Tell Me Something I Don't Already Know... Engaging Children in Different Types of Comprehension

I think this post is probably most useful for families. All the people who teach children to read (they are magical wizards, all of them) will probably read this post and think, "Duh." However, since I've spent most of my educator-time working with middle & high schoolers, I hadn't thought about differences in what comprehension might look like until I was in graduate school, reading Shirley Brice Heath's Ways With Words.

In Ways With Words, Heath observes three different groups of children and looks at the ways their communities engage with literacy. One group, the White, working-class children from Roadville, tended to read a book with their families and then get asked questions about what's on the page. Questions might sound something like, "Where's the balloon?" "What color is the balloon?" "Can you find the tree that the balloon is stuck in?"

Another group, the African-American, working-class children from  Trackton, tended to engage in literacy events that asked the children to use their imaginations. For example, if an adult said, "What happened to my balloon?" a child would be rewarded for making everyone laugh by making up a story about the way another child ran off with the balloon and stuck it in a tree.

The interesting take-away for teachers is that, in this situation, one group of young children grows up in an environment that values engaging with literacy by observing what's already there while another group of children grows up in an environment that values engaging with literacy by extending what's already there. In any given classroom, it's likely that the students have learned to engage with print in lots of different ways, and teachers have the opportunity to demonstrate that they value multiple ways of engaging with texts, thus demonstrating that they value all of their students' home literacies.

In fact, Keene (2010) argues that, when we ask a child to recall information that we think we already know the answer to, we're assessing comprehension rather than teaching new ways of engaging with comprehension. She advocates for probing further when a child demonstrates superficial comprehension and for giving children time to really think about what they understand and how they understand it.

So, how might this be helpful for families as they read with their children? Some ideas of ways to play with words:

• Predict: Ask questions like, "What's going to happen to the balloon?" Wait and wait to encourage a long-winded tale. Then follow up with, "Why?"
• Create Images: Stop in the middle of a book and have your child act out the page. Take a photo with your smartphone. Have your child decide if the photo really captures what's going on in the book. If your child decides it doesn't, take a new photo.
• Determine Importance: This comprehension strategy refers to importance within the text rather than importance to a reader (As in, "Why is it important that Ella stole the balloon?" rather than "Why do you like to read books about stealing balloons so much?"). When you hit a point that fits, try asking, "Why does this matter?" Then wait... and see what happens.

So, teachers, if this was useful: yay! But families, you know I was really writing it for you. Because sometimes it gets really, really annoying to just keep finding "the telephone and the red balloon and the picture of" every. single. time. the toddler begs you to read Goodnight Moon, so it's kind of nice to know there are some research-backed reasons to focus on some other stuff while you read.

Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Keene, E. O. (2010). New Horizons in Comprehension. Educational Leadership, 64(6), 69-73.