What Students Need for Effective Comprehension & Writing in the Classroom

Today, we’re diving right into a pretty loaded topic! We wanted to start the conversation around what students need to effectively comprehend lessons in the classroom and what they need to be able to write effectively to demonstrate their knowledge.

Now obviously, this isn’t something we can fully communicate/solve in a single blog post. But … we do have a really good starting point! And, don’t worry, we also have some really good follow-ups coming your way!

But let’s get started, shall we?

When we think about how the brain functions we can recognize pretty quickly that the brain has to process A LOT of information!!! To process all this information, it must be able to categorize information and categorize it quickly.

We often use the analogy that the brain is a big mental filing cabinet.

Information needs to be filed into appropriate folders and organized for later recall. The best way for us to support learning (having information available for later recall) is to help with the categorization process.

The more consistent we can be with categorizing - the better. And one of the best ways to categorize information is with graphic organizers (more on that next week). But before we dive into that, there is an important connection we need to draw.

The connection between listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and written composition.

Often we ask students to demonstrate what they know in writing, but the problem is - they can’t write effectively until they can organize the information they’ve heard or read effectively. So we always want to start there, but we also want to draw our students’ attention to the idea that -

We should be organizing information in the same way whether we’re listening to it, reading it, or writing it!

Let’s think about the theoretical models for a minute. The simple view of reading states that the combination of listening comprehension skills and decoding skills creates reading comprehension. This makes sense, basically, if you can decode/sound out the words then you hear the words and you’re in essence then “listening” either out loud or in your head to what you’re reading. This means that strong reading comprehension skills are built off of strong listening comprehension skills.

So obviously we talk all the time about how to build effective decoding skills. If you’re interested in learning exactly how we do this, we definitely recommend jumping into our 7-Steps to Reading Intervention that Works free training program (tons of extremely effective strategies in there).

And then the question should be posed -

How do we make sure we’re building effective listening comprehension skills?

This can be a little complex because there are SO MANY skills that are required to comprehend information that you hear. But for the sake of simplicity, we’re going to boil it down to

5 Critical Comprehension Skills -

Step 1 - Activate Background Knowledge

The first thing we must do to be able to comprehend effectively is to elicit background information. Once in college, I sat down for my Chemistry class and before I knew it I was completely lost. The professor went on and on about negations of quantifiers and restricted variables. Now, I know Chemistry can be complicated but I was so far in left-field that I couldn’t even make meaning of the words they were putting together even though they were speaking English and I’m a native English speaker.

Now the reason I couldn’t comprehend was that I was actually sitting in a Calculus for Engineers class (apparently I was an hour ahead of schedule that day) and I didn’t have ANY background information on that topic. We really struggle to comprehend information that we can’t tie to other information we already know. This is why we must be “setting the stage” if you will by activating background knowledge first.

Step 2 - Identify the Purpose or Main Idea

It is critical that when we’re listening to information (or reading information…remember our connection!) that we are able to identify the - so what? This is one of the most important and critical skills and yet often our students may surprise us because they aren’t always able to sort out the “take-home” message from some of the less relevant details and minutia. They are getting lost and can’t see the forest through the trees if you will. It’s critical that we help students identify the forest (aka the main idea).

The first step in identifying the main idea is that students must be able to identify the purpose or intention of the information.

Is it a narrative meant to entertain? Is it an informative piece? Is it an opinion piece? An ad? What’s happening here?

The next step is that they need to understand how all the details are coming together into one central idea or theme.

In order to do this, students must actually be able to identify the key details which brings us to Step 3.

Step 3 - Identify the Key details

Now, this can be challenging because details come in all sorts and sizes but one of the best ways to organize key details is to have students think about the 5 Ws. Who? What? When? Where? Why? This can be as simple as putting up your hand and asking students to identify the Who (thumb), What (pointer finger), When (middle finger), Where (ring finger), and Why (pinky). Often if they can answer these specific questions they’ve captured many of the key details and this works for fiction and nonfiction!

We have students highlight key details in one color and then work to identify the main idea that is overarching each of the details which they can highlight in a different color. Now, obviously, every paragraph doesn’t necessarily contain each of the 5 Ws but anytime they are recognizing that information may fall into one of those categories - they should be identifying it. We want them to begin categorizing this information in their notes (if they’re listening to the information) or in the margin of the text/on a sticky note in the text (if they’re reading the information).

Step 4 - Compare, contrast, and categorize the information

Step 4 is where we begin to connect the information to our background knowledge (information we already know) and other texts or information. This is where we begin to categorize the information on a deeper level. Essentially we’re taking a step beyond just categorizing the information into the main idea and details and we begin comparing and contrasting the information with other information to find where it fits.

So for example, if we’re reading about the British Empire - we may learn that at one time the empire controlled India, Canada, Australia, the United States, and South Africa, just to name a few! Then we may learn that the British Empire ended up releasing control of some of the territories without a fight (such as Canada and Australia) whereas other colonies needed to fight for their independence (such as the United States, India, and to some extent South Africa). From there, we may learn that while some territories resorted to warfare, others were able to accomplish a path to independence through peaceful or nonviolent efforts (such as in India). We could then begin to consider the leaders of those efforts (who were the people leading the “fight” for independence on all sides? What were they fighting for? Why? When did these different events occur?

By doing this, we’re creating models and grouping information into categories in our brains. This helps our “mental filing cabinet” put the information into the right file so we can access it quickly later on. If we don’t do this effectively, we may misfile the information making it really hard to find when we need it later on.

Step 5 - Draw conclusions, make inferences, and make predictions

Finally, we need to use this information that’s now neatly filed and stored away in our brains to draw conclusions and make inferences and predictions. Essentially, we’re taking the information we’ve heard or read and we are adding that to information we already know and we are getting inferences, we’re synthesizing the information. From there we can create predictions or draw even higher-level conclusions beyond the information that’s been explicitly provided.

So there you have it, five of the critical comprehension skills.

Now, if we can begin to teach these skills as a process we can help students begin to organize both information that they hear and information that they read into these frameworks. Then - we can take it a step further by asking students to begin to use these same organization frameworks in their writing so that whoever is READING their writing can also be gaining information in this same way.

We have this symbiotic relationship between listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and written composition and we can tie these three necessary skills together through the use of the same organizational frameworks or graphic representations!

You teach one skill that can be used in three different ways!

Talk about organizational efficiency :)

Check back next week to learn all about our graphic organizers, and in the meantime - grab the Science of Reading Blueprint. This blueprint will help you understand the 3 key scientific models that drive effective literacy instruction, learn how to integrate the research into practice, and provide simple checklists that will help you weave the science of reading into your instruction.