Developing Strategies to Help Improve Reading Comprehension
Posted by PLB · 2 Comments
Developing strategies to help improve reading comprehension can be tricky. Dr. Al Greefield, who did a lot of work in this area, came up with the following strategy. According to him, in order to develop or enhance a student’s reading skills, all three of the following elements must exist.
1. Meaning
- Cues from text and illustration
- What should make sense?
- Look at the picture in the book and in your head
- What do you think it might be?
- Prior knowledge and experience
2. Visual
- Cues from sounds/symbols relationships
- Does it look right?
- What letter does it start? With what letter does yours start with? Did that match?
3. Structure
- Cues from grammatical patterns, language structures and the rules of English
- What would sound right?
- What is another word that might fit there?
- Can you say it another way?
In this theory, all the three elements must work together and at the same time, in order for meaningful reading to occur. This is one of the strategies to help improve reading comprehension in your classroom.
How can you improve the reading comprehension in your classroom?
From Professional Learning Board’s online continuing education course for teachers: Reading Across the Curriculum
Would this method be considered as a peer researched methology for reading comprehension?
Cheryl,
We think it could be considered a peer researched methodology. Although may be a bit presumptuous to presume we’re at peer relationship level with Dr. Greenfield.
Thanks so much for your comment!
Hope that helps.