Teaching reading comprehension
Helps in teaching writing & study skills

If you want your students to be fully literate, your lesson plans must include teaching . . .

• Reading comprehension,

• Nonfiction writing, and

• Study skills.

Moreover, you must teach those skills regularly throughout the school year.

The more you integrate these three areas into your total curriculum, the easier teaching becomes: each lesson on one skill reinforces teaching on the other two.

The three competencies should be

• Integrated,

• Made to reinforce each other,

• Employed to achieve all your curricular objectives.

The material below outlines how to achieve that triple-treat.

Authenticity matters

Reading comprehension strategies are most effective when taught from authentic text materials. Don't restrict your reading instruction to imaginative literature. Expository prose is authentic reading and writing for everyone.

You'll find good, short expository essays suitable for middle and high school students on grammar, etymology, punctuation, and usage. In fact, you'll find more on those subjects than on literary topics.

That abundance will help you in teaching reading comprehension, writing skills, and all other facets of your English language arts curriculum.

Writing skills develop reading skills

Until students become competent writers, reading good writing does little to develop their writing ability. However, instruction in writing improves reading if students' reading and writing is in the same genre.

Struggling readers are helped by instruction in persuasive essay pattern (thesis + support) writing. The persuasive essay pattern is the basis for most expository writing ordinary people encounter, including student texts.

Knowing the persuasive pattern teaches students:

• Where to look for a thesis statement in another author's writing.

• How to recognize a thesis statement.

• Where to look for topic sentences of body paragraphs.

• The relationship between a thesis statement and a topic sentence.

• Where to look for transitional expressions that indicate the relationship between ideas.

In effect, when you teach the essay structure as the basis for writing, you are teaching reading comprehension while you are teaching writing.

Use structural reading for starters

Structural reading (A.K.A. survey/previewing) techniques help students see what information is likely to be important before they start reading.

Struggling and learning disabled students are less likely to survey or preview material before they start to read, just as they are less likely to plan writing before they compose.

Help students do close reading.

Training in writing impresses students with the need to develop ideas. Close reading helps writers see how other writers develop ideas.

During close reading, teach students to summarize a paragraph in a sentence before they read the next paragraph.

The ability to summarize will help students

• Study complex or confusing material.

• Be better researchers.

• Keep from stumbling into plagiarism.

Lessons on reading and writing are most effective if they are also reinforced during lessons on grammar, punctuation, and usage.

Integrating all aspects of your curriculum is the most effective way of teaching reading comprehension, writing, study skills, and your core content.