Comprehension [Grades K-12]. Douglas Fisher

runs counter to the goal of the instruction, which is to increase Tim’s use of making predictions when they are needed.

A goal of strategy instruction should be consolidation, so that the reader can activate the right strategy (for him or her) at the right time. Consider your own experiences with reading a plot-driven book such as The Da Vinci Code (Brown, 2003). We’ll venture a guess that you didn’t make predictions to the exclusion of everything else. It’s likely that you evaluated (“Hmm, not a lot of character development here”), made connections (“I’ve seen these paintings before”), and so on. In addition, you didn’t make predictions at the beginning of the text and then not return to them. Each time a new clue appeared, you revised your predictions. How did you know how and when to do that? Because you were able to consolidate those strategies and activate them when you needed them. A very real danger of curricularized strategy instruction is that the strategies fossilize to the point that readers hold narrow and rigid understandings of how and when they are used.

      A second concern related to the increased concentration on strategy instruction is the goal that teachers have for this type of instruction. We believe that the goal should be for students to use these strategies with automaticity, applying them authentically as they read. Afflerbach et al. (2008) argue that, over time and with purposeful instruction, strategies can become skills and that skilled readers should be the goal of instruction. As they note, “Readers are motivated to be skillful because skill affords high levels of performance with little effort whereas strategic readers are motivated to demonstrate control over reading processes with both ability and effort” (p. 372). Another look inside a middle school classroom, this time an eighth-grade classroom, will highlight this concern.

       The goal should be for students to use these strategies with automaticity, applying them authentically as they read. Strategies can become skills, and skilled readers should be the goal of instruction.

      Alexandria is sitting at her desk staring at a piece of paper when we enter the room. She has read a passage from the book Hattie Big Sky (Larson, 2006), a book she chose to read. Alexandria is required to document on a worksheet the strategy she used to understand the text on a The form is blank, so we ask her “Any surprises so far?”

Alexandria, excitedly, answers, YES! I’ve been stuck on a word in the book—honyocker. The word doesn’t matter that much, I guess, ’cause I can read the whole thing without knowing what the word really means. But I wanted to know, so I looked on the internet at home. Here’s what I learned: In German, it’s from a word meaning hen hunter. In Czech, it kinda means a shaggy fellow. In Hungarian, it comes from a word meaning negligent, careless, sloppy, or forgetful. A long time ago, ranchers in Montana didn’t like the homesteaders and they called them honyockers, a mean cowboy slang word. In North Dakota, it means a backward, old-fashioned type of rural person. I feel better now,” she says with a grin.

      Impressed, we ask Alexandria, known to be a collector of words and a bit of a trivia hound, what the problem was with her completing her work. She showed us the worksheet, which required that she identify one of the “big six” comprehension strategies and she said, “I’m not sure what I did. I read the whole thing, really. I understand it all, but I wanted to learn more about the word honyocker. I’m not sure which box to check and what to write. Can you help?”

      Focusing heavily on reading strategies can have unintended consequences.

      iStock.com/Goads Agency

      Again, we were struck with the unintended consequences of the concentration on strategies. Forcing students to independently identify which strategy they use and explain it is not likely to ensure that students develop as skilled readers. Was it monitoring? Sure, she knew herself well as a reader and knew she wanted to mine a specific word. Was it evaluating? Yes, she looked at several websites before settling on one that gave her definitions she found useful. Alexandria had moved into the realm of a skilled reader. Forcing her to deconstruct what was becoming an elegantly automatic process for her was counterproductive.

       Forcing students to independently identify which strategy they use and explain it is not likely to ensure that students develop as skilled readers.

      Skilled Readers or Strategic Readers

Given our experiences with the nearly exclusive focus on strategies, we question the idea that the goal of reading comprehension instruction is to develop strategic readers. As Afflerbach et al. (2008) noted, strategic reading is “effortful and deliberate” (p. 368) and occurs during initial learning and when the text becomes more difficult for the reader to understand. In contrast, “reading skills operate without the reader’s deliberate control or conscious awareness” (p. 368). To our thinking, the goal is to develop skilled readers, those who deploy the strategies they have learned with great automaticity. In other words, they have developed habits that they use almost without thinking about them. And, when texts are difficult, they revert back to known strategies to regain meaning.

      As an example, we were sitting near Nick, a third-grade student, as he was attempting to read Hey, Water! (Portis, 2019). We selected Nick because he shares his thinking verbally as he reads. His ability to think aloud is strong and thus provides us glimpses into his cognitive processes. At one point, he said, “I’m lost. I don’t know what is happening now. I hafta reread.” He turned back several pages and started again. Later, he read the large word on the page: tear. He pronounced it /ter/. Then he read the sentence in smaller font: Sometimes you slide down my cheek without a sound. Nick paused, looking perplexed. Then he said, “That’s not right. It’s /tir/ not /ter/. Why are those words spelled the same? That’s really confusing.” Then he proceeded with the rest of the book.

      Nick reminds us that skilled readers periodically recognize that they have lost meaning, and when this happens, they use fix-up strategies, reread, and so on to regain their understanding. Most of the time, Nick is a skilled reader. But importantly, he knows how to be a strategic reader when necessary. Thus, to our thinking, the goal of comprehension instruction should be to develop skilled readers.

      Skilled readers periodically recognize that they have lost meaning, and when this happens, they use fix-up strategies, reread, and so on to regain their understanding.

      iStock.com/PeoplesImages

Before we leave this comparison of skilled versus strategic reading, we would like to return to Afflerbach et al. (2008) one more time. They remind us that comprehension is much more complex than the cognitive skills that we have named thus far. As they note, “The progression from effortful and deliberate to automatic use of specific actions while reading occurs at many levels—decoding, fluency, comprehension, and critical reading” (p. 368). This is an important reminder and one that is often forgotten in conversations about comprehension. Each of those literacy processes is important if readers are going to understand what they read. As we will explore more fully in the next chapter, students must reach automaticity with each of those component parts. As readers develop automaticity with one aspect of reading, they free up working memory to focus on something else.

      Building on the work of LaBerge and Samuels (1964), Bloom (1986) explained automaticity as the brain developing its ability to “perform a skill unconsciously with speed and accuracy while consciously carrying on other brain functions” (cited in Wolfe, 2001, p. 102). This is why developing automaticity with decoding and word recognition is so essential to comprehension. Automaticity allows the reader to focus attention on the meaning rather than the process for acquiring the meaning.