Are you familiar with the struggle of reading the same page over and over again without making sense of it? So are lots of kids. Even those who are easily able to decode words sometimes struggle with reading comprehension. And while there isn’t any systematic, skill–based curriculum out there that focuses exclusively on comprehension, there are ways we can teach kids how to make sense of what they read.
Identify the Root of the Problem
When a student struggles to understand what they are reading, it can be for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is due to limited vocabulary which prevents them from making sense of the literal words they are reading. Sometimes it has more to do with confusing sentence and paragraph structure. In these cases, students know what each individual word means, but can’t make sense of the words in context. The other most common cause of comprehension problems is a learning disability. Students with dyslexia, auditory or visual processing issues, or receptive language impairment often have extra trouble comprehending what they read.
Build Up Vocabulary
Developing vocabulary is an important step in helping students understand the greater meaning of a sentence. They can’t understand the whole unless they can understand the parts. But education has come a long way in understanding how kids develop vocabulary best. Learning by rote is rarely an effective way to make new words stick. Instead, we are huge fans of Marzano’s method of vocabulary acquisition. It’s much more involved than memorizing a list, and it’s also much, much more effective.
Teach Sentence and Paragraph Structure
Developing readers need to learn and understand the formula for how words and ideas fit together in text. This can help them make more sense of what they are reading and what it means. The more practice students have with identifying the structure of various texts, the more equipped they’ll be to use that knowledge to make meaning of text.
Teach and Model Comprehension Strategies
Some of the most common comprehension strategies are summarizing, inferring, predicting, visualizing, activating prior knowledge, and asking questions as one reads. Developing these skills can help students learn how to engage more actively and more dynamically with what they are reading, as opposed to reading passively. However, these skills rarely come naturally to kids. It’s important that we teach them explicitly how to use these strategies and what it looks like to use them while reading.
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