Comprehension

 

Definition: “The process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language.” (Rand Reading Study Group, 2002, p. xiii).

 

To comprehend a text, a reader must process the information in the text while also putting together an understanding of the text.

  

Comprehension relies on:

Reader factors- influence the attitude a reader brings to the process of reading – includes purpose particular to the piece, motivation, and use of comprehension strategies

 

Text factors- aspects of the original text affect the overall construction of meaning. Text factors include specific ideas, words, organization, and presentation of the text by the writer

 

Activity factors- the purpose or task that underlies a reading activity (ex: reading a novel for pleasure, reading a science textbook for a class, reading a research journal to collect data)

 

       All of these work in conjunction with one another to influence comprehension.

 Rand Reading Study Group, 2002

 

 Processes Influencing Comprehension

• Word Level
  • Decoding
    • Better decoding skills result in less effort put towards decoding words and more towards comprehending and constructing meaning from the text
    • Those with good comprehension skills can recognize when there is a mistake in decoding simply from the fact that what they’ve just read “doesn’t make sense”
  • Vocabulary
    • More extensive vocabulary a strong aid in comprehension
    • Less effort can be put towards figuring out word meanings and more towards general comprehension of the text
• Above Word Level
  • Prior Knowledge
    • Known schemas can aid in making meaning from a text
    • Inferences are made from these schemas as a comprehension strategy
  • Controlled Processing
    • Several conscious processes and strategies to used to help construct meaning in a text. Ex: awareness of the purpose for reading, knowing an overview of the text, predicting, reading selectively for particular information, asking questions, imagining details about the text, integrating or making changes to prior knowledge, learning new word meanings, making inferences and interpretations, evaluating the quality of the text
• Other factors that can influence comprehension:
  • Oral language knowledge, fluency, Short-term/working memory capacity, motivation, type of text (genre, etc.)

Pressley, 2000

 

 What good comprehenders do when they read

Make use of several strategies before, during, and after reading a text. These include aspects of engaging in controlled processing:

• Making predictions about what is to come in the text
• Asking questions
• Imagining new details related to the text
• Clarifying the text
• Summarizing
• Making inferences
• Integrating prior knowledge

Pressley & Hilden, 2004

- Good comprehension  requires metacognition, the ability to think about one's own thinking

• By using megacognition in comprehension, students are aware of the controlled processes they are using to help them understand the text
• Megacognition is especially important when reading texts that are difficult to understand. Students must learn to realize when they do not understand something and be able to go back, re-read, and check their understanding.

Strickland & Snow, 2002

 

 

 Reasons for Comprehension Difficulties

-         Oral Language

o       Very little research done in this area

o       However, it does make sense that a child struggling to comprehend spoken language would also struggle with written language

o       It is also possible to struggle with comprehending from oral language, but find the same information in written form more understandable (ex: Origami activity- Give students two pieces of paper and ask them to fold one piece of paper into an origami frog by following oral instructions given to them. Then give them written instructions with diagrams to follow and ask them to fold the second piece of paper using these instructions. Take note of any differences in success with this activity for oral vs. written instructions.) 

-         Fluency

o       Fluent reading encourages leaving more cognitive attention open for comprehension

o       Good fluency shows evidence of higher word recognition levels

-         Short Term/Working Memory

o       Some research shows that students who struggle with comprehension may have less short term memory capacity

o       If the student’s short term memory cannot “hold” the details of all they are reading, comprehension will suffer

-         Motivation

o       Struggles with comprehension will make students discouraged and less likely to enjoy reading

o       These students will want to read less, giving themselves less practice that will make their comprehension skills better – less exposure to comprehension strategies, new vocabulary, and opportunities for fluency development

-         Type of Text

o       Different comprehension demands exist for different types of text

                        ●       Narrative vs. informational text

●         Printed linear text vs. electronic hypertext

-         Comprehension requires more cognition than just recognizing and decoding words

o       Meaning in text is constructed from more than just individual words. Entire sentence structures, paragraph organization, etc. influence comprehension

o       Comprehension issues can occur at the reader, text, or activity levels

-         Factors for teachers to examine in determining causes of students’ comprehension struggles:

o       Word decoding abilities

o       Sight word recognition

o       Fluency

o       Oral Language

o       Short-term/working memory

o       Whether a student’s primary language is English

o       Structure of certain types of text

o       Effective use of comprehension strategies

o       Motivation (for the topic or the activity)

Duke, Pressley, & Hilden, 2004

 

 

 Possible Comprehension Problems Found in Students

-         Automatic word callers- ability to read fluently, but poor comprehension skills

-         Struggling word callers- some difficulty in fluency and word identification, but still stronger there than in comprehension

-         Word stumblers- able to make meaning from text very well, but struggle with word identification

-         Slow and steady comprehenders- read slowly, but are able to identify words and comprehend well

-         Slow word callers- accurate but slow readers, also have poor comprehension

-         Disabled readers- struggle with both word identification and comprehension

-         Difficulties in comprehension and other reading skills can take many different forms

Buly & Valencia, 2002

 

 

 Issues for SLLs

 

-        These students are still developing their skills in oral language, fluency, vocabulary, and decoding in English, all of which affect comprehension

-         If a student struggles with these aspects of reading they will focus most of their cognitive energy on figuring out words and will have little left for making meaning

-         A child will struggle to comprehend a text until they have the vocabulary knowledge to understand 90-95% of the words in the text, therefore SLLs should be provided with extra materials that are paced to their current vocabulary level as they learn. If possible translations in their native language can be provided.

-         Teachers should be aware of cultural information that a SLL might encounter in text that is unfamiliar to them, and be ready to provide them with those contexts.

Lenters, 2004

Norton, 2007

 

COCA and ISCA Comprehension Assessments

The COCA (Concepts of Comprehension Assessment) and the ISCA (Informational Strategic Cloze Assessment) were designed by the Literacy Achievement Research Center (LARC) here at Michigan State University. These very detailed comprehension assessment are intended to test a student's comprehension abilities in four areas, "1) comprehension strategy use, 2) vocabulary strategy use and knowledge, 3) knowledge of informational text features, 4) comprehension of graphics in the context of text. " The COCA is intended for 1st and 2nd grade, and the ISCA for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. These assessment materials include the two text booklets used for the assessment, a manual of instructions for the teacher giving the assessment, an administration guide that takes the teacher page by page through each text with the comprehension skills to look for in the student, and a scoring guide. The detailed and specific nature of this assessment allows the teacher to find patterns in the exact areas of comprehension that a child struggles with. The materials for the COCA can be downloaded from this site: www.msularc.org/html/project_COCA_main.html and the ISCA from www.msularc.org/html/project_ISCA_main.html

Duke, 2007

 

MLPP Oral Language Assessment

This file presents three different assessments for oral language skills in the areas of syntax, vocabulary, and elaboration in preschool through 3rd grade. The first assessment for preschool through 1st grade is a generally oral language assessment in which a student is asked to talk verbally about a picture shown to them. The teacher then records observations based on guidelines in the assessment of the student's use of conventions of spoken English. The second two assessments are very similar and are designated for 1st through 3rd grade. In both the teacher observes a child a normal classroom context and makes observations based on provided guidelines of their oral language skills, first in expressive language, then in receptive language.

Michigan Department of Education Early Literacy Committee, 2001

 

Scholastic Printables Assessments

I used these short comprehension assessments as part of my Child Study project for TE 301. These assessments include a short non-fiction text passage accompanied by 8 questions that requires different comprehension skills including, drawing direct information from the text, identifying relevant vocabulary, determining main idea, making inferences, and drawing conclusions. These particular assessments are designed for grades 3-5, however similar assessments are available for other grade levels through Scholastic.

     The Real Dracula

     More Miracles for Helen Keller

     Lunch or Junk?

     America's Lost Colony

     The History of Gum

The Scholastic Printables homepage is located here: http://printables.scholastic.com/printables/home/

 

Scaffolded Comprehension Lesson Plan

This is the lesson plan that I developed for my child study project. This lesson involves the teacher aiding the student in strategies and things to be aware of in their reading that will assist in their comprehension of the text. After this scaffolded comprehension, the student is given the opportunity to demonstrate this similar process on their own while reading a text of their choice. The idea for this lesson came from the methods of comprehension skills building that I observed from my CT in her classroom. I thought I would try it myself as a way to help my study child work on developing and expressing her own ideas about a text through modeling this process for her. The texts I used are the Scholastic Printables non-fiction passages listed above.

 

Resources

Buly, M. & Valencia, S.W. (2002). Below the bar: Profiles of students who fail state reading assessments.  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24, 213-239.

 

 

 

Duke, N.K., Pressley, M., & Hilden, K. (2004). Difficulties with reading comprehension.  In C.A. Stone, E.R. Silliman, B.J. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.), Handbook of Language and Literacy: Development and Disorders (pp. 501-520).  New York: Guilford Press.

 

Lenters, K. (2004, December). No half measures: Reading instruction for young second language learners. The Reading Teacher, 58(4), 328-336.

 

Michigan Department of Education Early Literacy Committee. (2001). Michigan Literacy Progress Profile. Lansing, MI: Department of Education.

 

Norton, D.E. (2007). Literacy for Life. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

 

Pressley, M. (2000). What should comprehension instruction be the instruction of? In M.L. Kamil, P.B. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research, Volume III. (pp. 545-561).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

 

Pressley, M. & Hilden, K. (2004). Verbal protocols of reading. In N.K. Duke and M.H. Mallette (Eds.), Literacy Research Methodologies (pp. 308-321). New York: Guilford Press.

RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Towards an R & D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Education.

 

Scholastic printables: Find it. print it. teach it. Retrieved November 24, 2008, from http://printables.scholastic.com/printables/home/ 

 

Shedd, M. (2008). Comprehension. Presentation for TE 301(f), East Lansing, Michigan.