What is Comprehension?

What is comprehension and why is it so important?

“Comprehension is at the heart of what it really means to read. Reading is thinking and understanding and getting at the meaning behind the text."

–Jennifer Serravallo

To read is to uncover meaning within a text, to understand what the author is saying, and to have your own reactions and responses. It is all about thinking.

Comprehension is often used as an umbrella term and includes several skills. In their book Mosaic of Thought, authors Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann cite proficient reader research and explain seven comprehension areas. It is important to be aware of these areas to better support readers’ deepening understandings of text. Readers will shift from one strategy to another depending on what they are reading and what they need to understand the reading.

• Create mental images: Proficient readers don’t just visualize, but also hear, see, smell and feel what is described in the text.
• Use background knowledge: Proficient readers make connections to a text/topic before, during, and after they read.
• Ask questions: Proficient readers read with curiosity. They question the text and their reactions.
• Make inferences: Proficient readers form judgments, make predictions, and determine the theme or message of a story.
• Determine the most important ideas or themes: Proficient readers understand the most significant events in fiction, and the main ideas in nonfiction.
• Synthesize information (Retell): Proficient readers can figure out how parts of a text fit together, and understand cause/effect.
• Use "fix-up" strategies (monitor for meaning): Proficient readers monitor their own understanding, fix confusion as it arises, and understand new vocabulary.

Teachers can use these seven areas of comprehension to see where students are strongest, and where they need the most support. Instead of looking at skills as yes or no, consider how deep a students’ work is within each skill, and work within the skill to deepen.

How can you assess comprehension? Try to sample student understanding in a variety of ways. Often, running records are the first piece of data about students’ comprehension, and can be tools to inform earliest teaching. A running record can offer some insight into comprehension. When conferring around comprehension, you can start with questions instead of asking a child to read aloud. If you don't know the book, check the back cover blurb and skim the page the child is reading. Ask students to retell and to answer some literal and inferential questions. Have students keep track of their thinking on sticky notes. What they write can connect to what you taught in conferences and small groups. Serravallo says, “Regardless of how you choose to collect samples of your students’ thoughts about the characters in their books, you’ll need a rubric or continuum against which to judge their responses."

Serravallo, Jennifer. "Jennifer Serravallo: Focusing on Comprehension - Heinemann." Heinemann. Heinemann, 12 Feb. 2015. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.