Best Practices in Reading Comprehension

Below are five strategies for developing reading comprehension that I use in my teaching.  First, let's look at what factors affect reading comprehension:

"Many factors affect a child’s ability to comprehend text. These include 

• motivation/purpose/goals/engagement 

• vocabulary/word knowledge/background knowledge 

• automaticity of decoding 

• fluent reading

 • understanding and use of strategies employed by effective readers 

• the nature of the text itself (difficulty and interest)

 • the type or genre of text (e.g., fiction, nonfiction, poetry) 

• the amount of reading done"

https://www.hand2mind.com/pdf/miriam/grades_1_2.pdf

In order to help my students retain and fully understand the material they are reading and learning I utilize strategies such as the following:

1) Make the information relatable/allow children to make connections

 Teamwork, entrepreneurial skills, science, math, nutrition: these are just a few lessons that kids of all ages are learning through container gardening.  Resource Link

As we saw in my earlier post regarding what kind of teacher and learner I personally am, you can see why "transfer" is one of my favorite strategies for developing comprehension.  

My long term goal for all of my students and in regards to content being studied is always for them to be able to relate and apply the information to everyday life by making the information meaningful and transferrable.  Students, I believe, are more engaged and interested when the material is relatable and/or pertains to them.  When students have a hands on experience and/or fee the information is tangible to real life, it can create interest and motivate students to learn more.

There are many ways you can make the lessons transferrable.  For example, let's imagine your students are working on fractions; we can do a cooking lesson that utilizes using fractions of 1 cup.  They'll take notice that many and most recipes require knowledge of fractions in regards to ingredients.  

You could also have a super store in your classroom.  Let's say the students earn tickets as reward for good behavior, turning in homework, etc.  At the end of the week, students can use their earned tickets to "buy" rewards such as pencils, fruit, stickers, etc. They'll need to budge and utilize their subtraction skills in order to shop just as they would at the grocery store.  We can even take this outside of the classroom and have an assignment where students grocery shop with mom/dad/guardian (this would be an optional assignment for extra credit/tickets for the super store) and the parent gives them their budget and they have to work out what they can put in their cart to buy based on their budget, utilizing not only addition/subtraction skills but also buying savviness, like looking for sales, name brand vs. store brand pricing, size of package vs. cost (big or smaller is the better deal).  This is 100% a life skill that makes the material being learned tangible and relatable.

I came across this great site with some examples of fantastic ways to utilize "transfer" at home with the parents help; below are the listed suggestions that I find to be wonderful:

Here are a few ways parents can help with this at home:

1. Implement lessons at home. Apply science and math lessons to things around the house. For example, if your child’s science class is completing a unit on temperature, ask your child to check the temperature outside on an outside thermometer and apply the Fahrenheit and Celsius formula to convert it.
2. Practice fractions. Think of tasks that can apply the use of fractions or parts, such as cooking or checking the oil gauge in your car so they will better understand this concept in the real world.
3. Use current events. Prompt kids to read the newspaper then write a creative story from the headlines. This teaches them to convert expository text into real world creative ideas while improving their thinking and writing abilities.
4. Budget together. Ask kids to make a household budget for a month. Subtract common expenses such rent, utilities and car payments. Make it a game to apply what they learn in math. Hold friendly competitions between siblings to see who has the most money left at the end of each month after expenses.
5. Create word problems. Make up every day situational math problems (word problems) that involve multiple operations and mathematical skills. Using this type of problem to illustrate real world use of math skills is perhaps the best way to get them to see that math skills ARE important.
6. Go shopping. Take kids to the store with you and ask them to help you pick out items from a list. Instruct them to stay within the budget allotted and to estimate the amount of the purchase while shopping. This activity incorporates several math skills into real world applications including budgeting, subtraction, addition and estimation as well ascritical thinking.
7. Publish a book. Writing skills can be made more fun with digital technology. Encourage kids to create a digital online book with their own stories. Ask them to illustrate their books with pictures and use attractive fonts. Several programs online do this for them without expertise required. The use of technology appeals to kids of all ages and they will be proud to share their creations with friends on social media.
8. Put on a show. Have kids put on a puppet show or play with neighborhood friends, acting out a story. Most state standards now require some knowledge of poetry, dramatic arts, acting and playwriting. This is a fun way to fulfill this standard and a good social activity too.
9. Make math a game. Create estimation games by placing several hundred jellybeans in a jar and practice figuring out the probability of certain colors. Make it extra exciting by allowing kids to eat some as they figure out the probability problems.
10. Learn from movie night. Teach inference and other thinking skills when watching a movie. Let them see the first five minutes of a movie or television show then turn off the TV and ask them to write or act out their own ending. The ending must make sense, but does not have to be what actually occurs in the show. Allow kids to explore their imaginations while exploring viable creation options to storylines.

2) The Crazy Professor

The crazy professor game was one of Chris Biffle's first and most popular ebooks.  "Used by thousands of K-12 teachers across the country, the Crazy Professor is designed to deepen the students' reading comprehension of both fiction and nonfiction.  In a gamelike format, your kids learn to paraphrase, translate ideas into gestures, skim read for key ideas, [and] connect their reading to personal experiences" (Biffle.  Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids.  p.256).

I have found that the Crazy Professor game keeps the kids engaged. They have so much fun while reading and gesturing and whether they realize it or not, this game improves their comprehension of the story they are reading.

Here is a great video demonstrating the Crazy Professor Reading Game:

3) Super Speed 100

Super Speed 100 is a comprehension strategy that allows kids to master 100 of the most common sight words.  This game can be utilized in the earlier elementary grades and/or in special ed classes.  "The key motivator is that sudents are setting and braking personal records for reading and speed" (Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids.  p.256). 

Super Speed 100 is a a FANTASTIC game for students.  Again, it's engaging and fun.  Also it is great for students who lean heavier towards the competitive learning style as it is a game in which they aim to beat their own personal record each time they play.

Below is a video that demonstrates how the Super Speed 100 game works: 

4) Mind Soccer

Mind Soccer "provides a remarkably flexible (and comic!) format for reviewing course material.  The game is so entertaining that kids will work hard, tallying marks on the scoreboard, for the privilege of playing Mind Soccer.  [It allows] a whole class learning with as much energy as possible for the reward of reviewing what they have learned"(Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids.  p.256); furthering their understanding and comprehension of the material. 

Mind soccer, same as the games listed above, is just great tool that keeps the students engaged and having fun while learning and reviewing the content material.  It allows the students to work together, continue to develop relationships, and also teaches to many different learning styles including collaborative, dependent, competitive and participant.  

Below is a video demonstrating the use of Mind Soccer:

5) Brain Toys

"Brain toys are gestures used to engage the prefrontal, visual, motor and auditory cortex in original thinking, learning's highest level." (Biffle, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids.  p.157).  In the classroom, you can utilize brain toys such as props, air whiteboards, story gestures, sockless hand puppets, and more.  These brain toys and teaching/learning strategies allow for students in a diverse classroom to remain active, engaged and have fun while allowing further comprehension of the material being learned. 

According to Biffle brain toys can aid in reading comprehension. His books suggests you, "divide a reading selection into short units, about half a page.  Have pairs of students read a unit, use a brain toy to explain it to each other and then on to the next unit" in the reading.

Again, brain toys, just as the other tools mentioned above are great resources to engage learners and differentiate instruction to our diverse learners in the classroom.  

I hope you found this blog entry useful and try out some of the comprehension strategies I have found to be great tools in the classroom!