Domain 5: Comprehension Flashcards
Competency 12: concepts and factors affecting reading comprehension. Competency 13: instruction and assessment - before children read, while children read, and after children read. Competency 14: Instruction and assessment - understanding and analyzing narrative/literary texts. Competency 15: Instruction and assessment - understanding and analyzing expository/informational texts.
Literal Comprehension
Ability of a reader to understand the surface meaning of a text. Skills include identifying:
- Explicitly stated main ideas.
- Details and sequences of events.
- Clearly stated cause and effect relationship.
- Components of a story.
Inferential Comprehension
Ability of a reader to interpret what they have read, using speculation. Skills include:
- Inferring main ideas.
- Making comparisons.
- Identifying cause-and-effect relationships not explicitly stated in the text.
- Drawing conclusions.
- Making generalizations.
- Making predictions using evidence from the text.
- Inferring themes, the theme is not clearly stated.
Evaluative Comprehension
The ability of a reader to make judgements about what they have read. Skills include:
- Recognizing instances of bias.
- Recognizing unsupported assumptions, propaganda, and faulty reasoning.
- Distinguishing facts and opinions.
- Judging a text’s content, characters, and use of language.
- Analyzing themes - does the author’s theme make sense.
Text Structure
Information based text that follows a pattern. Common expository text structures are cause and effect; problem and solution; compare/contrast; sequence and description.
Instructional Strategies for Narrative Text Comprehenion
One of the best ways to help readers build literal comprehension is through the use of story maps.
Story Maps
Use graphic organizers to help students learn the elements of a book or story; focusing on the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
Traditional Literature
Cumulative tales, pourquoi tales, trickster tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables, myths.
Modern Fantasy
Stories that play with the laws of nature ex. Charlotte’s Web.
High Fantasy
Struggle between good and evil in a fantastical word ex. Harry Potter.
Science Fiction
Similar to high fantasy but features “futuristic” technology ex. Star Wars.
Contemporary Realistic Fiction
Takes place in real word ex. Ramona Quimby books.
Historical Fiction
Realistic fiction set in the past ex. Island of the Blue Dolphin.
Biography
Tell the story of a person’s life. Autobiography the author tells their own story.
Poetry
Form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language. Including:
- Haiku
- Free verse
- Sonnet
- Acrostic
- Limerick
- Ode
- Elegy
- Villanelle
- etc.
Expository Text
Provide information about a subject.
