The Keys to Unlocking Comprehension - Part Two

Last month we looked at the importance of vocabulary acquisition on the development of children’s comprehension skills.  The main message here being that the more words children understand on the page, the more chance they have of understanding the text as a whole and developing the all important, but somewhat elusive, stamina.  In fact, research shows that we need to know a whopping 95% of the words within any text we read to understand its meaning fully.  But what if the context is unfamiliar too?

We know that the notion of reading is a tricky business and that the holy grail of full text comprehension will only be attained through a complex weaving of language comprehension and word recognition.  Scarborough’s Reading Rope, referenced in Alex Quigley’s Closing the Vocabulary Gap, demonstrates the inter-connectedness of these two aspects beautifully.  Unravelling the rope reveals background knowledge as just as crucial an element of textcomprehension as vocabulary development.  And this is something that teachers can do a lot about – despite restrictions that classroom settings, budgets or children’s home situations might throw up.

What we’re talking about here is experience.  It is a general rule that the more experiences we have in life, the more we will understand about the world around us, especially if we’ve had the chance to discuss and question the things that are happening.  When tackling a new text, it is these experiences that arm us with the background knowledge needed to make sense of what we’re reading.  Imagine the difference between two children reading Little Red Riding Hood for the first time – one having experienced the pleasures of a walk through the woods and one not.  Which child is more likely to be able to visualise the red cloak of our main protagonist skipping carefree through the woods? Who will have a clearer sense of the danger lurking between the trees? And who will more easily infer the unease created by the author? The answers are obvious.

Research suggests that a child ‘poorer’ at reading will perform better when asked a series of comprehension questions than a more fluent reader if the context is familiar to them.   They have already created a ‘mental model’ for the context and can more easily follow what they are reading as the plots progresses or as new information is introduced.  It is this integration of what we already know with what is presented to us that ultimately leads to our ability to make inferences.  After all, what significance would the lurking wolf have if we couldn’t infer the sense of danger?

It makes sense then, that the more background knowledge we have, the more likely it is that we’re able to successfully create the mental models needed to understand a text as a whole.

Background knowledge + give information = mental model, leading to inferences

All complex stuff, but how do we tackle this in the classroom?  We’re not for a minute expecting all teachers to start galivanting the globe, curious classes in tow, all in the name of expanding the children’s life experiences (however lovely this may sound!).  But there are a few key things that we can ensure become a regular part of our routines around readingso that children set off on the right track to becoming successful text comprehenders:

1. Tell the children everything they need to know to be able to understand the piece of text before they begin reading. What is the context? Where is it set? Who is it about? What do we need to know about the key characters? 

2. Teach children new words prior to reading and make them stick: act them out, draw images of them, match them up or create displays to create the all-important 'stickability'. 

3. Make connections – talk about whether this context is familiar or reminds children of anything else they know.  Have they been to a similar place? Have they come across any of the words before? Can they categorise them alongside others with similar meanings or etymology? 

4. Use visuals wherever possible to illustrate, connect and quantify new concepts.  Providing an image of something new makes the abstract concrete and avoids misconceptions arising through guessing.

5. Empower children by allowing them to talk about what they know – your ‘poorer’ readers may just surprise you!

6. If you can, let children experience the context for themselves. This may be taking the children out on a trip or something you can organise in the classroom.  After all, reading about a 'rumpus' is nowhere near as memorable as taking part in one!

Posted in: Curriculum