Comprehension Strategies
Strengthening scholars’ capability to comprehend is an ongoing process that evolves with time and changes since various strategies are applied to meet students’ collective and individual requirements within the classroom. In definition, according to Bartz (2016), comprehension refers to the measure of a person’s understanding of a text or a passage. Bartz (2016) also substantiates that effective comprehension strategies implemented in social studies courses help students become successful residents within the ever-changing world. This paper, therefore, describes two comprehension strategies and illustrates how these strategies can be assessed. Additionally, this paper describes social-constructivist approaches to comprehension and expounds on the importance of the approaches.
Comprehension involves various strategies, including vocabulary development, as well as comparing and contrasting, among others. In explanation, vocabulary development is a vital skill that scholars should maximize to understand any form of program or curriculum (Bartz, 2016). In social studies, this strategy empowers apprentices to reinforce their foundation of the previous studies words and link ideologies that can be used as a setting or back up for implementing new comments to different courses. This strategy can generally be assessed by measuring a student’s understanding of words and concepts. On the other hand, comparing and contrasting strategy has a far-reaching ability to effectively help students comprehend various contents like social studies (Bartz, 2016). This strategy, which helps in providing the ability to compare and contrast two or more events, people, or perspectives, can be very advantageous to students since it helps in scaffolding new information with the existing information while measuring progression in comprehension on any given topic or subject (Bartz, 2016). Furthermore, this strategy can be assessed by making an expressive comparison or efficiently contrasting the information to help students draw personal conclusions and understand the meaning of the information or connect meaning to the information (Bartz, 2016).
Social constructivism refers to a sociological model of knowledge where human development is socially set, and through interaction with other people, knowledge is constructed (Ardiansyah & Ujihanti, 2018). In relation to its significance, the social constructivism approach improves students’ reading comprehension and accommodates scholars at any level of studies. Additionally, social constructivism enhances the growth in social values that helps in the elimination of friction among students; thus, it promotes peace within a schooling set-up. Finally, according to Jubran (2016), social constructivism improves students’ learning outcomes, thus leading to more outstanding performance.
References
Ardiansyah, W., & Ujihanti, M. (2018). Social constructivism-based reading comprehension teaching design at Politeknik Negeri Sriwijaya. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume, 9.
Bartz, C. J. (2016). Effective Comprehension Strategies in the Social Studies Classroom.
Jubran, S. M. (2016). The effect of the social constructivist approach on teaching reading to Jordanian University students. US-China Education Review, 6(5), 310-315.