Comprehension while reading decodable texts is necessary for all readers.
Decodable texts are prolific in the instructional lives of young readers in today’s classrooms. How does a teacher ensure beginning readers comprehend decodable texts?
All books are decodable if a reader has sufficient understanding of the ideas and vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and letter/sound correspondences found in the text. Texts for beginning readers, however, may be constructed to emphasize certain aspects of reading for which these up-and-coming readers need practice. Decodable texts as discussed in this article are short texts written specifically to provide a beginning reader with a highly structured experience in which the reader applies known phonemes and graphemes to automatically segment and blend words. These texts offer simple sentences with few (or no) words that cannot be decoded using previously taught phonetic patterns or sight recognition.
When beginning readers are developing the abilities to use their knowledge of letters and sounds, it is also critical for them to simultaneously experience how that knowledge leads them to make meaning of the text. So, an important factor in judging the quality of decodable texts is whether all the decoding abilities a student uses when reading the text produces a meaningful experience. In other words, the text must be decodable and make sense since comprehension—understanding spoken and written language—is the goal of literacy instruction.
Three Kinds of Thinking: Literal, Interpretive, and Evaluative
Checking for understanding—comprehension—when a reader has decoded the print in a decodable text is an essential part of the reading process. Discussion after students decode the print offers teachers a powerful opportunity to ensure that student’s comprehension includes the range of complexity characterized by literal, inferential, and evaluative thinking. While teachers use questions and students discuss thinking within each of these categories, the most powerful discussions move seamlessly among all these kinds of thinking. This range of thinking is necessary for the depth and complexity of understanding that defines a confident and proficient reader.
So, what are some examples of these three categories of thinking and how do they support a reader’s comprehension of a decodable text? Teaching notes for every decodable text included in Okapi Educational Publishing’s Flying Start to Literacy: PHONICS™ provides a question prompt for each of these three kinds of thinking. In this article, two texts from the program are used to provide examples of the three kinds of questions and possible responses teachers might hear from students as they discuss these decodable texts. The example texts are:
Pip, Sam, and Tim from Stage One/Module One (the first decodable text in the instructional sequence)
How Ants Make Nests from Stage One/Module Three
Literal Comprehension
Literal questions have answers that are located directly in the text and form the initial basis of understanding a text. Since replies to literal questions depend on what a text actually says, readers can more readily agree upon an answer to a literal question. As readers discuss their thinking, literal information from the text provides evidence to back up their claims.
In the first example of a decodable text, Pip, Sam, and Tim introduces three friends who reappear in several other decodable texts in the series. The literal question provided in the lesson notes for this text is “Who has the cat?” Readers can use words found in the text (“Pip and the cat”) to answer the question (“Pip has the cat.”). The illustration that accompanies these words also shows Pip holding the cat, which can be considered literal information, too.
In How Ants Make Nests, a nonfiction decodable text that shows various ways that ants make nests, the literal question is “What do red ants do to build a nest?” Readers can answer this question from the words found on page 6: “Red ants can cut. They put the cut bits in the nest.” In this text, the photographs do not contribute to the literal understandings about what red ants do to build a nest. Those photos require a different kind of thinking, the inferential kind.
Inferential Comprehension
Response to an inferential question requires a reader to go beyond what the text actually says to determine what the words might mean and consider what the author has implied. Readers typically incorporate background knowledge and experiences from their own lives, together with ideas from the text, to respond to an inferential question. This means responses to an inferential question will vary from reader to reader. Teachers may ask a broad question to prompt inferential responses from readers, such as “What are you thinking?” However, even inferential responses should be backed up with literal evidence from the text. Teachers may probe an inferential response from a student by asking, “What in the text makes you think that?”
In Pip, Sam, and Tim, the inferential question provided in the teacher notes for this decodable text is “What does Sam like to play?” On pages 6 & 7, readers find words that say “I am Sam” and an illustration that shows Sam holding a basketball atop his index finger. A reader must infer and integrate several ideas from the words and the illustration. First, the child in the illustration on page 7 is the same child named Sam that is discussed in the words found on page 6. Then the reader must continue their line of thinking about this child named Sam, inferring that Sam must like to play basketball because he is holding a basketball in the illustration. To reach these conclusions requires background knowledge on how books work: words and illustrations go together, and illustrations sometimes give extra information that isn’t found in the words. Readers also need background knowledge about the world to identify the ball in the illustration as a basketball and to be aware that sometimes basketball players spin a basketball on their finger as evidence of basketball proficiency!
In How Ants Make Nests, the inferential question in the teacher notes is “Why do ants build nests?” Each two-page spread in the decodable text states what ants do in relation to their nests (i.e., dig to make big nests, put cut bits in the nest, put sand on top, go in at the top of the nest, can make silk, and make nests with this silk), but why the ants do these things is never explicitly stated. So, each reader may have a different idea and may use different words to express their thinking. One reader might say something like, “The ant builds a nest to live in with other ants. See in this picture—there’s lots of ants going in the nest. That’s why the nest has to be big.” Another reader might add, “Ants take their food to the nest to save it for when they’re hungry. They carry their food back to the nest and go in the top. Maybe they put the sand on top of the nest to keep other insects out of their nest.” Each of these responses is an interpretation pulling together several pieces of information from across the decodable text integrated with background knowledge of how words and photographs fit together along with what the reader already knows or what seems to make sense about the world of insects and nests. To answer the question of why ants build nests, a reader must use inferential thinking.
Evaluative Comprehension
While interpretive questions necessitate a reader bring their world knowledge to the text, evaluative questions compel the reader to consider how the text informs them about the world and influences what they believe. Evaluative thinking incorporates a reader’s thoughts, opinions, and reactions to the text. In addition, as readers evaluate the ideas in a text, they appreciate that authors have definite points of view and use deliberate ways of crafting texts to purposely influence the reader’s thinking (i.e., including or excluding particular language, graphics, and ideas). This kind of thinking is quite sophisticated, yet it is entirely possible for our earliest readers if teachers devote time and interest.
For example, in Pip, Sam, and Tim, the evaluative question provided in the teacher notes for this decodable text asks readers, “Which picture did you like the best? Why?” Even beginning readers have preferences and can easily provide reasons for their thinking when prompted. A beginning reader might say something like, “I like this picture the best (indicating page 15) cause they’re playing together.” Another reader might chime in, “Me, too.” A teacher would want to probe why the second reader also prefers this picture—while the choice of favorite illustration is the same, their reasons might be different.
In How Ants Make Nests, the evaluative question for this decodable text is “Why do you think animals have their own ways of building nests?” One reader might respond by pointing out that different ants might have access to different building materials (“These ants live on the ground where it’s sandy, but these ants must live in trees cause I see the leaves right here.”) A peer might decide that some ants like to build nests that are in the ground while others build above ground because of where they live (“I bet those ants live near water so they can make mud to make their nest tall like in this picture, but these ants just make a hole in the ground.”)
Being asked to think in these evaluative ways from the very beginning of literacy instruction, even when reading decodable texts, anticipates and prepares students for when upper grade teachers ask students to analyze texts, determine author biases, and explore intentional craft moves an author uses to persuade a reader to think in certain ways (and then craft texts themselves using these same craft moves). Just as with interpretive responses, there are no right or wrong answers to evaluative questions and taking time to discuss text evidence that supports a reader’s thinking informs all discussions.
Taking time to have comprehension discussions about decodable texts supports students to think in literal, interpretive, and evaluative ways.
Ensure students develop as rich thinkers by having comprehension discussions around all texts, including those written for decoding practice. Debra Crouch.