WEBVTT

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My name is Janice Dole.

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I'm Professor of Education at the University of Utah.

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The value of teaching comprehension strategies, in my mind, consists of two things basically.

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First, we know that when we teach comprehension strategies to students,

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our students become more independent learners,

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and that's really what we want them to be able to do.

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As they get into later on in high school and in college,

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we want them to be able to learn independently without someone always being there.

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By using comprehension strategies, students can become more independent learners

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and more self-regulated as well, and that gives them really an empowerment

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to be able to learn on their own.

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It's simple.

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If students use comprehension strategies, especially when they get stuck,

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and if they know how to use the comprehension strategies appropriately,

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their comprehension is going to improve.

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And after all, in middle school and high school,

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that's what we want is we want their comprehension to improve.

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Some teachers think, "Well, my students know how to read.

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I don't need to teach them comprehension strategies.

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I need to help them learn the content."

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And that's obviously a very valuable position to come from.

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But the truth is, even though your students may know how to read,

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they may not know how to read the very difficult text that you are providing them.

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Textbooks at the middle and high school level

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and the different content areas now are really quite difficult,

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even for average readers to read.

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So, it really will help your students to teach them how to use strategies when they come

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across especially text that's very difficult.

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One study used a group of seventh graders,

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and they had ten classrooms in which they presented students with strategies

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for comprehending paragraphs that they read.

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And the students were taught three basic strategies: number one, read the paragraph; number two,

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ask questions; and then number three, paraphrase what you've read.

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When students were taught these strategies, they improved their comprehension over students

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who weren't taught the strategies.

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So, that's a nice example of the kind of comprehension strategies that can be taught

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to students and that we know are effective.

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There are two comprehension strategies that seem to be the most powerful for students.

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One is summarizing, and many students do summarize,

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but it's a very, very difficult skill to learn.

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And very honestly, it's a very difficult skill to teach as well,

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but we know that it's one strategy that has a powerful effect on comprehension.

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The other strategy that's most effective is asking questions.

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Now, by asking questions, I don't mean that the teacher ask questions of the students.

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Rather, the students ask questions about the text itself.

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So, students may be reading, and they may stop and ask a question, say perhaps:

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"What do the authors mean by the three branches of government?"

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Or "Why are there three branches of government instead of two branches of government?"

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Students asking themselves those kinds of questions seems

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to also have a powerful effect on comprehension.

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Now, there are three components in explicit or direct instruction,

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one is modeling and explanation, the second is guided practice with feedback,

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and the third is independent practice.

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Of those three, the hardest for teachers to grasp, I think,

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and really work with is guided practice with feedback.

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Sometimes, teachers model, and then they provide an example of guided practice with feedback.

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They give students another example, and they work with them to help them understand it,

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and then they move on to independent practice.

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But, really in truth, guided practice sometimes can take a great deal

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of time, and one example is not enough.

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Now, there are cases, for example,

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predicting what's going to happen in an upcoming text is something

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that students can do relatively easily and maybe with just one example

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of guided practice with feedback.

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When we're looking at teaching something like summarizing, however,

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the guided practice with feedback is going to look a lot different.

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Students need many, many different examples.

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They need examples working directly with the teacher.

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They may need examples that they practice in groups of four or five students.

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They may need examples that they practice with pairs of students.

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So, the guided practice with feedback,

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that critical component of the explicit instruction model,

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really is something that teachers have to adapt flexibly depending

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on the comprehension strategies they are teaching.

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When teachers want to implement this practice,

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the first suggestion I would give them is to work with other teachers.

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I think there's real value in teachers collaborating together because there's more help

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in thinking about the difficult nature of comprehension strategy instruction

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and thinking about how to teach it explicitly.

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What I would suggest to teachers is that they collaborate together.

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You could have several teachers in different content areas work together as a team,

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or you could have several teachers in the same content area work together as a team.

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In that team, teachers can think about one or two comprehension strategies

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that the whole team may teach students, and so when students enter different subject areas

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in different classrooms, they're going to experience the same comprehension strategies used

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in science, used in social studies, used in English.

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So that's very, very powerful and I think something that is very helpful for teachers.

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It's not something that I think a teacher can or should do by himself

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or herself; I just think it's too hard.

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A good principal or other instructional leader can really help schools implement comprehension

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strategy instruction at the middle and high school level.

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That instructional leader needs to be somebody who will provide teachers

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with the professional development that they're going to need in order to be able

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to implement this school-wide, and really, that's where we are going.

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Having teachers work together in teams, having perhaps a coach

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or a reading specialist work directly with teachers,

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and having that kind of support from an instructional leader is really going

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to take comprehension strategy away from being something that's just written in a textbook now

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to something that actually is implemented with students in classrooms in schools

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at the middle and high school level.