Ways to Teach Reading Comprehension to Second Graders
By second grade, children should be reading for meaning and not merely decoding words and simple sentences. While children ages 7 and 8 often enjoy and greatly benefit from reading to themselves, many strategies for improving reading comprehension at this age involve listening to stories that the teacher reads aloud, followed by analysis of the text. Whatever strategy or combination of strategies you use to improve your students' reading comprehension, be sure to demonstrate clearly the type of responses you are looking for and use shared-writing activities before asking children to work independently.
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Oral and Shared-Writing Summaries
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Summarizing requires students to identify the main ideas of a story and to use their own words to briefly describe those ideas. Veteran writing teacher Regie Routman explains in her book, "Writing Essentials" that asking children to summarize is one of the most effective ways to teach reading comprehension. She finds that children in the younger grades find written summaries too demanding and advises teachers to focus instead on "retelling, oral summary, and shared-writing summary of texts." As you prepare to read a story or book aloud, instruct the children to try to identify the most important elements of the story. After reading, work interactively with the class to develop a shared-writing summary of the story. Help the children distinguish between critical and extraneous information. After several months of repeatedly demonstrating how to write a proper summary, divide the class into pairs and instruct the members of each pair to read a story and practice oral summaries together.
Storyboards
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Storyboards are essentially a series of frames or boxes that contain pictures with accompanying text. Use storyboards to improve students' ability to identify the beginning, middle and end of a story. After reading a story or book aloud to the children, distribute paper and ask the children to fold the paper into thirds. In each section of the paper, children draw a picture of what happens in the beginning, middle and end of the story. Children write several sentences to accompany their pictures. Alternatively, the children can divide their paper into more squares to draw and label the main events of the story.
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Venn Diagrams
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Venn diagrams help children systematically compare two books. The basic Venn diagram consists of two interlocking circles. One circle represents the first of two books, the second circle represents the second book and the common area represents elements that are common to both books. Read two books aloud to the class. Brainstorm with the children to create a list of facts that they know about one of the books, including one- or two-word character descriptions, details about the setting and particular conflicts that arise. Repeat the exercise for the second book. Prepare a large Venn diagram representing the two books. Cut the fact lists into individual strips and, with feedback from the children, place each strip into its proper zone on the large Venn diagram.
Questioning
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Choose a story to read aloud. In advance of the reading lesson, prepare questions or comments that you have about the story. Read the story aloud to the class and ask students to jot down any questions and comments they have, including any vocabulary words that they do not recognize. After reading the story, ask children to read their questions aloud as you generate a list or chart. Encourage students to include questions that the text answers directly as well as more probing questions that relate to students' prior knowledge and experience. If necessary, interject with your prepared questions to guide students' thinking. Use the list or chart as a basis for discussion about various elements of the story and different issues that arise.
3-2-1 Strategy
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The 3-2-1 strategy requires children to summarize what they know, reflect on what they find interesting, and consider what questions they still have after reading a story or book. Read a text aloud to the children. As a class, identify three things the children know, two things the children consider interesting, and one question that still remains after reading the story. Chart the information. As students become increasingly comfortable with the technique over time, ask them to repeat the activity in small groups, pairs and individually.
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