Foundational Word Reading Skills- "Developing foundational word-reading skills—phonological awareness, print awareness, phonics, and word recognition instruction—is critical to developing reading comprehension." (Duke et al., 2021).

Bridging Skills- Word reading and comprehension, "GSF is the ability to simultaneously attend to, and flexibly switch between, the letters and sounds in words (graphophonological) and the meanings of words (semantic). (Duke et al., 2021).

Reading Comprehension is Not Automatic Even When Fluency is Strong

Comprehension Instruction Should Begin Early- "As young learners begin to read texts themselves, comprehension instruction, alongside phonics and other foundational skills instruction, has an important place." (Duke et al., 2021).

Comprehension Strategy Instruction Improves Reading Comprehension- Research has long shown that proficient compre-henders engage in particular mental activities to support their understanding of what they are read-ing (e.g., Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995).

Writing- Having students write about their readings can enhance reading comprehension because it forces them to think about what they have read.

A Layered Model of Effective Comprehension Instruction-

Monitor Comprehension- This means teaching children to notice when they understand information and when they do not as well as teaching them how to learn information they do not understand.

Metacognition- Metacognition is actively thinking about thinking. Monitoring their own understanding as they are reading. There are also strategies one can take after reading to "fix" problems with comprehension.

Graphic and Semantic Organizers- Graphic organizers are a visual tool one can use to put pieces of a text together, take notes about "most important" or difficult concepts, and organize their own thoughts to create summaries about a text.

Answering Questions- Question Answer Relationship (QAR) strategy can help students identify where the information used to answer questions was from the text, background knowledge, or assumptions based on implying.

Generating Questions- By asking questions students begin to realize if they can answer questions. This shows an understanding of a text and allows students to connect what their reading with their own questions.

Recognizing Story Structure- Learning different parts of a story (characters, main idea, plot, etc) students can connect the dots between important ideas and improve comprehension.

Summarizing- Summarizing texts requires students to think about what they read, what the important ideas are, and how to describe it in their own words.

Art Integration- Integrating art into lesson plans is a great way to enhance comprehension, engage long term memory, and create lesson plans/ activities that are fun for children.

"The arts provide powerful opportunities for cognitive work as well as imaginative play" (Wolf, 2006)

Tools for Contemplation:

1. Gesture

2. Contrast

3. Vibration

4. Texture

5. Abstraction

6. Expression

In this article a third grade class explores a new addition to their learning by integrating arts. The class reads several different texts and being painting and drawing to deeper their comprehension of the texts. This caused deeper discussion between the students and their art work as well as the texts.