Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0313: Reprise: How do I teach reading comprehension to a 5th-grade student?

Episode Date: May 20, 2015

Today Timothy revisits the question on how to teach reading comprehension to a 5th-grade student, with some extra comments on how he would change his answer today. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Today we're doing a reprise episode of episode 46, which is about teaching reading comprehension to a 5th grade student. I like the emphasis that this episode brings on teaching reading comprehension early. It's something that you can really leverage later in life. The earliest readers and the ones who love reading early in life tend to do very well academically later on. I also like the fact that I described the importance in this episode of summarizing passages. Now, one thing that I would add is the importance of teaching vocabulary immediately before reading a passage. So this is actually kind of the opposite of what a lot of people do, looking up vocabulary as they read. I say instead it's important to learn the

vocabulary first, any interesting vocabulary that you wouldn't otherwise know that's going to be in the passage, and then read the passage and you see examples of that vocabulary in context. This is a much more effective way of learning vocabulary, and it also helps with reading comprehension as you go down the road. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Michelle asked in an email about teaching reading comprehension to a fifth grade student.

How do you train a student to remember key concepts from a reading passage, and how do you make reading interesting and engaging for children that don't like to live in books? Well, Michelle, I think there are two main areas that you're going to have to focus on in working with this student. One will be your actual teaching method, and the other will have to do with what passages you actually give the student to read in training her. So to start with the first one, I would start with the simplest element possible, and that is having the student rephrase sentences as she reads. So just point at one sentence, ask what is the author saying here, and have the student rephrase it in her own words. That way she's not just reading the words passively, but is actually thinking about

it, getting in the author's head, and demonstrating that she understands the passage. Second, you're going to zoom out a little bit from that and teach the student to summarize paragraphs. So you might just assign individual paragraphs and have the student summarize what the author is saying in a single sentence. It's similar to the first step, but the student might have to think a little bit more to get at the author's main point in order to put the whole paragraph into just a few words. This is likely to be a bit of an exercise, and the student may show some resistance, especially if in the first step the student was basically just substituting words and saying the exact same thing that the text already said. But if you can get the student to do this, then it's going to help further down the road,

because even as an adult, some of us have trouble reading because we're just reading words, and our thoughts drift, and our eyes keep moving, and then we realize that we haven't really absorbed what we're looking at. Actually thinking about the text is going to turn the words into ideas, which is essential. And being able to summarize paragraphs helps the student to take a bigger picture view and turn lots of words into just a few simple ideas, which is a key skill for comprehension. And that goes into the third area, which will be to summarize whole passages, maybe a 500 word passage or a 1,000-word passage,

the type of reading that the student might encounter on a standardized test or any other type of evaluation as far as comprehension goes. And I would actually train the student to summarize these passages not just in writing, but actually in mind mapping. So as they go, they'll be reading the individual sentences, rephrasing them in their heads to try to get the author's ideas, and then they'll be summarizing the paragraphs in single sentences. Then those paragraphs will be organized in a mind map or in a system of branches of ideas that relate to one another. Some students find this really fun actually just to put a bunch of ideas together and show how they're related and what the author is trying to convey or maybe is thinking in organizing their thoughts

in this way. So since a mind map isn't just a bunch of text on a page, it's actually laid out in a visual fashion, the student may find this more interesting. And if you can get the student through steps one and two, then this is kind of rewarding. Now, the other thing that I would mention is in addition to following this process, you actually want to pick readings to start with that are short, easy, and fun. One of the most powerful principles to apply in learning anything, and especially in education for children, is starting with small wins. Once the student is used to following this process for passages that are enjoyable to read and to think about and all that good stuff, she'll find it much easier to do the

same thing with more difficult passages because it's already a trained process. All right, I hope you've enjoyed this reprise episode. For anyone who has any questions about learning or memorizing anything faster than ever, feel free still to leave a message at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll be able to respond quickly to your message from wherever I am. I just won't be able to record an episode on that topic until I'm back in the States in May. Meanwhile, if you want to support the show, please check out our Spanish course at masterofmemory.com slash Spanish. Or if you want to follow my adventures in Argentina or wherever else I might happen to be, you can do that at timothymoser.com. Thank you.