Comprehension [Grades K-12]. Douglas Fisher

      1 The Point of Comprehension Is Not Comprehension

      In the introduction, we noted that students needed instruction in the skill, will, and thrill of comprehension. But that may leave you thinking that these are discrete and separate activities that are linear in nature. To dispel that myth, let’s take a look inside Bridget Gengler’s third-grade class. They were focused on the upcoming Veterans Day. As Ms. Gengler explains, “It’s more than a day off school. It’s a holiday to recognize some very specific people. Unlike holidays that recognize people who have died, this holiday focuses on people who are alive. Are you interested to know who gets a holiday in their honor?”

      The students were excited to get started, in part because Ms. Gengler was enthusiastic, and she made the information sound interesting to them.

      There were a number of skills that were taught and practiced throughout the unit. Ms. Gengler had modeled annotation, for example, and students annotated the complex texts that they read. The students had been taught how to take notes and to create graphic organizers (see Figure 1.1 for a sample). They had previous lessons on fluency and vocabulary, including word solving. The students knew that when they encountered an unfamiliar word, they could use context clues, word parts or morphology, or resources. They also understood how to summarize information and ask questions. All of these skills were put to the test when they encountered a complex piece of text that explained veterans and Veterans Day.

Description

      Figure 1.1 Student graphic organizer.

      The skill aspect of the learning was not in isolation. Embedded in the experience was a recognition of the need to attend to the will to read. Ms. Gengler’s framing of the lesson helped, but so did the fact that they would have a day off of school the following week, and no one had really explained why there were specific school holidays. They also knew that there was a celebration at their school and that they could present at the celebration if they wanted.

      As part of the design of the experience, students understood that they would have opportunities to produce things as a result of their reading. Students were invited to write letters. Some wrote to military veterans; others wrote to explain the day. See Figure 1.2 for a sample letter written by a third grader to a veteran. Some wanted to present at the school celebration; others did not. Some wanted to share their understanding with family members; others wanted to create posters comparing Veterans Day with Remembrance Day, held on the same day in other countries.

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      Figure 1.2 Sample student letter.

What could have been an ordinary, compliance-oriented task turned into an opportunity to deepen students’ understanding about the holiday and, at the same time, allow them to practice their comprehension skills, enable them to build background and vocabulary knowledge, show them that reading was cool, and reinforce their ability to take action in the world. To our thinking, that’s what comprehension is all about. As David Pearson (personal communication, 2018) noted, the goal of comprehension isn’t comprehension; it’s to do something with the knowledge gained. The goal of comprehension is to take action in the world and to make a difference. That’s why we all work so hard to ensure that students can, and do, read.

       As David Pearson noted, the goal of comprehension isn’t comprehension; it’s to do something with the knowledge gained.

      But What Is Reading?

      Your eyes are traveling across this page, recognizing shapes and ascribing meaning to those shapes. Are you reading? Perhaps. There is some debate about the definition of reading. Is sounding out words reading? Is reading really fast reading?Does reading always mean that you understand and make meaning from the text? Tim Shanahan (2019) forwarded this definition of reading: Reading is making sense of text by negotiating the linguistic and conceptual affordances and barriers to meaning.

      In this case, reading requires some level of understanding or comprehending. This idea is not new. In 1978 Durkin proposed that comprehension was the “essence of reading” (p. 482). Until at least the 1960s, there was a general belief that comprehension was a matter of intelligence and that smart students who could decode would understand what they read (Duffy, 2002). Therefore, comprehension was not taught. In fact, there was debate about whether or not comprehension could even be taught. Some argue that you don’t teach comprehension, you teach for comprehension.

      Following an extensive review of research, The National Reading Panel (2000) defined comprehension instruction as

      developing students’ ability to (a) comprehend the literal meaning printed on the page; (b) interpret authors’ intentions to report knowledge, show possession, implied meaning; and (c) evaluate and apply ideas in printed materials to their lives. (p. 76)

      Their analysis of 38 studies suggested that comprehension skills can be developed through the intentional actions of teachers. This has led to a resurgence of interest in comprehension, specifically how to teach students to understand and make meaning from texts.

       The National Reading Panel’s analysis of 38 studies suggested that comprehension skills can be developed through the intentional actions of teachers.

      Teaching Students to Comprehend

Knowing how readers comprehend should help us design instructional experiences that foster students’ ability to comprehend. Unfortunately, there have been a number of false starts when it comes to teaching students to comprehend. Simply understanding the behaviors of proficient readers and then encouraging students to engage in those practices is not likely to produce the desired results. For example, let’s look at the “the super six” comprehension strategies: building knowledge and making connections, predicting and inferring, questioning, monitoring, summarizing, and evaluating (Oczkus, 2004). There’s nothing wrong with these, and most of us use these as we read. They come from the body of research on the behaviors of proficient and precocious readers—what readers do when they encounter text. Our concern is that these strategies are becoming “curricularized.” By this, we mean that the strategies—rather than the text—are becoming the center of instruction. One publisher even markets this curricularization by noting that its program teaches “one strategy at a time.” We can’t find any evidence for the effectiveness of teaching one strategy at a time, especially with pieces of text that require that readers use a variety of strategies to successfully negotiate meaning.

      Models of reading comprehension instruction

       We can’t find any evidence for the effectiveness of teaching one strategy at a time, especially with pieces of text that require that readers use a variety of strategies to successfully negotiate meaning.

      This was highlighted in a recent classroom visit. We entered a sixth-grade classroom. On every wall there were posters about making predictions: how to predict, what to predict, when to predict, what to record about your predictions, why predict, and so on. Some of these posters were classroom created, while others were publisherproduced. We sat next to Tim, a sixth grader who was reading Stone Fox (Gardiner, 1980). We asked Tim what he was doing, and predictably he answered, “predicting.” Having read Stone Fox, we asked him what he was predicting, expecting a discussion about the dog dying and the family losing the farm. To our surprise, Tim rolled his eyes and said, “Everything, man?” We have to say that it is very unlikely that Tim will incorporate predicting as a habit based on the five weeks his class spent on predicting. We would argue that Tim has developed a significant