Heather Register-November Blog Post-Routman's Chapter 8 "Teach Comprehension"

Regie Routman-Chapter 8: Teach Comprehension

“The current emphasis on word calling, automaticity, and fluency in the early grades is often at the expense of understanding…We are turning out lots of superficial readers,” (117)

Routman singled out one of my biggest frustrations and biggest weaknesses as a classroom teacher. Teaching fifth grade, I often dealt with students who could word call beautifully. However, when I asked them to explain what they just read, I was met with a blank stare or nonsense answers. Now in a position where I see reading instruction across grade levels, it concerns me how much time is spent on phonics and fluency instruction taught in isolation. If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that teaching anything in isolation doesn’t lend itself to permanent understanding. Focusing on these skills without incorporating comprehension won’t develop readers and this chapter supported that for me.

This chapter also made me confront a weakness I’ve shown as a reading teacher. Teaching the reading strategies over the years, I’ve focused on lessons on making connections and asking questions. What I need to focus more on is connecting these strategies to what good readers do. I’ve modeled before but I’ve only modeled using one strategy for the use of a mini-lesson. Routman’s suggestion to read a portion of a text for students and to think aloud about every strategy I’m utilizing is one that would be beneficial in the classroom. Now, as I work through plans for teachers, I am better able to include instances where the teacher thinks aloud and connects the lesson to the act of real world reading.

Another point that I noticed was Routman’s statement that “we continue to focus on low-level skills (often using direct instruction programs) with our most impoverished readers,” (118). With our district shift to using fewer prescribed programs and more teacher initiated lessons, I have found that some teachers are struggling. Some are asking for new programs or relying on programs that are out-of-date in a hope to meet the needs of their struggling readers. While this comes from good intentions, I wish the need to engage ALL students in authentic reading experiences would drive more instruction. As readers in the real world, we don’t complete worksheets and we don’t count how many words we read aloud correctly. Instead, we read with the intention of gaining meaning. Just because a reader is struggling, doesn’t mean he or she should be deprived of the opportunity to read a text they find interesting in the hopes of learning something new.

I found this chapter very helpful as a guide for when I collaborate with grade levels to plan reading instruction. I will especially focus on the portion of the chapter that urges teacher to teach students ways to monitor their understanding as they read. All of these quality strategies that are taught should be used together as strategies to repair understanding gaps. Like Routman says, teaching students to integrate these strategies when they are reading independently is the ultimate goal.