8 North Shore Children & Families
Learning Through Reading
Teach Your Child to Read Deeply Real reading is not just registering one word after another. Real reading is reading for comprehension. Real reading is deep reading. Deep reading is always a conversation between the parts and the whole of what we read. The most basic reading error that students make is that they fail to monitor their understanding of their reading. They often believe that somehow, if they read all of the words, the words will enter their heads and make some sort of an impression. The words will “add up” to what the student needs to know. This is a formula for disaster. It simply doesn’t work that way. To read deeply, it is necessary for students to continuously ask themselves two basic questions. For any given sentence, paragraph, section, article or book, it is necessary to ask: 1. Do I understand what I just read? 2. How does what I just read extend my understanding of the main point? The first question is about the parts of a given reading. Do I understand this particular sentence or paragraph? Do I understand the words? Do I understand its meaning? If, after reading a sentence, I find that I do not understand what I’ve read, I have to make a choice. What do I do? Do I go
back and re-read? Do I look up words that I don’t understand? Do I ask for help? Do I seek an external resource to help me understand? Do I write down what I don’t understand? Do I keep reading in the hope that I will understand? Should I ignore my lack of understanding for now (keeping in mind that I don’t understand what I’ve just read)? Finding the right answer is not entirely clear. We often think that when we read something, we are supposed to understand everything we read. But this is not so! Much of what we read we don’t immediately understand. We don’t understand until after we’ve read it; after we’ve talked about it with someone; or after weeks or even years after having finished the reading! So, monitoring our comprehension of our reading (that is, “Do I understand what I just read?”) is an active process. It requires that we make a judgment about what is necessary to understand right now, what can wait, and what we are simply not going to worry about. In this way, our comprehension is guided, in part, by our goals. Having assured ourselves that we have understood what we have just read, say, a sentence, our next task is to ask ourselves: “How does what I’ve just read extend the main point?” This is a critical question. This is a question Continued on page 10