Defining Comprehension Strategies and Instructional Strategies
1. Defining Comprehension Strategies and
Instructional Strategies
By
Marilyn Velez
READ-6707R-1
Reading and Literacy Growth
Walden University
2. What is Metacognition?
“Metacognition is a complex process that involves
understanding what literacy learners know about
their reading abilities. The learner also needs to
know when to apply specific skills in order to
comprehend the text” (Laureate Education, 2014i).
3. What is Reading Comprehension?
“Reading comprehension is composed of two
equally important components. Decoding, or the
ability to translate text into speech...The other part is
language comprehension, or the ability to
understand spoken language.” (SEDL, 2013).
Students must understand what they are reading to
gain knowledge and experience from their reading,
to enjoy the process of reading, and to become
lifelong readers.
4. What is Reading Comprehension?
“Comprehension involves different levels of
thinking, from literal to inferential, critical, and
evaluative.” (Tompkins, 2010, p. 257).
An advanced reader is fluent, accurate, and uses
cognitive and metacognitive decoding and
comprehension strategies to be successful at
understanding the meaning of the text at all levels of
thinking.
5. What are Comprehension Strategies?
Comprehension strategies are behaviors used by the
student to aid understanding of the text.
“Some strategies are cognitive-they involve
thinking; others are metacognitive-students reflect
on their thinking.” (Tompkins, 2010, p. 260).
6. Examples of Comprehension Strategies
Use schema – Activate relevant background
knowledge, or schema, before, during, and after
reading; use this knowledge to process new
information.
Synthesize – While reading, organize and evaluate
understandings, adjusting the main ideas on an
ongoing basis. After reading, develop an integrated
representation of the text, including significant
ideas and details.
(Hollenbeck, & Saternus, 2013, p. 560).
7. Why use Comprehension Strategies?
Comprehension strategies are essential for students
to become motivated to read.
“These successful readers are metacognitive. They
plan their reading in relation to specific goals, and
they monitor and evaluate their reading as it
progresses. These readers are motivated and
engaged. (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, & Doyle,
2013, p. 440).
8. Why use Comprehension Strategies?
Comprehension strategies are essential for students
to become critical thinkers.
“The readers' epistemic beliefs are developing-they
know that authors write for different purposes, that
texts can be biased, and that not everything in print
is necessarily 'true'” (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas,
& Doyle, 2013, p. 440).
9. Why use Comprehension Strategies?
Comprehension strategies are essential for students
to become confident readers.
“Finally, these successful readers have high self-
efficacy- they expect to be challenged by different
texts and tasks, and they expect to meet those
challenges. (Afflerbach, Cho, Kim, Crassas, &
Doyle, 2013, p. 440).
These affective aspects of reading comprehension –
motivation, engagement, epistemic beliefs, and self-
efficacy – emotionally connects students to texts.
10. What are Instructional Strategies?
Instructional strategies are those strategies that
teachers use to aid and support reading
comprehension.
“And so as teachers support reading
comprehension ...creating the collaborative,
supportive, and cooperative conditions in a
classroom that allow children to dialog and talk
about texts, ask each other questions and help each
other learn from texts in a group team setting.”
(Laureate Education, 2014g, p. 1-2).
11. Examples of Instructional Strategies
Teachers placing students in collaborative groups
for the purposes of reading comprehension.
“...the teacher needs to create the conditions, the
procedures, the routines and the understandings
necessary in the classroom for productive
collaborative and cooperative group work.”
(Laureate Education, 2014g, p. 1).
12. Examples of Instructional Strategies
Teachers providing the appropriate text selections or
choices of texts for students.
“...it appears that offering students a choice of texts
to read is a far more powerful incentive to engage
with a text...perhaps three or four literature
selections of equal complexity and length from
which students may choose will give them a
stronger motivation to read and yield better
instructional outcomes.” (Reutzel, & Cooter, 2016,
p. 298-299).
13. Why use Instructional Strategies?
Using these strategies are essential in aiding
students in reading comprehension, motivation, and
critical thinking.
“...offering students a choice of texts to read resulted
in a whopping .32 percentile point
increase...Research also indicates that encouraging
students to collaborate with each other in structured
discussion of assigned literature significantly
increases their motivation to read.” (Reutzel, &
Cooter, 2016, p. 298-299)
14. Example Lesson Plan
● Bright Morning: Exploring Character Development
in Fiction. (readwritethink.org.)
● The purpose of this lesson is to guide
comprehension in critical thinking as to how authors
develop and express character traits in texts.
15. Comprehension Strategy
The synthesize strategy was the comprehension
strategy used in this lesson.
Synthesize – While reading, organize and evaluate
understandings, adjusting the main ideas on an
ongoing basis. After reading, develop an integrated
representation of the text, including significant
ideas and details.
(Hollenbeck, & Saternus, 2013, p. 560).
16. Instructional Strategy
The collaborative grouping strategy was the
instructional strategy used in this lesson.
Teachers placing students in collaborative groups
for the purposes of reading comprehension.
“...the teacher needs to create the conditions, the
proced.sary in the classroom for productive
collaborative and cooperative group work.”
(Laureate Education, 2014g, p. 1).
17. Modifications for Struggling, Emergent,
Transional Readers and/or ELL Students
Graphic Organizers - “Graphic organizers are visual
representations of key story elements and the
interrelationships among these parts.” (Reutzel, &
Cooter, 2016, p. 314).
Sentence Frames - “Students often struggle finding
just the right words to explain, describe, and clarify
what they are thinking. One way to help students,
and further engage English language learners in
class discussions, is to provide sentence frames.
(teachersites.schoolworld.com)
18. Conclusion
Comprehension strategies are those strategies used
by the students to aid them in reading and
comprehending texts at multiple levels.
Instructional strategies are those strategies used by
the teacher to aid students in comprehension,
motivation, and critical thinking of texts.
Both types of strategies are needed in the classroom
to aid students, whether they are emergent,
transitional or advanced readers, in becoming
successful, lifelong, learners.
19. References
Afflerbach, P., Cho, B.-Y., Kim, J.-Y., Crassas, M. E., & Doyle, B. (2013). Reading: What else matters besides
strategies and skills? The Reading Teacher, 66(6), 440–448. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TlHkkGJjlE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUDigw4LCYE
Hollenbeck, A. F., & Saternus, K. (2013). Mind the comprehension iceberg: Avoiding titanic mistakes with the CCSS.
The Reading Teacher, 66(7), 558–568. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
International Reading Association (IRA) and National Council of Teachers of English. (2014a). ReadWriteThink.
Retrieved from http://www.readwritethink.org/search/?grade=13&resource_type=6&learning_objective=8
Laureate Education (Producer). (2014g). Conversations with Ray Reutzel: Supporting comprehension [Audio file].
Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education (Producer). (2014i). Metacognition: Thinking about thinking [Multimedia file]. Baltimore, MD:
Author.
Reutzel, D. R., & Cooter, R. B., Jr. (2016). Strategies for reading assessment and instruction in an era of common core
standards: Helping every child succeed (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
SEDL. (2013). Cognitive elements of reading. Retrieved from http://www.sedl.org/reading/framework/elements.htm
http://teachersites.schoolworld.com/webpages/Hultenius/sentence.cfm
Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st
century: A balanced approach. Boston, MA:Pearson
