How Effective Readers Read
- Expect the reading to make sense
- Make mental predictions and form good hypotheses about the text’s meaning before they being to read.
- Understand the purpose for reading and adjust their rate and techniques.
- Organize information while they reads.
- Form mental pictures while they read.
- Monitor how well they comprehend as they go along and are aware when they fail to comprehend the text.
- Have the means to solve a comprehension problem when it occurs.
- Use context to determine word meanings.
- Recognize the main idea of the text
- Identify patterns in a text.
- Read ahead or reread for clarification.
- Read for global meaning (not word by word).
- Summarize/paraphrase what they have read
- Relate what they are reading to what they already know.
- Ask questions throughout the piece.
In middle school and high school, we are most often concerned with helping students readincreasingly more difficult text and helping students read to learn. We must scaffold our readinginstruction so students develop and become more confident with their comprehension skills. Threefactors are most helpful for insuring successful comprehension:
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Connection to prior knowledge
Understanding text structure
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Using text processing strategies (during and after reading)
Prior Knowledge
All readers bring what they already know to the piece they are reading. Obviously, if one hassome general knowledge on World War II and the Holocaust, reading an article about it iseasier. Readers compare information with their own experience to assist in comprehension.When they encounter something new, they can make inferences based on their priorknowledge. Readers who have a greater range of prior knowledge will find comprehensioneasier than readers whose knowledge is more limited. For struggling readers, it is essential that the teacher provide some prior knowledge with new stories or topics. Good teaching would suggest that a teacher ask questions prior to starting a piece of literature that evokes anything students might already know on the subject. Also, brainstorming as a whole class or in groups helps pool the information that students posses among themselves.
Text Structure
Students will comprehend what they are reading better if they understand what they arereading better if they understand how the text is structured. Texts have definite structure,whether literary or information, and we must help them to identify and make sense of thestructure as it relates to the content. For instance, students might create a story map as ameans of determining plot sequence and conflict resolution. They can use the map to see thatthe writer has organized a series of events in a certain order, linked by cause and effectrelationships. Other types of writing have specific structures also: a newspaper article will look different from a textbook summary; likewise, an editorial essay will look different from a description ofsmoking. We help students unlock the meaning if we teach them how writers structure causeand effect, comparison and contrast, problem solution, descriptions, etc.
Text Processing Strategies
Student who use strategies to help make sense of their reading as they go along and tosynthesize their understanding at the end, will have greater comprehension of and, usually,greater satisfaction with a text. Likewise, understanding how these strategies work andbecoming aware of their own mental processes during reading (metacognition) can helpstudents make informed and purposeful choices about how they read. They become aware ofhow reading a “beach” novel is different from what they read a chapter in a science textbook.They recognize that what they do during reading and what they do to make sense of theirunderstanding after they’ve read differs based on their purposes and the kind of text it is.Students also become aware that they need different processing strategies based on the
difficulty or density of a text.