Comprehension ability

chases0102

Hi all,

Somebody may have seen teaching advice in relation to the below.

My 11 year old niece struggles somewhat with her comprehension skills. I recently had a conversation with my brother about this, as he had just come from her Parent Teacher Meeting, and it was clear that my niece was falling behind in all her aspects of 5th class. The teacher believer it was her ability, or inability rather, to comprehend the tasks set to her that was leading to this.

My niece was always quite 'fleeting' and never had much success in staying at one task at a time, be it playing or homework.

It probably doesn't help either that her younger 8 year old sister is the exact opposite, excelling in all subjects and generally being top of the class.

My brother was quite exasperated on the phone telling me this, and came to me in search of answers or tips (I'm a second level teacher).

I was quite stumped, in all honesty. My niece is in 5th class, so obviously a primary level curriculum applies. What I did tell my brother was perhaps to get 4th class English texts, and get her to do extra comprehension exercises in these, and also perhaps to extend this thinking to Maths and Irish. My way of thinking is to perhaps improve her confidence with dealing with texts in this way, which may lead to a better handle on more sophisticated content.

I also said to my brother to try and really limit her interaction with electronic devices (she's glued to iPad), and try to get her reading for pleasure...introducing her to books/magazines that appeal to her. Also maybe to introduce a rewards system at home, rather than completely forsaking the technology.

I guess my question is, after all that (apologies!), is whether anyone has experienced something similar, and maybe had any strategies with which to help her?

Cheers for reading.

peckerhead

chases0102 wrote: »

I also said to my brother to try and really limit her interaction with electronic devices (she's glued to iPad), and try to get her reading for pleasure...introducing her to books/magazines that appeal to her.

This is a hobby-horse of mine, but I'll try not to bang on too much...

I've been teaching at third level for nearly thirty years; I'm not a literacy expert as such, but I teach modern languages and literature to (largely) BA students, so I get a pretty good snapshot from year to year of the literacy/reading comprehension/general concentration skills and attention span of the average post-Leaving Cert. student. What I see convinces me — and I think the research is only now beginning to emerge to verify this; I'll try to link to something later — that in years to come we will rue the day we listened to the fatheads pushing the uncritical 'a tablet for every child in the class' sh1te that has taken hold in our educational system. I think we'll discover that, unchecked and/or mis-used (i.e. over-used to the detriment of traditional reading), our 'smart' technology has seriously damaged a generation's literacy levels, their general capacity for learning and also their (real life) communication & interpersonal skills.

I'm also a parent of 5 (now adults) and I know that what happens at home is more important than what goes down in the classroom. Tell your bro that a 'colleague' (maybe don't use my Boards name! ) said do the child a favour — take the fuggin' iPad out of her hands sometimes (nothing draconian) and get her reading. Make it a joint (and fun) activity — maybe a family 'book club', where everyone (yes, the parents too!) talks about the book they've read. Bring the kids to a bookshop every Saturday and let them pick their own books. Et cætera. You know all this, you're a teacher... (and I'm really just echoing/endorsing the good advice you've already given, with added rant!)

Cheers for reading is right!

Edit: Just an afterthought — it's also important that this doesn't become an arena in which your niece feels somehow threatened by the younger wunderkind sibling (who may in fact already be ahead of her in certain verbal skills). That's a tricky one to manage, but your brother and his wife will know best how to play that...

54and56

Hi,

My soon to be Junior Cert son really struggles with comprehension. He is smart and get's A grades in the more technical/maths type subjects (science, geography, maths etc) but struggles terribly with language based subjects such as English, History, Irish etc. His verbal vocabulary and language skills are quite strong and he is very articulate in conversation (other peoples observations not mine) and almost fluent in Irish having been to the Gaeltacht a couple of times. In class his teachers confirm that when asked a question on content they are studying his answers are correct and insightful but asked the same question in a paper his answer is terrible, literally D & E grades. We've had him tested for dyslexia (nothing) and he does a lot of extra curricular English work to try and improve his comprehension.

His big problem is misreading the question. He will frequently deliver a quality answer but not to the exact question asked or he will miss the key point in the question.

Ask Peckerhead has observed modern technology and in particular the constant use of modern personal technology such as phones, tablets and laptops etc are dumbing down our kids requirement to figure out language for themselves. My son is interested in technology and has built his own gaming PC etc but a couple of years ago I started to get concerned about the lack of reading for pleasure as it had become supplanted by technology so I purchased a Kindle for my son and he really embraced it. It was the Paperwhite version which makes reading in bed very easy. Since getting it for him he has developed a routine of reading for about 30 minutes every night before going to sleep and most Saturdays/Sundays he will read for an hour before getting up. It's also easier to get him to read at other times and in the car on journeys etc. It's not a panacea but it has helped and in my view anything which encourages more reading on a voluntary basis is good. You can always force a kid to read but I'd much prefer to encourage them and for them to do it for their own enjoyment.

One thing I did say to my son which resonated with him was that no matter how clever or intelligent you are if you can't communicate clearly you will never achieve your full potential. That was a wake up call of sorts for him as he studies hard and knows his stuff but the results he gets don't reflect either his knowledge or hard work and the primary reason for that is his weak comprehension.

Hopefully as he matures it will improve and enable him to achieve his academic and professional goals in life.

beauf

I love technology but I agree I think it has a negative impact on some kids.

However I also wouldn't rule out there is some other issue either. People can be brilliant readers but have concentration and comprehension problems that are unrelated.

I find something like music helps ours stay on task. Or a task list.

spurious

Je_suis_Jean wrote:

His big problem is misreading the question. He will frequently deliver a quality answer but not to the exact question asked or he will miss the key point in the question.

This is a huge issue for all exam levels in Ireland. Breaks my heart to see a child write pages and pages of good stuff, just not addressing the question. The scourge of the 'sample answer' at Leaving Cert. .

Perhaps he could do some work on the exact meanings of various 'question' terms?

54and56

spurious wrote: »

This is a huge issue for all exam levels in Ireland. Breaks my heart to see a child write pages and pages of good stuff, just not addressing the question. The scourge of the 'sample answer' at Leaving Cert. .

Perhaps he could do some work on the exact meanings of various 'question' terms?

Thanks Spurios, many's the time his teachers have told us he wrote a great answer, just to the wrong question and as a result got very poor marks!!

He is actually doing two separate extra curricular English support programs to try and address this issue and is fully committed to both i.e. he's not forced to doing them. He's a mature young lad and recognises the futility of working so hard but getting poor results through weak comprehension. I feel sorry for him as he really does spend a lot of time trying to remedy the situation.

We're actually very proud of his attitude towards this and hope the hard work will eventually pay off. It may be too late to significantly impact his Junior Cert results but with TY year coming up I'm hoping he'll be a bit more mature by the time he starts the LC cycle and the extra comprehension work he's doing, which will continue during TY, will give him an opportunity to "catch up" so to speak. That plus the fact he will likely choose the more technical subjects he is naturally attracted and suited to such as Maths, Physics etc will help mitigate the problem. Fingers crossed.

byhookorbycrook

She may need explicit teaching of comprehension strategies.
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/seven-strategies-teach-students-text-comprehension


Is there a difference in her subtest scores in the Drumcondra Reading test- is she performing better in the vocab subtest than in the comprehension one or is she low in both?

Does she read for pleasure? Do her parents read to her? A good idea might be to get her some audio books so that she can enjoy the books and get the language enrichment too. Then ask her some questions, get her to retell the story in her own words, to predict what will happen next and so on.

For "work" she could do some cloze procedures and it might be worth seeing if the school have the STILE comprehension books that she can borrow- there is no writing involved in these so it's "pure" comprehension.

(Sorry if that's too long, spot the primary L.S teacher!!)

chases0102

Thanks for all this fantastic advice folks! Boards is great!

Bananaleaf

I get this a lot at PT meetings

Parents often say "She/he eats books - how could his/her comprehension be so bad"

My advice is - maybe that is exactly the problem - he/she isn't actually processing anything.

Ask them after they read a chapter or two to tell you what has happened (check a chapter summary online yourself to corroborate)

or - at the weekend when reading the newspaper - give them a short article to read and you both discuss it together to see that they understood what they read.

Not all of the time, but some of the time, failure to answer the question can be because of a failure to understand the question (this is most likely the case in my opinion if he/she is writing 'summaries' or 'sample answers')

Miss Merry Berry

Bananaleaf wrote: »

I get this a lot at PT meetings

Parents often say "She/he eats books - how could his/her comprehension be so bad"

My advice is - maybe that is exactly the problem - he/she isn't actually processing anything.

Ask them after they read a chapter or two to tell you what has happened (check a chapter summary online yourself to corroborate)

or - at the weekend when reading the newspaper - give them a short article to read and you both discuss it together to see that they understood what they read.

Not all of the time, but some of the time, failure to answer the question can be because of a failure to understand the question (this is most likely the case in my opinion if he/she is writing 'summaries' or 'sample answers')

This is exactly it. Reading and comprehension are two completely different things. It's one thing I've noticed in the last few years, you could have an extremely fluent reader who is rhyming off a text but if you go back and ask them about what they've just read, they might go blank. Children need to be taught to examine what they've just read, it's actually a huge problem with children nowadays. They need to be taught to become critical thinkers. Exactly what you said- you need to ask questions to check for meaning about the text, use higher order thinking questions, ask their opinions about the text, use open ended questions so it's not a yes/no answer and they are using their own imaginations. Do this with the text from their readers on a daily basis or books about their own interest or like you suggested articles from newspapers or magazines. Even just day to day things- asking them about their opinions n the election or such and such.

Children are just so over stimulated these days from phones, iPads, interactive whiteboards, video games etc that they rarely have to use their own imaginations but thinking outside the box is a skill that can be nurtured over time but parents and teachers need to start triggering this in children more these days I feel.

beauf

You can also have a person can understand something they read, but not understand something said verbally to them.

Some people without any issues, simply speed read and don't read questions properly.

In my un-expert opinion different issues and causes and treatments. Some are effected badly by overuse of electronic devices some aren't.

I would also not underestimate how some bond socially with a common interest in something like mine-craft or similar, who would normally find it difficult to mix.

So I would agree with all other comments with that in mind. Its not always black and white.