is?
As we discuss the true aspects of comprehension and how to foster them, you will likely find that you are doing a lot of good things that this book suggests you do in the classroom (such as read-alouds, voice and choice books selected by readers, buddy reading, vocabulary spotting, and accountable independent reading). You may also find that some things you are doing may in fact hinder the process of comprehension (for example, too much focus on worksheets, workbooks, isolated skill development, teacher talk, and sustained silent reading without sufficient checking for understanding).
Also, it’s important to remember that some students are so profoundly advantaged by outside factors, such as having the opportunity to read voraciously on their own time, that they acquire advanced reading comprehension despite what teachers do or don’t do. And other students, less advantaged, have little chance of success unless we significantly advance our ability to describe reading comprehension—the destination—in detail and learn how to effectively guide all students there. For these students, we must create multiple, quality opportunities to read with a partner for the needed support, use digital tools so they will use auditory stories, and even take time to do more oral reading with them so they hear the sound of language.
While we are suggesting that educators need to shift their focus from skill-based reading routines to meaning- or knowledge-based efforts, we want to make it very clear that we are not blaming educators for their choice of where to focus. Reform and regulatory requirements are certainly impactful. Author and cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene (2009) places a good portion of the blame on policymakers and decision makers who “swing back and forth with the changing winds of pedagogical reform, often blatantly ignoring how the brain actually learns to read” (p. 2). Hirsch (2018) remarks that it is unfair that “teachers are being blamed for the poor results of this system” because “teachers have been misinformed about the actual nature of reading comprehension” (p. 75). In addition, leaders sometimes seem to imply that teachers must use all of the elements of the reading program supplied by the publisher. This may not be the case, but teachers will do whatever they think is expected of them.
When we consider the professional literature about reading comprehension as a whole, we find the usual suspects that are featured in this text, but with fundamental perspectives that make all the difference. We see phonics as a necessary first step to decoding written language; vocabulary, word choice, phrasing, sentence structure, and graphics as the visual input to help readers interpret meaning; and perhaps most important, background experiences, prior knowledge, emerging knowledge, and of course, the new knowledge revealed as understanding, meaning, and making sense are achieved. A survey of the professional literature reveals a common refrain: multiple authors discuss the same elements as critical and sometimes-overlooked factors contributing to reading comprehension (Hirsch, 2003; Lemov et al., 2016; Willingham, 2017). We present the elements here as the big three.
1. Decoding: Can you decipher the text? Can you use phonics to sound out unknown words? If so, how fluently?
2. Vocabulary: Do you know all the words in the text? If not, what percentage is unknown to you? Can you use context clues to help?
3. Knowledge: Do you have the necessary background knowledge to understand the context of and references in the text? Do these things make sense to you?
Let’s explore each of these elements individually, and then see how they work together.
Decoding First
Although we associate phonics with the early years of reading, even adult learners use these skills when they encounter unknown words. Consider the word ОДеЯЛО. Can you decipher it? This is the Russian word for “blanket.” Imagine you were a Russian preschool student; you would certainly know the word verbally, but if you had no phonetic knowledge of how to interpret the letters reflected in the word—no way to convert them to sound and meaning—you would be no closer to reading comprehension with this word than any of us with no knowledge of Russian.
Some of this word’s characters have familiar elements, but overall, most of us English speakers will look at this word and have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it. We might assume that the word ends with a “-row” sound, but we are also a little unsure of several of the ending characters. Is an inverted R pronounced differently than a regular R? And we have likely never seen anything like the second letter of this word unless we have taken Russian.
Clearly, readers need to be able to efficiently convert the symbols of reading into sounds and meanings, but we would be remiss if we associated phonics and decoding with direct access to comprehension. For phonics to instantly aid us in comprehension, we must already know the word. If we sound out a word and have never heard it before, we are no closer to comprehension. This brings us to the next element, vocabulary.
Vocabulary Forever
Conversations about the importance of vocabulary are endless. Teachers in every subject area or discipline value the vocabulary of their content and often issue student lists of discipline-specific, academic vocabulary. Indeed, vocabulary plays a critical role in understanding. Hirsch (2018) asserts that “vocabulary size is the single most reliable correlate to reading ability” (p. 48). From this, we can conclude that the words we know profoundly affect and accurately predict what we will be able to read and comprehend.
Vocabulary is so critical when seeking understanding that readers “have a pretty low tolerance for reading unknown words…. Just how much unknown stuff can a text have in it before a reader will declare mental overload and call it quits?” (Willingham, 2017, p. 90). It turns out that, while estimates vary among researchers, and comprehension depends on the reader’s attitude and motivation, the consensus is that readers need to know nearly all the words—98 percent—in order to comfortably comprehend what they’re reading (Willingham, 2017). Every standards document that we know of includes some ELA standard that requires students to use context clues to guess the meaning of unknown words, but without sufficient context (more than 98 percent known words), determining the meaning of unknown words is virtually impossible.
Every standards document that we know of includes some ELA standard that requires students to use context clues to guess the meaning of unknown words, but without sufficient context (more than 98 percent known words), determining the meaning of unknown words is virtually impossible.
So, with decoding ability and vocabulary, we are getting much closer to comprehension. However, these are only two of the big three. Without knowledge—the last element of the big three—it is possible for students to know how to decode all the words in a text and know what they mean, and still not comprehend what the author is trying to convey.
Knowledge Foremost
Let’s turn to “the most recently understood principle” of literacy: knowledge (Hirsch, 2003, p. 12). To understand why knowledge may be necessary even when you know all the words in a text, take a look at the following list of words.
• belonging
• call
• category
• contained
• intuition
• manifold
• means
• mine
