Because reading doesn’t equal comprehension
Students who are often said to be “better at math” are often bad readers. But it’s probably not because of any humanities or dyslexia, but because you just need to work with your kids. Including the use of 8th grade sbac practice test.
Why reading problems need to be addressed immediately
If you start talking about reading problems, you immediately think of young children with a poor phonetic set who struggle to decipher letters and make themselves understood.
And then there are people – high school and college students – who think they can read, but actually have a lot of trouble understanding words, images, conclusions, and reasoning.
If a child deciphers a adjectives that start with i and their definitions well, we usually assume he or she reads well. But at the same time, a teacher might notice that a child “decodes” a text fluently, but doesn’t understand it. Either way, both children who can’t decode and children who don’t understand decoded text are all children with reading problems. The latter, however, are much less visible, and their problem is much more likely to escape the attention of adults. The child begins to fail tests and not understand half of what is taught in class at all.
That’s when the real difficulties come, and more often than not it happens in middle and high school.
The sooner you start addressing this problem, the better. But it’s best to remember that to get a complete fix, you don’t just need to practice – like reading passages and asking questions about them – but you need a comprehensive approach that includes several important things.
The comprehension skills and strategies listed below can be used for the entire class. Teachers can help students choose reading material appropriate to their current vocabulary and abilities so that in class, children read the text and work at levels that are accessible to each of them.
What to do if a child doesn’t understand what he or she is reading
1. Recent research shows that reading comprehension difficulties can stem from poor oral language development, which develops long before a child begins to learn to read. It turns out that students who have trouble reading comprehension also often understand fewer words spoken, that is, less of what they hear. They have a worse command of spoken grammar. So, to effectively address reading comprehension problems, educators may need to take an approach that teaches vocabulary and comprehension first in spoken language and only later in written language.
2. Children who have poor reading comprehension often suffer from little vocabulary, so it is helpful for them to spend a lot of time learning new words. One way is a multisensory approach: for example, pictures, mind maps, or mnemonic techniques. Improving their general language skills increases the likelihood that they will understand the words they encounter in a written text. Since it is impossible to know and remember every word, the child should be taught different types of context clues and how to use them to determine the meaning of unknown words.
3. Once a child has enough vocabulary to understand each word in a text he finds it difficult to pay attention and keep track of all the details or, for example, to access the indirect information and hidden meanings in the text.
In such a case, the educator can teach the child several cognitive text reading strategies to help: among them are annotation, SQ3R, and KWL charting. They help:
learn to discuss what they have read or to activate the knowledge gained while reading the text;
develop and ask questions about what they have read;
draw parallels between two texts or between what the child saw and read;
Make predictions about what will happen next;
Identify key words that will help answer questions later;
thinking aloud.
Each child can choose the strategy that works best for him or her. Extracting deeper meaning from a text through strategic thinking can be useful not only for reading comprehension, but also for writing.
4. Have students engage in reciprocal teaching-it encourages the child to take the lead and think about his or her thought process while reading. Teachers can use peer-learning during class discussion, with the text read aloud and then with the text read in groups. Students should divide into four types and then alternate among themselves.
Participant 1. The one who asks the question. He
or she asks about parts of the lesson, discussion, or text that are unclear or confusing to help make a connection to previously learned material.
Participant 2. Someone who will capture the important stuff – such as details from the text or important discussion points.
Participant 3. Someone who will answer the questions posed by the first participant and will be responsible for making sure that the answers to those questions are clear to everyone.
Participant 4. Someone who will make predictions about what will happen next based on what has been presented, discussed, or read.
5. Students should definitely be taught text comprehension skills: they need to know what a sequence is, what the structure of the text and storyline are, how to draw a conclusion from what they read, what figurative language is, and what kinds it has. Students should be able to use the skills first with the text they hear the teacher read aloud and then with the text they read on their own and understand at their own level.