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8/9/2019 Comprehension 01

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Comprehension

Eh?


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What is Comprehension?

Comprehension and Fluency (refer to

Fluency PowerPoint)

Comprehension and Vocabulary (refer toVocabulary PowerPoint)

When all other aspects of literacy

development fall into place, comprehension

can occur


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What good comprehenders do when they

read A good comprehender starts thinking before reading

and doesnt stop when the book is done After reading a title of a book or chapter, they predict what

is going to happen

While reading, they question why things are happening

Also while reading, they imagine the events of the story intheirhead

If anything that is not understood while reading, theysearch for clues in the text to help, or if all else fails, ask

After reading, they summarize and make inferences aboutthe text

Also after reading, they connect it to their own life or someother form of prior knowledge

The above information is from Shedd, Meagan (2008). Comprehension.

Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan


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Affects on Students Comprehension

Prior knowledge

The amount of varied experiences students have

had affects the amount of schemas that can be

connected and the richness of the comprehension(Field Notes, April 1st)

Oral Language

Students may have difficulty understanding

questions when asked orally (Shedd, 2008)

Students may be comprehending, but are just not

understanding the questions asked


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Short-term or working memory (Shedd, 2008) This is our active memory that holds a small amount of

information for about 20 seconds (wikipedia.org)

If a student has problems withhis/her short-term memory,

he/she may have to continually re-read to comprehend thetext, because they always forget what they had previouslyread

Motivation (Shedd, 2008) If students are not motivated to read, they will not practice

various literacy concepts and will therefore have difficulty

with comprehension. Conversely, if students have difficulty with comprehension,

they may be unmotivated to read which will again, lead to alack of practice with various literacy concepts


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Linear vs. Hypertext

Hypertext can cause disorientation

The main issues students have withhypertext is

getting used to the ways in which we use it

different than linear text

Finding things relevant to the topic desired requires prior

knowledge of the topic

Hypertext is often skimmed for main ideas since thereare so many sources to choose from

The above information is from Shedd, Meagan (2008).

Comprehension. Presentation for TE 301, East Lansing, Michigan


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Diagnosing the problem

Students could have comprehension issues formany different reasons These issues may arise during certain activities or could be

content specific

These issues may arise because the student is not using

strategies to decode the text Having difficulty with any one of the literacy concepts

discussed in previous PowerPoints can affectcomprehension

This is why a large number ofgood assessments shouldbe used It is especially important to use multiple assessments when

testing comprehension, so as to get a broader view ofhow thestudent is doing with comprehension (In the case of a problemin comprehension: what is the cause and what course shouldbe taken for instruction)




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Issues for Second Language Learners

SLLs may have a particular problem with motivation Since it is harder for SLLs to learn another language, they may

be less motivated to try

Also, if the parents of the SLL place zero value on learningEnglish, the SLL will be much less motivated to try As discussed before, the less students read/practice the various

literacy concepts, the less they will comprehend

SLLs may have problems with texts that have a lot of metaphors Metaphors can be vary confusing for SLLs because they often

play on double meanings of words

Difficulty with early literacy concepts

Difficulty learning letter-sound relationships and morphologyleads to difficulty decoding and a smaller vocabulary, which leadsto low fluency and not seeing the big picture, which leads to lowcomprehension


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Assessments and Activities

Summarizing and Predicting Have a student predict what they think is going tohappen in a short story after reading the title and

seeing the cover illustration After the student reads the text aloud, havehim/her summarize it Predicting helps the student jump-start their

imagination

Summarizing gives the teacher a good idea if thestudent is comprehending the text or not

While the student reads aloud, the teacher should notethings like fluency and decoding strategies




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Activities and Assessments

Journal Entries

Give time for students to read their books every

day

After each reading session is over, have the students

write a short journal entry relating to the text (whats

happening, questions they have, predictions, how it

relates to them, etc.)

Reading these entries periodically will give the teacher an

idea ofhow the students are thinking about the book




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Activities and Assessments

Formal assessments

Fill in the blank questionnaires

Gates-MacGinitie

Qualitative Reading Inventory

All formal assessments such as the ones above

should measure multiple aspects of literacy

development, not just comprehension. It is key to

understand these other aspects along with

possible problems to understand the cause for

problems with comprehension




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References

Shedd, Meagan (2008). Comprehension. Presentation for TE 301,

East Lansing, Michigan

Field Notes (2008). April 1st visit to Mt. Hope Elementary and talk

with Mrs. Holley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory

comprehension 01

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