Blog #4 - Understanding "Understanding"

In  high school, the student’s goal is to learn and understand information long enough to get a good grade on a test or in a class; the teacher’s goal is to teach the information in such a way that the students remember it even after the course is finished. The reason that complete comprehension is the goal of high school teachers is because students will need to use this complete comprehension in their college or post-secondary education courses. Because comprehension is so important, it is also important to help students reach this level of comprehension. Many classrooms are failing to do this, but there are some strategies teachers can use to help their students

The first thing teachers can do to help their students is to help them understand what it means to understand. In the book Adolescent Literacy: Turning Practice into Promise, the author writes that, “They [students] had learned that in the classroom, understanding meant remembering the facts long enough to answer questions, completing a project, or scoring well on a test” (Beers, 2007, p. 31). Once students fulfill these requirements, the information has been “understood”, and they can forget that they ever learned it. A few pages later on page 35 of the same book, there is a chart that shows what true understanding entails. For example, “we manipulate our own thoughts to understand more completely…we discuss…we see patterns; we discover new ways to consider our existing knowledge” (Beers, 2007, p. 35). There is a very large gap between the student definition of understanding and the teacher definition of understanding, and it is the teacher who needs to initiate the closing of this gap.

There are two things that teachers can be looking for to gauge student comprehension. One thing teachers should be looking for is the integration of other course material, or even material from other courses, in student work. High schools tend to encourage students to leave the knowledge learned in 3^rd period in 3^rd period and not to bring it into other classes, even if it makes sense (Hinchman, 2014, p. 138). Although this is ideal, it is difficult to achieve, so how else can teachers gauge student comprehension? In the book Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, Hinchman mentioned that student’s knowledge of vocabulary predicts their comprehension (2014, p. 145). If a student understands the content-specific vocabulary embedded in a text, they are more likely understanding it.

There are two things teachers can be looking for to gauge student comprehension, but there are three things teachers can do to augment student comprehension. The first thing teachers can do is encourage students to think metacognitively. Metacognition occurs when students begin to think about their thinking and comprehension (Beers, 2007, p. 36). One way to encourage students to think metacognitively is to ask them to separate what they know and what they want to know (think of this as a “grown up” KWL chart). The second thing teachers can do is to ask students questions that will deepen their comprehension. As stated in Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, “Questions can also facilitate students’ search for evidence and their need to return to the text to deepen their understanding” (Hinchman, 2014, p. 140). When students need to back their answer with evidence, they must return to the text to find that evidence, thus strengthening their familiarity with the text and their understanding of the text. Thirdly, teachers can use “way-in” texts to scaffold students understanding of more abstract, content area related ideas (Beers, 2007, p. 30). These texts are often short and not very complex.

              Side note: If you want to measure text complexity or find a text that would be easy                or challenging for your students, www.lexile.com is a great resource! They have                    measured over 30,000 books based on their scale. Teachers can search for texts                  within certain lexiles, or search previously selected texts to see how they measure               (Lexile).

Using a way-in text allows students to make connections between what they already know and what they are going to learn.  This creates a base of knowledge for students to work off of so that when new information is introduced, students can continue to make connections.

Teachers are often the initiators of comprehension, but that does not mean they need to be doing the bulk of the work! Teachers can look at a few factors that may predict students’ comprehension, and there are also some strategies that teachers can use to encourage comprehension before and after introducing new material. Through the use of these strategies, hopefully students’ understanding of the word "understanding" becomes a lot more like a teacher's definition of "understanding". 

Resources: 
Beers, K. (2007). Adolescent Literacy: Turning Practice into Promise. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heineman. 
Hinchman, K.A., & Sheridan-Thomas, H. (2014). Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction. New York, New York: The Guilford Press. 
Lexile Framework for Reading. Retrieved from https://lexile.com/.