5 Simple Reading Strategies For Comprehension While Online-Teaching reading is a daily, perpetual struggle. While I enjoy teaching students how to read critically and seeing them grow day to day, this whole teaching online thing is no joke. Yet reading strategies for comprehension are vital in our world; without constant interaction with the written word, students’ levels of comprehension stagnate.
And as our world continues to incorporate more and more online, or distance, learning, we and our students must learn to adapt.
- We may not have a choice to teach in front of our students every day.
- We may not be able to physically see our students every day.
- We may not be able to participate in school activities and wave to each other across the hallways.
- We may not be able to do things the way they’ve always been done.
My prayer is that we will be able to regularly see our students face to face as we begin the new school year, but for now, we have to think about contingency plans for the “What If” scenarios that could arise this next year. Read below for some simple, yet effective reading strategies for comprehension in the online learning classroom!
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5 Simple Reading Strategies For Comprehension While Online
1. Teach Annotation
Most college students struggle with annotating a large text, so we cannot expect our middle and high school students to simply know how to annotate when they come to us. If we expect our students to be successful as they read, they need to learn how to take notes. And this process is made more difficult as we teach online. Because of this new era in learning, we must actually go through the process of teaching our students HOW to annotate, one of my favorite reading strategies for comprehension!
HOW TO ANNOTATE STEP BY STEP IN AN ONLINE WORLD
- Create a digital unmoveable image of the text you want your students to read. If you are using Google Classroom™ or MS Teams™, you can save as a JPEG, put the image into the background of your PowerPoint, and upload to whatever platform you use.
- Then, give your students a focus for annotation. We don’t want them to take notes on EVERYTHING, because we know they will highlight and underline every last word. So let’s focus on standards: characterization, theme, central idea, order of events, vocabulary, etc.
- After giving students a focus, let’s model what we want. Most teachers skip this part. We might assign and explain, but we need to SHOW our students what annotation looks like. You can highlight, underline, circle, and square, but the next part is the most important part. We need to model how to take notes on what we mark.
Check out this example from “The Tell Tale Heart,” which encourages students to annotate and summarize in the physical classroom and online.
2. Divide Texts Into Chunks
Too many times, we upload a text with an assignment for a student to complete. The text might be a long story, a play, or a novel, and these longer texts can be challenging for our students, especially when assigned online. Instead, why not use chunking?
“Chunking” is a method that a teacher can use to divide a text into smaller parts. There is no set standard. A chunk can be a sentence or two, a paragraph, a series of paragraphs, or even multiple pages. By chunking a text, we can help our students to hyper-focus on a specific part. This process can allow for greater comprehension, because there are moments of stopping, thinking, analyzing, and responding in some way. Below are some examples based on 1-sentence summaries, characterization, and making inferences.
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3. Use Varied Graphic Organizers
Most of us who teach Reading or English use graphic organizers. They are super helpful for students who need overall help with organization. Let’s face it; we could all use a little help when it comes to organizing our lives. The only issue is that most organizers are made for students to physically write on. When it comes to the online world, an MS Word™ doc or Google Doc™ is simply not enough. We need to make the process a bit easier for our students.
HOW TO CREATE AND USE DIGITAL ORGANIZERS
- Create a digital unmoveable image of the organizer you want your students to complete. If you are using Google Classroom™ or MS Teams™, you can save as a JPEG, put the image into the background of your PowerPoint, and upload to whatever platform you use.
- To make it a no-sweat process, be sure to create text boxes for your students.
- Model how to use the organizer. So often, I see organizers that seem simple and straightforward, but students need to know your expectations. If you want 5 responses, be sure to indicate this goal to your students.
- Offer differentiated options. We definitely want our students to organize their ideas in a specific place, but we need to provide varied activities to help our students.
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4. Model Visualizing
Good readers visualize, so we MUST teach this strategy to add to our students’ reading strategies for comprehension toolbelt. It might seem obvious to read something and automatically visualize what you read. But our struggling readers do NOT automatically visualize as they read. This lack of visualization can happen for a variety of reasons.
- Students might never have thought about visualizing before. Not everyone comes to us with the same background or set of skills.
- Students might not understand WHY it can even help. Think about it. We are in professional development throughout the year, but unless we understand how a specific course or “innovative” technique can help our students, why would we even use it?
- Students might not understand the vocabulary of the text, so visualization may not be an immediate option. If you don’t understand even 20% of the words, it will be extremely difficult to think about visualizing something.
So, how do we teach visualizing as one of the reading strategies for comprehension?
- Read the text with your students, especially if it is a more difficult text.
- Annotate for imagery: words, phrases, sentences, or chunks.
- Think Aloud as you read. Help students to picture what they are reading by modeling the process.
- Draw an image based on the evidence. If there is no evidence, there is no image. You don’t have to necessarily create your own visual, but it can be helpful and allay fears of not being perfect.
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5. Prioritize Writing Responses as Reading Strategies for Comprehension
When we listen to someone, we might retain like 5% of what we hear. When we write down something, we remember it. Writing is key! When it comes to online learning and reading strategies for comprehension growth, we need our students to write about what they read.
Writing is, in my opinion, ONE OF THE BEST reading strategies for comprehension. It forces students to engage in what they are reading because they always have to go back to the text to respond.
5 WRITING ACTIVITIES TO USE WITH READING STRATEGIES FOR COMPREHENSION
- Reading Comprehension Questions-Students may only need to respond in 2, 3, or 4 sentences; however, encourage them to use complete sentences and require evidence for EVERY response.
- Write a Thesis Statement-Instead of writing an entire response, provide a hypothetical essay prompt. The process of formulating a thesis will require critical thinking, but it won’t take days on end. Remember, we want to build endurance.
- Short Responses-When students have to respond in paragraphs of 6-8 sentences, it gives them a taste of endurance. At some point, 2-4 sentences will simply not be enough. We need to prepare our students to think deeply about what they read.
- Fill in an Outline-Students could fill out an entire outline, or you could leave certain parts blank. The options are endless. And the cool part is that students won’t realize that they are actually writing an entire response or essay!
- Multi-Paragraph Essays-I am not a huge believer in the standardization of everything; however, if we want our students to succeed in college, they MUST be able to respond in varied in-depth ways. You could have students write an introduction with 1 body paragraph, write only 2 body paragraphs, write an introduction with 2 body paragraphs and a conclusion, etc. Build up to the ultimate goal of a fully developed paper of at least 3-4 pages for middle school students; for high school students, you may want them to be able to write a 5-10 page paper by the end of the year.
Why do we need to teach reading strategies for comprehension?
- Reading is not an innate skill, so we need to teach our students reading strategies for comprehension that they can use any day or any time!
- Our students need a belt of varied tools that best fit their learning style. Choosing individualized reading strategies for comprehension will be super helpful!
- If we want our students to be prepared for the next level, whether that is college or the workplace, they will need to continually practice their reading strategies for comprehension.
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