Don't Throw Out Comprehension Strategies
Why comprehension strategies play an important role in reading development
Dear Reader,
The last few weeks, I have discussed the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Rope, the essential role phonological and phonemic awareness play in the development of reading, and the importance of building knowledge through vocabulary and content instruction. It would not be wrong to wonder...are all these things another fad? Do these new shiny ideas replace the old reading practices we were previously told were important, like metacognitive strategies and differentiated reading instruction?
No. Not at all.
We misunderstand the research when we think all of these components are discrete skills to be developed in isolation from one another. Imagine trying to plan such a schedule: “10 minutes for phonemic awareness, 30 minutes of phonics, 30 minutes of vocabulary, 1 hour for strategy instruction, 1 hour for background knowledge, 1 hour for…” We end up with no time left in the day for anything. In fact, such approaches to literacy have led to general ELA instruction hoarding significant time in elementary school schedules. The truth is, a strong phonics lesson will incorporate, if not rely on, the development of a child’s phonemic awareness. When children write about a topic they learned about, they are employing phonological principles. Strong content instruction in science and social studies will allow children to expand their vocabulary, engage in discussions with higher-order questioning, and deeply read texts. Literacy instruction is inherently integrated and cross-disciplinary, but we muddy this fact in schedules and curriculums that align with a narrow, rigid vision of literacy.
Today, I’m going to talk about one of the shiny objects of yesteryear: comprehension strategies. It’s unclear how general comprehension strategies fit into an ELA model emphasizing particular knowledge, though they have been robustly researched. My goal is to clarify which comprehension strategies are valuable to teach, how they should be taught, and how often.
Until next time,
Erin
This, Not That
Comprehension strategies are the mental activities a child engages in while reading; to put it another way, comprehension strategies are the thinking processes used to understand a text.
Comprehension strategies are not what you think they are. Here’s the list I initially generated based on my experiences with different curricula:
Main Idea
Character Motivation
Character Change
Central Message
Theme
Compare and Contrast
Problem and Solution
Etc
Here’s the thing: these are examples of the types of questions I may ask students, but they are not habits of thinking while reading. Comprehension strategies are the mental activities a child engages in while reading; to put it another way, comprehension strategies are the thinking processes used to understand a text. A student cannot tell me about the themes in a story or what argument the author is making unless they first make sense of what they are reading.
What Works Clearinghouse distilled the research into six strategies:
Activating Prior Knowledge/Predicting
Questioning
Visualizing
Monitoring, Clarifying, and Fix-Up
Drawing Inferences
Summarizing/Retelling
All of these strategies focus on what the child is thinking about while reading so that they comprehend the text. Activating prior knowledge and making predictions is when a reader makes explicit connections between what they already know and what they see in the text. Questioning refers to readers asking themselves what/how/why/where while they are reading to better understand the themes, ideas, characters, steps, or arguments. Readers visualize by creating a mental image of what they are reading. They monitor when they understand or do not understand what they read, which leads them to reread or look for clarifying details. They notice when authors do not include all the information they need to understand something, so they utilize text hints and clues to draw an inference. They can summarize the key points of the text in their own words.
How to Teach Comprehension Strategies
Teachers need to model, model, model.
Teachers cannot listen in on a child’s thoughts, which makes measuring successful use of these comprehension strategies difficult. Unfortunately, while there is an extensive research literature on the benefits of comprehension strategy instruction, the same cannot be said for teacher pedagogy. What Works Clearinghouse concedes in their report (linked above), “The panel believes that teaching strategies with a gradual release of responsibility facilitates strategy learning; however, there is no strong causal evidence that strategy instruction that uses gradual release of responsibility to students improves comprehension any more than strategy instruction without gradual release. Three studies examined multiple strategy instruction that involved gradual release of responsibility, but neither study tested specifically for the effectiveness of the gradual release of responsibility.”
By gradual release, the panel means that teachers first model and facilitate guided practice with students before they move towards using the strategy with independence. My guess is most of the educators consider the use of gradual release too obvious and uncontroversial to bear mentioning here. We know explicit and direct instruction, specifically in math, science, and phonics, have been buttressed by decades of research, and it is more likely than not that we can draw similar conclusions about strategy instruction. Nevertheless, this is one of those moments when I think we have to point out that there are still questions unanswered by researchers, and it is important we remember scientific inquiry is ongoing and, by necessity, always incomplete.
All that said, I think I can say a few things based on my experience about teaching strategies to students.
Teachers need to model, model, model. Even though we can’t eavesdrop on their inner thoughts, we can create a situation where kids can see into our heads. A strong think-aloud shows students a teacher’s mental process while reading. When they see their teacher pausing to notice they didn’t understand something, kids are more likely to pause in their own reading.
The research is mixed on whether teachers should only model one strategy at a time or model multiple strategies. In general, I don’t think we should overwhelm our youngest students with too many strategies at once. Nonetheless, the strategies listed above naturally arise during the reading process. Drawing inferences happens constantly in a text, while summarizing can happen throughout or after the text happens. Teachers can pause and use questioning to help children monitor their comprehension If there is a misunderstanding, teachers can use the opportunity to say, “This happens to me all the time! Whenever I’m not sure what’s going on, I go back to the last page and read it again. I then pay really close attention to see if it makes more sense the second time. Let’s do that now.”
To support the transition from teacher-supported reading to independence, create concise visuals and graphic organizers for students. So often, I see student-facing materials busy with tons of clipart and text, which leaves little space for student thinking. I prefer to create a short series of thinking steps for students, which aligns with how I will model the strategy. When they get into an independent text, they can refer to either the visual or the graphic organizer to support their reading.
Not every student will need extensive support with all of these strategies. While strategies should be modeled and revisited throughout a school year, children may need additional modeling and support during small groups.
How Often Should Comprehension Strategies Be Taught?
A teacher’s mind is the most valuable educational resource, and we have to look carefully at our students as readers and thinkers to intentionally plan activities and materials that will move them forward.
As I mentioned above, literacy instruction is inherently interdisciplinary. Children read, think, and discuss across all subjects, and they can engage in prior knowledge activation, questioning, retell, visualization, comprehension monitoring, and inferential thinking throughout the school day.
But everything in teaching can be taken too far. What matters is that teachers strategically decide when and how to include any of these cognitive processes in their teaching. In the 2000 National Reading Panel report, they wrote:
“In spite of heavy emphasis on modeling and metacognitive instruction, even very good teachers may have trouble implementing, and may even omit, crucial aspects of strategic reasoning. The research suggests that, when partially implemented, students of strategy teachers will still improve. But it is not easy for teachers or readers to develop readers’ conceptions about what it means to be strategic. It takes time and ongoing monitoring of success to evolve readers into becoming good strategy users” (4-49).
They go on to say,
“Strategic reading requires strategic teaching, which involves putting teachers in positions where their minds are the most valued educational resource (Duffy, 1993). Skilled reading is constructive reading, and the activities of the reader matter (Pressley, Harris, & Marks, 1992; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995)” (4-49).
Students may quickly master some of the cognitive routines mentioned earlier, but some may struggle with smaller components. Of course, the elephant in the room is that a child may demonstrate excellent inferential thinking in an informational text but struggle to do the same in a realistic fiction story. These reading habits may present varying levels of difficulty based on the text and topic.
For this reason, teachers cannot rely on a scripted version of any of these comprehension strategies. A teacher’s mind is the most valuable educational resource, and we have to look carefully at our students as readers and thinkers to intentionally plan activities and materials that will move them forward. For some classes and age groups, visualization will be a frequent practice, while in another context this work will happen less frequently with the whole class and more often in a small group setting.
Math teacher Michael Pershan wrote in his book Teaching Math With Examples (2021) about the difference between evidence-based teaching and evidence-informed teaching. “Without getting bogged down in semantics, I think there is a difference between evidence-based teaching and evidence-informed teaching. The main difference is the first is mostly impossible and the second is hard but valuable.” He goes on to say, “Think of teaching as a landscape and research as the map. Not every hiker will take the same route, and we aren’t all trying to get to the same place. But a good, accurate map is useful to everybody” (39).
To borrow Pershan’s analogy, as we better understand the topography of the research map, when researchers or teachers fill in the locations of rivers, hills, and forests, we can better direct and guide children on their pathway to skilled reading. Research on comprehension strategies does not provide teachers with all the answers, but understanding that we need to care about the cognitive processes children use when reading can help us make purposeful decisions to positively impact learning.
Extra Credit:
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” - Jorge Luis Borges
Cognitive scientist Mark Seidenberg talks with researchers and practitioners about reading science and the implications for elementary classrooms. Check it out here.
Researcher Nell K. Duke of The University of Michigan breaks down the benefits of comprehension strategies in this video. Her website is a treasure trove for K-3 literacy teachers, which is the focus of her research.