Five Strategies for Teaching Adolescent Students With Deficits in Their Reading Comprehension

Upon completion of this section, y'all will:

• Empathise the components of reading comprehension
• Receive ideas for making the text personally relevant
• Larn how to teach active engagement with the text
• Obtain extension activities for all learning styles

Traditionally, reading comprehension was narrowly idea to embrace answering multiple-choice questions after reading a story or passage. While this may be one form of reading comprehension, it is not comprehensive and does not have into account the stages of reading comprehension, requirements for understanding dissimilar genres of text, or understanding text when read silent versus orally.

Comprehension of Fiction video past The Jerry Fifty. Johns Literacy Dispensary at Northern Illinois Academy

Paula, an eighth grade pupil with dyslexia, cannot manage to answer multiple choice questions unless they are read aloud to her. Christina, a fifth grade student with dyslexia, tin accurately respond multiple choice questions for passages up to the 10th grade level, though she cannot tell you what she's read. This page focuses on strategies to enhance reading comprehension, commencement with selecting something to read, and ending with how the reader integrates text into her knowledge base and demonstrates that noesis. Multiple ways of reading and demonstrating noesis will exist discussed for a variety of learning styles.

We have written this and so that you can share the information directly with your students.

• Before You Read
• While You Read
• Later You Read

Before You lot Read

Pick a book

To become a reader, you accept to be able to pick a volume. This skill is not frequently a part of Language Arts curricula; as a result, many students with dyslexia do non know how to select a book. What criteria should they utilise? How easy it looks? How big the font is? Explicit instruction for choosing a book (even if information technology is for a report or from a volume list) is often needed. A variety of book genre vocabulary is necessary for this step: cocky-help, auto-biographical, fantasy, science-fiction, teen-fiction, historical fiction, mystery, romance, etc. On-site instruction (in front of a bookshelf, in a library or bookstore) is advantageous. The student should receive guidance through the following considerations:

• What are my interests? Do I desire to read about ane of these topics?
• What genre would I like to try?
• Where is that located in the library/bookstore?
• Does the title and summary on the embrace appeal to me?
• Is in that location an author or book that I have enjoyed in the past?
• Who can I ask for recommendations?
• If I open up up and read a few pages of the volume, does it capture my involvement?

Preview

Imagine that someone hands you an already open book and asks you to read information technology and do what it says (demonstrating comprehension) and it looks like Greek to yous. You are going to look at the title and chapter names, boldface words and tables to attempt to at least figure out if you are looking at a car manual, theology reference book, or Farmer'southward Almanac. Previewing a book gives the reader a chance to fit the information into a meaningful context. This helps her to bring all of her previous knowledge and schemas to the task in club to predict what she volition read.

If the student had the opportunity to pick her ain book, she has had the opportunity to preview it. Modeling the previewing process with verbal mediation is ofttimes an effective means of instruction this skill. For instance you might say, "Allow'due south see, this volume is called East of Eden by John Steinbeck. It's a long book, only the capacity look pretty short. In that location is no table of contents and the chapters don't have names, simply numbers. The back encompass says that Salinas Valley and River are in California. That must exist where the author is from or where the story takes place. Oh yes, it'due south where the story takes place. The front flap says that this story is about two families as they farm the land and raise their children out West. The characters' fate re-enacts the fall of Adam and Eve and the sibling rivalry of Cain and Abel. (While flipping through the pages) This looks pretty readable. At that place'due south lots of description and dialogue."

Afterwards modeling and verbally mediating the previewing procedure, ask your educatee to exercise the same. Yous may wish to have another grouping member jot down a list of key words as your pupil previews the text and verbally mediates this procedure. Writing down central words can demonstrate active listening, facilitate memory, and serve as a guide for the subsequent pre-reading tasks. If your educatee is going to be reading non-fiction or a portion of a textbook, betoken out relevant parts of the book, such every bit the table of contents, index, chapter championship, section headings, boldface words, tables, pictures and captions, etc. Information technology may be valuable to teach your student how to use the features of the book to skim. You may tell her, "The goal of skimming is to move your eyes rapidly through the text to get the gist or master idea of what you will exist reading. You may besides want to skim the book when you lot are looking for a specific answer to a question."

Previous cognition

Activating previous knowledge is an essential ingredient in building reading comprehension skills. Information technology allows the new data "to stick" to the older information and be more easily recognized, understood, and remembered. Initially, this may be a separate pace for your novice readers; still, with do this skill may be incorporated into the previewing procedure. Enquire your student what she knows nearly the themes, topics, and setting of the text that she only previewed. If you or a pupil wrote downwardly a list of key terms (i.e. Salinas, CA, sibling rivalry, Cain and Abel, the Fall, Adam and Eve, and farming) refer to it now. You may use an open-concluded ("Tell me what you know nigh these topics?") or more directive format ("Accept you e'er traveled out Westward? What do you think they are referring to when they mention 'The Fall of Adam and Eve?'") to find out what your student knows about these themes/terms.

Predict

Making a prediction about the book is a way of building reading comprehension before even commencing with the volume. You tin aid your student form a more complete or authentic prediction using the following techniques:

• Include several of the key words in the prediction.
• Incorporate the earth knowledge and personal experience from the previous chore.
• Put the prediction into a complete judgement.
• For a story, include the characters and a problem in your prediction.
• For not-fiction, include a person/object, action, time, and place (if applicable).
• Write this prediction down and and then modify it every bit new information is caused. Talk near the value and limitations of predictions (y'all may wish to use the analogy of a weather forecast that is not 100% authentic, nonetheless very valuable; information technology is continually updated when new information is attained).

Make this activeness fun by contributing predictions yourself. Make some that are in "left-field" and some that are more on-target. Ask the students to charge per unit and improve your predictions. Heighten the student's apprehension by proverb, "Permit'due south see if you're right about that!" Y'all could even reward the student (through a token system or with actress-credit points) for every correct part of her prediction.

Put on your reading schema

You might introduce schemas past comparing them to your reading glasses. (For younger students, y'all may wear some oversized or lightheaded glasses). Schemas are the lenses that help yous see what is going on in the story/text. You use dissimilar lenses for reading stories than for reading your science book considering stories have characters, problems, feelings, and plans for solving the problem, whereas scientific discipline books take information near the way things piece of work, hypotheses, and methods for testing, observing, and measuring. Invite your students to wearable their schema glasses for a different type of volume (history, math, or strange language). Begin the part and form of that type of book. Also talk virtually the way you would utilise that book and the tools to help you extract the data (i.east., conjugation boxes, timelines, examples, etc.). Enquire the students to compare and dissimilarity these schemas. If you are comparing genres within a Language Arts curriculum such every bit folklore, poetry, and biography, y'all may employ the aforementioned process. Then ask the students to cite other examples of stories they've read in these genres.

Find ways to make the schemas memorable. A visual learner may benefit from decorating book covers for all of her books with the schema written and illustrated. This can exist a reminder to use this "lens" each fourth dimension she opens her book to "correctly view" the text. An auditory learner may benefit from making a rhyme, chant, tune, or "wacky story" about all of the pertinent features of the schemas while a kinesthetic learner might make a skit or gesture to aid her remember the schemas. The goal for your student is to go far memorable and an automated part of the reading process.

While You Read

Active Reading

Choose your format: Multiple types of media are at present available to students (e.g., electronic books, audio books, and text-to-oral communication). It is of import for the student to read along with audio supports to increase sight vocabulary and reading fluency. Some students select to watch a picture show in conjunction with reading the book. The visual and auditory input tin strengthen reading comprehension. If your pupil selects this avenue for increasing reading comprehension, you will want to help her to compare and contrast the book and the motion-picture show.

Bank check your predictions and brand some more…A good book draws the reader in and allows her to "share in the feel." Therefore, you lot will want to invite your student to check her initial prediction (e.g., "I think this book volition be about the tensions between two siblings and the moral decay of two farming families that movement to California.") and revise it, likewise as brand new predictions as she goes. Even the finish of the book should cause the reader to speculate what happened afterwards that. If your pupil is an auditory learner, she could record her predictions (video or audio). A visual learner should be encouraged to write, illustrate, and visualize the prediction in graphic detail. You may demand to model that for her through verbal mediation. ("I picture two brothers, i stocky and hairy, the other lean and nimble yelling and coming to blows over a woman with whom they both accept fallen in dearest. The lean and nimble one has a black eye, but was able to break the stocky brother's nose, which is gushing blood.")

Clarify pregnant

Students with dyslexia need to exist taught to "check their comprehension" as they read. This is best addressed during oral reading. For case, in E of Eden, your student might read,

A little boulder jumped down a hill and broke my father'due south leg. They gear up the leg and gave him cripples' work, straightening used nails with a hammer on a rock. And whether with worry or work—it doesn't thing—my mother went into early labor. And then the half-mad men knew and they went all mad.. One hunger sharpened another hunger, and one crime blotted out the one before it, and the little crimes committed against those starving men flared into one gigantic maniac crime.

Y'all can model, "I wonder what 'i criminal offense blotted out the ane before it' means?" or "I've never heard flared used that way before." Then you can demonstrate how to use the context, previous word cognition, and the dictionary to analyze the significant of the text. Illustrate the importance of making some attempt at this process (east.g., "I'm not completely sure, but I recall that 'one crime blotted out the one before it,' is referring to the way that tragedy led to even more tragedy and sorrow, eventually hardening these men.")

Consider the Big Picture

Since many students with dyslexia are then focused on decoding the meaning of each discussion that they "miss the wood for the trees," scaffolding (using the Socratic method of asking leading questions) is generally required to assist them connect the events within the novel to extract the theme. For example, you may inquire,

"What was Caleb'south motive for giving his earnings to his begetter? How did he respond when he didn't get the approval that he longed for? Practise y'all think that his subconscious comparison of himself to Aron was his downfall? Was this behavior a grapheme flaw or something more than basic than that? What does that tell u.s.a. virtually the man condition?"

Visual learners may benefit from visually mapping out the characters and their inherent strengths and flaws. Their actions and motives may be included in the graphic equally well. Verbal/auditory learners may need to dialogue about the characters and the life lessons that they learned, and and then draw connections from their own lives and earth knowledge. Kinesthetic learners (depending on the age) often comprehend wide themes afterward writing and performing a play, picture, vocal, or puppet show of the book.

Subsequently You Read

Follow Upwardly

Multiple mediums to demonstrate comprehension

Since there are many different learning styles, it is imperative that the instructor provide a wide spectrum of ways to demonstrate competence. Many students with dyslexia are not able to show what they truly know in a traditional examination taking or writing format. A multifariousness of opportunities should be provided, so that the student with dyslexia tin can not only demonstrate competence, but likewise contribute her unique signal of view. Beneath are several examples of last projects to demonstrate reading comprehension:

• Write/illustrate a comic strip with the primary characters
• Create a shadow box or collage illustrating the main themes
• Produce a film of this book re-set in a unlike time menstruation
• Re-enact the book in a skit
• Write and illustrate an original book jacket for the volume
• Rewrite the ending of the story (include dialogue and imagery)
• Requite an oral presentation about the writer of this book
• Stage an interview with 1 of the characters
• Make a poster with a story map/character analysis
• Create a trivia game with quotes from the book ("Who would have said this?")

Make information technology personally relevant

Comprehension, disquisitional thinking, and memory are enhanced when a educatee can draw connections between the text and her own feel. This is particularly true for inferential questions such every bit: "How do you remember Aron felt when he saw his father's disdain of Caleb's souvenir?" "Have you ever had a situation when you were (through no real effort of your own) clearly the more favored child, student, or employee? How did that bear on your relationships with your siblings/peers/co-workers? Would you take done anything differently if you would have known the bear on of your favored status?" Ask your educatee to put herself in the place of each of the primary characters. What would she do in each of their situations?

Make connections to the globe

Now that your student has comprehended the story line, themes, and made personal connections to the story, she has to apply what she has learned to some other context. This type of divergent thinking and critical thinking requires practice and guidance. You might use modeling, Socratic questioning, or even several written choices as a mode to help your student attain this goal. Once over again, this inferential type of knowledge would help your student do answer the following types of questions:

• Can yous remember of another adept title for this book?
• If this homicide were reported on the news, how would information technology be portrayed?
• How was the setting in Salinas (most the Valley River) significant for the story?
• Compare and contrast this story with the biblical narrative of Cain and Abel.
• How might this story exist different if it happened today?

Pedagogy reading comprehension is a multi-step process and demands that the educatee bring every ounce of her experience and earth knowledge to the task. In addition, your student's learning style should assist to decide the way reading comprehension is taught and how she demonstrates her noesis. You will inevitably learn alongside your educatee if you decide to venture beyond traditional comprehension questions. Success starts here!

For more information on strengthening reading comprehension, read ADDitude Magazine'southward article, Reading to Remember.

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Source: http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/professionals/dyslexia-school/reading-comprehension

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