Looking for SOR Books About Comprehension? Look No Further!
In the social media science of reading community, sharing knowledge about word recognition skills tends to take front-and-center. But the research also provides us with some amazing resources about the language comprehension side of the equation! If you’re looking for some books to get you started on your science of reading comprehension journey, look no further! I have four recommendations for you!
I love the following four books because they focus on comprehension and they are written in teacher-friendly language. If we’re looking at Scarborough’s Reading Rope, these books are planted firmly in the language comprehension strands. At the risk of overwhelming someone new to this journey, I stopped with four recommendations that I feel are especially helpful. I’ll give a brief overview of each book below and share what I love most about it!
The Reading Comprehension Blueprint by Dr. Nancy Hennessy
If you’re looking for a one-stop-shop for all things comprehension, this is my #1 recommendation. As Dr. Nancy Hennessy walks us through The Reading Comprehension Blueprint, she outlines key elements of comprehension and instructional strategies to support those elements. She explains the importance of vocabulary, syntax, text structure, background knowledge and inferencing when it comes to comprehension. She cites the research and gives countless examples of direct, explicit instruction. Best of all, she puts it together in a blueprint framework to help teachers plan unit and lesson plans.
This book is divided into 3 sections: (1) The Nature of Skilled Reading Comprehension, (2) The Blueprint, and (3) Implementation. The first section is dense and gives a very comprehensive overview of research and theory surrounding reading comprehension. Don’t let that section scare you off! The second section is the goldmine of this book! As Dr. Hennessy walks us through the parts of the blueprint, you’ll see each of the complex strands of language comprehension weave together in a way that will have a huge impact on classroom instruction. The final section wraps things up with some concrete ways to plan units and lessons with all of the key components of comprehension in mind!
The Knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler
Written in an easy-to-read narrative format, Natalie Wexler’s The Knowledge Gap walks us through a major problem in our current educational system – the lack of teaching of content knowledge. Background knowledge and vocabulary are highly predictive of reading comprehension success (or failure). We have to know something to learn something. And right now, many schools aren’t teaching a whole lot of that something.
This book is also broken into three sections: (1) The Way We Teach Now, (2) How We Got Here, and (3) How We Can Change. A clear pathway through history to today, you’ll be fascinated with the story of how our public education system embraced a skill-based curriculum at the expense of knowledge building. A fair warning, however; this book will get you fired up!
The Writing Revolution by Judith C. Hochman & Natalie Wexler
The Writing Revolution by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler is a must-read book for any teacher of writing! Together, these authors show us the importance and the power of the sentence. If we want students to become strong writers, they need to be able to write strong sentences. With a direct focus on the Language Structures strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope, this book shows the powerful way syntax influences writing and comprehension.
One of my favorite takeaways from this book was a sense of relief that I could spend instructional time, and that this time would be well-spent, focusing on sentence-level work with my students. In fact, sentence-level work would not only result in stronger writers, but it could also be used as a tool for comprehension! Weaving writing instruction throughout core subjects has been a game changer in my classroom! If you read this book, I don’t doubt it will be in yours too!
Bringing Words to Life by Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, & Linda Kucan
And my final recommendation for you is an amazing book on vocabulary instruction! Bringing Words to Life will quickly become your go-to resource for all things vocabulary! The authors, Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan, walk us through the importance of robust vocabulary instruction, how to choose the best words for instruction, and countless examples of how to teach vocabulary to all grade levels! This book is full of helpful resources and is written in a very easy-to-read format. It feels like you’re having an engaging conversation with a friendly professor!
I’m not sure I can actually pinpoint my favorite part of this book. I found myself getting excited throughout the whole book as I thought about ways I will enhance and tweak my own classroom instruction. There are tons of actual classroom examples and this book left me feeling very confident that I knew how to choose the best words to teach and how to introduce them effectively to my students.
If you have follow-up questions or comments, please send them my way! Happy reading!
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