Did they get it?: Comprehension Activities

An important part of teaching reading in the classroom is being able to identify if students understand what is being taught. John Macalister (2011) offers a few ideas of how a teacher can analyze if students are really comprehending the lesson and the readings.

First, he offers the obvious comprehension questions as a way of knowing if students comprehend. Multiple choice, fill in the blank, and other common types of questions are good for gaining access to what a student has absorbed from the reading. This can be a challenge for the teacher, because writing good questions takes  a lot of time and thought. The questions need to probe the expected knowledge without being too difficult to understand, or focusing on the wrong things. There are several guides online that can help teachers come up with good questions to ask.

There are several other options if you want to avoid simple tests. When I was in high school, one of my favorite activities used after we finished reading a book or a section of a book was "inside/outside circle." I can't really remember the name of it, but it was something like that. The class was divided into two groups and given a couple of days to prepare. The first day of the activity, one group formed a tight circle with their desks, facing each other. The second group formed a larger circle outside that one. The outside circle asked questions for the inside circle to discuss, focusing on the reading. The next day, we switched groups. We were graded on whether we had 3 good questions to ask when we were in the outside circle, and if we spoke times when we were in the inside circle. That way we were graded mostly on participation, and were free to speak up on topics that interested us. We were free to voice our opinion about the reading, and not just answer questions about it. When we knew this would be our testing activity, we all tended to read more in depth and take more notes. We were more familiar with the themes of the book and took more notice of details. I would recommend this activity to any teacher.

In any case, when we use comprehension activities with the students, we can see if they are using reading techniques we have taught them. If they are having trouble, we may need to review the MINUS idea (mentioned in the previous post) to ensure that we are teaching the right things in the right way.  I feel like most, if not all, students can understand the assigned reading if we as teachers give them the right resources and reading cues. When we have a specific goal in mind for them to accomplish, we can better know how to go about teaching it, and how we can identify whether they have learned it or not.