Neural Pathways of Hope

Have you ever had a child read an entire page beautifully, only to ask what happened and hear, “I don’t know”? Maybe a student can repeat individual facts from a lesson but has difficulty explaining the main idea. Or perhaps they understand each sentence separately but struggle to see how all the information fits together.

These difficulties can sometimes involve comprehension—our ability to understand, interpret, and make meaning from information, whether spoken, written, or visual.

Comprehension is often associated with reading, but it goes far beyond reading comprehension. We need comprehension to understand spoken conversations, follow explanations, interpret what we see, understand stories and situations, and connect new information with what we already know.

What Is Comprehension?

Comprehension is our ability to understand, interpret, and make meaning from information—whether that information is spoken, written, or visual.

Strong comprehension involves more than remembering individual words or facts. We need to understand the details while also recognizing how those details fit together to form the bigger picture.

This means comprehension can involve reasoning, making connections, drawing conclusions, identifying important information, and connecting new information with what we already know.

For example, a child might remember that a story mentioned dark clouds, strong wind, and people running inside. Comprehension allows the learner to put those details together and understand something that may never have been directly stated: a storm is probably coming.

Comprehension Is More Than Reading

We often hear the word comprehension in connection with reading, but comprehension isn’t limited to words on a page.

A learner may have difficulty understanding:

• something they read
• something they hear
• something they see
• a conversation or explanation
• the meaning behind a situation
• how several pieces of information relate to one another

A student can also have different strengths across these areas. Someone may understand information much better when it is explained verbally than when it is presented in writing—or the reverse.

What Can Difficulty With Comprehension Look Like?

A learner might:

• Read fluently but have difficulty explaining what they just read.
• Remember isolated details but miss the main idea.
• Have difficulty retelling information in a logical sequence.
• Struggle to answer “why” or “how” questions.
• Have difficulty making inferences when information isn’t directly stated.
• Struggle to connect new information with something previously learned.
• Have difficulty identifying which information is important.
• Understand shorter, simpler information but become lost as more details are added.
• Have difficulty following conversations, explanations, or stories.
• Give answers that don’t seem to match the question being asked.

Seeing one of these behaviors doesn’t necessarily tell us why the learner is struggling. Comprehension relies on multiple cognitive and language skills, which is why it’s important to look beneath the behavior rather than making assumptions.

The Details and the Bigger Picture

Think of comprehension like putting together a puzzle. Individual facts and details are the pieces. A learner may be able to identify each piece correctly but still have difficulty seeing how the pieces connect to create the whole picture.

Strong comprehension requires us to work with both: the details and the bigger picture.

Comprehension Works With Other Cognitive Skills

Comprehension doesn’t happen in isolation. Attention, memory, processing, executive functioning, logic and reasoning can all influence our ability to understand information.

A learner needs to attend to the information long enough to receive it. They may need to hold important details in working memory while additional information is presented. They need to process the words or images, understand their meaning, connect them with previous knowledge, and reason about how the pieces fit together.

A difficulty anywhere along that process can affect what we ultimately see as “comprehension.”

Don’t Ask Only, “Do You Understand?”

Children—and adults!—often answer “yes” to Do you understand? Without us actually knowing what they understood.

Instead, encourage parents and teachers to ask:

• Tell me what happened in your own words.
• What was the most important part?
• Why do you think that happened?
• What do you think will happen next?
• How does this connect to something you already know?
• Can you picture what is happening?
• What clues helped you figure that out?
• What doesn’t make sense yet?

Mental Imagery and Comprehension

One strategy used within Equipping Minds is imagery—encouraging learners to create a mental picture or “movie” of information. This can provide another way to engage with and think about what is being heard or read.

For example, rather than simply hearing, “The small brown dog ran across the muddy yard and jumped into the red wagon,” the learner can practice creating that scene in their mind. What color is the dog? Where is it running? What does the yard look like? Where is the wagon?

As information becomes longer and more complex, the learner can practice adding details to that mental movie and then using the image to think about, organize, recall, and discuss the information.

How Does Equipping Minds Work With Comprehension?

Equipping Minds takes a holistic approach to cognitive development, which is especially relevant to comprehension because understanding information requires multiple skills to work together.

Activities can encourage learners to listen carefully, visualize, observe details, sequence information, compare and categorize, make connections, answer questions, reason about what they’ve heard or seen, and explain their thinking.

Rather than focusing only on whether the learner arrived at the correct answer, we can ask questions that help us understand how the learner is making meaning from the information.

Comprehension isn’t ultimately about meaning. A learner may hear the words, know the facts, and read the sentences, but the ultimate question is: What does this information mean?

When a learner struggles with comprehension, simply saying the information again or asking them to read it again may not address the underlying issue. Instead, we can slow down, ask thoughtful questions, gather information, help them make connections, and consider which cognitive skills might be affecting their understanding.

Our goal is never for learners to take in the information, but to learn to make meaning of the information they’re learning.