Monitoring Comprehension
METANotice the difference between decoding words and actually understanding them — recognise when you've read the words but not grasped the meaning, and do something about it
Mastery Evidence
- comprehension monitoring research
- Metacognitive Monitoring in Reading Comprehension (MDPI 2024)
Assessment Prompt
“After [child] reads a paragraph or listens to an explanation, do they notice when they haven't really understood it — rather than just carrying on as if they had?”
Prerequisites2
- Feeling of not understandingsoftAges 6—7
- Reading for MeaninghardAges 5—6
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- Feeling of not understanding soft
Noticing the decoding/understanding gap is the English-specific form of the universal comprehension-monitoring habit
- Asking for Help hard
Noticing confusion and acting on it requires already knowing that asking for help is a valid response to being stuck
- Reading for Meaning hard
Noticing the gap between decoding and understanding requires first having the foundational idea that reading means making meaning
- Feeling of not understanding soft
Understanding that reading means making meaning is the English-domain grounding of the universal habit of noticing when you don't understand
- Asking for Help hard
Noticing confusion and acting on it requires already knowing that asking for help is a valid response to being stuck
Unlocks3
- Inference vs Explicit MeaninghardAges 7—9
- Author's word choiceshardAges 7—9
- Self-Correcting While ReadingsoftAges 5—11