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What Integration Strategies Are Effective in Building Reading Comprehension?

 

Building Background Knowledge

Before reading, it is important to build a student's background knowledge. When students have prior knowledge of a topic they are reading about, they are more likely to have a better understanding of the text. The following are strategies that can be implemented to help in building students' background knowledge.

  • Anticipation Guides-Students are provided with statements that they must respond to before reading a text. This gives students the opportunity to think and make predictions about the topic. This tool helps students to engage more with the text by providing them opportunity to think and question the content before reading.

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  • Guided Imagery-Teachers prompt students to visualize the content they are reading. This allows students to gain a stronger grasp of the content and better comprehend the text as a whole. Guided imagery requires students to close their eyes and imagine a scenario, clarify or solve problems, and explore other lands or worlds. During this process, students are able to connect their visualizations with the content they will read. 

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  • Prereading Plan (PreP)-Teachers start by telling students to "think of anything that comes to mind when..." Students can discuss their thoughts with other classmates. Then, the teacher asks "What made you think of [student response]." Students share and listen to their peer responses. Last, the teacher asks "Are there any new ideas about..." This allows students to think carefully and critically about the topic before reading. Teachers can also use this strategy to assess how much prior knowledge their students have before reading.

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Click here to read my research proposal on how background knowledge affects students' comprehension of nonfiction texts.

Questioning

When reading texts in different content areas, it is important for students to learn how to question the text. When students are confused about a certain concept they are reading about, asking questions can help them gain a better understanding of what the text is saying. It can also allow them to think more deeply about the topic and extend their learning.  

  • Think-Alouds-A think-aloud is an excellent way for teachers to model how to effectively question the text and verbalize their thoughts. Think-alouds should begin before reading by making hypotheses or predictions. During reading, students should question and make inferences. After reading, students should continue to question and connect to prior knowledge to try to answer those questions.

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  • Questioning the Author (QtA)-Questioning the author is a strategy that requires readers to ask questions during reading to gain a better idea of why the author wrote the text. When practicing this strategy, students should be encouraged to annotate the text, refer back to the text, express their thinking to a partner or group and summarize the main points. This results in readers gaining a deeper understanding and constructing a clearer meaning.

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  • Student-Centered Inquiry-Inquiry is an excellent way to spark student's curiosity and interest of a topic. When implementing inquiry based learning, teachers take a step back and allow students to wonder, research, discuss and present their thoughts or facts about a specific topic. This method of teaching is a great way to boost student motivation and engagement when teaching literacy across content areas.

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References

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