Glossary · Comprehension and language
What are comprehension strategies?
Definition
Comprehension strategies are deliberate mental actions readers use to understand and remember a text, such as predicting, questioning, clarifying, visualizing and summarizing.
Skilled readers do these things without noticing. Struggling readers often don't, so teachers make them explicit: name the strategy, model it with a think-aloud, practice it together, then hand it over.
Research on strategy teaching suggests that a small amount goes a long way. A few weeks of explicit teaching gets most of the benefit; months of drilling the same strategies adds little. After that, the time is better spent on knowledge, vocabulary and discussion of meaty texts.
The strategies are tools, not the point. The question isn't “Did you make a prediction?” but “What do you think will happen, and why?” Keep the talk about the text, and the strategy follows.
In a lesson
Partway through a chapter, the teacher stops and thinks aloud: “I'm confused about why the girl hid the letter. Let me reread that page.” That models clarifying in about fifteen seconds.
Why does this matter for the record?
Don't rate strategies as skills to master. Note whether the student uses them on their own when a text gets hard.
Rate each skill as you teach it
Needs support, Developing, Secure. The rating schedules the review and builds the report.