It has never come to my mind that there is no successfull reading aloud for comprehension in the classroom, so never do it. You've got to have a purpose to do reading aloud activities wich is not comprehension or reading for gist. It just does not work.
I loved this article (which I've copied below)
https://www.wabisabilearning.com/blog/10-ways-improving-reading-comprehension
10 EFFECTIVE WAYS OF IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION IN YOUR LEARNERS
If you were to ask, most teachers would agree improving reading comprehension is about teaching students how to think while reading.
The truth is your learners need practical guidance before they read. In that spirit, here is a step-by-step guide that can help your students improve their reading comprehension significantly.
1. DISCUSS READING COMPREHENSION
Writing a one-page handout detailing your ideas about reading comprehension and why it’s important can be helpful. You can include your ideas about subjects such as taking notes, setting goals, and asking questions. Additionally, connect the importance of improving reading comprehension to something practical and relevant to them like texting, emails, and blogs. Share these written thoughts with your learners and use the handout as a reminder throughout the school year.
2. DISCUSS EACH ASSIGNMENT
Prior to each reading assignment, you should tell students what you want them to learn from the text. Ask them a few questions and tell them you want to discuss the answers in the next class. They should also write down your questions and use them in group discussions of their own.
3. DISCUSS EACH ASSIGNMENT
Prior to each reading assignment, you should tell students what you want them to learn from the text. Ask them a few questions and tell them you want to discuss the answers in the next class. They should also write down your questions and use them in group discussions of their own.
4. URGE THINKING BEFORE READING
Students should read your questions and/or the book’s questions before they begin reading. This should help them know when to focus on text and when to skim it. In other words, thinking before reading can help them be selective instead of trying to comprehend every sentence. The questions can also help them formulate their own questions before they begin reading.
5. TEACH GOAL SETTING
Teaching students to set goals before they read is also a good idea. Initially, the goal might be to answer your questions. Eventually, they should be able to set their own goals such as “I want to understand why the Civil War started.” “Before reading, good readers tend to set goals for their reading,” reports the article “What Research Tells Us About Reading, Comprehension, and Comprehension Instruction.” “They are likely to focus more of their attention on the parts of the text that are most closely tied to their reading goals.”
6. URGE THINKING WHILE READING
Perhaps the most important tip you can give learners about how to read is that their reading comprehension is most likely to improve when they stop reading. Students should be thinking while they’re reading rather than reading continuously. Thus, they should be taught to stop when they are confused or have a question or thought about what they have just read. Teaching students to stop and think might lead them to reread what they have just read or seek the answers to their questions in the material that they haven’t read yet.
7. URGE NOTE TAKING
It's likely most of your high school classmates did not take notes while they did their schoolwork. In college, though, everyone took notes in their textbooks. Your students should know that college students regularly highlight important material via underlining, circles, and notes in margins. They can take notes too, in notebooks rather than textbooks. Students should be encouraged to stop reading after they have read something important and write down that fact, point, or argument. They should also be writing the answers to your pre-reading assignment questions.
8. TELL THEM TO PLAN AHEAD
Reading doesn’t accomplish much in and of itself. Reading assignments should be connected to future class discussions, oral presentations, tests, or reports. Thus, you should urge students to stop reading when they think of a point they want to make for a class discussion, oral presentation, test, or report. They should write down their points. Emphasize that they can prepare for a test while reading. There is nothing wrong with giving students an idea about questions on tests. You want them to practice improving their skills so they’re ready when they’re being graded.
9. RECOMMEND VISUALIZING
“Some good readers may also create mental images, or visualize a setting, event, or character to help them understand a passage in a text,” the Texas Education Agency wrote. Are students more apt to recall what happened at the Yalta Conference if they can visualize U.S. leader Franklin D. Roosevelt, United Kingdom leader Winston Churchill, and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin talking about what to do after World War II ended? Some will. It’s a good idea to mention to students, who could also learn better by studying the text’s photos and captions.
10. ASSIGN SUMMARIES
Asking students to write summaries of what they have read sounds like you're requiring them to do a lot of work , but you can emphasize that these summaries can reduce how much time they spend studying, or cramming, for a test. Essentially, these summaries can be homework. They can also help students prepare for class discussions and oral presentations.
Some more about teaching Reading (taken from the Workshop 'Developing Reading Sub-skills - by M.Meshcheryakova M.)
Global Reading Strategies
* settitg goals before reading and reading selectively to achieve those goals
* activating prior knowledge
* previewing the text
* forming predictions
* monitoring the accuracy of those predictions and modifying them where necessary
* making summaries
* connecting knowledge gained from the text tobackground knowledge
* identifying central arguments
* forming appropriate questions about the text
* using text structure to predict direction of the text
* inferring meaning fromcontext
Top-down Reading Sub-skills
1. Identifying and understanding the gist
2. Identifying the topic of the text and recognising the topic changes
3. Distinguishing key information from less important one
4. Inferring the writer's attitude
5. Following the development of an argument
6. Following the sequence of a narrative
7. Paraphrasing the text
Bottom-up Reading Sub-skills
1. Recognising the script
2. Recognising words and identifying their grammatical function
3. Understanding vocabulary
4. Recognising grammar features such as word endings, and being able to 'unpack' the syntax of the sentence
5. Recognising discourse markers and other cohesive devices
6. Identifying text type, text purpose and text organisation
Considerations about reading
There are good readers and poor readers in L1 as well as in L2,
so in my classes there going to be a differentiated system of reading tasks and different interactive strategies like pair or group work, information gap reading, mingle activity, etc.
The transfer of L1 reading skills to L2 reading skills is important.
I'd better relate to this overtly, namely...
It's essential to start with global understanding and move
towards detailed understanding, so first reading tasks could
be, for example, one of the following: reading for gist, summarizing, defining the style or genre, giving a title to the passage, picture drawing.
And the second can be, for example, telling the story from the point of view of a different character. Or answering special questions to practice some grammatical structures. Or creating a mind map to deduce inferred meaning and author's attitude.
I remember the huge variety of text types in real life, so in the classroom I try to give not only stories and articles, but blogue posts, menues, catalogues, adverticements, pictures and comments to them, etc. Learners would soon learn to tell the difference between the styles and register of the texts.
I remember the wide variety of reasons for reading in real life, and I give realistic tasks. I like integrating skills. Reading is a social skill, so I encourage appropriate responses to reading, such as discussions, writing essays, making predictions or writing alternative endings. I appreciate learners for setting their own goals, let them focus their attention on the parts which are close to their reading goals.
Reading is a social skill, so I encourage appropriate responses to reading,
such as expressing learners' ideas, agreement/disagreement with the author, writing an alternative ending, acting out some scenes (for stories).
If we deal with non-fiction text, if it is a prospect, catalogue, some product description the tasks could be: making orders, choices, writing reports to a technical support or refund requests, or giving a recommendation to a friend.
Use authentic texts wherever possible. By simplifying we often destroy the reference, the redundancy and discourse markers that actually help to make the text more accessible. What we can and must vary, simplify/make more difficult is the goals setting, but not the text.
I usually encourage learners to deduce the meaning of lexis from the text, rather than getting stuck on in dividual words, let the interest etc. of the text keep them at discourse level for as
long as possible. What I do for this purpose is...
Using symbols while reading
V – I agree with this
X – I disagree with this
? – I don’t understand fully
! – this is surprising/shocking
lol – this is funny
create some interactive tasks, games, word hunts, scaffolding and gesticulation.
I avoid always promoting linguistic reasons for reading. I encourage extensive reading, reading for pleasure.
I keep askig questions:
“Did you enjoy that?"
Was the information new for you?
What ideas mentioned in the text were new for you?
What would you do if you were one of the characters?
Would you like to read more of this author?
Have you expected a different ending?
How you assess yourself, was it too hard or too easy, rate it between one and ten points.
My students love alternative comprehension ways, such as
drawings, mental visualization, pantomime, mimicking sounds, summarizing with the help of emoji.
***
3 principles of designing you task:
Effective
Entertaining
Setting purposes
Open-ended tasks and activities are loved by Ss, not so boring, require more creativity, develop skills instead of testing.
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