Comprehension Instruction

In classrooms around the Untied States students have a difficult time understanding the written material within a textbook, but comprehension instruction is a way to help both students and teachers with this problem. Learning and understanding from textbooks are part of every subject area and this type of instruction can be used in all areas. The problem is it does not occur enough in classrooms because teachers have little knowledge on how to incorporate comprehension instruction strategies into teaching due to not having the correct or any information on this type of instruction.

Author Paul Neufeld on the article Comprehension Instruction In Content Area Classes wants teachers to fully understand and how to use comprehension instruction. He describes comprehending a text is always different due to factors such as diverse backgrounds, which can cause a student to view the material in a different way. However he understands that for the comprehension process to work to its full potential the student must be engaged with ideas stemming from what was read in the text. His conflicting downside to this is that he also knows that if a student is weak in understanding words and how to pronounce them can hinder the process of comprehension instruction. If the student has a high word processing level the easier the understanding of the text comes to be. The author notes that expert comprehension readers are “self- regulated” which can benefit other students from them maybe not at that particular time but can be remembered and used in the future. For a teacher to understand how to do this he chose the best comprehension strategies he felt to be most effective. He brakes down his strategies by telling the most important one then breaking it down into small sections allowing the reader to fully understand and absorb the information in small sections making it easier to remember. He puts these sections of strategies to be used before reading. Following after in the article are comprehension strategies for during and after reading, to improve the knowledge of the text even more. Putting this aside he understand that readers who are not on an expert level or even mediocre have trouble organizing what they have already read and that were comprehension instruction comes in to help. In his last few pages pages of the article he describes how teachers can use comprehension instruction effectively in his two phases with steps to follow.