Reading Comprehension

Finding the main idea of a paragraph

Find the central idea of a passage

Making inferences

Reading Comprehension

Vocabulary KnowledgeIn order to understand a text the reader must be able to comprehend the vocabulary used in the piece of writing. If the individual words don’t make the sense then the overall story will not either. Children can draw on their prior knowledge of vocabulary, but they also need to continually be taught new words.

Text Comprehension In addition to being able to understand each distinct word in a text, the child also has to be able to put them together to develop an overall conception of what it is trying to say. This is text comprehension.

Comprehension TaxonomyLiteral Comprehension - Students obtain a low-level of understanding using information explicity stated in the text.Interpretation - Skills include finding main ideas, drawing inferences, drawing conclusions.Critiical Reading - Skills include the ability to tell differentiate between fact and opinion and between fanantasy and reality.Creative Reading - Students try to think of new or alternate solutions to those presented by the author.

Reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you are reading. There are two elements that make up the process of reading comprehension: vocabulary knowledge and text comprehension.

Comprehension StrategiesMonitoring understandingMaking connectionsMaking predictionsVisualizing

Assessing ComprehensionAsking questionsCloze procedureMaze Procedure