comprehension strategies
Comprehension is something I'm finding a lot more children struggle with these days.
My personal theory is that children are less able to focus and that they have fewer opportunities to develop their oral language skills, both of which are crucial building blocks for their ability to understand written and spoken texts.
Why do so many children struggle with comprehension?
We shouldn't actually have to teach comprehension strategies. Children who have grown up engaging in conversation with adults who listen to them and who have had stories read to them from an early age learn about language by using it every day. They ask questions to clarify meaning, summarise things in their head and can recount stories to other people without being explicitly taught how to do it. Sadly, many children do not have these experiences as they grow up, hence the need to teach comprehension strategies.
What I've found, however, is that in many classrooms we start teaching strategies before children have the basics of oral comprehension under their belts. I think we need to start with very easy activities which will build children's confidence and to revisit some of these, even in the older primary years. In my experience, doing this this means the children who already have these skills in place get a sense of achievement from being able to do the task and demonstrate their skills while the children who do not yet have the skills in place start learning with a task which does not create an overwhelming cognitive load for them.
Comprehension strategies are described all over the internet and many teachers teach them. I think they're great for more advanced children but I've seen so many children struggle and become demoralised because they don't even understand the concept of comprehension.
So what to do? I think we should think simple, quick and fun!
A Quick and Easy Comprehension Activity
This is a quick and easy strategy you can use with any age group to build children's oral - and later reading - comprehension skills. It's also a great activity to do with EAL/D students of any age.
1. Find a non-fiction paragraph about something that genuinely appeals to the children you are teaching.
Dinosaurs, snakes, space, Minecraft, Donald Trump, Ancient Egypt ... any of these will do, as long as your students have shown an interest in the topic. With EAL/D students I've used paragraphs about their own countries.
This means the children are instantly engaged and have the background knowledge they need. This in turn lessens the cognitive load of the task: the children don't have to struggle with a new subject they know nothing about, as well as with the comprehension task you're working on. They can just concentrate on the task.
2. Read the paragraph aloud.
You should not have to do much by way of introducing this before you begin reading. Just tell the children you're going to read them a paragraph - a short piece of writing - about xxx and that you want them to listen.
3. Give the children you will give them a minute to think in their heads about what the paragraph was about.
4. Give the children another minute to talk to a friend about what the paragraph was about.
5. Lead a (very brief) class discussion about what the paragraph was about.
Some children will want to tell you every word they heard you read. Be kind and encouraging and try not to say "no". Phrases you could use instead include: "You heard all that detail, Sam. Can you tell me what it was about/summarise all that in one sentence?"
What you want is one sentence that begins: "The paragraph was about the kinds of things the diplodocus used to eat." Or "The paragraph was about how scientists and historians think the pyramids might have been built." Watch for children's understanding of this when one of the group is able to summarise using a paragraph like this.
And that's it! No writing or long discussions.
You can fit this in to a spare few minutes during the day if you have the paragraph ready. Casual/relief/supply teachers can do this whenever it suits you. It's actually a very powerful, no-stress way to improve your students' abilities to understand and articulate what they hear and this will carry over into their written work: read a paragraph, stop, think, ask 'what is this paragraph about?' Write it down.
Tips
My personal theory is that children are less able to focus and that they have fewer opportunities to develop their oral language skills, both of which are crucial building blocks for their ability to understand written and spoken texts.
Why do so many children struggle with comprehension?
We shouldn't actually have to teach comprehension strategies. Children who have grown up engaging in conversation with adults who listen to them and who have had stories read to them from an early age learn about language by using it every day. They ask questions to clarify meaning, summarise things in their head and can recount stories to other people without being explicitly taught how to do it. Sadly, many children do not have these experiences as they grow up, hence the need to teach comprehension strategies.
What I've found, however, is that in many classrooms we start teaching strategies before children have the basics of oral comprehension under their belts. I think we need to start with very easy activities which will build children's confidence and to revisit some of these, even in the older primary years. In my experience, doing this this means the children who already have these skills in place get a sense of achievement from being able to do the task and demonstrate their skills while the children who do not yet have the skills in place start learning with a task which does not create an overwhelming cognitive load for them.
Comprehension strategies are described all over the internet and many teachers teach them. I think they're great for more advanced children but I've seen so many children struggle and become demoralised because they don't even understand the concept of comprehension.
So what to do? I think we should think simple, quick and fun!
A Quick and Easy Comprehension Activity
This is a quick and easy strategy you can use with any age group to build children's oral - and later reading - comprehension skills. It's also a great activity to do with EAL/D students of any age.
1. Find a non-fiction paragraph about something that genuinely appeals to the children you are teaching.
Dinosaurs, snakes, space, Minecraft, Donald Trump, Ancient Egypt ... any of these will do, as long as your students have shown an interest in the topic. With EAL/D students I've used paragraphs about their own countries.
This means the children are instantly engaged and have the background knowledge they need. This in turn lessens the cognitive load of the task: the children don't have to struggle with a new subject they know nothing about, as well as with the comprehension task you're working on. They can just concentrate on the task.
2. Read the paragraph aloud.
You should not have to do much by way of introducing this before you begin reading. Just tell the children you're going to read them a paragraph - a short piece of writing - about xxx and that you want them to listen.
3. Give the children you will give them a minute to think in their heads about what the paragraph was about.
4. Give the children another minute to talk to a friend about what the paragraph was about.
5. Lead a (very brief) class discussion about what the paragraph was about.
Some children will want to tell you every word they heard you read. Be kind and encouraging and try not to say "no". Phrases you could use instead include: "You heard all that detail, Sam. Can you tell me what it was about/summarise all that in one sentence?"
What you want is one sentence that begins: "The paragraph was about the kinds of things the diplodocus used to eat." Or "The paragraph was about how scientists and historians think the pyramids might have been built." Watch for children's understanding of this when one of the group is able to summarise using a paragraph like this.
And that's it! No writing or long discussions.
You can fit this in to a spare few minutes during the day if you have the paragraph ready. Casual/relief/supply teachers can do this whenever it suits you. It's actually a very powerful, no-stress way to improve your students' abilities to understand and articulate what they hear and this will carry over into their written work: read a paragraph, stop, think, ask 'what is this paragraph about?' Write it down.
Tips
- Repetition is important. I suggest having a series of appropriate paragraphs ready and doing this daily - or even twice a day for, say, a week.
- With older children, you can, if you like, expand the activity over time to having a longer piece of writing with several paragraphs and going through the process I've described with each paragraph in turn. If you do this, I recommend writing the summary sentence for each paragraph on the classroom whiteboard as your students come up with each sentence. By the end, you will have a summary of the whole piece of writing on the whiteboard, allowing children to see how writers organise their writing. Don't go over three or four paragraphs, though, or you risk turning this into something that's no longer fun or interesting.
- This activity works even better if you are able to choose paragraphs that relate to something you are doing in class. Don't sacrifice interest and engagement, though. It's better to have a piece of writing that has nothing to do with what you're doing in class than to have something that's related but doesn't capture the children's interest.