Comments on: Four Ways to Improve Reading Comprehension

By: Lesson Plans

Lesson Plans — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:29:25 +0000

A Teacher’s Life Blog Carnival – March 31, 2008…

Welcome to the March 31, 2008 edition of A Teacher’s Life Blog Carnival.
For this edition, we have presented the carnival on our Lesson Plans site, which is dedicated to providing resources to teachers and parents of home schooled students. Af…

By: Mathew

Mathew — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:02:14 +0000

@Florida Teacher There are so many factors involved in standardized testing that I can’t offer you a guarantee that if you just do these things your scores will improve. However, at my last school we managed to make our API for seven years and these were some of the strategies we used.

In terms of how long it takes for these skills to become ingrained…suggestions 1-3 are things you can employ tomorrow and after the first time students will be able to do them. Internalizing and using comprehension strategies independently usually takes until mid-year depending on what grade level you’re teaching and whether or not the strategies were taught the year before. Obviously, giving students chances to use the strategies more often through partner sharing etc. will assist in students learning the strategies more quickly. Good luck.

By: Florida Teacher

Florida Teacher — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:02:14 +0000

These all sound like great things to employ in the classroom. Is one to assume that if teachers apply these practices students will improve comprehension scores on standardized tests as well? If so, generally how long does it take for students to have these skill ingrained?

By: jenorr

jenorr — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:59:23 +0000

Great points. I love having my students talk to each other about things. They know now that after I ask a question, chances are good I’m going to tell them to get a knee buddy and talk.

“Resist the urge to rephrase everything students say as if we know more than they do.” We do this too much. I’ve found that I’m trying to have my students rephrase for each other. That way important points got made more than once, but not by me.

By: Mathew

Mathew — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:48:52 +0000

Thanks Karen, I wasn’t a bad reader but I do remember I didn’t like reading aloud in class either and used to anticipate it like you describe.

By: Karen Janowski

Karen Janowski — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:45:54 +0000

Mathew,
One other reason to throw out the “popcorn reading” model: the struggling readers anxiety levels increase as they anticipate and dread their turn to read in front of their peers. They becomes fixated on the possible humiliation and absolutely lose the ability to comprehend what their peers or they are reading.

Love your model as “best practice.”