Explicitly Teaching Reading Comprehension

This week's article summary is Reading Comprehension Loses Out in the Classroom, and it's a follow up to last week's summary.

When I taught middle school humanities (language arts and history/social), one of my principal academic objective was to get my students to form, substantiate, and express (orally and in writing) their opinions.

For most humanities teachers the vehicles used to accomplish the above goals are reading novels, short stories, textbooks, and primary sources. Usually teachers ask their students to complete their reading assignments at home, and then the classroom is used to assess, deepen, and expand their understanding of the material they read.

I always thought that through class discussions I could assess if my students were successfully comprehending their reading assignments. But, as you’ll see in the article below, I should have included more direct reading in my classroom.

Reading comprehension has remained an elusive goal in education. We know how important it is but struggle teaching and assessing it.

It’s critical to learn to decode words, develop an extensive vocabulary, and possess extensive background knowledge. Yet these skills don’t necessarily mean a student is effective at reading comprehension.

The article below recommends more direct reading in class – both by students themselves and from read alouds from their teachers. Thid should be followed from a class discussion of open-ended questions.

As I read the article, I kept thinking of two questions to repeatedly ask students about what they’re reading: What is the reading selection telling you? How do you know this?

Classroom reading is a staple of most elementary school teachers’ pedagogy. Yet, in addition to being entertaining for children, classroom reading is also a great opportunity to see if they are developing reading comprehension skills.

Joe

-----

Nearly a half century ago, a landmark study showed that teachers weren’t explicitly teaching reading comprehension. Once children learned how to read words, no one taught them how to make sense of the sentences and paragraphs. Some kids naturally got it. Some didn’t.

Since then, reading researchers have come up with many ideas to foster comprehension. Although the research on reading comprehension continues, there’s evidence for a collection of teaching approaches, from building vocabulary and background knowledge to leading classroom discussions and encouraging children to check for understanding as they read. 

This should mean substantial progress toward fixing a problem that was identified decades ago. But hardly any of these evidence-based practices have filtered into the classroom.

“It’s a little bit discouraging,” said Philip Capin of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. “What we often see in classrooms is devoid of high-quality strategy instruction or knowledge-building instruction.

Capin is referring to a host of comprehension strategies, such as checking yourself for understanding after reading a paragraph, identifying the author’s main point, or summarizing what you have just read.

Teachers spend limited time reading texts with children. The dearth of reading is especially pronounced in science classes where teachers tended to prefer PowerPoint slides over texts. More time is spent on reading comprehension instruction in reading or English class, but it was still just 23 percent of instructional time. Still, that is a big improvement over the original 1978 study, which documented that only 1 percent of instructional time was spent on reading comprehension.

A survey of middle school teachers published in 2021 echoes these observational findings that very little reading is taking place in classrooms. Seventy percent of science teachers said they spent less than 6 minutes on texts a day, or less than 30 minutes a week. Only 50 percent of social studies teachers said they spent more time reading in classrooms.

Capin said his team found that reading instruction was more focused on word reading skills, what educators call “decoding.” Researchers noticed that teachers were also building students’ knowledge, especially in science and social studies classes. But this knowledge building was mostly divorced from engaging students in text comprehension. 

Classroom researchers observed “low-level” reading instruction in which a teacher asks a question and students respond with a one-word answer. Teachers tended to confirm whether student responses were “right” or “wrong.” Capin said that only 18 percent of teacher responses elaborated on or developed students’ ideas. 

Capin said teachers tended to lecture rather than encourage students to talk about what they understand or think. Teachers often read the text aloud, asked a question and then answered the question themselves when students didn’t answer it correctly. He said that leading a discussion might help students better understand the text. 

Capin said teachers also often ask generic comprehension questions, such as “What is the main point?” without considering whether the questions are appropriate for the reading passage at hand. For example, in fiction, the author’s main point is not nearly as important as identifying the main characters and their goals.

Some teachers are leading reading discussions in their classrooms. Capin said he visited one such classroom a few weeks ago. But he thinks good comprehension instruction isn’t commonplace because it’s much harder than teaching foundational reading skills. Teachers have to fill in gaps in students’ skills and background knowledge so that everyone can engage. Teacher training programs don’t put enough emphasis on evidence-based methods, and researchers aren’t good at telling educators about these methods.

Interest in the science of reading has been exploding around the country over the past five years, especially since a podcast, “Sold a Story,” highlighted the need for more phonics instruction. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another 50 years for comprehension to get better.