When it comes to teaching students how to read challenging informational or artistic texts, the emphasis on discrete comprehension skills such as “finding the main idea” or “making inferences”-approaches designed to transfer across disciplines-has lost ground.
As we reported in our annual roundup of the most important educational research in 2023, recent research seems to have addressed this issue by supporting deeper engagement with texts within a discipline.
For example, a large study conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in 2020 found that “exposing children to rich civic, historical, and legal content” was more effective at teaching reading than a skills-based approach.2023. Two studies from Harvard and Brown Universities conclude that “knowledge-rich” curricula that emphasize building background knowledge through reading and discussing text can improve general reading comprehension test scores by 20 percent.
Large school districts in states such as Maryland and Louisiana have taken note, adopting new curricula that embed richer texts in early ELA instruction and require students to engage in more metacognitive work to process these texts.
Still, teachers are wondering how to move away from a focus on skills such as finding main ideas, which are often tied to standards and assessed on state tests. One teacher recently asked literacy expert Timothy Shanahan how to deal with this dilemma.
In an in-depth response on his blog, Shanahan on Literacy, Shanahan writes that if the goal is to deepen reading comprehension, engage in practice “answering specific types of questions,” such as “This text is a great example of how to answer a specific type of question,” and “This text is a great example of how to answer a specific type of question. such as “What is the main idea of this text?” are not very useful. In fact, research shows that having students read an article and answer main idea questions “does not consistently or significantly improve main idea identification or reading comprehension.”
Shanahan points out that finding the main idea is not a problem in and of itself-teachers can continue to ask students to do so-but focusing too narrowly on the main idea limits discussion of other key text features, such as broader issues of narrative structure, information hierarchy, tone, and the use of metaphorical language, among other issues.
Helping students notice and decipher meaning from these features of text requires pushing them to practice literacy skills that go well beyond finding the main idea. These skills include summarizing what you’ve read in your own words, discussing narrative decisions and the meaning of key phrases, and using active reading skills and writing skills to ask questions and predict outcomes.
Getting the main idea shouldn’t be the main idea,” writes Shanahan. “Students perform better when reading goals are more demanding and comprehensive.”
Here’s how other teachers are encouraging their students to think beyond the surface level of the reading text and improve their comprehension skills in the process.
Discussion and Reflection
In order for elementary students to distill meaning from the challenging texts they read, educator and author Michael McDowell suggests incorporating discussion into reading comprehension activities so that students have the opportunity to process what they read on their own and build their understanding through conversations with their peers.
First, McDowell gives students texts that are “several grade levels” above their current reading level (a practice also advocated by Shanahan) and interactively reads them aloud. This may seem like reading the text aloud to the students themselves and then having them read it again on their own. Afterward, McDowell asks students to think about or write down a short summary of what they’ve just read and then share it in “think-pair-share” groups.
McDowell notes that fishbowl discussions are useful for larger classroom discussions. He recommends Option 4a, which asks students to read an article and think about or respond to questions such as “What ideas in the article do you agree with?” or “What are you trying to argue in the article?” , and share those responses in a small group. Activities like these, which force students to restate the author’s point of view and sort out nuances, can help students develop a “holistic understanding” of the text that Shanahan is calling for.
At the end of the discussion, McDowell says, the teacher should step in and “debrief” the reading, guiding students back to interrogating the text as much as possible.
Summarize in Your Own Words
In a 2023 Edutopia interview, Shanahan cited a study he conducted that was credited with finding a mutually reinforcing relationship between writing activity and reading comprehension. The study, which began in the 1980s, found that one of the best ways to improve comprehension and increase knowledge is to ask students to write responses, analyses, or comments as they read text.
More recent research agrees.2021 One study found that when students wrote a short summary of a challenging text and took a subsequent comprehension test, they performed far better than those who read teacher-provided reading summaries. Further research suggests that it’s important to instruct students to avoid memorizing text word for word: students read “more meaningfully” when they try to explain key points from memory in their own words.
Educator and author Brian Kissman writes about a fun version of this: Have elementary students summarize what they’ve read as if it were an episode of a TV show. Students can write one or two short sentences in their own words to state the main ideas they’ve just read, and then go on to engage with the text by describing key elements, such as the characters involved, the setting, and any central tension or conflict. Finally, students can write a paragraph from memory that summarizes “the fundamentals of who or what did what, where, when, why, and how,” Kissman said.
Using this approach is especially effective with longer nonfiction texts because it helps students understand individual chapters and “move on” as they read.
Create a “Text Structure-Aware” Classroom
Rebecca Alber, a lecturer in education at the UCLA Graduate School of Education, writes that it’s easy for educators – the most experienced readers in the classroom – to forget that reading requires “anticipating, making connections, contextualizing,” and “moving on in the reading process. ” and criticizing during reading.
Teachers must support and teach the basics of comprehension, she writes, and explicitly train young students to read in this positive, self-reflective way. For example, before students read a text in depth, the class can skim, ask questions, and make predictions. “Speaking out loud as a whole invites students to make predictions about what they’re going to read,” Alber said.
According to Alber, before reading in depth, students should also pay attention to key features of the text:A poem, a fictional story, or a nonfiction text? If it’s nonfiction, is it something private, like a letter, or something that’s read by a lot of people, like an article in a newspaper? Scanning for other, more subtle textual features can also be helpful, Alber says. Are there subheadings? Graphs or charts? What might be the tone of the text implied in the headline?
She says, “Giving students an idea of the structure and features of the text will help them understand and recognize the author’s purpose or intent.”
When students read actual texts, Alber suggests asking them to read with a purpose, rather than “just reading.” Begin with a sentence like, “This is your task as you read. Some possible goals include “humor, author’s purpose, use of literary devices (e.g., ambiguity, imagery), facts, confusion, and context clues for new words.” Modeling students in sample texts can help them get started.
Students should be taught to annotate the text so they can jot down their insights. Some basic annotation practices worth modeling include numbering passages to track evidence, circling keywords, phrases, or dates, and underlining “the author’s claims and important information related to those claims.” You can also show students how to use the margins of a text as valuable space, such as a place to leave their questions about the text.
During this reading and annotation process, Alber suggests encouraging students to find connections to the text by identifying moments that relate to themselves, other texts they’ve read, or society as a whole: “This reminds me of (my birthday party, a poem we read, last year’s snowstorm).” These connections, she says, help students deepen their analysis, develop the language needed to effectively discuss their insights in small groups, or write about them during assessments.
Nell K. Duke, a professor and researcher at the University of Michigan, writes that these kinds of strategies not only deepen understanding, but also create a “text-structure-aware classroom” that encourages students to “take an interest in how authors organize their texts.”
Drawing for Comprehension
A growing body of research suggests that sketching, doodling, and drawing are also useful in helping students solidify their understanding of a text.
A 2022 study found that “organization charts,” such as concept maps or sketch notes that attempt to connect ideas with arrows, annotations, or other relational markers, help fifth graders imagine how ideas and information are connected-a strategy that is useful when trying to make sense of complex text. Meanwhile, a 2018 study found that memory for specific vocabulary words can improve if students try to draw the words after studying them. The researchers concluded that drawing “improves memory by facilitating the integration of fine, pictorial, and motor codes to promote the creation of a rich contextual representation.”
Jill Fletcher, a middle school English teacher in Hawaii, puts this strategy into practice by asking her students to incorporate art into “one-pagers” to convey their understanding of a given text. Fletcher gives students a standard printout on which they write the title and author of the text they’ve read, as well as a quote from the text-“their favorite quote, or the one they think is the most important” — and a written explanation of why they chose that quote. They then write down some of the main ideas explored in the article, any questions they have about the article, and any personal connections that may have arisen during their reading.
After they had completed these treatments, Fletcher asked the students to draw pictures that related to the main ideas of the text, making it clear that their level of artistic skill was not as important (sketches are popular, and research also suggests that aesthetic qualities are largely irrelevant). Fletcher says: “It’s important to emphasize that you’re not evaluating someone on a page based on their appearance; what matters is whether they show understanding.”
As part of the creative process, Fletcher’s students list a number of key terms from the text and try to provide their own definitions, as well as any images or icons that might be useful to represent the terms (see the National Council of Teachers of English’s blog post for some examples of the final product).
This activity is particularly effective for students because it does not emphasize finding the “one right answer,” but rather allows students to be creative and challenge their thinking in new ways. “Instead of trying to find a solution, they’re trying to find a solution that they can support.”