How to Teach Comprehension Skills With Real Literature

Gone are the days of workbooks, filling in the best answer and flipchart skills. Students can learn main ideas, characters' motivation and emotions, cause and effect, and summarizing directly from literature. It takes a little preparation and creative thinking on your part, but students will apply these skills to their reading when they are taught comprehension through real literature.

Things You'll Need

• Books
• Reading curriculum
• Reading journals
• Post-it notes
• Plan book
• Pencil
• Paper

Instructions

1. Read over the comprehension skills you need to teach for your grade level. Decide which ones you want to focus on for a certain set of books or for a quarter. If you are doing reading workshop with your class, chances are each one of your students is reading a different book. You can still do comprehension skills with them. You can also teach these skills if you are assigning literature circle books to small groups of students in your classroom.

2. Meet with students in small groups or as a whole class. Talk about the comprehension skill you would like students to focus on for the week. For example, if you are focusing on main idea for the week, ask students, "What does main idea mean?" "How do you find the main idea of a paragraph, passage, chapter or book?" "What is the main idea of a story like The Three Little Pigs?" This discussion would be a mini-lesson that should only take 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Pass out post-it notes. Have students write main ideas down while they are reading. Ask them to write a main idea for a large paragraph in their reading. Have them write the main idea for a page or for a chapter. The purpose of the post-it notes is for students to focus on and practice the comprehension skill while they are reading.

4. Discuss with students their findings on their post-it-notes after a few days. Ask them to write a journal entry, focusing on the comprehension skill, such as main idea. You can make an assignment such as: "Write the main idea of chapter one of your book. Explain why you believe this is the main idea. Do you think it is easy to find the main idea? Why or why not?" Students write several sentences in their journals, responding to this prompt (or a similar prompt for a different comprehension skill). They turn in this journal entry to you, so you can assess how students are doing with the comprehension skill when they are using real literature they enjoy.

5. Review comprehension skills at the beginning of each week before you introduce a new skill. Always provide plenty of reading time and plenty of post-it notes, so students can continue reading, but they can also make notes and practice the new comprehension skill.

Tips & Warnings

• If your students are doing reading workshop, they may be reading books you have never read. Ask your students to turn in a copy of their book with their journal entries in case you need to review the books.

• Mill around the classroom and spot check the post-it-notes to make sure students are on the right track. This is an ongoing assessment.