A few years ago, one of the teachers at my school asked me how she, “could improve the comprehension for her students?” I did not have a quick answer for her. My focus was more on the spelling patterns and helping students to decode words. But her question has lingered, and many other teachers have asked the same question over the years.
Can’t Level Up Without Comprehension
Teachers were reporting back to me that overall reading and spelling skills were improving after intervention, but students could not be leveled up because of the low comprehension scores. The targeted structured approach was working for the decoding skills, but the students were still missing an important step.
Stop and Take Notice of the Full Stops
It is never a surprise to me when one of the younger students reads past the full stops in their decodable books. They are younger, so I would stop and teach them the skill. I have one resource for that here.
When an older student did it, that was a helpful reminder that punctuation has a purpose.
During a running record test, one of my students was struggling with a sentence because she had read past the full stop. She tried rereading the words, with no success. She repeatedly used the last word of the sentence as the first word for what she was trying to make sense of. This was a perfect example of how punctuation affects the reader’s understanding. That has stuck with me and serves as a good example of why punctuation is important.
The Purpose of Punctuation Is to Help Readers Understand What They’re Reading
There is a really good article from Bedrock Learning.
Comprehension Is the Reason for Reading
The Reading Rockets article says, “Comprehension is the reason for reading.” Strong readers should think actively as they read. That is a great way to explain it. It is not a race to read all the words and finish.
There are lots of other things involved with comprehension, but punctuation might be a foundational item that is easy to fix quickly.