Looking for new ways to improve your students’ reading comprehension? Try the Somebody-Wanted-But-So strategy (SWBS). This strategy can be used during or after a reading to help students understand literary elements such as conflicts and resolutions. It can also be used as a summation tool in social studies and other subjects. Students complete the strategy on a chart by identifying who (Somebody) wanted something (their goal or motivation, what they Wanted), what conflict (but) arose from the character’s desire, and the resolution (So) of the conflict.
Fairy tales, cultural fables, and legends are good choices to practice this technique because of their familiarity to students. Most youth can relate to these stories and connect the issues, conflicts, and personalities presented in them to their personal lives. These connections support reading comprehension and enhance long-term recall.
In addition, the brevity of this genre allows for repetition and frequency, which is ideal for initial instruction as well as an intervention. Time constraints pose significant challenges to the secondary teacher, especially at the high school level. Utilizing short texts supports the learning objective without requiring significant class time.
Research Background
Reading comprehension is a complex intellectual process that involves two main abilities: understanding word meanings and reasoning with verbal concepts. Without these abilities, students cannot comprehend and in turn do not internalize what they read. Comprehension happens within a reader’s mind, which means it cannot be measured in a tangible fashion. Comprehension can only be measured by inferring from a reader’s overt behavior. The use of strategies helps teachers infer a student’s comprehension of material read. Summarizing, recall, and inferential reading are all methods of instruction to determine a student’s comprehension of text.
When assessing comprehension within expository text, students must discern main ideas and concepts from text, contrary to literature where students must identify key elements to summarize a story completely. Summarizing materials allows students to connect to material in a personal manner as they have the opportunity to make a connection from personal experiences to the text. A summary allows students to synthesize, analyze, and evaluate material, which develops higher order thinking skills. However, most students lack the ability to write a summary in a concise manner. When summarizing, students need to identify what happened in the story and state the main details of the expository of literary text. Most students tend to rewrite the story and tell their teacher everything that happened to demonstrate that they read the passage. This is not a summary. A summary will summarize what the story was about in a concise and explicit manner. Using graphic organizers and the Somebody-Wanted-But-So (SWBS) strategy encourages students to develop concise summaries of literature.