Parents often ask:  “What are the benchmarks to learning to read that signal real progress?”  “What do teachers look for to advance a young reader to the next levels of reading?”  Below is a brief summary of those benchmarks.

• Students begin to identify words by voice print match, left to right, top to bottom, letter sound awareness and beginning blending. Students show an ability to work successfully in a teacher-directed format. Students begin to develop an awareness of all 3 language systems; graphophonics (sound & visual cues), syntax (innate understanding of language) and semantics (meaning), relying on each system at different times in different ways.

• Students work towards demonstrating an increased ability to self-monitor and self-correct when reading, sounding out a word or rereading a sentence when necessary.  Students move into reading longer text, with fewer controlled vocabulary words, as they are able to attend to phonics cues when reading. Students are able to understand main idea and supporting details and they begin to internalize story structure, recalling the characters, setting, problem and solution in a fiction story.

•   Students read a great deal and  their vocabularies expand rapidly, we check to make sure that they can not only pronounce a word,  but are able to understand the word meaning in a way that they can add the new words to their reading, writing and speaking vocabularies. Students also are asked to demonstrate increased understanding of the main idea of a story, and recall sequential facts and details. Students can understand and interpret comprehension questions, and learn how to go back to the text to locate and confirm an answer. Students moving into higher level texts are able to read with fluency, consistently self-monitoring and self-correcting when reading. They are able to complete assignments, and are excited to transfer their skills to reading a variety of books and texts.

• Students at this level begin to bridge from literal to interpretive comprehension when reading. Students are now beginning to be asked to assimilate information when reading, and to ‘reason’ the unstated answer from what they have read. The ability to reason abstractly indicates a major shift into more complex comprehension.  Students continue to build upon their reading skills, advancing in vocabulary acquisition, and are increasingly able to predict and confirm as they read, by interpreting incoming information and building an ongoing understanding of the story structure. Students move into longer and more complex assignments and are challenged to work towards a high degree of accuracy in their work.

• Students in Home Reading Programs begin to move into higher level comprehension skills, i.e. synthesizing information, determining cause and effect, comparing and contrasting, finding word meaning in context, distinguishing fact and opinion, drawing conclusions, and making inferences. Students also move toward demonstrating the ability to provide increasingly complex written answers to comprehension questions, using the correct conventions of written language. Students are also able to plan for consistently and accurately completed homework. Students have developed the skills to comprehend expository text (non-fiction), and are able to apply their skill knowledge to reading social studies and science texts.

• Students in upper intermediate classes are moving towards an integrated ability to monitor their comprehension in sophisticated ways, interpreting and prioritizing information, and demonstrating their knowledge by writing cohesive, adept summaries. Students can compare and contrast authors, make cross textual interpretations, and discern fact from opinion. They are able to distinguish nuances in meaning among vocabulary words. Their work habits continue to expand, as they work towards increased responsibility and accountability in their preparation of assignments. For upper intermediate students, reading is becoming a strategic tool for successful learning.

What does synthesis have to do with comprehension?  According to the authors of our book, synthesizing is closely linked to determining importance. “Basically, as we identify what’s important, we interweave our thoughts to form a comprehensive perspective to make the whole greater that the sum of its parts.”

When readers synthesize, they identify the essential storyline and ask, ‘What does it all mean to me?’” By generating questions and  using their background knowledge as they read, they deepen their thinking and understanding.

Tips for helping your child with determining importance and synthesizing:

•  For Beginning Readers:  Just like looking both ways before crossing a street or sharing with friends and sibling, your child is in the process of learning about what’s important. You can help them by talking about and helping them understand what the word important means. Ask them questions to help them understand the concept of ‘what’s important.’  Talk about it as your read a story together. Use the simple stories in the beginning reading books as examples and ask your child when you finish, “What do you think was important in this story?” It will help them develop the ability to read with a focus on determining importance. (The very shortest stories especially can help your child with this.) As we have discussed before, make sure your child focuses on understanding from the very first day of reading. Just correctly saying words is not reading: reading is comprehension.

 

•  For Developing Readers:  Help your child to continue to deepen their understanding of importance. One way you can do this is to talk about the metaphor of watching a game as a spectator. Spectators are not unmoved by the action of the game. They cheer, clap, react, stand…they interact with the game. That’s what readers do too!   When reading with your child, you can help them distinguish between facts that are interesting and facts that are important. Do this as you discuss the story together. You might start a discussion with a sentence like, “I think this information is important because…” or “I think _________ is more important than ______________ because…”

 

•  For Advancing Readers:  Perhaps your child has finished reading a book or a couple to book on a topic and they have a report to write. The authors talk about a child feeling ‘information overload as they try to determine what’s important. Here’s how you can assist them. You might ask them to simplify their thinking by writing down or telling you the three or four most important things they learned.

The author’s suggest you might say something like:

“Let’s try to simplify.  If you think back over all you have read, what are four things about _________________ that you think are the most important? Let’s skim the tables of contents and look at the pictures. That will give you a good overview. You can mark the places with a sticky note that you think are most important. You might need to lump some information together to come up with four main topics.” Through such conversations, you help your child to summarize information in a way that captures and organizes its meaning.

 Another tip for students is to help them remember to look for words as ‘in summary’ or ‘as a result’ when reading, as these terms will often be followed by what the author feels is the most significant information.