What is Comprehension?
Learning to read is an exciting milestone for kids. Early literacy skills include phonological awareness, letter and sound recognition, decoding, blending, and segmenting. Without a strong foundation of these skills, comprehension is not possible. Think about building a house. Would you build a house on a faulty or weak foundation? No. You want your house to be on a strong and sturdy foundation. The same goes for reading. With this being said, there is so much more to reading than just sounding out words. Having strong reading comprehension means that students can make sense of what is happening in the text.
For the younger students, I like to focus on two parts of reading comprehension:
Listening Comprehension
Listening Comprehension is the ability to listen to a text read aloud and make sense of (or comprehend) what the text was all about. This helps to build vocabulary, activate prior knowledge, encourage discussions and model what good readers do.
Oral Reading Comprehension
Oral Comprehension is the ability to read the text with proper fluency, expression, and accuracy in order to comprehend and make meaning of the text. This can be achieved once students have that strong foundation of phonological awareness, phonics, and fluency.
For students who are just starting their journey as readers, this can be difficult. They spend so much of their cognitive ability becoming a fluent reader. Think about this for a minute.
When a child is learning how to read, they must first look at the page and ask themselves the following:
How many words are on the page?
How can I track those words with my finger?
Where does this sentence start?
Where does this sentence end?
What are the letters in this word?
What sounds do these letters make?
How can I sound out these letters to blend them into a word?
Crazy right? So, I bet you are thinking, there is no way they will be able to comprehend what they are reading until they are completely fluent! I beg to differ. Today I am going to share with you some helpful tips to get your kiddos off on the right foot.
The Best Place to Start:
Because we know that our early texts don't typically have a lot to "comprehend," I suggest starting with listening comprehension. This will allow students to begin to understand that we read for meaning. Kids love to be read to. They love picture books and they love it when we read with expression. Take time every single day to read aloud to your students.
As you are reading, model what good readers do.
Activate prior knowledge prior to reading.
Build background knowledge and discuss vocabulary.
Look at and talk about the illustrations.
Ask questions about what is happening in the story.
Think aloud—Tell your students what you are thinking as you read certain parts of the story.
Make connections to what you are reading and share those connections with your students.
Stop and take time to retell what has happened so far (characters, setting, events conflict, resolution).
Talk about how the characters are feeling in the story.
Make predictions.
By taking the time to do this with your students, you are helping to build strong background knowledge and you are modeling for them what good readers do. When you have finished reading the story, ask them questions about what was read.
Click below for some free ready-made questions. These questions are perfect for both fiction and non-fiction and can be used with any book!
Once students begin to start understanding the concept of comprehension, you can begin to also move it slowly into small group. Next week, I will be sharing some quick and easy ideas to use in your small group! Snag your free comprehension questions!
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