What is Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is the reader’s understanding of what the writer is trying to convey. In order to be successful in reading comprehension the reader must be able to decode the words, have vocabulary knowledge, obtain main ideas, knowledge of text structures, writing strategies and various other skills.
Challenges related to Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is the ultimate reading goal for a students literacy abilities. Various other skills are need in order for a student to comprehend what they read. When a child is discouraged with reading it can limit them for their whole lives. Teachers need to make sure to provide students with various and continuous opportunities to read daily. By doing this teachers can begin to challenge and encourage students through reading. New technologies are being developed daily that be used within the classroom get students reading. Many students of today find books boring, thus teachers need to be proactive in finding new reading material which might include blogs, website, e-readers, e-magazines, fan forums or various other digital texts. Below you will find Factors That Affect Reading Comprehension:
Solutions for improving Reading Comprehension
There are a few solutions that can improve reading comprehension including using text annotation software and apps, as well as reader prompts and supported texts. Getting students to engage with reading material and if a teacher can make it fun and interesting to each student then it is a win-win for everyone. Using digital texts can get students, who might find reading boring, to engage in reading. Student interests are more appealed to in digital and online environments, rather then century old books.
By incorporating sites like Newsla into the curriculum students are able to read about real time events, but can also read and understand what is being said because the website allows for students to adjust the reading levels of articles. Imagine a struggling read trying to read an Economics article from the Los Angeles Times and expected to write a 2-page opinion summary. With Newsla, it is more realistic and the teacher can better assess the students understanding.
By giving students reading prompts,they can better prepare for the assessment after the reading. This will greatly ease their anxiety and allow them to look for the important information within the article. This site offer various reader response prompts that can give teachers ideas on what to have students write about to assess comprehension. 100 Reader Response Prompts
Research on Reading Comprehension
Comprehension is affected by the reader’s knowledge of the topic, knowledge of language structures, knowledge of text structures and genres, knowledge of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, their reasoning abilities, their motivation, and their level of engagement (Reading Comprehension). Students need to be guided in their efforts to become good at reading comprehension. They need to be able to do so many things in order to understand what they are reading that if one skill is lacking it could deter or decrease their ability to know what they are reading. Processes of word identification, parsing, referential mapping, and inference all contribute, interacting with the reader’s conceptual knowledge to produce a situation model of the text (Word Meaning to Text Meaning). Reading comprehension is a difficult process and students need as much practice as possible. If teachers can get students to read digital text vs books then they are at least able to have students practicing, reading and continuing to build their skills. Several technologies can assist with building and practicing reading comprehension.
Tools for Reading Comprehension
Newsla–current events news site that allows the user to change the level of the reading to fit the current readers abilities
Readworks–leveled reading passage resource site
TinyPDF–PDF reader/editor that allows for annotating and referencing material
WordPress–social blog site where students can review each other writings, find other people who have written about topics and find ideas for assignments. Students can also write reading summaries within their blog posts.
Scrible–annotation tool for reading and gathering information
Google Docs–Collaborative environment, also includes various add-ons for annotation tools, reference tools and text-to-speech tools
Link to Reading Comprehension Apps–tons of apps to support reading comprehension
Link to Annotation Tools–several apps for annotating readings online
Videos to Improve Reading Comprehension
Demonstration of Scrible
Readworks Demonstration
Tips and Tricks for Newsela
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