Comprehension Strategies Essay

Comprehension strategy instruction has been proven to assist readers in their understanding of text. As you begin planning to teach comprehension strategies, you should first consider using text that does not exceed your students' word recognition abilities. Otherwise, if the texts are too difficult, your students' attention will be directed to the word level. All of these strategies should be addressed in a before, during, and after reading format. Students must participate in pre-reading activities in order to activate their background knowledge, set a purpose for reading, and promote personal connections/responses and motivation. During reading activities are equally important. They facilitate comprehension while focusing attention, promoting reactions, and allowing for personal responses. Finally, post-reading activities allow students to reflect, analyze and synthesize information, make personal connections/responses, and organize information. In this section, we will highlight a popular technique and discuss how to incorporate it throughout the before, during, and after framework.
Helping students learn to identify recurring story grammar elements provides them with a story schema. When they encounter a new narrative text, students can then call on this story schema to make predictions about what might happen in the story, to visualize settings or characters, or summarize plot events. Instructional practices that facilitate students' understanding of narrative text include: focusing discussions on story elements and encouraging students to relate story events and characters to their own experiences; encouraging students to compare the structure of one story to that of other stories they have read; and preparing visual guides, such as story maps of the structure of a story, to help them recall specific story elements.
Students also need to learn that expository text can differ from narrative text in the way it is presented on a page. For example, expository