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A New Way of thinking about comprehension


How many times have we, teachers, worried about testing to determine whether our students understand a comprehension skill or strategy? 


In LETRS, Moats and Tolman talk about the many hidden mental activities that happen in comprehension. In other words, comprehension is more of a process than a product. 


Well, that makes sense. 


So what are those processes of comprehension? 

  • Monitoring comprehension - my favorite strategy for this is STP (Stop, Think, Paraphrase)
  • Reading with appropriate pace - pacing actually correlates to understanding text
  • Making inferences as you read - what are the characters thinking or feeling? 
  • Making a mental model to organize thinking  and understanding
  • Making connections in the text with views and background knowledge 

How can we support those processes of comprehension? 

Reading multiple texts around one topic helps to build background knowledge.  In another blog I will talk moe about this critical component of learning. A final component that will be addressed later is helping students process the actual language of the text - vocabulary, syntax, semantics. 

Remember in your teacher prep college experience when we learned about before, during and after reading? Well, turns out those phases are cricitcal for supporting students as they build mental models. Teachers need to guide the students to recognizing certain parts of the text that are important for building understanding. 

Teachers need to purposefully set the stage before reading, guide understanding through interactive read aloud questions, and create experiences that synthesize their understanding after reading. 

So you see, comprehension is more than just pulling books off a shelf and asking a question or two. It is more than reading a paragraph and asking multiple choice questions based on one specific skill. It is more than drill and kill of isolated skills. 

Come join me on the OTHER End of the reading rope as we dive deeper into language comprehension!  Stay tuned.... 


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