Science of Reading Part 3 of 5: Reading Comprehension at the Sentence Level by Anna Geiger

Welcome back to our Science of Reading journey! In Part One, we explored the foundational relationship between decoding and language comprehension. Part Two focused on the critical role of word-level comprehension. Now, in Part Three, we’re turning our attention to the next crucial step:

Building Comprehension at the Sentence Level

Our ultimate goal is for our students to truly comprehend what they read. This means more than just answering comprehension questions; it means grasping the overall meaning, the essence, the “gist” of the text. Researchers describe this as constructing a mental model – the reader’s internal representation of the text. When students can accurately summarize a book, they are demonstrating a strong mental model.

So, how do we guide our students in building these essential mental models? Today, we’ll focus on developing comprehension at the sentence level.

Comprehension at the sentence level is a little trickier than at the word level. We could delve into various grammatical concepts like parts of speech, phrases, clauses, and connectives, but today we’ll focus on practical, actionable activities you can implement immediately. These activities can be adapted for even the youngest learners when they are done orally. As students develop their reading skills, they can gradually take on more independent practice. Remember to always model these activities and do guided practice before having students do them independently. 

Words Working Together

This activity, inspired by Nancy Hennessy’s valuable book, The Reading Comprehension Blueprint, helps students understand the relationships between words within a sentence. While Hennessy’s book can be dense, it offers incredibly practical strategies. This activity is one of them.

Begin with a sentence from a text you’ve read with your students – fiction or nonfiction, read aloud or independently read. For example, let’s use the sentence: “Some whales swim from cold polar regions to warmer waters in winter.”

Prepare a series of targeted questions designed to prompt students to think about how the words relate to one another. The goal with this activity isn’t to teach grammatical terms, but to foster an understanding of how words function together within a sentence.

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Here’s how you might introduce this activity to students who are new to it: “Today, I’m going to show you how we can understand a sentence better by thinking about how the words work together.”

Here’s a sample sequence of questions for the example sentence:

• Which word answers “what” in this sentence? (whales)
• Which whales? (some)
• What do the whales do? (swim)
• Where do the whales swim from? (cold polar regions)
• What two words describe the regions? (cold and polar)
• Which word tells where the whales swim to? (waters)
• What kind of waters are they? (warmer)
• What phrase tells us when the whales swim? (in winter)

Since this activity would be challenging for your younger students, start with simpler sentences like “The black dog ran.” Ask questions like:

• Who or what is this sentence about? (dog)
• What word describes the dog? (black)
• What did the dog do? (ran)

Gradually increase the complexity of the sentences as your students’ skills develop.

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Sentence Anagrams

A sentence anagram involves presenting the words of a sentence in a scrambled order and having students rearrange them to form a coherent sentence. This activity can be adapted for different grade levels by using individual words or phrases on cards or on a screen.

For example, scramble the following sentence from Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White: “Fern fed Wilbur with the bottle.”

When working on sentence construction, I recommend starting with the verb. In this example:

• What’s the action word? (fed)
• Who fed? (Fern)
• Fern fed whom? (Wilbur)
• How did Fern feed Wilbur? (with the bottle)

This process can be extended to more complex sentences with multiple phrases. For instance: “Fern heated the milk and fed Wilbur with a bottle.” By guiding students through the process of identifying the actions, subjects, and objects, you help them understand how sentence structure conveys meaning. 

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Sentence Combining

This activity encourages students to combine shorter sentences into more complex and sophisticated ones. Using a text like Ladybugs by Gail Gibbons, you might present three simple sentences:

• The ladybug lays eggs.
• The eggs are yellow.
• The eggs hatch in two to ten days.

Guide students through the process of combining these sentences:

• What extra information does the second sentence give us? (The eggs are yellow.)
• Where does the word “yellow” fit in the first sentence? (The ladybug lays yellow eggs.)
• How can we combine this new sentence with the third sentence using the word “which”? Always encourage partner discussion and practice before arriving at the final combined sentence: “The ladybug lays yellow eggs which hatch in two to ten days.” 

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Through these activities, we help our students understand how sentences function to convey meaning. This is a crucial step in building the strong mental models that are essential for deep and lasting reading comprehension.

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