As I continue to learn, I find myself spending more time reflecting on the teaching practices I used when I was a classroom teacher. Many times, I think back to a practice I used and realize that I wouldn’t do the same if I were to go back into a classroom teacher position. Today, I was specifically thinking about the way I taught reading comprehension when I was a sixth-grade teacher.

As a new teacher, I frequently searched for ways to enhance my teaching skills, particularly regarding the teaching of reading. I found two books, which I read and utilized often, that helped me in teaching students how to comprehend what they were reading. These books were Guiding Readers and Writers: Teaching Comprehension, Genre, and Content Literacy and Teaching for Comprehension and Fluency: Thinking, Talking, and Writing About Reading, K-8, both authored by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. These books significantly influenced my teaching methods for several years, especially when teaching intermediate grade students.

While it would be hard to name a single takeaway from these texts, one of the things that was influenced by these books was the way I thought I needed to teach reading comprehension. I would teach reading comprehension as independent strategies that a reader might just pull out and utilize at the correct moment. When I taught this way, I might choose one text and use it to learn about the main ideas and supporting details. Then I might select another text to work on inferencing. This may sound familiar to any of you who have been in the education realm in the past 30 years (or possibly more!).

This was the primary work that I did to teach comprehension. It seemed like the strategies were the key to comprehension, so we would cycle through lessons in small group, whole group, guided reading, etc. Then last fall, I read the newest version of Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom by Katie Egan Cunningham, Jan Burkins, and Kari Yates. If you are an upper elementary/intermediate grade teacher, I think this is a highly accessible text for you to learn more about The Science of Reading. It does a great job of distilling some of the timeliest research into a format that teaches you a bit about the science behind a shift, and then gives suggestions for new practices.

But, if you’re like me, be prepared to have moments when you begin to doubt what you thought you knew about teaching reading. For me, the first moment (but not the last) came when I got to page 43, Shift 2: Rethinking the Role of Strategy Comprehension in Learning to Comprehend. If you go back a couple of paragraphs to my description of teaching comprehension strategies, I think there was a part of me that believed the teaching of the strategies was the teaching of comprehension. So, when I read this quote from the work of Nell Duke, Alessandra Ward, and P. David Pearson, I had a moment of guilt that I think many of us have when we learn that what we thought was a great practice might not have been so great based on more current research:

What I have now learned is that while those strategies may help with comprehension, by themselves it’s not enough. In addition to those strategies, readers need so much more. Those things include “vocabulary knowledge, executive function skills, working memory, familiarity with language structures, knowledge of text structures, verbal reasoning, and motivation” (Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates, p.44-45).

As a classroom teacher, what are we to do? How can we engage those other skills? I’m definitely not telling you to go throw out any lesson you’ve done in the past on comprehension strategies, because students need to be introduced to those skills. But, just as the purpose behind a systemic and explicit structure literacy program is to help students get to automaticity in their decoding of words, providing readers with the right strategies will help them get to automaticity in comprehension and fluidly move between different strategies to become proficient readers. I really like the kid-friendly language that Cunningham, Burkins, and Yates use to describe what they call “The Strategic Six.” Here are some thoughts on what might help your students move toward proficiency (the headings below come from the intermediate version of Shifting the Balance):

• Switch on What You Know (Activate Prior Knowledge) – We might teach this skill by engaging in a pre-read of a text. This might involve looking at headings, titles, pictures, and diagrams. Help students ask themselves “What do I already know about this?” (Or maybe, what don’t I know).
• Map the Text (Notice Structures) – As you do the pre-read, what do you notice about the text? Are there patterns? Section headings or chapter titles that might help you know what to expect? In a fiction piece, who is the narrator? From what point of view is the story told?
• Keep a Close Eye on Comprehension (Monitor and Clarify) – This is all about metacognition and being aware of our own thinking. This means paying attention to our thoughts as we read. If something doesn’t make sense, where did it break down? Do I need to reread? Slow down? Fix-up strategies like this help improve comprehension.
• Dig Below the Surface (Ask and Answer Questions) – Long ago, I came across an old comprehension model called SQ3R. This stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recall, Review. During a pre-read (survey), you might jot down a few questions you think could be answered while you are reading. As you read, you monitor your thinking looking for answers to those questions. Then, you go back to your questions and see if you can answer them based on the reading you just did. Finally, you check your answers by going back to the text. This helped my students develop the skill of asking questions prior to and while reading.
• Fill in the Missing Pieces (Infer) – When we think about inferences, it’s often about the conclusions we draw based on previous experiences. We make inferences all the time. Imagine walking into your home, you see dirty dishes in the sink, the mixer is out on the counter, along with a mess of flour and dough, and you can smell that something is baking. You may not be able to see what, but you know that your daughter is making chocolate chip cookies because she likes baking and is the only one at home. This is an inference. Once students understand that using clues to understand what’s happening is inferencing, they will notice their inferences all the time! An activity that I have seen used is the paper bag mystery person. You can do this, or you can ask students to create their own. In one example you might have a bag with a pair of running shoes, a medal from a 5k, a number bib from a half marathon, and a pair of socks. As you share the items have the students make an inference about the person by creating a list. More items will likely lead to more specific inferences.
• Sum up the Core Ideas (Summarize) – As students are reading, they should be thinking about some of the key details. In a narrative, this might involve the setting, key characters, the problem and solution, and what happened at the end of the story. If you’re looking for a way to support this, you might consider story frames. Reading Rockets has a couple of great graphic organizers to support this. Here is one option, and here is another. For nonfiction reading, you might use a concept map like this for students to identify main ideas and key details. These tools will support students in thinking about what the key details are that they need to share a meaningful summary.

This is not the end-all, be-all list of important things students “need to know” to comprehend their reading. You might find a dozen other blogs with a dozen other thoughts, but the ideas listed above are supported by research as high-leverage ways to help grow reading comprehension in our students.

As I’ve shared before, the goal of reading should always be to comprehend. But we must remember that proficient readers will use a variety of strategies with automaticity based on their needs while they read. Comprehension is not the use of a single strategy, rather it’s an active and ongoing process that might involve shifting between several different strategies to help with comprehension. This is why teaching strategies in a stand-alone format with a specific text is not the only way to practice our comprehension skills.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Have you been teaching strategies thinking that would help your students learn to comprehend? What is something new you can commit to trying as a result of your reading today? Share with us in your comments below, or have a conversation with your PLC team about how you might be able to integrate some of these thoughts into the work you do in your classroom.