Reading comprehension is a phrase you think about daily in the classroom. It may seem like you are stuck doing the same thing repeatedly. Your students read a text and answer questions to check their understanding. Sound familiar? While this strategy is a great way to see how students are doing with their comprehension, there are many other strategies that can be used to get students to where they need to be.
Below are five simple ways to increase reading comprehension with your students. Share these strategies with your students so they can start using them daily with their reading!
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1. Previewing the Text
When given a text, it is essential for students to take a quick look at the passage before diving deeper. I like to give my students a graphic organizer that helps them know what to look for. I always suggest students notice the headings, subheadings, bold words, charts, photos, etc.
Previewing the text will allow students to gain a deeper understanding of what they are about to read.
2. Repeated Reading
Repeated reading is another way for students to increase their reading comprehension and build fluency. When students are given the same text to read over several days, it is fascinating to see the new information they will pull out, the unique questions they will come up with, the new connections they will make, etc. This is especially helpful with struggling readers.
My Spiral Reading Homework is perfect for this reason because students are asked to reread the same passage each night and answer questions for that day. When students spend more time with the same passage, they are able to gain a deeper understanding of the text as a whole.
3. Summary Sentences
When it comes to reading comprehension, it can be difficult to know if your students truly understood what they read. It can also be difficult to know if your students are reading the entire passage, or if they are going right to the questions and skimming the passage for the answers. Teaching summary sentences is an excellent way for teachers to see what their students are taking away from the different sections of the passage, which can lead you to see how well they understood the passage, from start to finish.
What Are Summary Sentences?
Summary sentences are sentences used to summarize different sections, or parts, of a passage. These sentences can be used with every text, whether it be long or short, fiction or nonfiction.
The point of taking the time to write summary sentences is to help students quickly see what each section was mostly about, which will help when answering reading comprehension questions. The summary sentences will help students find evidence from the passage that supports their answers, which helps them to have confidence in their answers.
By going through this process, you require students to think deeply about a text and decide what each section is mostly about. This will automatically increase a student’s reading comprehension of the text.
How to Use Summary Sentences
- Students go through the passage and divide it into sections. If the passage is already separated into paragraphs, they can simply section it off that way. For longer paragraphs, they can section it off into more than one section per paragraph. If the paragraphs are shorter, they could combine more than one paragraph into a section. The sectioning will differ depending on the layout of the passage.
- After sectioning off the passage, students go back through and number each section. My students usually wrote the numbers on the left side of the passage.
- After numbering the sections, students do a “cold read” of the passage. For a cold read, students read the passage all the way through without stopping.
- Following the cold read, students read the passage again. This time, they stop after each section and write a summary sentence. Their summary sentence should include what that section was mostly about, almost like the main idea of that section of the passage. If there is room, students can write their summary sentences on the side of each section. However, sticky notes work great for summary sentences.
- Once students have finished reading the passage for the second time and writing their summary sentences, they move on to answering the reading comprehension questions. They refer to their summary sentences to help them answer the questions.
How Summary Sentences Helped My Students
Based on my experience in using summary sentences with my students, I noticed a HUGE increase in confidence when answering questions, whether it be multiple-choice, short answer, or extended response. My students were able to use their summary sentences to see where in the passage they should be looking for the answer. This saved them from becoming frustrated and ensured they were answering the questions correctly.
While it does take extra time to write summary sentences in the beginning, in the end, this strategy will increase overall reading comprehension for your students. If you would like some FREE reading passages with text-dependent questions, check out my FREE reading resources!
4. Vocabulary Review
Taking note of new vocabulary words that students come across in a text is crucial when it comes to their comprehension. It is essential for students to be able to identify the words that are new to them and work through different strategies to help them better understand those words. Students need to realize that each vocabulary word has an important meaning to the text.
To identify these vocabulary words, students can simply underline or highlight the word. I also like to use one of my Reading Comprehension Graphic Organizers to help students review new vocabulary.
Get this graphic organizer FREE! Just click below.
5. Talk It Out
Give students the opportunity to talk about a passage with their peers. Students can discuss questions they have about the text, the connections they made, the things they noticed, and so much more. Each student will naturally take away something a little different from the text, and this strategy lets them share that with their peers. As a result, students gain a deeper understanding of the passage and think about things they may not have thought of without the input of their peers.
There are LOTS of reading comprehension strategies that will help students grow as readers. If you are looking for some great resources to help reinforce reading skills, check out my Fiction and Nonfiction Graphic Organizers. You may also like my Daily Reading Review system, which gives students quality reading passages and text-dependent questions every week.
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Want more tips for teaching reading? Check out my post on guided reading strategy groups. I hope these strategies help your readers grow this year!
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