When students attempt to read new material, whether it is a narrative or textbook related, it is a good idea for them to ask themselves to think about the content of this material. They need to devise a way to take a picture by walking through the text; look at headings and chapter titles, and make predictions about various events or words highlighted. Good readers are active in their reading. They ask questions about new words and concepts, make comparisons, and draw on their prior knowledge to assist them in comprehension. (Duke and Pearson, 2002) Developing good reading comprehension is more than just thinking about how to comprehend. Students must also be taught specific skills that are essential to good comprehension.
Fluency instruction
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Word recognition involves includes that of blending, applying sight words and Syntactic cues and sit under the umbrella of phonological awareness and reading fluency. Reading comprehension is the process of understanding what is been read and sits under the umbrella of reading vocabulary and reading for enjoyment (pg 10). These components will allow students to recognize words quickly and effortless and with enjoyment. Of all the skills children learn in school, reading is the most important but unfortunately children are sometimes faced with barriers that if not dealt with properly will prevent them from overcoming reading difficulties. Jennings, Caldwell and Lerner (2009) stated that Reading difficulties can be a problem of emotional, neurological, cognitive, and can even be associated with intelligence and intellectual factors. They went on to say that the environment which includes the home, school, social and cultural environment can also influence reading. They pointed out neurological is how the brain performs during reading and cognitive is the mental actions. Any deficit in these areas could interfere with how students interpret information that is presented to them (pg 23-24). Since reading is a vital skill to success, it is important that children who are faced with reading difficulties get evaluated early and given …show more content…
The use of bottom-up and top-down processing is context-dependent. In some cases, individual words need attention (bottom-up) whereas in other cases, the entire context requires focus (top-down). Bottom – up uses pieces and breaks words down individually to comprehend word meaning before combining the entire piece being read. This sometimes will cause comprehension breakdown because contextual awareness is used.
Top – down approach is more common in classrooms but is not necessarily the most effective approach for reading comprehension. The reader uses the overall theme or purpose to garner comprehension. This is sometimes not effective because individual learner variables (race, culture, native language, etc.) cannot place the text into context without individual word knowledge.
These two approaches combined will be effective in a reading classroom, but may not be effective in a regular educational setting. The approaches put limits on teachers trying to achieve curriculum standards and guidelines. The time factor of implementing these two approaches would be demanding for a regular classroom
I asked Student A eight comprehension questions about the text once she was finished reading. She did not have a problem with any of the questions. For example, one of the questions was “How old is Jessie now?” she responded right away with the correct answer “thirteen.” She did not even have to look back to the story to find the sentence; “Now that she is thirteen, Jessie competes with adults.” Student A was able to answer the “right there” questions with ease. Being able to remember key details from a text is crucial to developing the ability to comprehend what she is reading. She is already at a great stage when it comes to text comprehension and this will only help with further development. She had a purpose when she read and was reading for the details as opposed to reading to finish the text. She understood what was happening and if she continues to do this in the future, she will be able to understand more difficult texts by putting all of the key details together. Since Student A is able to recall key information from text, it will allow her to summarize and retell a text with ease. This strength will help Student A as she continues to develop as a reader because as the readings increase in difficulty she will remember the basic key details that she read and recount the story based on the main
Whole language is considered a "top down" approach where the reader constructs a personal meaning for a text based on using their prior knowledge to interpret the meaning of what they are reading. Teachers are expected to provide a literacy rich environment for their students and to combine speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Whole language teachers emphasize the meaning of texts over the sounds of letters, and phonics instruction becomes just one component of the whole language classroom. Problems associated with whole language include a lack of structure that has been traditionally supplied by the scope and sequence, lessons and activities, and extensive graded literature found in basal readers. Whole language puts a heavy burden on teachers to develop their own curriculum.
Reading: According to the teacher’s data, work samples and classroom observations, Danica has made program towards her reading goal. She is able to decode through unknown words, recall details and to answer questions from short passages; however she struggles with comprehension question for lengthy reading selections. Progress monitoring shows that she is averaging in the 30-40% proficiency for reading comprehension. Danica has shown improvements towards her reading fluency, according to the Mclass DiBels assessment, 51wpm from 21 wpm at the (BOY) beginning of the year. Informal observation made by the teacher notes that Danica demonstrates weakness in comprehension and fluency. The difficulty in the area of comprehension impacts the general education setting in the
The causes of reading difficulties often arise because of learning disabilities such as dyslexia, poor preparation before entering school, no value for literacy, low school attendance, insufficient reading instruction, and/or even the way students were taught to read in the early grades. The struggles that students “encounter in school can be seen as socially constructed-by the ways in which schools are organized and scheduled, by assumptions that are made about home life and school abilities, by a curriculum that is often devoid of connections to students’ lives, and by text that may be too difficult for students to read” (Hinchman, and Sheridan-Thomas166). Whatever the reason for the existence of the reading problem initially, by “the time a [student] is in the intermediate grades, there is good evidence that he will show continued reading g...
Reading is a complex process that’s difficult to explain linearly. A student’s reading capabilities begin development long before entering the school setting and largely start with exposure (Solley, 2014). The first remnants of what children are able to do in terms of reading are built from their parents and other people and object around them as they’re read to, spoken to, and taken from place to place to see new things (Solley, 2014). As kids are exposed to more and more their noises quickly turn into intentional comprehensible messages and their scribbling begins to take the form of legible text as they attempt to mimic the language(s) they’re exposed to daily.
Unfortunately, that skill is rather ignored in middle school and is expected to be taught in elementary school. When those students do not grasp the concept in elementary and are pushed through to the middle school without the skill, they fall behind their classmates. With the reading skills for vocabulary lacking, these children are usually labeled with ‘learning disabilities’. All too often students read a passage and skip over the words that they do not understand. However, vocabulary skills in reading are essential to not only in the reading classroom, but in all the content area classrooms as well.
The reading selections for this week provide a historical perspective of comprehension instruction at various grade levels. The authors describe characteristics of learners at various grade levels, examine previous instructional goals and discuss the goals for the future, examine previous learning contexts and what learning contexts should become and how assessment strategies can be improved to meet the challenges of learners at various grade and proficiency levels. It is important to note the influence of multiple literacies and the challenges of integrating conventional discourses and nonconventional discourses in the learning context. Wharton-McDonald and Swiger (2009) said, “Instructional practices that repair the disconnect between students’ public and private literacies—practices that form connections between what is personally interesting to students and the material they are asked to read in school will support the development of comprehension processes” (Developing Higher Order Comprehension in the Middle Grades, 2009, p. 523).
When students read independently, they might skim read over text and fail to see meanings of individual words and phrases and the overall deeper meaning. For example, there are particular focus words such as there, their and they’re that would differentiate the purpose of the text when reading it slowly rather skim reading. Therefore, breaking the text down using the whole-part-whole method enables students to become aware of the intricate details of the text they may not have otherwise
“Deep reading” is a challenge that opens doors. Like cardio for the heart, reading trains and pushes the brain to a new level. Not only does reading stimulate the back lobe of the brain allowing humans to develop as better intellectuals, it puts the human mind in the situation of a character, thus exercising the ability to empathize.
That is the goal of being a fluent reader. Mrs. Baughman uses the components of a story to teach comprehension. The components of the story are the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution. If students can easily pick out the answers for the components of a story then their comprehension is growing. Another way to teach comprehension is by using graphic organizers like Venn-diagrams, story maps, and cause and effect charts. Teachers can also ask questions to make sure students understand the text. Not only does the teacher need to ask questions, but so do the students. If a student can ask questions, and with guidance answer it themselves they understand the material. The same goes with summarizing texts. A good way to check comprehension is to see how well the students summarized the texts. Doing so, can show if they really understand the material or they are just reading without thinking about it. Group work is a good way for students to share their thoughts on texts and help explain it to others in an easier way. If students do not comprehend text then their reading skills for the future will not be good. Teaching comprehension is not by just asking questions. There are many ways to check it that give a better view on how students are
How can what we know about the development of readers inform reading comprehension instruction? Reading instruction typically starts in kindergarten with the alphabetic principle, simple word blending, and sight word recognition. Texts read by early readers usually include very little to comprehend. As children develop reading ability, they are able read more complex texts requiring greater comprehension skills. Separate and explicit instruction in reading comprehension is crucial because the ability to comprehend develops in its own right, independent of word recognition. The ability to read words and sentences is clearly important, but as readers develop, these skills are less and less closely correlated with comprehension abilities. (Aarnoutse & van Leeuwe, 2000) While no one would argue that word blending and sight word reading skills be omitted from early reading instruction, vocabulary and listening comprehension may be at least as important in achieving the even...
Reading is an essential skill that needs to be addressed when dealing with students with disabilities. Reading is a skill that will be used for a student’s entire life. Therefore, it needs to be an important skill that is learned and used proficiently in order for a student to succeed in the real world. There are many techniques that educators can use to help improve a student’s reading comprehension. One of these skills that needs to be directly and explicitly taught is learning how to read fluently for comprehension. “To comprehend texts, the reader must be a fluent decoder and not a laborious, word-by-word reader” (Kameenui, 252). Comprehension can be difficult for students with learning disabilities because they tend to be the students that are reading below grade level. One strategy is to incorporate the student’s background knowledge into a lesson. This may require a bit of work, but it will help the students relate with the information being pres...
Taking a close look at a text takes much more than looking at words or fining word and phrases to answer questions. Close reading is define as the mindful, disciplined reading of an object with a view to deeper understanding of its meaning (Cummins, 2013). According to Fisher & Frey (2012), the practice of close reading is not a new one, and in fact has existed for many decades as the practice of reading a text for a level of detail not used in everyday reading. Therefore, teachers need to foster this skill on students in early stages of literacy skill to become proficient in comprehension. In order for students to examine complex text, teachers need to model and guide them through various strategies that would support their understanding
Many factors can influence children’s ability to read (Combs, 2012). Effective teachers, therefore, must regularly assess the students to see how they are doing and to adjust the instruction as necessary.
The subskill theory approach to reading is one that has been around for a long time, and is based on instructional strategies to teach letter-sound relationships, sight words and decoding skills (among others), until the reading act becomes automatic. Comprehension does play a role in this theory, but it is a small role, in my opinion. I know this system works, because it is the way I was taught to read. I believe it is vital for young children to understand the relationship between sound and symbol relationships. This approach gives children a strategy for sounding out words that are unfamiliar to them. Unlocking the pronunciation of a word can sometimes lead to the word’s meaning, if the child is familiar with the word, and this is an important skill for young readers to have. But, the goal of reading is to ga...