LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR COMPREHENSION
After spending time planning and creating the perfect lesson (ha), we teach it and all goes well – until the assessment. Then it’s clear that students did not retain the knowledge like you thought they should. What can you do?
Besides going back and teaching the information again and in different ways, how about teaching your students HOW to learn. It’s not always your job to just teach the material, but is also the job of the student to help themselves learn it. You can facilitate that by helping them learn how to learn.
Note: This is the second part in a series of posts of learning strategies. To view the first, on quick memorization, click here.
TEACHING LEARNING STRATEGIES EXPLICITLY
Reading comprehension strategies like making connections and inferring are a part of learning strategies and are commonly known, but there are other strategies as well. The ones in this post will mostly refer to strategies to understanding nonfiction text.
Part of the struggle is that most teachers know these, but don’t explicitly explain them to their students. For example, the teacher may ask students what they know about a particular topic before beginning a new book. But they don’t teach them that activating background knowledge helps them to understand the new book better. Without explaining these strategies, students are not able to then use these strategies on their own in other situations.
So, here are few learning strategies designed specifically for students to improve comprehension and how you can teach it to them.
SCHEMA ACTIVATION
Your schema is all of the information you already know about a particular subject. Whales, gymnastics, horses, etc. The more schema you have on a topic, the easier it is for you to understand a text about the same topic. This means that students with the same general reading proficiency could understand a text at totally different rates if one student already knows a lot about construction equipment, for example, and one knows very little.
Tell students about schema, and specifically how it helps to use your schema to make connections between the text and what you already know in order to understand the text. Then, after you read a text, you can use the new information to add it to your existing schema.
READING DIFFERENTLY FOR DIFFERENT PURPOSES
I was a great reader when I was a kid, except I had terrible comprehension (which means I could read any word you put in front of me, but really wasn’t that great of a reader). My main problem was that I read too fast and didn’t stop to check if I was understanding things. But most specifically, I thought that every text could be read in the same way. I struggled with this until mid-way through high school.
The point is, you have to change your style of reading when you are reading different types of text. A fantasy story can often be read much quicker than an informational text. With nonfiction, you have to stop and frequently process what you read because there is so much new information that you are trying to get into your brain.
Make an anchor chart with students using a Venn diagram so that students can see some of the ways that reading different type of texts means that you also have to change your style of reading.
SUMMARIZING
We all know what summarizing is, but do students understand the purpose of it? Do they know that when they summarize information, they are showing that they can understand the text well enough that they are able to find just the important parts and put it into their own words?
When using nonfiction text, I like to have students summarize each section, or sometimes even each paragraph. They can do this just orally, rather than having to write everything. Have them say a sentence or two summary of what each section was about. Eventually, they should be able to do this on their own without prompting to check for understanding.
QUESTIONING
I love teaching about questioning. It’s such a great quick strategy.
Most students understand why it is important to ask a question when they don’t understand something. But when used as a learning strategy, often the point is to ask a question even if you already know the answer. It helps clarify the information in your mind and check for understanding.
For example, after reading about the process to make jelly beans, students should ask themselves a question. “What are the steps, in order, to make a jelly bean?” If they can answer the question, they can move on. If not, they should review the section.
I also like to teach about asking deeper questions – I call them thin and thick questions. Thin questions have an answer that is right there in the text, such as “What color is the main character’s hair?” Thick questions need a combination of what is in the text and knowledge that you have. For example, “How would you feel if you had your doll taken away like the character in the story?” To answer this, students would need to have knowledge of the story, but also add their own experience.
Both of these types of questions can help students to better understand a text.
ACTIVE LISTENING
This one is a learning strategy associated not with reading comprehension, but with listening comprehension. This is another one I struggle with myself. When I’m sitting in church or a meeting, am I staying focused on the speaker, or letting my mind wander?
Students need to know that active listening involves continually choosing to focus on the speaker. It means repeating their words in your mind or asking yourself questions for understanding as you are listening.
Before sharing information from the front of the class, teach students how to use active listening to focus on remembering what you are saying.
STUDENTS TAKE PART IN LEARNING
By teaching these strategies, you are asking students to take part in their own learning. You aren’t wanting them to ask questions only when you ask them to. You are telling them that these are strategies they should do every time they are learning something in order to help themselves learn better.
This takes a lot of practice, but by teaching students these things in upper elementary, they won’t have to struggle through high school and college as much while they try to figure all of this out on their own.
LEARNING AND STUDY STRATEGIES
If you want all of these materials already prepared for you, with instructions for how to teach the strategies, practice pages, and nonfiction passages to practice with, click on the picture below.
