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Teachers Know Comprehension PDF
Teachers Know Comprehension PDF
Teachers Know Comprehension PDF
PA R D O
C
omprehension is a complex process that has teract with the model to help children become
been understood and explained in a num- strong comprehenders, beginning in kindergarten.
ber of ways. The RAND Reading Study
Group (2002) stated that comprehension is the
process of simultaneously extracting and con-
structing meaning through interaction and involve-
The reader
ment with written language (p. 11). Duke (2003) Any literacy event is made up of a reader en-
added navigation and critique to her definition gaging with some form of text. Each reader is
because she believed that readers actually move unique in that he or she possesses certain traits or
through the text, finding their way, evaluating the
accuracy of the text to see if it fits their personal
agenda, and finally arriving at a self-selected loca- FIGURE 1
Model of comprehension
tion. A common definition for teachers might be
that comprehension is a process in which readers
construct meaning by interacting with text through
the combination of prior knowledge and previous
experience, information in the text, and the stance Social Context
the reader takes in relationship to the text. As these Cultural
different definitions demonstrate, there are many Reader
interpretations of what it means to comprehend
text. This article synthesizes the research on com- Transaction
prehension and makes connections to classroom Meaning
practice. I begin by introducing a visual model of happens here
comprehension.
Text
Provide explicit instruction of useful comprehen- Use multiple strategy approaches. Researchers
sion strategies. Good readers use strategies to sup- have found that teaching multiple strategies simul-
port their understanding of text. Teachers help taneously may be particularly powerful (Trabasso
students become good readers by teaching them how & Bouchard, 2002; National Institute of Child
to use the strategies of monitoring, predicting, in- Health and Human Development, 2000; Pressley,
ferring, questioning, connecting, summarizing, visu- 2000).