This document discusses various comprehension strategies and instructional strategies to support students' reading comprehension. It describes strategies like graphic organizers, fix-up strategies, and elaborate interrogation that students can use to understand texts. Instructional strategies discussed for teachers include think-pair-share, START, and scaffolding approaches. The document also distinguishes between comprehension strategies, which are tools for students, and instructional strategies, which teachers use to support comprehension.

1. Comprehension Strategies
and
Instructional Strategies
By Juliana Smyth
EDRD 6707 Reading and Literacy Growth
March 22, 2015

2. Comprehension Strategies for the Learner
Graphic Organizers
“Graphic organizers can:
• Help students focus on text structure differences between
fiction and nonfiction as they read
• Provide students with tools they can use to examine and
show relationships in a text
• Help students write well-organized summaries of a text”
(Adler, n.d.).

3. Comprehension Strategies for the Learner
Fix-Up Strategy
(Reutzel & Cooter, 2011, p. 309)

4. Comprehension Strategies for the Learner
Elaborate Interrogation
1. Read each page carefully.
2. Stop at the end of each page and pick a statement.
3. Write a “why” question for the statement you pick in your reading
notebooks.
4. Think about an answer to the “why” question using your own
knowledge and experiences.
5. If you can, write an answer to your “why” question.
6. Read the pages again looking for an answer. Read on to another page to
look for the answer.
7. If you can, write an answer to your “why” question.
8. If you can’t write an answer to your “why” question save it for group
discussion after reading.
(Reutzel & Cooter, 2011, p. 315).

5. Instructional Strategies for the Teacher
Think-Pair-Share
This strategy is where the teacher asks a question,
students think, the students discuss, and then the
students share with the whole group.
(Reutzel & Cooter, 2011, p. 309)

6. Instructional Strategies for the Teacher
Students and Teachers Actively Reading Text
(START)
START is an instructional framework that is implemented over a period of
nine sessions where the teacher models and scaffolds the 8 comprehension
strategies and the students implement the strategies for retelling before,
during, and after reading.
(Reutzel & Cooter, 2011, p. 302)

7. Instructional Strategies for the Teacher
Scaffolding Strategies
The diagram shows instructional strategies used to effectively
teach students. These strategies can be used for any content
area.

8. Importance
of
Comprehension Strategies
The comprehension strategies that were chosen are
appropriate for transitional, intermediate, and advanced literacy
learners. Graphic organizers, fix-up strategies, and elaborate
interrogation allow for the students to use metacognition while
reading independently or collaboratively. These strategies also
are engaging, relevant, and meaningful to comprehend a
narrative or informational text that they read or was read to
them.

9. Importance
of
Instructional Strategies
The importance of the instructional strategies are how the
content is presented to the students and under what conditions
the content is presented. The instructional strategies chosen to
teach comprehension of a text were Think-Pair-Share, START, and
Scaffolding. All are exemplar teaching strategies, that are
research-based, and appropriate to use when teaching
transitional, intermediate, and advanced literacy learners. These
strategies motivate and engage the readers in a text. They allow
for collaboration and differentiation in the lesson.

10. Cognitive and Affective Aspects
That Inform
Comprehension
There are 2 main cognitive aspects that inform comprehension:
1. Language Comprehension
2. Decoding
Language comprehension refers to understanding language. Decoding is
what a child uses to figure out unknown words. These cognitive elements
“tend to develop congruently in a young reader’s mind and serve to
reinforce each other” (SEDL, 2013) as they read.

11. Cognitive and Affective Aspects
That Inform
Comprehension
Under these 2 main cognitive aspects, there is a collection of interrelated
aspects that inform comprehension:
1. Cipher Knowledge-seeing patterns in words
2. Lexical Knowledge-recognizing irregular words
3. Phoneme Awareness-spoken words made up of individual sounds
4. Knowledge of Alphabetic Principle-spoken words made up of phonemes
5. Letter Knowledge-basic unit of reading and writing
6. Concepts of Print-pointing to words, beginning of sentence, where to
start and stop

12. American Folklore: A Jigsaw Character Study Lesson
The lesson I selected was “American Folklore: A Jigsaw Character Study” (International
Reading Association (IRA) and National Council of Teachers of English, 2014a). I selected
this lesson because it was students learning American folklore and studying character
traits in a collaborative setting. The jigsaw collaborative approach is a great way for the
students to use their metacognition to study the characters’ traits on a deeper level,
because “metacognition is critical for reading success: It contributes to reading
comprehension, and it promotes academic learning” (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, &
Doyle, 2013). The comprehension strategy used was describing the characters in a text
(story elements). The specific ways that the lesson supports comprehension for the
students in class is:
1. Comparing characters in the same text/other texts
2. Problems characters have/how problems resolved
3. Character’s accomplishments/abilities
4. Supporting characters
The teacher’s instructional strategy is jigsaw collaboration. The comprehension strategy
the student uses is a graphic organizer for the character study.

13. Differences between
Comprehension Strategies
and
Instructional Strategies
Laureate Education, 2014g
Comprehension
Strategies
• For the students
• Use to understand
the text
• Monitoring tools for
regulating,,
checking, and
repairing
Instructional
Strategies
• For the teacher
• Create the conditions
and contexts that
support reading
comprehension.
• Teach the individual
cognitive comprehension
strategies

14. References:
Adler, C. (n.d.). Seven Strategies to Teach Students Text Comprehension.
Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/seven-
strategies-teach-students-text-comprehension
Afflerbach, P., Cho, B.-Y., Kim, J.-Y., Crassas, M. E., & Doyle, B. (2013).
Reading: What else matters besides strategies and skills? The Reading
Teacher, 66(6), 440–448.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
International Reading Association (IRA) and National Council of
Teachers of English. (2014a). ReadWriteThink. Retrieved from
http://www.readwritethink.org/search/?grade=13&resource_type=6&learning_objective=8
Laureate Education (Producer). (2014g). Conversations with Ray Reutzel:
Supporting comprehension [Audio file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B., Jr. (2011). Strategies for reading
assessment and instruction: Helping every child succeed (4th ed.).
Boston, MA: Pearson.
SEDL. (2013). Cognitive elements of reading. Retrieved from
http://www.sedl.org/reading/framework/elements.html