During our winter reading “scan”, we noticed our Wolfpack are unable to specifically name reading comprehension strategies that help their reading comprehension.

Reading comprehension strategies include:

• Accessing background knowledge
• Inferencing/Drawing conclusions
• Visualizing
• Summarizing
• Connecting
• Questioning
• Predicting
• Comparing
• Applying their reading
• Monitoring and clarifying

Our students were unable to name specific reading strategies they use independently or in class to help build their comprehension. When digging a little deeper, students can recall some strategies but struggle to make meaningful responses to specific questioning. For example, students can make simple text-to-self connections but are unable to justify their response or provide more meaningful connections to other forms of literature or the world around them.

Our scans included both primary and intermediate students as well as students in both our French and English programs. Because of the breadth of students that need targeted support, we decided that this is one area that we can narrow our school-wide focus towards.

We look forward to “diving in” to future professional learning, collaboration time, and more specific instructional routines that will help students identify and use specific reading comprehension strategies.