During Parent/Teacher conferences, you might have had a discussion with your child's classroom teacher about the need to help your child improve his/her reading comprehension. The information below was provided to parents at Family Reading Night which was held in October. Read below to find an excellent resource on reading comprehension strategies that will provide you with important information on how to support your child's acquisition of reading for meaning.
Reading Comprehension Strategies to make Reading Meaningful!
Reading Comprehension Strategies to make Reading Meaningful!
The book, 7 Keys to Comprehension – How to Help your Kids Read It and Get It! by Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins, is an excellent resource for parents and teachers alike. This common sense approach to fostering reading for meaning is based on important research on the reading behaviors of proficient readers. Reading for meaning goes beyond decoding strategies. Reading is thinking! The 7 Keys include:
1. Create mental images
2. Use background knowledge
3. Ask questions
4. Make inferences
5. Determine the importance of ideas or themes
6. Synthesize information
7. Use “fix-up” strategies
Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels are two renowned gurus in reading who lead teacher workshops and have identified the cognitive processes that proficient readers deploy in order to gain meaning from the reading, listening and visual experiences that they encounter. You will note a strong correlation between the 7 Keys listed above and the cognitive processes listed below. These processes are as follows:
· Monitor Comprehension and Make Adjustments
· Connect New Information to Background Knowledge
· Ask Questions
· Infer and Visualize Meaning
· Determine Importance
· Summarize and Synthesize Ideas
At May Watts School, teachers identify a repertoire of strategies at both the Newly Fluent and Truly Fluent stages that are important to foster the continuum of acquired comprehension that goes beyond word calling, beyond literal knowledge of facts, beyond a basic understanding of text. Reading is for Meaning! That means that students acquire strategies that help them become strategic readers who think as they read! As Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels so aptly state, “Comprehension is about understanding.” (Comprehension & Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action)
