Comprehension Clinchers
By Barclay Marcell

For the lyrics to Barclay Marcell's The Comprehension Song click here (PDF 686KB)

For the reproducible STAR bookmark click here. PDF 697KB

They sit before you: the decoders and the comprehenders. There are the Sallys who can decode multisyllabic words, yet haven't a clue about the content. Then there are the Suzies who laboriously attack each letter sound, chopping away at the pronunciation -- yet somehow, they retell with ease.

It's the Sallys I worry about the most. Their deficits often go unnoticed at the primary level, where the ability to sound out words is cause for celebration. It's not until the fourth grade, where comprehension is assumed, that the decoders falter. Then one day some upper grade teacher will stare, aghast, at the results of a standardized test. "How did this student get this far with no one identifying her need?"

So, how do we turn the decoders into comprehenders?

The big four. These days, any teacher worth his or her salt can recite the "Big Four" quicker than you can say "metacognitive:" 1) visualizing, 2) predicting, 3) asking questions and 4) connecting. Daily instructional time is allotted to building prior knowledge, extracting predictions and of course, thinking aloud.

Yet, what's the decoder doing while her theatrical teacher thinks aloud? Probably fidgeting with a chewed-up eraser. When Sally is required to apply independently the Big Four, she word-calls beautifully, but does not "construct meaning through interaction and involvement with written text," the RAND Reading Study Group's 2002 definition of comprehension.

The comprehension queen. Since fluency is such a measurable skill, I have, in the past, over-emphasized decoding and de-emphasized comprehension and, I'm afraid, short-changed my students in the process. That's why I committed to become the Comprehension Queen – predicting, inferring and fixing up.

Yet, despite my explicit teaching and modeling, I noticed that most students were still not thinking-readers. So, last year, I tried to make the Big Four come alive. Today, my struggling Sallys are now truly invested in the reading process. Here's what I did.

STAR Readers
Lessons began with this recitation: "The most important part of reading is making sure you get the meaning." Then we chanted together, "Didn't get it? Don't sweat it!"

Next came identifying the Big Four. For this, we developed the STAR acronym, accompanied by a song, bookmark and poster.

S = See it in your mind's eye.
T = Think about what's going to happen next.
A = Ask questions.
R = Relate the story to your life.

The strategy stage was set. Now the hard part – teaching kids to use them without spoon-feeding. Each child was given a laminated think-aloud "bubble" and a marker. As strategies were practiced, kids recorded predictions, questions and connections. We looked quite silly, holding thought bubbles above our heads; but sometimes, the sillier, the better. Bottom line – students learned that good readers think during reading.

Stop n' Tell!
"You've heard of Show and Tell, but how about Stop n' Tell? After reading a paragraph, we'd exclaim, Stop!" and slap our hands over the passage. Students would then retell the main points.

"Stop! I predict that…"
"Stop! That reminds me of…"
"Stop! I'm wondering about…"
"Stop! I'm picturing…"

Each child was given four stop signs with the above captions. During reading, kids held up their signs and finished the sentences.

Mind Movie
Albert Einstein once said, "If I can't picture it, I can't understand it." Visualizing must be in place for meaning to be attained. Show me a reader without a mental picture, and I'll show you a reader who cannot retell. That's why we threw squishy eyeballs at the blackboard, making them stick. For comprehension to stick, good readers must have a Mind Movie.

Subsequent lessons came from Nanci Bell's Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking (Nancibell Inc., 1991). Kids practiced reading a single word and then describing their mental image. Following that, they visualized sentences. Eventually, they "saw" paragraphs. Did I mention we wore Visualizing Visors?

Next?
Now it was time to dig up that fortune-telling ball from the 1970s. The students wrote predictions on their thought bubbles, then passed around the Magic 8-Ball® and asked if their story outcomes would indeed take place. "Most likely" or "Don't count on it" came its typically cryptic responses. Robert Munsch stories, such as Alligator Baby (Scholastic, 1997), provided ideal passages for this activity. First, it was an alligator; what or who would these goofy parents bring home from the hospital next? A baby monkey? An iguana? Right or wrong, students learned that making predictions increases one's investment in the story and that it's an important strategy utilized routinely by good readers.

Why, oh Why?
We labeled paper clip spinners with the "5 Ws." Typically, the "Why" questions are of the thinking variety, in which the student has to draw a conclusion or make an inference. This is in contrast to the questions that are of a more factual nature – Who did What, When and Where. The former questions tend to be "fat" (more meaty), while the latter have often been called "skinny" (a one-word answer suffices). The kids became teachers, trying to stump each other with the fattest question. This activity also emphasized test-taking tips, reciprocal teaching and story elements.

Clinched! My Sallys will probably never score in the 90th percentile in reading; however, I knew that these comprehension clinchers were more than just a bag of tricks on the day I witnessed a miracle. As one particular "Sally" read and answered questions, she was underlining, pointing and pausing, giving the appearance of a thinking-reader. When I later reported her success with the answers to the questions, Sally beamed – and so did I as one of my former decoders embarked on a lifelong reading-comprehension journey. Oh, the places she'll go!

For the lyrics to Barclay Marcell's The Comprehension Song click here (PDF 686KB)

For the reproducible STAR bookmark click here. PDF 697KB

Barclay Marcell is an academic achievement teacher for second and third grade reading and math at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School in Park Ridge, IL.

May, 2006, Vol.36, No.8