TAKE-AWAYS

• Students need to be taught how to ask higher order questions.
• Teach students a variety of strategies to express what they have comprehended from reading.
• Reading comprehension is a personal experience, and students should be taught to organize their thoughts in a way that works best for them.
• Don't underestimate the importance of summarizing.

REFLECTION

I attended a webinar through Education Week called "Demystifying the Role of Reading Comprehension in the Common Core." It was led by Maureen McLaughlin, the 2013-2014 president of the International Literacy Association. McLaughlin provided a wealth of knowledge and insight when it comes to teaching reading comprehension. As a third grade teacher, I find that so much of my instruction is helping my students transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." Because all of my students have dyslexia, it is crucial to provide them with the strategies they need to comprehend reading. McLaughlin mentioned a quote that stuck with throughout the webinar, "If we can't comprehend, we pretty much can't do anything else." Though simple, this statement put a huge weight of importance on the job of the teacher in the classroom. The common core state standards provide what is expected to be learned when listing the content of reading comprehension. McLaughlin helped to develop strategies to help our students while still meeting the standards.

McLaughlin outlined four types of questions we should be asking our kids when it comes to reading comprehension. Memory questions help students to remember basic facts or details from the reading; in other words, the who/what/where/when questions. Convergent thinking questions are those that ask why and how something is happening. These have to do with explanations, relationships, and comparing and contrasting. Divergent thinking questions require kids to imagine and make predictions, and evaluative thinking questions have kids defend, judge, or justify what has happened in the story. We as teachers need to push past the basic memory questions, so students can be thinking more critically about texts.

McLaughlin recommends teaching multiple strategies to have kids show what they have learned from text. One of my favorites that she shared was "Draw and Label" retelling. Essentially, it is four-part comic strip showing the who, what, where, and how of the story. She also recommends retelling this story. This is helpful for my students who have a hard time writing their thoughts down in words. Giving them the opportunity to express themselves through voice or drawing is a great way to teach summarization. Graphic organizers provide universal design strategies for teaching in the classroom. By teaching different strategies for organizing a story, students eventually will pick what they enjoy best, and best helps their brain comprehend. The goal of teaching reading comprehension strategies is to give students life-long skills for reading. I quite enjoyed the webinar and am looking forward to using strategies in my classroom. My one wish is that she was not rushed in the end. She breezed through her sections on collaborative discussion and graphic organizers, and I would have loved to hear more on that. All in all, a really great experience, and an easy and useful professional development!

Resources Supporting Reading Comprehension Strategies

The above link directs you to a slide show discussing the importance of summarizing. Summarizing after initially reading a text shows the teacher exactly what a student was able to grasp. In other words, teachers see if students "got the gist" of the story. This skill is the first step towards higher order thinking and creating deeper meaning of the text. The slideshow also offers strategies for differentiation.

Above is a link to a document that organizes prompts for thinking after reading text. The document helps to address lower-order thinking skills, or as McLaughlin called them, "memory questions." It also addresses how to ask higher order thinking skills with sentence starters and fill-in-the blank options. The suggested activities help students to gradually develop deeper meaning with the text with a variety of strategies.

Reading Rockets addresses reading comprehension strategies for students with disabilities. Teaching at a school for students with dyslexia has taught me that students need to be systematically taught comprehension strategies in an organized format. Struggling readers are first working to read the words on the page, but are often not able to process what they are reading. Reading Rockets helps to outline what works best for students with learning disabilities.