![Comprehension [Grades K-12] - Douglas Fisher Corwin Literacy](/cover_874811.jpg "Comprehension [Grades K-12] - Douglas Fisher")
2
Background knowledge in reading
The sounds of language
Fluency in reading
Vocabulary in reading
Chapter 3
The “will to read”
The four dimensions of dispositions for learning
Building classroom choice
Chapter 4
Cultivating thrill in reading comprehension
Critical literacy
How do we question the commonplace in a text?
How do we consider the role of the author?
How do we encourage action through comprehension?
Chapter 5
Text readability and text complexity
Qualitative characteristics of texts
Digital texts
Making decisions about texts
Direct instruction
Dialogic instruction
An instructional framework that works
Acknowledgments
Corwin gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following reviewers:
Melissa J. Black
Associate Dean, Progressive Education Institute
Harlem Village Academy
Washington, DC
Patrick L. Harris II
Teacher
Detroit, MI
Peter Nielsen
Leadership Development, Literacy, and Numeracy
Flinders University
Adelaide, South Australia
Lynn Angus Ramos
K–12 English Language Arts Coordinator
DeKalb County School District
Decatur, GA
Introduction
It’s time for a new model of reading comprehension instruction. Research during the past several decades has resulted in significant increases in understanding about reading comprehension itself (e.g., Israel, 2017). Helping students make meaning from texts is critical to their success, and reading comprehension is one of the oldest lines of inquiry in education; Thorndike noted that comprehension required “a cooperation of many forces” (1917, p. 232). Following a comprehensive review of research, Snow (2002) clarified those forces and noted that comprehension is dependent on four variables:
1 Reader variables: age, ability, affect, knowledge bases, motivation
2 Text variables: genres, format, features, considerateness
3 Educational-context variables: environment, task, social grouping, purpose
4 Teacher variables: knowledge, experience, attitude, pedagogical approach
Models of reading instruction
But models for helping teachers develop students’ comprehension have not kept pace with the knowledge about what comprehension is. While there are strategies such as modeling or reciprocal teaching, a unifying framework for reading comprehension instruction remains elusive. Importantly, reading comprehension instruction should be more than a pile of strategies. The field needs a structured approach to comprehension instruction. We propose that students need to experience reading comprehension instruction across three phases: skill, will, and thrill (see Figure i.1). When they do, students come to see the instructional experiences their teachers provide them as purposeful. Importantly, they begin to accept responsibility for their learning and understand that struggle is a natural part of the process.
Reading comprehension instruction should be more than a pile of strategies. The field needs a structured approach to comprehension instruction.
Figure i.1 A framework for reading comprehension instruction.
The Skill of Reading Comprehension
The forces that must be mobilized to understand a text are many. In this first phase of reading comprehension instruction, teachers focus on the component parts of reading: oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and fluency. These components are formulated according to the age and needs of students, with some skills instruction fading as students master them. However, neglecting any one of these processes will very likely result in compromised comprehension. Over time, students increasingly automate these processes, freeing working memory for comprehension. If a student is laboring over individual words, whether because she can’t decode them or because he doesn’t know what they mean, meaning making is harder and sometimes impossible. When students read laboriously, they rarely pay attention to the meaning and often forget what they read at the start of the sentence or paragraph. Comprehension suffers.
We call these skills because we want students to evolve from strategic readers to skilled ones. As Afflerbach et al. (2008) note, “Reading skills operate without the reader’s deliberate control or conscious awareness. . . . This has important, positive consequences for each reader’s limited working memory” (p. 368). Strategies, on the other hand, are “effortful and deliberate” and occur during initial learning, and when the text becomes more difficult for the reader to understand (p. 369).
At the skill level, specific comprehension strategies are introduced, such as monitoring, predicting, summarizing, questioning,
