Comprehension

Teaching Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Comprehension with Riddles

By: Marcy Zipke (2008)

Riddles are the perfect medium for learning how to manipulate language for many reasons, including students' familiarity with them and motivation for reading them. Here's how riddles can be used in the classroom to stimulate student's metalinguistic awareness.

Instruction of Metacognitive Strategies Enhances Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Achievement of Third-Grade Students

By: Regina Boulware-Gooden, Suzanne Carreker, Ann Thornhill, and R. Malatesha Joshi (2007)

The use of metacognitive strategies helps students to "think about their thinking" before, during, and after they read.

Repeated Interactive Read-Alouds in Preschool and Kindergarten

By: Cheryl K. Iannucci (2007)

Research has demonstrated that the most effective read-alouds are those where children are actively involved asking and answering questions and making predictions, rather than passively listening. This article describes in detail a technique for a three-step interactive read-aloud using sophisticated storybooks.

Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?

By: Daniel T. Willingham (2006)

How does the mind work — and especially how does it learn? Teachers' instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such gut knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?

How to Help Students See When Their Knowledge Is Superficial or Incomplete

By: Daniel T. Willingham (2006)

Why Students Think They Understand When They Don't

By: Daniel T. Willingham (2006)

Very often, students will think they understand a body of material. Believing that they know it, they stop trying to learn more. But, come test time, it turns out they really don't know the material. Can cognitive science tell us anything about why students are commonly mistaken about what they know and don't know? Are there any strategies teachers can use to help students better estimate what they know?

How Knowledge Helps

By: Daniel T. Willingham (2006)

The author, a professor of cognitive psychology, notes, "it's true that knowledge gives students something to think about, but… knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills, it actually makes learning easier." Factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning, and once you have some knowledge, the brain finds it easier to get more and more knowledge.

Comprehension

By: Gina Carrier (2006)

In the last few years, an alarm has sounded throughout the nation's middle and high schools: too many students cannot read well. It isn't that they don't know their ABCs or how to read words. It's that they cannot understand or explain what they're reading. Johnny can read, but he doesn't understand.

Knowledge in the Classroom

By: Daniel T. Willingham (2006)

Learning happens when we connect new information to what we already know. When children have limited knowledge about the world, they have a smaller capacity to learn more about it. Here are four ways teachers can build content knowledge that will expand the opportunity for students to forge new connections — and make them better independent readers and learners.

How We Neglect Knowledge and Why

By: Susan Neuman (2006)

What Do Reading Comprehension Tests Measure? Knowledge.

By: E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (2006)

The federal No Child Left Behind law requires more testing of students, and has spurred some frantic and ineffectual test preparation in many schools, says the author, E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Reading tests must use unpredictable texts to be accurate measures of reading ability, but if you cannot predict the subject matter on a valid reading test, how can you prepare students? Hirsch says you can't, and, therefore, you shouldn’t try. The only useful way to prepare for a reading test is indirectly–by becoming a good reader of a broad range of texts, an ability that requires broad general knowledge."

What Is Reading? Decoding and the Jabberwocky's Song

By: Sebastian Wren (2005)

This article illustrates the difference between being able to decode words on a page and being able to derive meaning from the words and the concepts they are trying to convey.

Improving Reading Skills in the Science Classroom

By: Teaching Today (2005)

Science texts are often more challenging for students than other text types. This article contains strategies teachers can use to increase reading comprehension, helping students make sense of complicated science concepts.

Using Think-Alouds to Improve Reading Comprehension

By: Roger Farr and Jenny Conner (2004)

Students need to think while they are reading. By using modeling, coached practice, and reflection, you can teach your students strategies to help them think while they read and build their comprehension.

Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension

By: C.R. Adler (2004)

Comprehension strategies are conscious plans — sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension.

Reading For Meaning: Tutoring Elementary Students to Enhance Comprehension

By: Akimi Gibson (2004)

This article provides tutors with proven techniques for helping students acquire comprehension skills and strategies. In addition to building background knowledge about comprehension, it looks at six comprehension strategies and activities that support each strategy.

English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction

By: Beth Antunez (2002)

Find out how teachers can play to the strengths and shore up the weaknesses of English Language Learners in each of the Reading First content areas.

Don't Let Basics Obstruct Comprehension Strategies

By: Kathleen Kennedy Manzo (2002)

A new federal report, "Reading for Understanding: Toward an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension," produced by the RAND Corporation, sets out an ambitious agenda for research that could be readily applied in the classroom and that addresses three specific areas: the reader's ability, knowledge, and experience; features of the text; and the purposes, processes, and consequences of a particular reading activity.

Reading Aloud to Build Comprehension

By: Judith Gold and Akimi Gibson (2001)

This article discusses the power of reading aloud and goes a step further to discuss the power of thinking out loud while reading to children as a way to highlight the strategies used by thoughtful readers.

Comprehension Instruction: What Works

By: Michael Pressley (2000)

Without a strong background in basic skills like decoding and vocabulary-building, reading comprehension is impossible. This article offers research-based strategies for building on these and other skills to increase student understanding of what is read.