Comprehension Monitoring

What is comprehension monitoring?• The ability of a reader to be aware,

while reading, whether a text is making sense or not.

What to Watch For: Questions to Help Assess Reading

• Does the reader understand the purposes for reading a particular text?• Does the reader understand (or attempt to understand) the purposes and goals of the author?• Does the reader bring personal background knowledge to bear in understanding the text?

What to Watch For: Questions to Help Assess Reading

• How well does the reading bring knowledge forward from one part of the text to another, from another text or activity to another text or activity?• How well does the reader employ other general processes of reading?

What to Watch For: Questions to Help Assess Reading

• How independent is the reader with a particular text or kind of text?• How well does the student understand global structures of organizing text?• Does the student recognize text as a construction of an author?

What to Watch For: Questions to Help Assess Reading

• How well does the reader use local-level coherence to make links within sentences or to connect sentences? To link different parts of a text together?• How well does the student understand global structures of organizing text?• How well are inference gaps recognized and inferences made?

What to Watch For: Questions to Help Assess Reading

• How often does the reader encounter unfamiliar words?• How well does the student recognize codes and conventions?• How well does the student learn information from text? Learn ways of reading?

Inconsistent Element• A check to see if students are monitoring their comprehension.• Find a passage on the student’s instructional level.• Retype it adding an inconsistent element.

Comprehension Monitoring Strategies

1. Identify where the difficulty is2. Identify what is difficult.3. Restate the passage in their own words.4. Look back through the text.5. Look forward in the text.

Assessing Comprehension Monitoring

• Retell or Summary• Strategy Assessment• Teacher Observation• Cloze Passages

Think-Alouds“Think-alouds” help students understand how they currently read and ways for students to take on specific new reading strategies. With think-alouds, students will learn how to recognize problems when they occur, how to isolate problems and name the source of confusion, and how to use the strategies to overcome their confusion. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm

Think-AloudsThree common responses of struggling readers:

• They play through readings, decoding words but not comprehending.

• They don’t bring meaning forward with them to build upon it as they work through text.

• They give up easily.