Fostering Comprehension of Complex Texts
Doug Buehl · 2023
The authors refer to microbes, and the readers briefly ponder what they remember about these microscopic creatures. Bacteria, they think, and maybe viruses. The authors emphasize that attacks on microbes impel them to mutate into stronger and deadlier forms. The readers revise their definition of microbes to include fungi and protozoa. Proficient reading abilities are integral to the literacy challenges and choices the authors make as adults each day of their lives. Likewise, proficient reading abilities are integral for learning. For students to achieve success in learning in social studies and science, literature and mathematics, in fact, in all curricular disciplines, they need to develop strategic comprehension processes. The minds of proficient readers are literally teeming with questions. When readers wonder about something in a text—wonder why, wonder if, wonder whether, wonder what, wonder how—they are surfacing questions that direct their thinking through a text.