Reading comprehension is personal and eclectic.

How do you explain how to understand? How can you make sense of how to make sense? When it comes to teaching reading comprehension, these are things you must be able to talk about and demonstrate. There is no master plan for this because different students have different needs. Some students learn to comprehend what they read without ever having a discussion about it, while some require demonstration and guided practice. We can model how we use strategies, allow students to converse about these demonstrations, and guide them into working independently.

Last semester I observed a multiage classroom, grades 1-2-3, and in the beginning I wondered how it was possible to teach a wide range of students reading and writing skills when they are all at such different levels. It wasn’t long until I was continually amazed at how the teacher’s lessons and demonstrations could be interpreted by students age six to ten. The class would come together for directions before starting their writer’s workshop or independent reading time, and during that time she would read part of a story or go over a piece of her writing with the whole class. The focus would range from persuasive writing to following a character’s emotions in the story to understand how he or she is feeling. She would always think-out-loud, and share with the class what strategies helped her become a better reader and writer.

One great example of a shared demonstration was when this teacher was going to read aloud a book about one of the class’s favorite characters—Poppleton. The focus of the mini-lesson was to pay attention to the characters feelings and how they change throughout the story. They knew Poppleton well, so it was a great book for this. They made a list on large chart paper of the character’s traits, which stay the same, and the character’s feelings, which change as you read. The students contributed what they knew about Poppleton; he is “calm, patient, kind, and quieter.” As she read, everyone paid close attention to his feelings, and raised their hands when his emotions changed. They wrote the feelings on post-it notes and stuck them on the pages. He started out happy, then became annoyed, then felt awful, and then happy again. She explained how thinking about Poppleton’s feelings helped her understand the story better, because she knew how the character was feeling because of what was happening. Then they went off to practice this on their own, putting post-it notes with emotions in the books they were reading.

I came to realize that this worked so well was because she was modeling strategies that work for her, and explaining how students could use it when they are reading. Every student must figure out what works best for them, and eventually develop their own system of reading for meaning. For some students maybe this strategy really helped, and perhaps some students were already there. Pat Johnson’s example of reading a newspaper article to answer her questions in Catching Readers Before They Fall reminded me of this example.

The bottom line is that reading comprehension is personal and unique to every student. Despite what the authorities are telling teachers to teach when it comes to reading, I am coming to find that the best teachers know to follow the students. Check in with them, monitor their progress, have little conferences, and really get to know them and their abilities. Only then will you know what they really need to work on, and what strategies may help them get where they are going—in a way that makes sense to them.