comprehension TEKS talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Comprehension skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student uses metacognitive skills to both develop and deepen comprehension of increasingly complex texts.

Provide students with a passage and giving them a chart to complete after reading the passage. The chart would have two columns: “The text said . . .” and “This likely means . . .”

For assessment purposes, the teacher can have “The text said . . .” section filled out and have students fill out the “This likely means . . .” part or the teacher can do the opposite. As students advance with this skill, the teacher can also provide a mix of both. By the end of the assessment, both sides would be completed.

Examples:

  • The text may say, “Jose smiled,” and students would write “Jose was happy.”
  • Another example could be to have the “This likely means . . .” tab filled out with “inside was a kitten” and students would refer to the text and write what the text said in the column that told them that. The response could be, “There was a box that was making a meowing noise.”
the available body of supporting, valid, and relevant details, facts, or information that supports an inference, idea, or proposition
Readers must be able to make inferences within and beyond a text to draw conclusions about information or ideas not explicitly stated in the text. Students should be able to use context presented in the text or illustrations, prior knowledge or experience, text features, and/or other comprehension tools to make reasonable, logical assumptions about the intended meaning in a text.

Research

What Works Clearinghouse. (2010). Improving reading comprehension in kindergarten through 3rd grade: practice guide summary. Washington, DC: Institute of Education Science. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/14#tab-summary

Summary: The goal of this practice guide is to offer educators specific evidence-based recommendations that address the challenge of teaching reading comprehension to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. The guide provides practical, clear information on critical topics related to teaching reading comprehension and is based on the best available evidence as judged by the authors.