THE PRACTICE: Teachers model how to verbalize understandings and questions about readings and then provide opportunities for students to practice these comprehension strategies.
Content Presented By:
The Education Alliance at Brown University

What Is It?
Implications for ELLs
Strategies for Supporting ELLs
Glimpse of the Classroom
Questions to Think About

What Is It?

Teaching students to monitor their own reading is one of the best ways a teacher can help improve student comprehension. Using the "inner language" of speech, effective readers ask themselves questions such as: Does this make sense? What may happen next? How does this connect to something I already know? These metacognitive strategies can keep students actively engaged in their reading.

Implications for ELLs

English language learners (ELLs) spend a great part of their time and energy trying to understand the oral and written English that surrounds them. ELLs benefit from learning how to ask themselves and other people questions that focus on finding and clarifying the information they need. Helpful strategies for ELLs include: rereading, skimming, scanning, and consulting resources to obtain clarification. Explicit modeling and instruction helps students to monitor their comprehension by verbalizing their understandings and pinpointing areas of confusion or missing information. Beginners in English and those who have not yet learned to read in their primary languages will need more modeling and clear explanations of the strategies in order to understand and use them.

Strategies for Supporting ELLs

Teachers of English language learners (ELLs) keep in mind that limited English word knowledge is an important, but not the only, reason that ELLs may have difficulty understanding what they read. Many stories are difficult for ELLs to understand because the authors have written for an audience that shares background knowledge of American culture, history, and customs.

Effective teachers use, explain, demonstrate, and revisit comprehension strategies throughout the school year. Students who may not be ready to understand a strategy early in the school year may be able to understand and use the strategy when it is explained and modeled again a few months later.

To engage students in their reading, teachers model and explain questioning strategies that send students back to the text to look for story elements such as character (Who?), setting (Where? When?), and problem (What's the matter?). For informational text comprehension, teachers model graphic organizers appropriate to the subject matter, such as the one below.

Glimpse of the Classroom

Zach, a second grader, and Mrs. R. are sitting side-by-side at the reading table.

Mrs. R. says, "This is a book that has some really tricky language in it, but I've already introduced it to you, so you should be able to read it. What's the one thing that you always want to make sure of when you read?"

"The book has to make sense," Zach responds. Zach has said earlier that when he reads and gets it, reading is fun.

He starts to read aloud:
"One day, a little mouse jumped onto a sleeping lion.
The lion woke up.
'Got you!' he said.
'Eee-eee! said the mouse.
'Please let me go!
Please let me go!
One day I may help you.'"

The next page of text presents a problem for Zach. It reads:
"Ha-ha-ha," laughed the lion.
"A little mouse like you can't help a big lion like me!"
But he let the mouse go.
"Thank you," said the little mouse
and away she ran to her hole.

Zach is stuck on the words Ha-ha-ha.

Mrs. R. points to the quotation marks. "What do you know about these marks, Zach?"
"They're talk marks," replies Zach.
He looks at the picture of the laughing lion on the opposing page.
"I think I know who is talking," he says as he points to the picture of the laughing lion.

Now the word laughed is presenting a problem for him. Being a strategic reader, he substitutes the word blank for laughed and re-reads the sentence.

"Mmmmm. What makes sense?" Mrs. R. asks.
"Laughing?" Zach suggests.
"Try it and see if it makes sense," says Mrs. R.
Zach reads the sentence again, substituting laughing for laughed. He now realizes that laughed is the correct word, so he rereads the sentence again, this time correctly identifying each word.

Even at this young age, Zach has realized that you need to read for meaning and monitor what you read. If it doesn't make sense, you need to go back and use a fix-up strategy to make the passage read correctly. He goes on to read the rest of the text without committing a miscue.

Questions to Think About

1. How can teachers motivate students to generate questions while reading?
2. How can teachers adapt self-questioning strategies to make them appropriate for different grade levels?
3. How might teachers encourage English language learners (ELLs) to develop comprehension strategies based upon students' knowledge of their home languages?

This resource is developed and maintained by The Education Alliance at Brown University. Seed funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Send comments to: loom@alliance.brown.edu