Wednesday, April 9, 2014

RICA Competency 13: Comprehension- Instruction and Assessment


Introduction

This competency discusses instructional strategies that can be used to help comprehension before, while and after reading. It mentions several key points regarding asking and answering questions to help monitor comprehension levels and also how to assess what knowledge they are retaining. 

Examples


Effective comprehension instruction begins with pre-reading. “Children will have a better chance of understanding what they are about to read if their teacher helps them call to mind what they know about the topic of the selection.” (pg. 95-96) I use this strategy in nearly all of our reading activities and it is extremely helpful in getting my students prepared for our time together. They begin to realize that they have information to offer and want to get more involved with the text. 

Almost all strategies for teaching comprehension while reading “follow a model of teaching called the gradual release of responsibility.” (pg. 98) The teacher starts by doing most of the work and slowly releasing responsibility to the student. Students look to the teacher for guidance and learn the strategies by following the teacher’s example. 

Post reading tasks include summarizing and retelling, sharing personal perspectives and providing visual/graphic representations of what was read. In my personal experience this is the best time to determine how much of the text, the student has retained. ( pg. 99)
IF the teacher is reading a book about farm animals THEN they would want to ask students about farm animals before reading. 

Differentiation

IF the teacher wants to monitor comprehension THEN they should implement questions answer relationship to help determine the student’s ability to answer literal, inferential and evaluative questions.

IF the student cannot summarize the story THEN the teacher may need to have the student go through the text again and ask more probing questions.  


The Learning to Read text supports this competency when it states “a common comprehension strategy is to have children answer questions about what is read. Traditionally such questions have been organized into three categories; literal, inferential and evaluative. 

Assessments

Students will answer questions based on the text "using a taxonomy such as the QAR." (Questions Answer Relationship)


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