How well did your university teacher program prepare you for teaching reading comprehension? Do you know exactly what to do? How about those unwieldy basal programs? How is reader's workshop going for you and all your students?
Over the course of nineteen years in the elementary school classroom, I've learned many new strategies and programs, and I've tried and tested many different approaches to teaching the skill of reading comprehension.
How to Teach Reading Successfully in 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grades
To most effectively make reading clear, understandable, and meaningful to upper elementary students, I do five daily strategies in the same order. These five activities give a soothing, predictable structure to the reading lesson so students always know what they will be doing next. Within each step is a range of choices that provide variety as well as accommodations for specific student needs.
Reading Comprehension Strategy 1
Teach three to five new words from the text using the 7-step vocabulary method. This should take no more than 10 or 15 minutes.
Reading Comprehension Strategy 2
Support students in reading the text. Choose from maximum support such as reading aloud, through peer support such as partner reading or reciprocal teaching, to minimal support by having the students read independently while you circulate.
Reading Comprehension Strategy 3
Encourage students to talk about what they just read. In this step some of the choices are "turn and talk," reciprocal teaching, asking and answering questions.
Reading Comprehension Strategy 4
Analyze the text in conjunction with one (only one!) teaching point. Examples of teaching points are: determining character traits, identifying causes and effects, interpreting figurative language, and many, many more. Using a simple graphic organizer is helpful here. This is the crux of the reading lesson, and it needs to be prepared in advance.
Reading Comprehension Strategy 5
Share student work. Wrap up and summarize the lesson by giving students an opportunity to share what they learned, usually using the graphic organizer, with each other or with the whole class.
How to Further Strengthen Your Reading Instruction
To truly deepen students' understanding of their reading, connect your writing lesson directly to the text that was just read. For example, if the text contained a description of a volcanic eruption, say, then have students research and write a description of another volcanic eruption.
Doing the above five strategies every day will not only create a predictable structure for your reading class, but it will truly help your students understand what they read.
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