Developing critical and analystical reading for information

• Monitoring comprehension is a process in which students determine whether they understand what they are reading
• If students realize they cannot articulate the main idea of the passage, they can take steps to repair their comprehension before continuing to read
• Most successful student readers intuitively monitor their comprehension
• Some students who struggle with reading either might not recognize a breakdown in their comprehension or else might not know how to fix it when it does occur
• Even students who are typically competent readers may not self-monitor comprehension in subject areas they find challenging
• Monitoring comprehension


  Noticing our thinking as we read, including our confusions, background knowledge, new information, questions, and inferences
• Monitoring comprehension is considered one of the six research-based comprehension strategies, and is the umbrella over all of them
• Teaching students to monitor their comprehension

  1. Teach them that proficient readers actually do think while they read

  2. Teach them that the real point of reading is to learn, get ideas, feel something, enjoy
• Monitoring comprehension


  • It is the first step towards understanding what we read
  • It sets the stage for a more authentic, reader-driven use of strategies
  • It leads to engagement with the text
• Every student can be successful with monitoring their thinking, as there is not one right answer their teacher wants, and the diversity of thinking among readers is greatly valued
• How to teach monitoring comprehension

  1. Through interactive read-alouds

  2. Model our own thinking as we read

  3. Gradually release responsibility for thinking to the reader

  4. Provide many opportunities for students to turn and talk, draw, or write their thinking

  5. Practice with fiction, nonfiction, poetry
• Monitoring/Clarifying strategy


  Teaches students to recognize when they do not understand parts of a text and to take necessary steps to restore meaning
• Benefits of Monitoring/Clarifying


  • Helps students focus their attention on the fact that there may be reasons why the text is difficult to understand
  • Encourages students to ask questions, reread, restate, and visualize to make the text more comprehendible
• Creating and using the Monitoring/Clarifying strategy

  1. Pre-select and introduce the text based on each student's reading level

  2. Model the process while providing students time and opportunities to practice

  3. Have students follow steps like stopping and thinking, rereading, adjusting reading rate, connecting to prior knowledge, visualizing, reflecting, and using print conventions
• Benefits of self-monitoring reading strategies

  • Give students greater independence
  • Foster a deeper understanding of a text
  • Enable students to learn more effectively
  • Encourage risk-taking
  • Promote students to take more responsibility for their learning
  • Empower students
• Self-monitoring reading strategies


  • Visualize
  • Ask yourself questions
  • Draw conclusions
  • Reread to clarify
• Thin questions


  Questions where the answers are right in the text
• Thick questions


  Questions where the answers require inferences beyond what is stated in the text
• Self-monitoring strategies


  • Give students greater independence
  • Foster a deeper understanding of a text
  • Enable students to learn more effectively
  • Encourage risk-taking
  • Empower students
• Self-correction behaviour


  1. Try that again

  2. I liked the way you worked that out

  3. You made a mistake. Can you find it?

  4. You are nearly right. Try that again
• Recall


  Basic comprehension - the learner is able to decode the text, understand and remember the information
• It is pointless to ask students to read and reread a text they cannot learn from - a text at their frustration level
• Scaffolding suggestions for recalling details

  1. Have the student reread if the book is at his instructional level

  2. Place the student in a book in which he or she has enough background knowledge to recall its details

  3. Find another book that is more accessible

  4. Have the student reread a few paragraphs and then stops to think and check his or her amount of recall
• Moving students from basic recall to analytical comprehension

  • Determine importance
  • Make logical inferences
  • Identify themes
• Determine importance


  1. With fiction, decide the events, conflicts, and decisions that are significant and can explain why

  2. With informational texts, separate non-essential from essential information
• Make logical inferences


  Use details in texts to support inferences
• Identifying themes


  1. Identify the big idea or general topics in the text

  2. In fiction, explore what characters do and say that relate to that big idea or general topic

  3. In nonfiction, explore information and details that relate to that big idea or general topic

  4. Compose a theme statement that expresses the author's message about the big idea or general topic
• Inferring becomes automatic for most students between eighth and tenth grade
• Themes are tough for readers to identify because, like inferences, they are unstated
• An effective theme statement applies to people, characters, and ideas across texts, not just the text in hand