Regie Routman starts her eighth chapter in her book, Reading Essentials: The Specifics You Need to Teach Reading Well, with the concept that comprehension must be taught from the very beginning of student learning. She believe students shouldn't start being taught comprehension in third grade, but rather start teaching students the day they enter preschool or kindergarten. "If we want kids to wind up with comprehension, we have to begin with comprehension," (117). Routman writes that teachers spend an excessive amount of time focusing on words rather than meaning and this sends out the wrong meaning to students. She also states that teachers assess comprehension, but not enough teaching to further develop student understanding of comprehension on a deeper level, which is evident in my classroom. My students can regurgitate information that they have just read, but they are not as successful analyzing the text and providing meaning of text. Routman calls these students "superficial readers." The students look and sound competent, but they are unable to go further in meaning and summarizing.
Routman says comprehension instruction starts with the texts students are reading. "If we want readers to be critical thinkers, inquirers, and problem solvers, we need to introduce them to challenging, interesting texts," (118). After the text has been provided then we must show the students how to process the text, reason strategically as they analyze the text, and eventually appreciate the text. I think Routman steps are great and could be highly beneficial, but I think the steps will be as successful if the students don't begin the an appreciation for reading, which is what I try to encourage in my classroom on a daily bases. "Love what you read, love reading."
Routman continues her chapter with some strategies teachers should use to develop understanding while reading. I encourage my students to make connections while reading. They are successful at making text-to- text and text- to- world connections, but not a whole lot of self connections, which I think appreciation and love of reading comes from. Other strategies that she list: monitor reading for meaning, determine what's most important, visualize, ask questions, make inferences, and synthesize. I think these are great tools, but they won't be as successful if the student doesn't like the book or the book is on the wrong reading level for the student, which tells me each text has to be individualized. Routman's next paragraph stresses that comprehension based tools should be integrated throughout the year and not focusing on one strategy per week. I usually introduce a new strategy a week, but we never just use that one strategy and forget about the others. My students should know to continually use all the strategies we have discussed while reading, which goes into Routman's next point: Teach and Apply Your Own Comprehension Processes.
"Just because we teach our students strategies doesn't mean they apply them," (120). Routman provides an example of a fifth-grade teacher saying her students know and can describe the comprehension strategies good readers use, but they don't apply the strategies in their own learning. I feel like I am in the same situation. Routman say this can be fixed by teaching students my own personal experience as a reader. I need to make my reading and thinking process visible. I like this idea of modeling my reading process to my students and then us developing a chart of my process. The most important thing Routman says I need to illustrate to my students and add in my modeling, the power of rereading.
Routman continues her chapter with comprehension strategies and tools we have seen before. Teach students to make connections, teach them to self- monitor, allow students to interact with peers to increase comprehension and enjoyment, be aware of fluency, and teach students how to ask significant questions. All these things need to be in a well developed integrated system. Routman emphasizes the importance of not just focusing on one strategy. "There is a huge difference between strategy instruction and strategic instruction," (129). The strategies I teach must be "invoked" by each individual students. I think most of my students will be successful at attempting these strategies if they enjoy their book, but I still have those few students who do not appreciate reading that I am going to have to buckle down and develop individual reading processes with.
Hi Chloe,
ReplyDeleteYou did an outstanding job with your blog post. I appreciate your thorough reading and response to Routman's comprehension strategies. Like you it made so much sense to me to teach comprehension strategies within the context of real reading through modeling think alouds instead of focusing on one strategy in isolation at a time.