Chapter 8: Promoting Comprehension: Reader Factors

Vocabulary:

Comprehension: A creative thinking process where students engage with the text. In order to comprehend, some students may have a mental “picture” of what they are reading. The goal is to remember what they’ve read.

Text Complexity: Way of examining comprehension to determine cognitive demands of books. Tells how well a student can complete a task with a particular text.

Inference: An educated guess based on information the author has already given. Inferences can be made about what will happen next, characters, plot, theme, etc.

Step 1: Activating background knowledge about topics that are related to the text

Step 2: looking for authors clues throughout reading

Step 3: Asking questions, connecting background knowledge to clues

Step 4: Drawing inferences by answering the questions

What Readers Think About When Reading: Prior knowledge, meaning text to uncover organization, making predictions, connecting to personal experiences, creating mental images, drawing inferences, noticing symbols and other literary devices, monitor understanding

Comprehension Factors and Roles: Below

Background Knowledge: When student activates prior knowledge and connects it to what they’re reading

Vocabulary: Recognizing meaning of familiar words and applying word learning strategies to understand what they are reading

Fluency: Student has adequate cognitive resources to understand they are reading while reading fluently

Strategies: Students directs reading, monitor their understanding, and troubleshoot when problems arise

Skills: Student automatically notes details that support main ideas, sequence ideas, etc. 

Motivation: Motivated students are more engaged in reading, more confident, and more likely to successfully comprehend

Genres: Each genre is unique. The knowledge of them a student has provides a scaffold for comprehension

Text Structures: Understanding the structure helps students to recognize important ideas

Text Features: Literary devices used in text deepens students understanding

Comprehension Strategies: thoughtful behaviors students use to facilitate their understanding (BELOW)

Activating Background Knowledge: Reader thinks about what rhey already know

Connecting: Making text to self, text to world, and text to text links

Determining Importance: Identifies big ideas in text and notices relationship among them

Drawing Inferences: Using background knowledge and clues to read between the lines

Evaluating: Evaluating both text and reading experience

Monitoring: Readers supervise their reading experience, checking that they understand what they are reading

Predicting: Making thoughtful “guesses”  about what will happen

Questioning: Asking themselves literal and inferential questions about the text

Repairing: Identifying a problem interfering with comprehension, then solving it

Setting a Purpose: Identifying broad focus to direct reading

Summarizing: Paraphrasing big ideas to create concise statement

Visualizing: creating mental pictures of what is being read

Comprehension Skills: Recognizing details, Noticing similarities and differences, Identifying topic sentences, Comparing and contrasting main ideas and details, Matching causes with effects, Sequencing details, Paraphrasing ideas, Choosing  a good title for a text

Comprehension Strategies and Reading Process: Strategies are used throughout process

Creating an Expectation of Comprehension:Involve students in authentic reading activities every day, PRoviding access to well-stocked classroom libraries, Teaching students to use comprehension strategies, Ensuring students are fluent readers, Providing opportunities for students to talk about the books they’re reading, Linking vocab instruction to underlying concepts

Ways to Teach Comprehension: 

Cloze Procedures: Students supply deleted words in a passage taken from text they’ve read. Similar to filling in the blank

Assessment Tools: 

Story Retelling: Teachers ask students to retell a story they’ve read or listened to in order to assess literal comprehension

Factors Affecting Motivation:

Classroom Application: This chapter was SO information rich. I do best when I am able to see a table that displays information which is what this chapter had a lot of!