Metacognitive Strategies and Reading Comprehension

The following article is comprised of a number of extracts from PETAA Paper 182 Metacognition matters: Raising reading comprehension achievement by Alison Davis.

In the simplest terms, metacognition can be described as a learner's consciousness of knowing something, knowing why, and equally importantly, knowing when they don't know something and knowing what to do about it! It involves having an awareness of and an understanding about one's own cognition. 

Skilled readers are extremely active when they read. They draw on and integrate a range of comprehension strategies that may include - making connections to prior knowledge, predicting, visualising, asking and answering questions, inferring, retelling, paraphrasing, summarising, identifying the author's purpose, evaluating, re-reading and reaching conclusions, to name a few. In addition students use strategies at word level — to assist with decoding the meaning of unknown vocabulary, and also to develop fluency and accuracy of reading (both in reading aloud and in silent reading). Metacognitively rich instruction involves the teaching of comprehension strategies in such a way that they are made explicit to students so that they know and have the ability to draw on strategies in a planned and coordinated manner as required, when they have to comprehend text. The selection and knowledgeable use of strategies will help students to better understand what they read, and to self-monitor and self-correct as needed. For this to occur, direct instruction of comprehension strategies is one important part of a balanced instructional reading programme. Furthermore, helping students verbalise what they are learning and what they are doing through planned and explicit talk will develop greater understanding of comprehension.

Planned and explicit talk — talk about learning

Two common approaches to engage students in explicit talk about learning are the talk aloud and the think aloud approach (see also Davis, 2011). The talk aloud approach requires students to talk aloud about what they are reading and learning as they read. This includes any strategies they may use to assist comprehension. It also requires students to talk aloud about what they are understanding as they are reading, the process of meaning making, and the comprehension that results.

The think aloud approach takes this one step further by encouraging students not just to talk about what they are reading but to make explicit what they are also thinking aloud as they are reading. Thus think aloud means — to tell others what they are thinking as they read — the connections they are making, the information that is puzzling, the difficulties they are experiencing, the strategies they are trying when meaning falls apart and as well as the content of what you are reading. Teachers often explain this to students as ‘saying everything you think as you are reading this section of text’ or ‘saying everything you think as you work out the problem/question posed’.

A metacognitive view: Inside the classroom

Metacognitive teaching approaches include teacher explanation and demonstration of the strategy being taught, and it requires the teacher to provide modelled, guided, small group and independent student practice. Further, it encourages students to model and explain strategy use for other students and for the teacher to provide on-going and regular feedback on strategy use to the student. It also encourages the same feedback from the students’ peers.

Often these approaches are integrated with guided reading and shared reading instruction or will be part of a ‘mini lesson’ where a specific skill is taught in isolation and then applied in the context of real reading. Consequently, it is the planned and flexible combination of each approach that provides rich learning opportunities for students. This kind of instruction supports students to monitor their reading, to detect and to draw on a range of comprehension strategies to adjust their reading as needed. Strategies may be related to word recognition, vocabulary understanding, sentence comprehension, paragraph comprehension and comprehending across and between a range of texts — both fiction and nonfiction.

An Example: Comprehension Strategies

Olivia teaches a Year 5 class. She has observed that a number of her students can read relatively accurately but struggle with comprehending. On further investigation she discovers that many of the group do not read with fluency and are not able to explain visual images or what they ‘see’ as they read. This limits the quality of discussion and engagement of the readers.

Olivia plans to focus on the following comprehension strategies:

• making connections to prior knowledge
• generating a visual image as students read — building both sentence and paragraph level comprehension
• providing repeated reading opportunities for students to practise reading known texts for fluency, with good reading rate and attention to accuracy.

Making connections to prior knowledge

A reader’s prior knowledge is one of the most important elements in assisting them to make meaning from new text before, during and after reading. This may include making connections to their cultural experiences, their social experiences, their knowledge of the content, setting or theme they will be reading about, their knowledge of the structure of the text and their knowledge of vocabulary specific to the topic or context for reading.

Olivia will deliberately plan to link to the prior knowledge of her students before reading. She will use this both as a lever for engagement and preparation for reading and to determine specific learning needs or areas she may need to focus on, as students read the text (for example, to scaffold understanding of new ideas or concepts that students will not be familiar with; to pre-teach some subject-specific vocabulary as readiness for reading). She will explicitly share the learning goal with students, taking time to ensure students’ accurate understanding of the learning goal and what they will be able to do if they are successfully using this comprehension strategy.

Learning goal: We are learning to connect to what we know about our topic before we read. We will be successful if we have listed and discussed what we know and asked ourselves ‘How will thinking about what I already know prepare me to better understand the ideas in this text?’

Olivia will provide opportunities for students to share their prior knowledge with others in the group, to ask and answer questions and to prepare her students for the new and challenging ideas they may encounter during reading. Furthermore, she will take note of the degree of prior knowledge her students have, and adjust the focus of her teaching and the pace of text reading accordingly. During reading, and again at the end of reading, Olivia will guide her students back to their recorded prior knowledge (Table 1) — discussing and questioning them about what they knew before reading, the connections they made during reading and the new information they know understand. (For more information on the Prior Knowledge Comprehension strategy see Davis, 2011: 37–50.)  

Generating a visual image — visualisation

When students use the visualisation strategy, they draw on their senses to think aloud what they are reading and create a ‘picture in their minds’ as they read. In particular they think about what they see as they read – often likened to having a camera or movie camera in one’s head as one reads.

What do you ‘see’ when you read this information about lightning? (Nonfiction)

What do you ‘see’ when you read about the actions of the main character (fiction)  

The visualisation strategy deepens comprehension of text, helps the text come to life, assists students to imagine they are part of the text (thus also assisting inference) and helps them to think critically about the ideas, events, actions described in both fiction and nonfiction text with questions such as those above.

Learning goal: Visualisation is the strategy where we think about what we ‘see’ when we read. We think about the words the author has used and the descriptions the author has created to help us ‘see’ what is happening or what they are describing’. Using this strategy helps us to become a better at comprehending text because it helps us to imagine we are in the text. It helps us to talk about what happens and to understand what the characters are like and why the do what they do.

Olivia will explain that words and phrases used by the author to create visual images, as well as the use of punctuation and a range of literacy devices such as alliteration, repetition, simile, personification and metaphor. She will show examples of each and demonstrate to the students the different images they create.  

Applying the strategy after reading: Guided reading

After introducing the text and setting a purpose for reading students will read the first section of the text. Olivia will scaffold discussion of the main ideas and will also question students about the visual image they gained as they read this section and the language used by the author that helped them gain this image. Students will use the talk aloud or the think aloud approach. Either Olivia or her students will record their visual images and will discuss what they have read so far. They will then set the purpose for reading the second section of text, again stopping to discuss the main ideas and the visual images gained from reading.

As reading progresses, Olivia will scaffold discussion to enable students to talk about and share the visual images they gain from reading (see Table 2). She will encourage them to discuss how use of this comprehension strategy helps them to understand particular characters, actions, events or details. As students develop knowledge and use of this strategy she may encourage them to also draw on other senses – to think about what they ‘hear’ as they read – what they ‘smell’ as they read. She may also plan explicit lessons to teach imagery through vocabulary, to encourage students to sketch the images they see as they read — and to go back to the text to find evidence to label and support the images they sketch.

Olivia will keep anecdotal notes of the progress her students make with using both the making connections and visualisation strategies and will adjust instruction accordingly. Her students will be involved in self- and/or peer assessment of their strategy use at some time in this sequence and she will compare their assessments with those of her own. She will use her observations and student assessments to provide feedback to her students and to help plan and scaffold future lessons. As required, she may also provide additional practice lessons as required and maintenance tasks as follow up and reinforcement activities in subsequent weeks. (For more information on the Visualisation comprehension strategy see Davis, 2011: 61–74.)