Most
people have an innate curiosity about things and ideas, people and
events. When they read stories, especially those concerning crime, love,
or adventure, they not only want to find out what is happening or has
happened, but they generally make some kind of guess as to what is
likely to happen next.
Where there is no such curiosity on the part of
the reader, a detective story becomes a pointless tale of violence that
few intelligent people would take the trouble to read.
A “discovery” approach
Learners guess or discover what will
happen next. The teacher should train
students in imaginative thinking
as much as in language skills, but it is surely
wrong to dissociate the
two faculties of thought and speech.
Comprehension
Comprehension is powerful because the ability to construct meaning
comes from the mind of the reader. Therefore, specific comprehension
instruction—modeling during read-aloud and shared reading, targeted
mini-lessons, and varied opportunities for practice during small-group
and independent reading—is crucial to the development of strategic,
effective readers.
The reader begins to construct meaning by selecting and previewing the
text. During reading, comprehension builds through predicting,
inferring, synthesizing, and seeking answers to questions that arise.
After reading, deeper meaning is constructed through reviewing,
rereading portions of the text, discussion, and thoughtful reflection.
During each of these phases, the reader relates the text to his own life
experiences.
Types of reading:
1-Literal comprehension involves what the author is actually saying. The reader needs to understand ideas and information explicitly stated in the text including what, who, where, and when of the passage.
The readers, who are at this level, believe that they have adequately comprehended text if they can recognize the content words and can understand most of the sentences.
Generally, the readers at this level only identify lists of facts, definitions of concepts and other easily memorized materials.
2-Inferential comprehension
Inferential comprehension refers to the ability of the readers to establish, guess correctly the
logical inference of the authors. The readers, at this level, must be
able to order authors’ ideas coherently and find out the intended messages conveyed by the authors in the passage.
Inferential comprehension is harder than literal comprehension for the readers are not only recognize the author’s ideas stated explicitly in the text, but they have also to be ableto guess the author’s intention either explicitly or implicitly stated in the text.
Inferential comprehension includes text connecting inferences which are required to integrate information from different parts of the text and to establish coherency and gap filling inferences in which information from outside the text (general knowledge) is incorporated
with information in the text to fill in gaps in missing details
3-Critical comprehension
refers to deep comprehension of understanding a text. Critical comprehensionemphasizes
thinking ritually about text meaning and intentionally making
connection between text and relevant knowledge of the world beyond that
text. Fisher (2001: 8) relates critical comprehension to critical thinking.
It includes how to identify the elements in a reasoned case, especially reason and conclusions, identify and evaluate assumptions, clarify and interpret the ideas and expressions, recognized unstated assumption and values, render accurate judgment about specific things, evaluate arguments of different kinds, analyze, evaluate, and
produce explanations, draw inferences, and produce arguments
There are six main types of comprehension strategies:
Make Connections—Readers connect the topic or information to what they already know about themselves, about other texts, and about the world.
Ask Questions—Readers ask themselves questions about the text, their reactions to it, and the author's purpose for writing it.
Visualize—Readers make the printed word real and concrete by creating a “movie” of the text in their minds.
Determine Text Importance—Readers (a)
distinguish between what's essential versus what's interesting, (b)
distinguish between fact and opinion, (c) determine cause-and-effect
relationships, (d) compare and contrast ideas or information, (e)
discern themes, opinions, or perspectives, (f) pinpoint problems and
solutions, (g) name steps in a process, (h) locate information that
answers specific questions, or (i) summarize
Make Inferences—Readers merge text clues with
their prior knowledge and determine answers to questions that lead to
conclusions about underlying themes or ideas.
Synthesize—Readers combine new information with existing knowledge to form original ideas, new lines of thinking, or new creations.
Students quickly grasp how to make connections, ask questions, and
visualize. However, they often struggle with the way to identify what is
most important in the text, identify clues and evidence to make
inferences, and combine information into new thoughts.
All these
strategies should be modeled in isolation many times so that students
get a firm grasp of what the strategy is and how it helps them
comprehend text.
Make Inferences—Readers merge text clues with
their prior knowledge and determine answers to questions that lead to
conclusions about underlying themes or ideas.
Synthesize—Readers combine new information with existing knowledge to form original ideas, new lines of thinking, or new creations.
Students quickly grasp how to make connections, ask questions, and
visualize. However, they often struggle with the way to identify what is
most important in the text, identify clues and evidence to make
inferences, and combine information into new thoughts.
All these
strategies should be modeled in isolation many times so that students
get a firm grasp of what the strategy is and how it helps them
comprehend text.
Make Inferences—Readers merge text clues with
their prior knowledge and determine answers to questions that lead to
conclusions about underlying themes or ideas.
Synthesize—Readers combine new information with existing knowledge to form original ideas, new lines of thinking, or new creations.
Students quickly grasp how to make connections, ask questions, and
visualize. However, they often struggle with the way to identify what is
most important in the text, identify clues and evidence to make
inferences, and combine information into new thoughts.
All these
strategies should be modeled in isolation many times so that students
get a firm grasp of what the strategy is and how it helps them
comprehend text.
Make Inferences—Readers merge text clues with
their prior knowledge and determine answers to questions that lead to
conclusions about underlying themes or ideas.
Synthesize—Readers combine new information with existing knowledge to form original ideas, new lines of thinking, or new creations.
Students quickly grasp how to make connections, ask questions, and
visualize. However, they often struggle with the way to identify what is
most important in the text, identify clues and evidence to make
inferences, and combine information into new thoughts.
All these
strategies should be modeled in isolation many times so that students
get a firm grasp of what the strategy is and how it helps them
comprehend text.
15 Interesting Facts About Education Around The
World They Don’t Teach You In School
Did You Know?
1. The City Montessori School in Lucknow, India, is the largest
school in the world in terms of number of students, with more than
32,000 students.
2. The students in China receive the most homework in the world. At
an average, teenagers do a whopping 14 hours of homework in a week.
Consider yourself lucky, you didn't have to!
3. Pakistan does not give children a legal right to free education.
Only children between the ages of 5 and 9 are entitled to compulsory
education.
4. Summer vacations in Chile start from mid-December and end in early March. That's 3 whole months away from school.
5. France has the shortest school year from August to June and also the longest school day.
6. Children in Germany receive a special cone called Schultüte, which is filled with pens, pencils, books and snacks.
7. In Holland, children start school on the day they turn 4, which means that there's always someone new in the class.
8. World's oldest school is in Canterbury, England. The King's School, as it is named, was founded in 597 AD.
The school is up-to-date with quality equipment and supplies and provides modern education.
9. Kids in Japan are the most independent of the lot. They travel to
school alone, clean their own classrooms and even carry lunch.
10. Turin has the smallest school in the world with only one pupil.
Confused if we should be happy for the child or pity him/her?
11. Kids in Finland do not start school until the age of 7, which is one of the oldest ages around the world to start school.
12. Iran is one country where girls and boys are educated separately till the time they reach college.
In fact, only women teachers take classes of girls and male teachers for boys.
13. In Kenya, it is not mandatory for children to go to school, but they mostly go anyway. Bless them!
14. In Brazil, having meals with family is an important part of the
culture, which is why schools start at 7 AM and are over by noon so that
the kids can have lunch with their parents.
15. World's highest school is situated in Phumachangtang, Tibet, at a height of 5,373 metres above sea level.