One of the quotes that jumped out to me about this chapter, Teach Comprehension, was, "just because we teach our students strategies doesn't mean they apply them." I find this to be true with certain readers in the classroom and the reminder to look into what we as teachers do to comprehend was very helpful in making a list for comprehension strategies to teach our own students.
Routman suggests teaching re-reading as one of the most useful strategies in comprehension. This is something I need to emphasize and teach more, because often students are happy to skip over words they don't know, or aren't listening to words they read incorrectly (not making sense), therefore much meaning of the text can be lost. I like the idea of doing a model lesson for students and then rating yourself on comprehension of the text. This would help them become more self-aware of their own understanding of a reading passage.
Recently I led my students in a think-aloud of a fiction text we had been reading one week. I began by reading a few pages at a time and with the easel next to the Promethean board (where the text was displayed) began an anchor chart on various thoughts and connections I was making to the text. After doing this for several pages on my own, I had the students volunteer their connections for subsequent pages. I would record each student's name and their comment. They loved this activity. While most of the students made text-to-text connections and text-to-self connections, other skills were at play here including evaluating character's actions/motivations. And by recording each connection I was able to implement writing as a comprehension strategy as well. Routman warns us against spending too long on one particular strategy because when we read we implement several strategies at one time. This is very true--even as a reader myself I re-read, or make a connection, or survey texts myself all at once.
As we are working toward more student-led instruction, I have began having students talk in pairs about texts they have read, or allow them to share a comment or connection they are dying to share during class instruction. But, I need to be doing alot more of this, and actually listen to what they are saying to see if comprehension is mastered or not. I plan to add these to some of the independent center time during guided reading groups as well.
Hi Christina,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that Routman's strategies for teaching comprehension were helpful to you. I appreciated her explanation for providing students with the opportunities for re-reading and the importance of modeling through think alouds how to apply proficient reading strategies in the context of reading a text.