round and red, green or yellow. A banana is another fruit that is yellow. Blue is a color…"

You can read the text yes, but does it makes sense? No. 

Reading comprehension is the intentional active process that occurs before, during and after reading a text in which you gather meaning. 

Why is Reading Comprehension Important? 

Reading without comprehension is just sounding out words, without any understanding. Words on a page or device have no meaning unless you can understand what they are saying, in order to provide you with information. Comprehension is essential and a critical component of literacy. 

How Do We Develop Reading Comprehension? 

Readers do not develop comprehension skills quickly or independently. Comprehension strategies are learned and taught over time through a variety of means. Just because you can read, it does not mean you comprehend. 

Here are 7 Strategies as further explained on the Reading Rockets resource.

1. Monitoring Comprehension
     - being aware of what you do
     - identifying what you do not understand and resolving the problems
2. Metacognition 
      - "thinking about thinking"
      - identify when and where the difficulty occurs
      - look back through the text
3. Graphic Organizers
      - illustrate concepts and relationships within texts
      -provide students with tools to examine texts
4. Answering Questions
      - give students a purpose for reading
       Four different types of question:
      - "right there": questions found right within the text
      - "think and search": questions based on the real of facts
      - "author and you": students use what the already know
      - "on your own":questions based on students prior knowledge 
5. Generating Questions
      - students become aware of whether they can answer the questions and if they understand what
        it is that they are reading
      - gather the important information from the text
6. Recognizing Story Structure
      - recognizing students of a story increasing the students comprehension
7. Summarizing  
      - students learn to recognize what information is important and put it into their own words
      - remember what they had read and highlight the main points



Developing comprehension is very important and this directly links to overall expectation one which states read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning as well as expectation two which states, "recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate understanding of how they help communicate meaning", as students must be able to construct meaning from the information that they gather relate this to other contexts. 

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Now that you understand some of the strategies to reading comprehension, what are some tools that you can use to aid the teaching and learning?

This article by Jamie Martin, provides some great tools through a means which todays students connect with - technology. These are some assistive tools which can help students to develop comprehension and deepen their understanding. Here are some of them:

Rewordify
"One of the most innovative websites to be developed in the last several years". The website works to locate the difficult words in the text by replacing them with simpler ones that the student can understand while providing the definitions and later on teaching students the new vocabulary.

Newsela

This tech tool was diver lopped for the comprehension of diverse learners. The tool publishes current events articles everyday in five different versions for different reading levels. The site then gathers the data from the student and creates prompts based on their comprehension level and progress.

Inspiration

This multi sensory tool improves reading comprehension through graphic organizers and software. It allows students to create visual representations of characters and themes while mapping out the details of the book they are reading while providing templates to increase comprehension.

Test Your Reading Comprehension 

This section will directly connect to overall expectation four which states, "reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading" as you can see how you did and where you need improvement. 

Here is a simple interactive learning tool to use that can you practice and test your reading comprehension from the e-Learning for Kids non-profit organization. 

Here is a sample reading comprehension worksheet for K5 learning on how to make animations for grade 5 students!