¿Lo Entiendes? How Your Students Can Understand What They Read

Imagine asking your students to raise their hands if they think they can read. If you aren’t teaching kindergarten or first grade, I’m guessing most, if not all, would raise their hands. Now imagine having them read a story, then asking them to raise their hands if they understood what they just read. You probably won’t see as many hands shooting up. Why the difference?

Read the following sentence:

Si puede reconocer y pronunciar las palabras en la página, pero no entiende los que significan, ¿puede realmente decir que puede leer?

Unless you are fluent in Spanish, you probably didn’t understand it. Here is a rough translation: "If you can recognize and pronounce the words on the page, but don’t understand what they mean, can you really say that you can read?”

Just like an English speaker trying to read Spanish, if your students don’t understand what they are reading, they won’t get anything from it.

Reading is much more than just recognizing the words and being able to say them. I can memorize how to pronounce hundreds of Spanish words, but if I don’t know what they mean, I can’t say that I know how to read Spanish. Why do students who can "read” so often struggle with comprehending what they read?

Suggested Reading

The subject of teaching reading comprehension is a complex topic a short blog post cannot fully explore. I recommend you do more reading and research about modeling reading strategies if you have students who are struggling with reading comprehension. Following are some websites with resources for modeling reading strategies.

Modeling on ActivelyLearn.comThink-Alouds on ReadingRockets.comModelled Reading in the Literacy Teaching Toolkit of the Government of VictoriaModel Strategies To Improve Reading Comprehension on TeachHub.com