Michelle O'Donnell

“Inference and comprehension strategies seem to do little to compensate for weak domain knowledge. Instead, research repeatedly shows prior domain knowledge to be a far stronger predictor of students’ ability to comprehend or to learn from advanced texts. Of course, students’ comprehension and learning is also influenced by their reading skills (ex. decoding and fluency). But even the advantage of strong reading skills turns out to be the greatest for students with strong domain knowledge.” (p.8) SORticle#11: Advancing Our Students’ Language and Literacy: The Challenge of Complex Texts, by Marilyn Jager Adams. Teaching students to decode words is only PART of the reading process, and arguably an easier than other parts that are required for reading proficiency. Language comprehension is “a long road” and much more complicated, complex, and infinite. This article highlights the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction and ensuring students have strong domain/topic knowledge to build the scaffolding needed to make meaning from texts they read or listen to. This article is a MUST-read for teachers of all grade levels, Kinder to post-secondary. #SoRticle #Literacy #ScienceOfReading 📘 aft.org/sites/default/files/…