Comprehension quick win

Welcome to our last episode in our Quick Win series. Today we're talking comprehension.

Today, I just want to encourage you to think about the difference between comprehension processes and products. I think in the past, for many of us, myself included, much of our comprehension instruction really was just comprehension assessment. We would perhaps ask questions or have students take a quiz, but we really weren't teaching students HOW to comprehend the text.

The processes are the things that students do that will help them LEARN to comprehend a text. The processes could be things like teaching them how to consult a dictionary if they don't understand a word or using context to help them figure out the meaning of a word.

It could be having them connect their background knowledge to what it is that they're reading.

It could be having them locate cohesive ties. A cohesive tie is a phrase that refers to something else that we've already mentioned in the text, so figuring out how things connect. An example could be like a pronoun connecting to its antecedent.

We want to make sure that rather than just expecting an outcome, we're actually equipping students to comprehend the text.

One of the biggest ways that you can do that is by building vocabulary and background knowledge. Before students read a new text, particularly non-fiction, you can do some activities to boost that background knowledge as well as pre-teach some challenging vocabulary words or teach them as you go.

Just remember, there's a difference between process and product. We don't just want to check comprehension, we want to teach it.

This concludes our Quick Win series. You can find the show notes for this episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode22. See you next time!