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Text Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension is defined as "intentional thinking during
which meaning is constructed through interactions between text and
reader (Harris & Hodges, 1995)."
(cited in the NRP Subgroup Report)
National Reading Panel (NRP) Conclusion: "Both vocabulary and comprehension involve the meaning of the text, albeit at different levels. Vocabulary is generally tied closely to individual words while comprehension is more often thought of in much larger units." (p. 4-15)
NRP's three predominant themes: "(1) reading comprehension is a cognitive process that integrates complex skills and cannot be understood without examining the critical role of vocabulary learning and instruction and its development; (2) active interactive strategic processes are critically necessary to the development of reading comprehension; and (3) the preparation of teacher to best equip them to facilitate these complex processes is critical and intimately tied to the development of reading comprehension." (p. 4-1)
| Further NRP Findings | How My Reading Coach Gold Meets NRP Research |
|---|---|
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"Of the 16 categories of instruction, 7 appear to have a firm
scientific basis for concluding that they improve comprehension in
normal readers. The seven individual strategies that appear to be
effective and most promising for classroom instruction are (in
alphabetical order) comprehension monitoring, cooperative
learning, graphic and semantic organizers including story maps,
story structure, question answering, question generation,
and summarization." (p. 4-42) (bold and italicized item missing filled in from p. 4-6) |
My Reading Coach Gold uses a combination of specific cognitive strategies such as: comprehension monitoring, graphic organizers, question answering, summarization and story structure. |
| "Multiple-strategy teaching in which the reader uses several of the procedures in interaction with the teacher over the text. Multiple-strategy teaching is effective when the procedures are used flexibly and appropriately by the reader or the teacher in naturalistic context." (p. 4-6) | My Reading Coach Gold uses multiple-strategy direct teaching and remediation to model effective reading comprehension strategies and to teach students to employ these skills as they read. |
| "These comprehension strategies yield increases in measures of near transfer such as recall, question answering and generation, and summarization of texts. These comprehension strategies, when used in combination, show general gains on standardized comprehension tests. Teachers can learn to teach students to use comprehension strategies in natural situations. Furthermore, when teachers teach with these strategies, their students learn them and improve their reading comprehension." (p. 4-6) | My Reading Coach Gold uses a comprehension monitoring strategy called Read Like You Talk™ to help students easily understand and remember what they read. This strategy uses grammar instruction to help students easily identify when to make and change mental pictures to grasp the meaning of what is read. Students, on average, improve 2 or more reading grade equivalent levels with 50 hours of instruction. |
| "With respect to the scientific basis of the instruction of text comprehension, the Panel concludes that comprehension instruction can effectively motivate and teach readers to learn and to use comprehension strategies that benefit the reader." (p. 4-6) | All students receive equitable reading comprehension strategy instruction since the program's reading coach teaches these techniques. The coach models proper application as he teaches these strategies; and he encourages students to become active participants in the learning process as they master vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension. |
| "As indicated by the Panel's review of text comprehension, reading comprehension can be improved by teaching students to use specific cognitive strategies or to reason strategically when they encounter barriers to comprehension when reading. The goal of such training is the achievement of competent and self-regulated reading." (p. 4-7) | My Reading Coach Gold uses a combination of specific cognitive strategies such as: comprehension monitoring, graphic organizers, question answering, summarization and story structure. |
