Discuss to Strengthen Comprehension

Not only should educators explicitly teach students to stop and determine confusing parts of a text and possibly what action to take, but they also must teach them that sometimes readers must live with ambiguity until post-reading discussions and writing, both of which help piece together meaning. Students should also understand that all readers experience uncertainty while reading; in fact, sometimes, the author purposefully invites ambiguity.

This chapter is not intended to give you solutions for each reading problem but rather give you tools to help your students self-monitor and self-clarify while reading. In addition to the tools we feature, find more ideas for potential reading challenges with possible solutions in Laura Robb’s (2009) book Assessments for Differentiating Reading Instruction: 100 Forms and Checklists for Identifying Students’ Strengths and Needs So You Can Help Every Reader Improve.

A perk of traveling is meeting new people and learning of new things to see. Many of our best excursions have happened because locals shared a place to go that was not listed in the travel guide, and we’ve gained new insights into their cities based on their stories and experiences. Students gain new insight into text when they can talk with their peers about their understanding (or lack of understanding) about the text. In addition, active discussion—which requires students to pay attention, not interrupt, and understand what the speaker is discussing, as well as be able to coherently communicate their thinking—develops and strengthens interpersonal communication skills, supports analytical and critical-thinking skills, deepens student knowledge and retention, and builds problem-solving skills (Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter, Hennessey, & Alexander, 2009). Research from Carnegie Mellon University (2021) suggests that engaging students through interactive activities, discussions, and feedback results in improved academic performance compared to traditional sit-and-get methods. Discussions help students thread together what they brought to the reading, the rich connections they made during the reading, and how others perceived and connected with the text. Discussions help students summarize their learning and enhance their procedural and conceptual knowledge, which is why teachers usually follow up all reading with opportunities for students to discuss. But discussions can also be of benefit during the reading. When comprehension breaks down, having discussions makes it clearer to both the student and teacher what the issues are and what potential next steps could fix the problems (de Garcia, n.d.), thus strengthening comprehension.

However, rich, active discussions don’t just happen. Teachers must plant the seeds for discourse with intention, so students apply what they have learned through direct, explicit instruction, minilessons, and guided practices. They can plant these seeds by providing the following prompts prior to the discussion.

• Based on today’s thinking job, share your tabs, marks, or annotations that reflect your purpose for reading. • Find the page that supports . • Select an example of dialogue and share how the character’s words give the reader insight into his or her personality. • Choose a new word, or a word used in a different way, to discuss with your group.

Teachers should not assume all students will know how to participate successfully in discussion groups. We have included many pointers throughout this and the following chapter. In addition, students may benefit from an explicit discussion minilesson, found in chapter 6. Some suggestions for facilitating positive group discussions follow.

• Set clear and consistent behavior guidelines (share your expectations and the consequences for not following the set guidelines). Encourage student contributions to these guidelines, record them, and visibly post them. • Model (or ask students to model) what a quality discussion should look like and sound like. Some active listening pointers could be to make eye contact with the person speaking, listen intensely so that you can paraphrase what was said, restate something that seems important, nod your head in agreement, and draw or expand on peers’ statements. Some speaking pointers could be to make eye contact with each person in the group, speak slowly with intonation and feeling, project with appropriate volume considering the context, respectfully disagree when appropriate, and stay on topic. • Continually give feedback during group discussions based on the criteria for success you and your students designed for stronger discussions. Be prepared to provide minilessons for social-emotional skills (chapter 6) so they have more productive conversations. See the reproducible “Common Social-Emotional Skills by Grade Level” (page 183). • Offer text all readers can access (or provide support for challenging text). • Prepare statement and question stems for successful discussions, and have them ready to use in case you encounter students who struggle with discussions. • Assign roles like the following. • Discussion leader, who leads and monitors the discussion ensuring participants provide evidence to support their responses • Recorder, who writes or types the key points (in notes, on a graphic organizer, and so on) • Timekeeper or encourager, who monitors time allotted, provides positive feedback, and encourages all voices are heard • Evaluator, who invites each participant to evaluate his or her own participation, as well as rates the participation of the group as a whole on things such as preparation, contributions, providing textual support, listening and valuing others, staying on task, and so on

Some discussions will be teacher led while others will be student led. During-reading discussions should have stopping points in the text to signal an opportunity to stop reading and discuss with the guidance of prompts. To ensure that this happens, separate your text into manageable chunks before reading to create stopping points in the text. These stopping points could occur after each subtitled section with nonfiction, or after paragraph or chapter breaks with fiction. Alert students that at the end of each chunk, they should stop to discuss with either the whole class or their group, whichever you prefer. If students are reading orally, this stop will be consistent with the class (or group); if they are reading independently, some may finish before the other members of the group are ready to discuss. They can use this time to organize their annotations or create questions to ask their group during the discussion. Provide a timer, or assign a timekeeper, to maintain the flow between reading and discussing.