What Are Priority Comprehension Skills & Strategies for Beginning Readers?

For beginning adult readers, the majority of instructional time in teaching beginning adult readers is devoted to alphabetics, fluency, and vocabulary. However, at beginning levels, we need to lay the foundation for later stages of reading and regularly reinforce the main goal of reading: comprehension. Focus work with comprehension skills and strategies on texts that students are already working with to strengthen fluency and alphabetics skills. Oral texts can be used as well as print texts, videos and podcasts.

For ELs:

Some ELs may be effective readers in their native language and may already have some effective comprehension strategies and skills. Consequently, strengthening vocabulary knowledge and ability to decode English words fluently should strengthen comprehension of English texts. Also important is to develop background knowledge related to how English texts are formatted and how English grammar works, as well as background knowledge that native English speakers may have from growing up in the US.

Beginning Adult Readers

Skills

Ask and answer questions about key details
Identify the key topic of a text
Make simple inferences
Identify how two texts about the same topics are alike and different

Strategies

Articulate a purpose for reading
Pay attention to uses and features of different simple texts (e.g., stories, labels, forms, maps, signs, etc),
Make predictions from titles, visuals, background knowledge,
Identify pronoun antecedents

High Beginning Adult Readers

Skills

Identify the main idea and key details of a simple text
Compare and contrast characters, events, and information presented in a simple text
Work with time, sequence, cause/effect text structures
Integrate illustrations with simple text (photos, maps, drawings, etc.)

Strategies

Create simple text annotations
Identifying story elements in simple narratives
Use basic graphic organizers to connect ideas from text
Monitor comprehension (check predictions, retell using own words, ask and answer 5W+H questions)
Use fix-up/repair strategies when comprehension breaks down (rereading, focusing on individual words)

Click "Next" to read about priorities for intermediate adult readers.