This document provides strategies and information for teaching reading comprehension. It discusses the important role teachers play in developing student comprehension and recommends explicitly teaching comprehension strategies. Some key points include emphasizing building knowledge, vocabulary, and teaching strategies before, during, and after reading. The document also notes the importance of discussion and using graphic organizers to improve comprehension.

1. COMPREHENDING
COMPREHENSION
P R A C T I C A L S T R AT E G I E S F O R T H E C L A S S R O O M
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Have your phone out
and be ready to text
to 37607

2. The best kind of tours
don’t wait until the end to
interest you.They show
why you are there the
entire time.
Teachers are like
tour guides.

3. “…ensuring that students stay on course, pausing to
make sure they appreciate the landscape of
understanding, and encouraging the occasional diversion
down an inviting and interesting cul-de-sac or byway.”1
“If learning to read effectively is a
journey toward ever-increasing
ability to comprehend texts, then
teachers are like tour guides…”
1Duke, Pearson, Strachan, & Billman, 2011

4. TEACHERS MATTER
80% of first graders in a high-poverty
school were brought up to grade
level reading comprehension while
others got only 20%.2
Second through fifth graders showed
dramatically different rates of growth
in comprehension over one year. It
depended all on the teacher and her
strategies.3
2Tivnan & Hemphill, 2005
3Taylor, Pearson, Peterson, and Rodriguez, 2003

5. SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
We spend too much time
testing comprehension
rather than teaching them
strategies to be successful.4
Teachers should explicitly
teach comprehension
strategies so students can
focus on making meaning.5
4Beers, 2003
5Duke, Pearson, Strachan, & Billman, 2011

6. READING COMPREHENSION6
1. Build disciplinary and world knowledge.
2. Provide exposure to volume and range of texts.
3. Provide motivating and contexts for reading.
4. Teach strategies for comprehending.
5. Teach text structures.
6. Engage students in discussion.
7. Build vocabulary and language knowledge.
8. Integrate reading and writing.
9. Observe and assess.
10. Differentiate instruction.
6Duke, Pearson, Strachan, & Billman, 2011

7. Comprehension
Knowledge
adjustment
Comprehension
Knowledge
adjustment
Comprehension
Knowledge
adjustment
Prior
Knowledge
Build disciplinary and world knowledge
Teach strategies for comprehending
Build vocabulary and language knowledge
Based on Kintsch’s (1998, 2004) Construction-Integration model

8. Before Reading During Reading After Reading
A. Probable Passage
B. Tea Party
C. KIM Charts
A. Annotating
B. Say Something
C. Making
Connections
A. Summary Frames
B. GalleryWalk
C. Sketch to Stretch
Technology

9. FIRST STOP:
PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
WATERFALL
Thinking about what you already know.
Even if a reader has acquired some prior
knowledge of the text, schema (patterns
of thought) must still be activated before
reading (Atwell, 2015).

10. BEFORE READING:
PROBABLE PASSAGE
• Focus: Making a prediction based on prior knowledge.
• Pull 8-15 words from the text that can be categorized.
• Students use what they have pieced together as clues to
making a “gist statement” about the plot or main idea.
• Unknown words get categorized as well and can even be
looked up if the gist statement needs to be revised.
• Write questions to further thinking.
• Read the text and then compare predictions.

11. BEFORE READING:
PROBABLE PASSAGE
Who What Where/When
Why
Gist Statement
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
To Discover…
1.
2.
3.
UnknownWords
Download
a template!

12. BEFORE READING:
PROBABLE PASSAGE
1. Cascadia subduction zone
2. Magnitude 8
3. Tectonic plates
4. Scientists
5. Tsunami destruction
6. Pressure builds
7. Underwater forests
8. Rocks break
9. 1700

13. Informational
text on
Earthquakes

14. BEFORE READING:
PROBABLE PASSAGE
1. Categorize words
2. Look up unknown words
3. Create prediction
4. Watch book trailer
5. Revise prediction
6. Create questions

15. BEFORE READING:
TEA PARTY
• An active version of the probable passage.
• Cards contain a word/phrase from the text and each
student gets one. (Phrases can be repeated; half of the
number of students in class)
• Students (1) share their card to others, (2) listen to their
classmates’ cards, (3) discuss the relationship between the
cards, and (4) predict what the cards as a whole mean.
• Tea Party is simulates the mingling done at a real party
with listening and sharing.

16. BEFORE READING:
TEA PARTY
• [All students move around the room.Teacher listens in.]
• S1: Mine says,“Grace.”
• S2: Okay, mine says,“I remember going there every summer.”
• S3:“God wouldn’t let the good person sink.”
• S4: Huh? So they must be on a boat?
• [Students move around for 10-12 minutes.Then they get into groups
of 5 to discuss what they heard and come up with a “we think”
statement.]
• Group:We think this is about a boy who goes to a summer church
camp and has a girlfriend and likes her but he doesn’t like to kiss.
Once he goes home he wishes he had kissed her.

17. BEFORE READING:
KIM CHARTS
• Vocabulary impacts comprehension.
• Prereading the words can be helpful.
• Logographic cues (things that are a memory aide) can help
them learn.
• Graphic organizers are important for making connections.

18. Review Game: Pictionary

19. SECOND STOP:
WEB OF
CONNECTIONS
“We sometimes confuse explaining to students what is
happening in a text with actually teaching students how
to comprehend a text” (Beers, 2003, p. 4).
Teaching comprehension strategies will help students
convert information into knowledge by questioning the
text, making inferences, visualizing, and connecting
information across texts (Harvey & Goudvis, 2013).

20. DURING READING:
ANNOTATING
• What they are
thinking while reading
can be a big mystery.
• Comments and codes
show us what he or
she is thinking.
• Reflection is
important at the end.

22. • Kelly Gallagher realized his high school students had no
knowledge of what was happening around them.
• Based on the idea that prior knowledge helps build
comprehension and that students need to actively read
informational texts, he created AoW.
DURING READING:
ANNOTATING
Gallagher’s
Website
One teacher’s
Journey
Vale Middle
School*

23. • Begin with a discussion and end with one.
– Preview together: NBC Nightly News is great!
– Independently complete
– Discuss and share (small group and/or whole group) at
week’s end.
DURING READING:
ANNOTATING

24. Modeling it
“live” with a
document
camera might
be helpful.

26. DURING READING:
ANNOTATING

28. DURING READING:
SAY SOMETHING
• Periodically stopping to give you a moment to think about
what is read.
• Groups of 2-3 take turns reading aloud.
• May pause to make a prediction, ask a question, clarify
confusion, or comment on something.
• Students respond and then someone else continues
reading.

29. DURING READING:
SAY SOMETHING
• Model the process, use
sentence starters if
need be for struggling
readers, and keep the
categories clear for
what should be said.
• Practice with short
texts.
• Independent readers
naturally do this and
may not need such
scaffolding.
Rules for Say Something
1. With your partner, decide who will
say something first.
2. After reading __ paragraphs/pages
say something:
 Predict
 Question
 Clarify a misunderstanding
 Comment
 Connect
3. If you can’t do one of those, you
need to reread

30. DURING READING:
SAY SOMETHING
To promise Ivan
something if she does
not make it.
To promise Stella to
protect Ruby.
Ivan got up and Bob
fell down in the
domain. I laughed.
Stella is maybe dead. I feel sad.
Ivan wishes for his
heart to be ice.
So he can’t feel the
pain.
Mark said “vet. Should.
Wrong.”
Marks could not speak
correctly because he is
sad for Stella because
she died with bad foot.

31. DURING READING:
SAY SOMETHING
• Can be done
silently.
– Decide when
they will stop
and write a
comment.
– Exchange
paper with
another.
• Can be done
more actively
(cubes/cards)
1. Predict
2. Question
3. Comment
4. Confusion
Bookmark
“Poker” Cards
Cubing (beach ball works too!)
Scoresheet to participation

32. DURING READING:
MAKING CONNECTIONS
• Literature Circle Dilemma: How do I ensure good
discussions over the text?
• Skilled readers bring knowledge of language, text, and
world for reading comprehension. Connections are
important!
• Text-to-text, -to-self, and -to-world create a way for
students to build their knowledge in meaningful ways.
Adapted from
Facing History

33. DURING READING:
MAKING CONNECTIONS

34. DURING READING:
MAKING CONNECTIONS

35. DURING READING:
MAKING CONNECTIONS

36. THIRD STOP:
LOOKBACK MOUNTAIN
Learning: knowing more than we did before reading.
Van den Branden (2000) discovered
that conversations around texts
created higher comprehension (Duke,
Pearson, Strachan, & Billman, 2011).

37. AFTER READING:
SUMMARY FRAMES
• An alternate way of demonstrating comprehension
without a series of questions.
• Uses organization for struggling readers.
• Fosters discussion and they don’t realize they are simply
summarizing!

38. AFTER READING:
SUMMARY FRAMES
Somebody Wanted But So
(who) (to do something) (conflict/problem) (result)
Fiction
THEN…
Somebody Wanted But So
Mrs. Stevenson To call her husband But couldn’t get ahold
of him
She contacted the
operator
Mrs. Stevenson Wanted to find out
who was being
murdered
No one believed her She was murdered
Sgt. Duffy A piece of pie The diner didn’t carry
any
The delivery boy ran
back and found him
some

39. 3-2-1 Blastoff! The Most
Important Idea
Budget Summary
3 things you found out
2 interesting things
1 question you still have
3 things I liked about
the play/production
2 things that were hard
for me to understand
1 thing I disliked about
the play/production
An important idea in
the text was ______.
But the most important
idea was ______.
An important idea was
that you will get very
sick in space and throw
up! But the most
important thing I
learned was that our
bodies will adapt.
Each word costs 10
cents.You must
summarize within a
budget ($2).
Everything stops
working andTommy
thinks it’s aliens.
Everyone turns on each
other thinking they are
an alien. ($1.80)

40. AFTER READING:
GALLERY WALK
• Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on
the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel
from station to station together, performing some kind of
task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result
in a conversation.
• Move beyond pictorial:
– I found this confusing, this idea stands out, I found this
quote interesting, I wish I knew more about
– Students rotate around the room marking thoughts
directly on posters or on sticky notes. Each group
builds on the previous.
Gallery Walk
Assessments
(FormalVS informal)

41. AFTER READING:
SKETCH TO STRETCH
• Visual scaffold that helps students illustrate and symbolize
ideas in the text.
• Can they visualize what they read?
• Write an explanation of the sketch on the back.
• Share and respond.

42. AFTER READING:
SKETCH TO STRETCH
Ivan watched TV and saw
all these animals he had
never seen before.Then he
saw a gorilla and it made
him sad that he was alone.

43. TECHNOLOGY
Poll Everywhere Padlet Socrative
• Join with a code (texting)
• Best for multiple choice
questions.Whole class can
see results.
• Can be embedded right in a
PowerPoint**
• Before Reading
• Join with a link (browser)
• Best for displaying thoughts
to whole class
• Before/During/After
• Join with link (browser) or
app
• Best for gathering data for
the teacher
• Students can create
accounts
• After Reading

44. REFERENCES
Beers, K. (2003). When kids can’t read:What teachers can do. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Duke, N.K., Pearson, P. D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading
comprehension.
Duke, N. K., Pearson, D. P., Strachan, S. L., & Billman,A. K. (2011). Essential
elements of fostering and teaching reading comprehension. In S. J Samuels
& A. E. Farstrup (ed.), What research has to say about reading instruction (4th
ed.). (pp. 51-93). Newark, DE: International Association.