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Have you ever read a block of text and realized, although you are seeing the words, and understand it in the moment, but three paragraphs later you pause to realize you didn’t retain any of it?
Teachers know this can happen to someone who is stressed, tired, bored, or any number of reasons for not being able to focus. They also know that this is a reality for so many students.
It’s not that students can’t read the words, but they struggle with comprehension and retention. How can we teach students this abstract concept? By finding creative ways to check in on their comprehension.
Here are a collection of tips and assignments to help engage your students before, during, and after their reading assignments. These will guide them through focusing and hold them accountable for retaining and understanding what they’ve read.
PREVISUALIZATION
Students can help their comprehension levels even before they begin to read. Have students brainstorm what the title of the text means to them. Prediction can be employed to help lay the groundwork for fuller understanding when they start reading.
Have them come up with questions they’d like answered based on the subject of the text, or give them guided questions about things to think about before, and while, they read. Actively engaging students’ curiosity with previsualization will go a long way.
JOURNAL WHILE READING
Students can check in with their own comprehension by keeping a running journal of summaries for each paragraph. After each chunk, paragraph, or page, have students take a minute to review what they read in a sentence or two. You can even have them do this online as a blog of comprehension. It creates a pattern they can follow in all their reading: take in information and note it in their own words.
DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE READING
After students have read the text, inspire and challenge them to interpret what they have read. There are many possible outlets for this demonstration of comprehension. Students can create a play of what they read and perform it to the class. They can create visual aides showing important ideas they discovered in the reading, and they can even create their own study questions with answers based on the reading. They can create the assessment, and by doing so, actually show the teacher how well they are comprehending the texts.
However you choose to implement new and creative ways to engage students in the act of comprehension, you’ll see how retention of the text will rise. Students are learning the habits of not just looking at words, but taking them in and deeply processing to fully grasp what the author has been trying to express.