monitoring and clarifying understanding

Monitoring and Clarifying

Reading comprehension

Monitoring

Steps:

1. Stop your reading because you don't understand.

2. ​Focus on the part you don't understand (words, sentences, or paragraphs)

3. ​Reread the section

4. ​Adjust your reading rate: slow ​down or speed up

Clarifying (aka Fix-up strategy)

Steps:

1. After you stop your reading because you don't understand, clarify or use a strategy to mak meaning clear.

2. ​Focus on the word, phrase, sentence or paragraph.

3. Use a strategy: guessing meaning from context, use a dictionary, connect what you read to something in your life, refelct on the reading, notice a new grammar structure or expression, etc.

Important!!!

• As you read, you can monitor/clarify a text DURING reading.

• As you read, you can monitor/clarify a text AFTER reading.​

• You can use multiple strategies at any point.

• You can keep note of the new information.​

​

Questions you can ask:

Does this make sense? Do I understand?

​What is happening in the story or article?

What clues can I use to understand better?

Does this text remind me of ​something I read before?

How do I read this word?

What is the main idea?

​What did I need to learn from this paragraph?​​

​Now let's practice:

Multiple Choice

"Many of the organisms that are commonly called seaweeds are brown algae. In addition to their pigment..."

The word seaweed means:

• a plant that grows everywhere

• a marine plant

• what they use to make sushi

Multiple Choice

"Many of the organisms that are commonly called seaweeds are brown algae. In addition to their brown pigment brown algae contains gree, yellow and orange pigments. "

The word pigment means:

• a substance that imparts black or white

• a substance that imparts any color

• a cute little animal

Multiple Choice

In addition to their brown pigment brown algae contains gree, yellow and orange pigments. "

The word pigment is pronounced:

• pig-ˈmant

• ˈpig-mant

• ˈpig-mənt

• pig-ˈmənt

Multiple Choice

In addition to their brown pigment brown algae contains gree, yellow and orange pigments. "

The word algae is pronounced:

• ˈalga

• ældʒˈi

• ˈælgiː

• ˈældʒiː

Multiple Choice

"Many of the organisms that are commonly called seaweeds are brown algae. In addition to their brown pigment brown algae contains gree, yellow and orange pigments. "

What type of text do you think these two sentences come from?

• Art class

• Science

• Both

• No idea

Open Ended

Can you think of a question that could help understand the previous example?