Research on Informational and Digital Text Comprehension

Many elementary students experience difficulties with informational text comprehension, which depends on component skills such as word recognition and decoding, prior knowledge, vocabulary, and intrinsic motivation. Teachers face challenges teaching with informational texts, and the increasing prevalence of digital texts in classrooms poses further challenges. Drawing on cognitive and developmental theories of reading comprehension, in this chapter, we synthesize research on the challenges associated with informational and digital text comprehension as well as research-based instructional practices to promote informational text comprehension for elementary students, including instruction in comprehension strategies, text structure, background knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, multisyllabic decoding, fluency, and reading motivation. We also discuss the affordances of design features and instructional scaffolds that can support digital text comprehension. We dive into deeper thinking about instructional technology designed to promote digital informational text comprehension, summarize our own contributions to research on informational and digital text comprehension, and provide implications for research and practice. We conclude with questions for discussion or reflection.