Issue 16: Meta-cognition and Comprehension Strategies for Dyslexic/Struggling Readers | Lynn Givens

As educators and parents of dyslexic children, we know that we must go beyond helping them learn to decode and read fluently. Comprehension is the end goal for all the instruction and practice that we provide. BUT how do we know WHAT and HOW to teach to help our students improve in this critical component of reading?

Important reading skills such as making inferences, determining the main idea, and identifying cause and effect are important. However, these isolated skills do not turn our struggling students into thoughtful readers. To do this, we must focus on reading strategies, specifically those that promote META COGNITION.

What is Meta-Cognition?

Simply put, it is thinking about one's own thinking. This involves awareness and executive control of the reader's own thinking while reading. Proficient readers continually monitor their own thoughts when reading. They know WHEN they don't understand and WHAT they don't understand. They have a TOOL BAG of fix-up strategies. They ask themselves questions while reading to confirm their understanding. They think ahead and predict, often forming mental images as they connect with the text.

Our struggling readers, on the other hand, often lack these abilities because they focus so much on decoding when reading. So, how can we promote mega-cognitive thinking with these students?

Here are several ways to get started:

1. Model meta-cognitive processes while reading aloud to students. Preview the text before reading aloud; make connections to personal experiences and to other texts; ask questions to clear up misunderstandings. Let your students see and hear you doing this so that they can understand the type of thinking they must do.
   Ex.: "What is the author telling me now? Do I understand what he is saying? Does this make sense?"
2. Use decodable texts or texts that students can read easily. This will free up their "cognitive space" to help them focus on the strategies that they will be learning and practicing.
3. Teach the essential comprehension strategies and provide opportunities for scaffolded practice with your students.

Comprehension Strategies

The four most powerful comprehension strategies to promote mega-cognitive thinking are:

1. Self-monitoring
2. Summarizing
3. Generating questions
4. Visualizing

Self-monitoring

Students who are good at monitoring their own comprehension know when they understand what they read and when they do not. They have strategies to "fix" problems when they arise. Research shows that explicit instruction, even in the early grades, can help students become better at monitoring their comprehension. Comprehension monitoring instruction teaches students to:

• Be aware that they do understand
• Identify what they do not understand
• Look back through the text to clear up misunderstandings
• Restate the difficult idea in their own words

What are some ways to help students engage in this kind of thinking?

Marking

Use sticky notes in students’ texts, marking where they should be checking for understanding. Initially, write questions on the notes for students. Later, when students understand what types of questions they should be asking, use a note with just a question mark as a prompt.

Coding

Coding helps students learn to self-monitor for understanding. They can learn how to use a code to mark places in the text that cause confusion, require further information for understanding, use a difficult vocabulary word, etc. Like all techniques, coding requires modeling by the teacher, examples, and a lot of guided practice.

Clicks and Clunks

The Clicks and Clunks visual provides students with a handy reference for fix-up strategies to use when they are struggling to understand.

These types of visual models are critical for our dyslexic readers. They provide structure and ways to remind them of what they are practicing to improve their comprehension.

Summarizing

Summarizing requires students to determine what is important when reading and to put it into their own words. Teaching students how to summarize helps them remember what they read. If they try to remember everything that they have read, they may focus on unimportant details rather than main ideas.

When asked to summarize, struggling readers often try to write everything they remember, write almost nothing, or copy parts of the text word for word.

These techniques are useful for teaching this essential strategy.

• Provide modeling and examples. Begin by using short passages and increase the amount of text when students demonstrate mastery with shorter ones.
• Model and teach students how to highlight or underline important information. Teach selective underlining, beginning with small selections of text.
• Provide an Anchor Chart for summarizing a short paragraph, and practice with students.

• Model, teach, and practice “Getting the GIST” with students. Have them list “Who, What, When, Where and Why” elements in the text. Then ask them to write a statement that incorporates all these elements. Practice narrowing down this statement into 15-20 words— the “gist.” This format can be used in all grades and for most content areas.

• Model and teach the “Somebody Wanted But So/Then” organizer, which teaches students how to summarize narrative text. Use a simple, familiar story, such as Cinderella, as an example.

Many of our struggling students may need a lot of practice with these summarizing techniques, but the time spent is certainly worthwhile.

Generating Questions

Generating their own questions keeps readers focused. By asking themselves questions as they read, students become aware of whether they can answer the questions and if they understand what they are reading.

We ask children questions while we/they are reading, but it is critical that we teach them how to generate their own questions before, during, and after reading.

Once students have extensive practice in answering teacher-generated questions, they can begin to ask their own questions. Introduce question generation gradually by asking students to read a passage and to write their own questions using “Who?”, “What?”, “When?” and “Where?”. Provide positive corrective feedback until students are comfortable generating these types of questions. Then ask students to begin writing questions with “How?” and “Why?”. Use answer stems to help with this process.

Again, using sticky notes can be useful. Place a sticky note with one of the question words next to a targeted sentence or paragraph. Gradually, you can begin to use a blank sticky note to mark the place for a question to be generated.

Visualizing

Visualizing, or generating mental images has been shown to be a powerful strategy for comprehension. For many readers, visualizing is automatic and generates a streaming video of images in their minds. Many struggling readers do not use this strategy. When asked to tell what they can “see” from their reading, they frequently report, “I don’t know.” Teaching our students to “draw mind pictures” or to “make mind movies” increases comprehension while they are reading.

Introduce visualizing gradually.

• Ask students to close their eyes and form a picture of a familiar object (for example, a pet), then to verbalize their images.
• Read a sentence with descriptive words aloud to students and ask them to make mental images/verbalize. Drawing can accompany this step.

• Read a short descriptive paragraph aloud, asking them to visualize and share by verbalizing. Drawing and/or writing can accompany this step.

Using these meta-cognitive strategies will help your dyslexic/struggling students learn to “think as they read.” Their self-esteem will grow as they realize that they are thinkers as well as readers!

Learn more

• Learn about a variety of effective strategies and supporting research study on metacognitive strategies. [ReadingRockets.org]
• Learn more meta-cognitive strategies and techniques for helping struggling students through the course module at the Center for Literacy Learning. [Teachable.com]

References

• Adler, C.R. (Ed). 2001. Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, pp. 49-54. National Institute for Literacy. Retrieved Jul. 10, 2023, from lincs.ed.gov
• Boulware-Gooden, R., Carreker, S., Thornhill, A., Joshi, R.M. (2007). Instruction of Metacognitive Strategies Enhances Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Achievement of Third-Grade Students. The Reading Teacher, 61(1), pp. 70-77
• Honig, B., Diamond, L., Gutjohn, L. (2008). Teaching Reading Sourcebook, 2nd edition. Notato, CA: Arena Press.
• Minskoff, E. (2005) Teaching reading to struggling learners. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Co.
• National Behaviour Support Service (n.d.) Get the GIST: reading and learning strategy. Downloaded from nbss.ie

Lynn Givens

Lynn has been a teacher of struggling readers and a teacher educator for over 40 years. She served as Director of Intervention at the Florida Center for Reading Research, where she was involved in providing intervention training and professional development for teachers throughout Florida. She taught undergraduate reading courses at Florida State University's School of Teacher Education and facilitated practicums for teachers of struggling readers. As a staff member at Beacon Educator for 10 years, she acted as an instructor/facilitator for online teacher endorsement courses in reading. Trained in the Orton-Gillingham approach, she spent eight years at the Schenck School in Atlanta, which provided her with a firm foundation in teaching students with dyslexia and other struggling readers. Her goal has always been to provide high-quality, explicit instruction to close the gaps for students with reading difficulties and to instruct teachers on how to do this as well. She is the developer of the Connect to Comprehension intervention program for struggling readers and of the Center for Literacy Learning, which provides essential professional development to all teachers.

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Extracts from Dystinct Magazine