The Importance of Coprehension for Successful Reading Skill

Reading is one of the most fundamental skills required to be an active successful member of our society. While much emphasis, especially in early grades, is placed on decoding and fluency, without providing students with the ability to understand and comprehend what they have read these efforts fall fruitless. Simply put, comprehension transforms the act of decoding words on a page to reading. In recent years, researchers have turned their focus towards comprehension and it many facets in order to help support educators as they help students to develop their ability to comprehend texts.

There has been a deluge of research recently focused on reading comprehension, although this has not always been the case. The writer found numerous articles detailing the effects of comprehension strategies and comprehensive approaches which can be used to teach reading comprehension. The vast majority of these articles were presented in the form of research reports and were very helpful in constructing a clear picture of the field’s current understanding about how to support readers comprehend a text. While a few articles were targeted towards a very narrow population segment (English language learners or visually impaired readers), the conclusions and implications of these articles could be applied to all learners. This spur in research in the field of reading comprehension was created Durkin’s (1978) groundbreaking report detailing what was actually going on during reading instruction in classrooms across the nation. The shocking results illuminated the actual day to day literacy practices inside classrooms. Durkin found only a very small fraction, if any, of the instructional day was spent in comprehension instruction. Since this time, com...

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...r lack thereof). This data should be used to select which strategies should be explicitly taught through direct instruction. Several of the research studies included in this review were targeted to specific subsets of readers (for example speakers of other languages or older students) which do not make the writer’s targeted groups. While these articles do not directly relate to the targeted group, the articles may be used to form useful generalizations or may be adapted to meet the needs of a younger reader.

The writer has selected the integrated approach of Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction and the explicit instruction of targeted reading comprehension strategies. These strategies were demonstrated to be effective for both struggling and proficient readers. Additionally, in order to help drive this instruction, a performance-based assessment will be utilized.