How Can We Increase Student Literacy/Comprehension?
People read for different reasons but ultimately the goal of reading is to derive meaning for a purpose whether it is for learning new skills, gathering facts or just for pleasure. If there is no comprehension, then reading is nothing more than following words on a page while sounding them out. The words don’t really have any meaning. That’s why literacy/comprehension skills are critical for students (especially ELLs) success in school as well as outside of school. Without these skills students cannot gather any information and use it to function efficiently and enjoy life. As educators, there are many strategies we can employ in our classrooms to ensure that students are developing literacy/comprehension skills. The strategies that I have found to be the most effective are sticky notes, visualizing and synthesizing frames.
Students can use sticky notes in a variety of ways to help them increase their comprehension. One strategy is to have students read a story or passage and write down any questions they have about the story on sticky notes as they read. This strategy can be used before and during reading and it can be done individually or as a class. To use it before reading, have the students take a picture walk through a book and write down questions they have based on the pictures. Next, read through the book and have the students write down any new or different questions they have based on the text. Finally, after reading go through the questions and see which ones can be answered from what was read. A second way to use sticky notes is to have students read a story and write down any text-to-self connections they might have to a particular part of the story (“When I was reading this part of the story it reminded me of…”) on their sticky notes and then put them on an anchor chart. This strategy