![Comprehension [Grades K-12] - Douglas Fisher Corwin Literacy](/cover_874811.jpg "Comprehension [Grades K-12] - Douglas Fisher")
high school students. (It’s to steal something and has replaced jacked in the popular vernacular.) By the time you read this, that word will probably be dated, and we will have learned countless new words.
Constrained and Unconstrained Skills
Reading researcher Scott Paris (2005) describes these concepts as constrained and unconstrained skills. Constrained reading skills are those that have boundaries or limits. There are 44 phonemes in English and 26 letters. As well, there are a finite number of letter combinations that represent the sounds. And there is a limit as to the rate of reading one can sustain without sacrificing accuracy and meaning. These first four reading skills—phonemic awareness, alphabetics, phonics, and fluency—are constrained reading skills. They are constrained because we can count them, they are easily measured, and more importantly, they are the foundational reading skills readers must acquire.
Constrained and unconstrained skills
However, the ability to decode and read text fluently is not the final destination. If that were so, we wouldn’t need to do much instruction beyond elementary school. But true reading is much more than accurate word calling. All of us spend a lifetime acquiring what Paris calls the unconstrained reading skills of vocabulary and comprehension. Unlike constrained skills, there is no endpoint. Your vocabulary is better today than it was five years ago, and your reading comprehension will be better five years from now (see Figure 1.3).
Figure 1.3 Constrained and unconstrained skills in reading comprehension.
Effective reading instruction involves both constrained and unconstrained skills development. No responsible primary teacher would limit attention to constrained skills only while ignoring vocabulary and reading comprehension. But constrained skills do have a shelf life, in that once they are learned, there is no further benefit to continuing to teach them. Therefore, attention to constrained skills instruction does fade after the first years of school, as students acquire them. In turn, vocabulary and reading comprehension take on an even more prominent role than in the primary years. We include this information because we believe that the skill of comprehending, the focus of the next chapter, requires all of the constrained and unconstrained skills.
Is Comprehension Enough?
Thus far in this chapter we have reviewed the known. In other words, we have attempted to summarize what the experts tell us about comprehension and comprehension instruction. But we are left with a nagging feeling that, although this is all important, it’s not sufficient to ensure that students become readers who choose to read and engage with the world. Several years ago, we started saying that it was time to move reading comprehension instruction from a place of passive reception to active production. Students need to understand what they read, but they need to do something with that understanding. After all, Amazon and Yelp reviews and the countless number of blogs, not to mention YouTube postings, suggest that we all want to share our thinking with broader audiences.
It is time to move reading comprehension instruction from a place of passive reception to active production.
We had been thinking about this when we attended P. David Pearson’s retirement party. As part of the event, scholars were invited to share their thinking. At one point, Pearson shared his thinking. We won’t get every word right, but in essence he said that teaching students to read includes
Phonemic awareness, which may be importantif it is on the pathway to . . .
Phonics, which may be importantif it is on the pathway to . . .
Fluency, which may be importantif it is on the pathway to . . .
Vocabulary, which may be importantif it is on the pathway to . . .
Comprehension, which may be importantif it is on the pathway to . . .
Critical reasoning and problem solving, which may be importantif they are on the pathway to . . .
Action in the world. Changing something that matters.
WOW. There it is. The point of comprehension is no longer comprehension. It’s much more than that. We now realize that comprehension is a step in the process of reading development. It’s critical, just like phonics or vocabulary, but it’s not the pinnacle. Instead, we need to move to critical reasoning and problem solving, including critical literacy stances. And, we have to ensure that students can do something with their understanding that allows them to take action in the world.
As we thought about this more, engaged teachers with these ideas, and explored the research base, we realized that comprehension instruction needed a new model. Hattie and Donoghue (2016) suggested instructional strategies could be organized along a continuum across skill, will, and thrill, which sparked our thinking about reading. As we noted in the introduction, we believe that there needs to be a model for comprehension instruction. Our model, based on the framework developed by Hattie and Donoghue, is deceptively simple, and includes three dimensions:
Skill. This aspect focuses on the development of the skills necessary for students to comprehend. As we have noted, this includes both constrained and unconstrained skills that are taught to the point of automaticity. This area is probably the most comfortable for most of us, as we have spent decades learning how to teach students the component parts of comprehending texts.
Will. This aspect concerns motivation and engagement. We all know people who can read but don’t. They have developed the skills necessary to read yet not the will to do so. There is a lot of evidence for the value of attending to the will of reading as well as evidence about how to develop this aspect.
Thrill. The final aspect focuses on what readers do with the information that they gain from reading. To our thinking, understanding a text should be exciting, especially when there are consequential things that you can do with the knowledge you have gained. Unfortunately, this is rare for most students. They do not find reading to be a thrill, and they see little relevance in reading, as evidenced by the decline in out-of-school reading all of us, students and adults alike, are doing.
Thus, we propose that comprehension instruction needs to be refined and refocused. Students must learn the necessary skills. But their teachers would be wise to focus on engagement and motivation and ensure that students have opportunities to take action and impact the world. We recognize that it sounds lofty, but we believe that nothing less than our readers’ futures are at stake. There are far too many lost readers who need to experience new forms of instruction so that they choose to read and choose to take actions that make a difference for them and for their communities. In fact, we will go a step further and suggest that our very democracy is at stake. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” And the best ways to keep it? Separation of powers, such as the three branches of government, and an educated population. Let’s do our part to keep this republic we call home.
