EDF3306 Literacy Assessment 2:
Reading Comprehension
In the classroom
Why is reading comprehension important for middle to upper primary students?
For secondary school
It is vital your students learn effective reading comprehension strategies as by the time they reach secondary school, they will be expected to read quickly and accurately to derive meaning from texts for almost all school learning (Woolacott, 2002). Teaching reading comprehension strategies empowers students to take ownership of their literacy development.
For everyday life
We use reading comprehension regularly and subconsciously in everyday life as we construct and extract meanings from various texts (Emmitt et al., 2010; Freebody, 2013; Luke, et al., 2011). In order to make meaning from everyday texts such as timetables, warning signs and recipes we need to be able to deploy a range of comprehension strategies.
Teaching reading comprehension
It is essential to assist your students master both ‘learning to read’ and ‘reading to learn’ to ensure their academic and social success (Konza, 2011, p. 3). Effective comprehension relies on transforming the cognitive strategies detailed on the previous page into automatic skills. Therefore, it is crucial to explicitly teach effective comprehension strategies in a meaningful context and provide scaffolded learning experiences. A supportive reading comprehension framework you may like to use to structure your literacy program is the Gradual Release of Responsibility model.
Gradual Release of Responsibility
The Gradual Release of Responsibility model involves: the explicit instruction of strategies and their use; guided practice; and collaborative use and independent application of strategies (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Miller, 2013; Munro & Munro, 1994). We have provided an explicit example of how you might use this in your practice on our sample unit page.
The Gradual Release of Responsibility coincides with our sociocultural perspective of reading comprehension as we take on the role of a more knowledgeable other to scaffold students’ understandings until they can adopt a more agentive role (Woolley, 2011). Students can also have the opportunity to support their peers' development as demonstrated by the Reciprocal Teaching technique (Palincsar & Brown, 1986, as cited in Hill, 2012), which could be utilised in guided or independent practice.
Teacher responsibility
'I do it'
'We do it'
'You do it together'
'You do it alone'
Student responsibility
Inspired by Miller (2013)
Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal Teaching enables students' overall comprehension in an inclusive, social context as they strive for independent use of strategies. While the traditional approach focuses on predicting, clarifying, questioning and summarising, it can be adapted to suit your students' needs and deepen their metacognitive awareness. We have altered the roles below to demonstrate how this model could be used in an upper primary context to highlight the interconnected nature of reading comprehension strategies.
Social critic
The social critic asks:
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Is this text fair?
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Are there any stereotypes?
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Who is included/excluded?
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How could the text be more equitable?
Critiquing/Critical skills
Individual
The individual asks:
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What does this text mean to me?
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Have I experienced something similar?
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How did I feel when this happened to me?
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Can I connect any ideas or events to another text?
Activating prior knowledge
Investigator
The investigator:
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Asks what words or techniques were used to create a feeling or image.
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Looks up meanings of unfamiliar words or concepts and reports back to the group.
Questioning
Artist
The artist:
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Illustrates a main idea or event.
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May create a sketch, diagram, cartoon or digital image.
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Presents to group and leads discussion on visualisation.
Visualising
Summariser
The summariser:
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Lists events in a sequence.
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Summarises text and synthesises ideas.
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Asks others to listen and check whether they agree with ideas in the summary.
Summarising
Director
The director:
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Manages the group.
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Asks each member to predict what will happen in the text.
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Monitors and confirms predictions during reading and questions at the end.
Predicting
Inspired by Hill (2012)
Reciprocal teaching in action
For more information see DEECD's Teaching and Learning Resource
When teaching reading comprehension, keep in mind...
A literacy-rich classroom is fundamental for reading comprehension to flourish and succeed (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Winch et al., 2011). This involves providing students with ongoing opportunities to interact with a range of genres for real purposes (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Emmitt et al., 2010), selecting appropriate texts that cater for student diversity (Luke et al., 2011) and establishing a supportive reading comprehension environment.
For practical ideas about how to teach each of the universal reading strategies, please the learning activities page of this website.
For a sample reading comprehension unit, please visit the sample unit page of this website.
