Reading Matters: Comprehension and the Cognitive Model

In this era of Covid, I had the opportunity to go back to reading clinician work. In late 2020, I joined the team of CRAIN (Center for Reading Assessment and Intervention, Inc.) as literacy coach and intervention teacher. I am learning and relearning reading and literacy concepts all over again. This informs my teaching practice and intervention teaching.

Every Tuesday night, CRAIN teachers come together and discuss matters important to us like, Reading Comprehension.

Reading Comprehension can be viewed in this Cognitive Model by McKenna and Stahl (2009). From a Bottom-Up (left going right) perspective reading comprehension can be taught from the basic skills. Seen the other way (right to left) is an approach to identify strenths and weaknesses on reading comprehension skills. This is leaning more on an evidenced based teaching practice using reading assessment as tool to aid teachers in planning units of study. 

Another way to use this model as a framework for teaching reading comprehension skills is to combine both approaches of Bottom-Up and Assessment Informed Teaching mindful of the results. This way, the model becomes a framewrok that will help teachers identify gaps in learning and specific reading comprehension skills that need intervention or enrichment.

Preparing lessons and making a unit of study is a science as well as a craft.