Classroom App: Comprehension
Gary Obermeyer, Sun November 27, 2005, 12:01 PM
This is the place to report on the comprehension strategy that you applied in your classroom. Tell us:
What was the strategy you chose?
Did you choose it from the presentation or the Early Literacy Portal?
Why did you chose this particular strategy, i.e. what was your hypothesis about student(s) needs or proficiency?
What was the effect on student learning?
Comprehension is a major obsticle for many ESL students. Therefore for my classroom application I choose to more vigorously and more often to continuosly check comprehension in these students. I will administer early reading inventories and try to provide more opportunities for discussions that are open-ended. I will also continue to ask students to retell stories that we have been reading. I chose this strategy from the presentation. I hope that this strategy will help my students to more fully grasp comprehension and the strategies needed to be competent English learners. The effect on the students learning will not fully be know for some time.
The main strategy that I chose, was having my lower readers reread text when they seem to be having trouble decoding words. I got this strategy from the "Meta Cognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension" article.
I chose this strategy, because I have noticed that some of my students stumble over so many words in a story, that they lose everything that was read. They basically have very little comprehension, because of their focus on decoding of unfamiliar words.
Rereading seemed to work better, but it definately took up more time during reading circle. I will start using this strategy more with my lower readers, so they have better comprehension skills and they learn to reread information on their own.
I chose the questioning strategy from the presentation. I chose this strategy because I think that it is very important for my sped students to learn to question themselves. I thought that it would be a good idea to give each one of them the "Continuum of Questions" handout that was in the presentation. With teacher modeling I think that the students will be able to use the chart to ask each other and themselves questions after reading.
Afte giving each of my students the handout, I immediately found how modivating it was for them. They really enjoyed "asking teacher questions." Only after a few sessions I found that it is beginning to help their comprehension. It gives them a purpose for reading, and they seem more motivated.
I chose a classroom stategy from the presentation. I decided to try to use visualisation more in my teaching. I have seen many great things come from student work that involves visualization. I had my students draw pictures for their vocabulary words. Now they not only have to know the definition and be able to use it in a sentence, but they have to be able to create an image to describe the word. I notice my students really enjoy expressing parts of a story through the use pictures, collages, and other art activities. I am always surprised at their creativity. Another visual strategy to increase reading comprehension is using "Mystery Boxes". This is where students compile objects into a decorated box. Each item has to represent something for the story. This is a fun way to check for comprehension.
I chose to use visual representation of text that the article "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension" spoke of. I had them read a story out of their reading books and then retell the story using only pictures. Once they were done with the visual representation I then had them go back and add a summary for each picuture using one to three sentences. I also used visual representation with our stories' vocabulary words. I think that by using visual representaion of text, it helped my students to retain much more of what they learned through the week.
I took an idea from "Metacognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension" when teaching vocabulary to show those words in multiple contexts and using them in multiple way. I chose this strategy because I intro the vocabulary words for the new story every week and wanted another idea to use with my students to draw interest. I feel if the students take a more personal interest in the words then they are more likely to remember them. I taught the students the vocabulary words like usual but showed multiple different areas of where the vocabulary could be found and how. I found magazine ads and articles of the vocabulary words. When we played a "Around The World Game" I was really surprised how much more confident my shyer students felt with the vocabulary words.
I chose to do more of the Questioning Strategy from the "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension" article. I think that teaching this strategy to the students over time and gradually releasing it will benefit them but it is too soon to tell.
I spent more time with students on vocab. I did this during the time when I teach SOAR. The program has a "MMY NOTES TO CLARIFY" page. I spent about 5 to 7 minutes more a day on the words students did not understand. I did by creating a game where students challenged eithor by dquestioning their partner on words they did not understood and looking them in the dictionary. Following this we had a mini class discussion. I felt very happy with the results because my ESL students are talking, and all other students seem to be getting a better understanding of the text! As the article stressed - it is about balance.
I chose to use the Expository Cards. I used these cards as my students were reading a webpage on the three types of rocks. I paired my students up so they could ask each other the questions on the cards. First, I demonstrated on a webpage about elephants. I felt like they really helped with their comprehension although we had to modify them a little because of how differently webpages can be set up compared to say a science book passage.
When I do reading in the basal series, the reading comprehension questions are good, but I thought if I used the card idea that was given in session six of pre-during-post reading with our basal it would give the students more of a focus on what the purpose of the story and reading. This activity was very explicity and more helpful than what the lesson in the basal does.
I chose to do a graphic organizer to show comprehension. I am a very visual person, so I thought this would be an excellent application to organize information from the text we read. I had the students make a web to show problems and solutions that the character in our story had. I read a story and put a web with the problem in the center on the board. The students were responsible for giving me solutions to fill into the web. It worked quite nicely because I was able to validate student's thoughts by putting their solution on the board. This process also created understanding of the story through discussion. They seemed to really know the story and understand the skill very well.
I chose to do a graphic organizer to show comprehension. I used a venn diagram to show the difference between a lion and a mouse, an extension from the story, Lion and the Mouse. I put the word "lion" and the word "mouse" at the top of the venn diagram. I then drew pictures describing the lion and the mouse. The children put the appropriate pictures under the correct word. The children learned the words lion and mouse, and they understood the story better, better comprehension. The students had fun.
I chose "Getting the Gist" activity and it went well for the first time of implementation with my sixth grade group. They enjoyed working cooperatively. The goal was met by improving comprehension, and I continually saw on-task behavior. Next time I will be more specific on how each question should be answered. Many times my students said who or what it is about was the same as the main idea.
I chose to use graphic organizers in two separate activities. My students have been discussing problems and solutions. Instead of just writing the problem and listing possible solutions, we created a color-coded web as a class. The character's problem was in the center (in one color), and all of the solutions the character tried surrounded the problem (in a different color). The final solution that actually worked was done in a different color and was enclosed in stars. We also used a Venn diagram to compare and contrast two characters from two different stories. I have used Venn diagrams several times before this, and students of all ages always seem to really enjoy doing them. Graphic organizers are perfect for helping students organize their thoughts, and they are especially helpful for visual learners.
I chose to use think-alouds from the "Effective Practices..." article, with an emphasis on curbing their tendency to jump ahead in the text without understanding what thay had just read. It was slow going and entailed some repetition but, when we did our story mapping later on, showed up in their heightened knowledge and eager anticipation of the correct answers! This is always a great boost to the ego!
I looked further into using different types of questions (implicit and explicit) questions for comprehension. A lot of my students have delays in their language and in addition I have students that are learning English as a second language. I use open and close ended questions, but now I see how implicit and explicit questions can be implemented as well.
The strategy that we focused on for this application was from the presentation about visualization for reading. Students really need to take some time to utilize this strategy in order to enhance their understanding/comprehension of text. During our discussions, we have to students close their eyes and visualize what is happening with the text. Students seem to truly benefit from this technique because it helps them to make connections between the story's text and the illustrations created mentally. We tried this strategy the other day when we were brainstorming ideas about Christmas trees. We had the students close their eyes and picture what a tree would look like to them. Then we had them share their ideas with the class. They really enjoyed this strategy and came up with some fascinating ideas about trees. We also utilize this strategy on a regular basis during our reading groups, especially when we introduce a new story. We have them close their eyes and then we read the title to them. We ask them what they see in their minds just by listening to the title. We draw predictions from this. They love it. Then they get to compare their thoughts with those illustrations found in the story.
Again I can't comment on this as I cannot apply this in my classes as I teach music. I am rather frustrated with all this because of it should I opt out of this class even though i have spent many hours doing the assignments?
I have been using the graphic organiers for my ELL students with their weekly anthology stories. I have used the Sequence of Events organizer which leads my students to writing main events and resolution to a story as a recap and picking out the main events of a story. It clearifys and helps them to retell a story they have just spent a week in class reading.....Also, I use the Venn diagram to compare/contrast with my 1st gr. intervention literacy grp. The story was on Seasons and we compared/contrasted winter vs summer play they might do...I work on the floor so I used a big sheet of paper and drew my Venn Diagram and we all wrote and drew our answers...It was alot of fun and alot of good thinking was generated!
I choose to do the Think Aloud. I modeled it first and i really like how it turned out. all the students were practicing the strategies after seeing how it was done and really started to get the meaning of the book.
I am really excited about the Narrative and Expository cards.I have not had an opportunity to use the strategy yet, since we went on Christmas Break, however my brain has been racing with ideas. As a coach I have spent a lot of time in a second grade classroom, hoping that it can become a model classroom, where others can come in and observe the lessons and strategies in action. As the reading coach I have taken an active part in working with the students during their differentiated instruction time, that we now call Literacy Stations. One of the stations is a Readers Response Comprehension station. I went in and modeled, using a think aloud strategy, how to stop and think, before, during and after reading. Kids then were taught how to use Post Its (Linda Hoyt) to help them visually remember to stop and think about their reading. The classroom teacher and I have decided that the piece that has been missing are the cards. Our plan is to put the cards in the station and have kids self question, or pair up with a reading buddy and read the cards out loud, students will then respond on the Post It, and later post in their Notebooks to create a summary of the days readings. As a Reading First school we will be engaging in Professional Development during the month of January, and concentrating a great deal on Literacy Stations, I plan on making the cards a portion of the training, thank you.
I used a graphic organizer, an idea presented in the presentation, in my reading groups as a way of aiding in comprehension. I had the students do a web and list the character in the middle and then characteristics of this character. We also did another graphic organizer that focused on beginning, middle, and end. The kids liked it because it was visual. I did it on the board to model it and then had them also do it at their seats so that they were engaged. Graphic organizers are great tools and it did make a difference because we discussed traits and then beginning, middle, and end after without the organizer and they did seem to remember after having seen and written the information.
I really liked the idea from the article about making a prediction chart with each page number where they made a prediction, then after reading they they marked if it happened or not, and if it didn't they marked if it might happen later. Then they made new predictions and went on reading. My students are getting really good at making predictions and it gives us a starting point on where to go and what to talk about.
I chose Reciprocal Teaching and will be using the ELL readers provided by the Harcourt series. I will use this strategy with my 3rd and 4th grade EL students who are at the early intermediate or intermediate levels of proficiency. These are students who read at, or just below, grade level and are working on fluency. They are able to verbalize their ideas with a little scaffolding. Since I work with small groups, in 30-minute chunks of time, the students will have ample opportunity to focus, and to practise listening, thinking, speaking, reading and writing, and I am able to closely guide and monitor the different layers of Reciprocal Teaching to ensure success.
This Fall we made student name cards, ID the names, looked at the letters, and then made puzzles out of the cards. Following the article by Eliz Sulzbt,I am going to revisit this strategy again, but with emphasis on the student, how the name was chosen, any nick name, and family names. I liked her emphasis on bringing the reading home, and involving the family more.
I typically use questioning as a strategy for comprehension instruction. Questions always progress from the simple to the complex. As a special education teacher, I am constantly monitoring a student’s comprehension. I know how simple or complex question should be depending upon the student. Even when a student requires more simple questions at first, we progress to more complex questions during the reading session. This strategy is also effective when eliciting discussion and sharing of ideas with the students.
I chose the visualization strategy from the presentation. No matter what age students are, they need to understand imagery and that when they are reading or being read to that they should keep a movie running in their imaginations of everything they're reading or hearing. Many times, even when I taught 5th graders, I had students draw their favorite scene and write why they chose to draw that scene - students liked this because they had a choice. Helping students understand visualization aids in strengthening their comprehension.
Our comprehension skill of the week was compare and contrast. I decided use visualization for this assignment using a graphic organizer. Using a venn diagram, I modeled how to compare and contrase two characters in our weekly story. Then I had the students use a venn diagram to compare and contrast two characters from a story that was at their instructional level.
I decided to implement the narrative cards into my classroom through a literary response station. My students have been responding to what they're reading independently in this station on post-its. They first decide where to place the post-its in their books. Then as they are reading, they will come to a post-it and stop and think. On the post-its, the students can make connections (text-self, text-text, or text-world), describe what's happening in story, etc. However, the students were having difficulties responding on own to something on post-its. As I was reading about narrative cards, I thought that I could put these cards in a bag in the station. When students reach a post-it, they stop and pull a card from bag. Then they write on post-it whatever card tells them to do. I am hoping to implement this strategy next week since we just got back from winter break this week.
The Naritive Cards are really good to use. This helps my students really get into what they are doing. Harcourt does do this, but not as in depth. This is hands on and my students love to do things like this. I would use this everytime we start a new book. So then it would not be all of the time but at least one a week in my class. It got my students excited because I have always just verbally asked questions and now they have something interactive. Also it helps students see the words. In Kindergarten the students need to be exposed to words and writing as much as possible. These cards would really have them looking at the words and they would become more familiar to the students and further their reading and writing.
I chose graphic organinzers from the presentation section because this is another area I feel is underutilized at our school. Using graphic organizers helps students see how information is classified, is sequenced or can be organized. It is extremely helpful to the ELLs especially if the same organizer is used with different reading material. This way the procedure remains the same but the content varies and the student is not having to re-learn procedures each time. There is one program we had used at another school called Thinking Maps which was fabulous. It was a series of 8 different graphic organizers that could be used to organize thinking either sequentially, cause/effect, using analogies, main idea/details, etc. I continue to use and model with graphic orgainizers- first with the teacher using it on chart paper and modeling (public charting is accessible to all), then in groups, then in partners and finally independently.
I have noticed through Accelerated Reader especially, that my students are just reading for points and not for comprehension. Here are some of the things I have done in my classroom to improve comprehension: summaries--divide a paper into four squares...each page includes a 2 or 3 sentence summary of a combined number of pages and a picture to represent their summary. This is done for the entire book. I have more students reading aloud to other students. I find that if children read silently they are not asking questions on pronunciation or skipping some parts. I have other students ask comprehension questions and I do a lot of different activities in my writer's response center during my literacy block time that relates directly to comprehension. It has all seemed to help increasingly.
I chose an activity from the Early Literacy Portal that was from the Things to Print Section. It was a memory game from Between the Lions where you print cow cards and then the children have to put them in alphabetical order and then you take a card away and see if they can work out which letter is missing. It really help them learn the alphabet and was fun for them to play. It would not challenge most first graders but great for the group I used it with.
I chose a strategy from the presentation. Summarizing is a skill we work on a lot. It helps the students understand a story when they are able to talk about it with their own words. With our younger students we often use questioning to prompt more detailed summarizing. We also use pictures and props to aid the activity.
I did a graphic organizer from a story in our core program. The organizer focused on the beginning, middle and end of the story. This allowed the students to summarize the story in a more visual way. It seemed to be very effective in helping all the students in my classroom, no matter what their reading level was.
I think that all of the comprehension strategies that were discussed in this session are very important. I decided to focus on making visual representations of the texts that we were reading for my application assignment. I felt that this would be especially valuable to my 1st grade students. I feel that sometimes when we create a graphic organizer that only contains written words that sometimes my students don't actually understand what we're trying to do with the organizer or what the information represents. My students seemed much more eager to participate because they seemed to understand what we were doing when I included drawings in our organizer.
Previously, I said I will use Student Name cards, as suggested by Eliz Sulzby. We have used them in class the past two weeks. The biggest improvement has been in the student writing of their own name. First, I gave each student a 3/5 with their name neatly printed. Next, I gave a new 3/5 neatly printed, but without the vowels. Finally, I gave a new card, neatly printed, but cut into a three piece puzzle. In addition to the printing, and the letter recognition and matching, the students were quite proud or pleased about sharing how they got their name, and for some, whom they are named after. I teach kindergarten, and we kept the cards in plastic zip bags. This was a fun, appropriate series of lessons, with very little teacher prep.
Based on the imput from Elizbeth and Maria I am going to try the narraitive cards in my classroom.
I chose using a visual representation (graphic organizer)with my kindergarten class. After reading "In the Rain with Baby Duck," I wanted them to be able to retell the beginning, middle and ending of the story. In whole group, I divided chart paper into the three sections. I then had the students tell the class about each part of the story until we agreed about what happened in each part. Students came up and wrote letters, words, or drew a picture to describe the beginning, middle and end. I was surprised to see that many of the students started to draw about the end at the middle section or vice-versa. We read the chart again and they seemed to understand the concept a little better. When we reviewed the chart the next day, the students were better able to tell what happened at each part though a few still seemed confused. We will need to practice this skill more. I want to continue using this strategy for future books.
I decided to do a cause-and-effect graphic organizer from the presentation for expository text. I used this strategy in my reading groups. I decided to use this because it was an objective in our McGraw reading books for our leveled reading books. What I did was write cause on one side of the chart and effect on the other. I gave the students some causes and some effects and they had to come up with the cause or effect that corresponded, and they had to show me proof of where they found it in their books. They did extremely well. My lower groups needed more modeling and guidance, but we go through it. I would really like to incorporate graphic organizers in my lessons when time permits.
I used the Narrative and Expository Cards in my reading group. We started out with Expository because I thought they needed more help with that type of Text. We practiced with the paragraph given, which they said was too easy, they knew it all already. But then we took the cards and read about Animals In The Winter. It wasn't as easy as they thought it was once they had a text to use. I am going to do Narrative this week. Then we are going to continue using these until they get better using them! I really like them!
I decided to focus on the visualization strategy. The reason I chose this one first was because many of my low readers are so concerned about decoding the words that they don't stop to visualize what is happening in the story. I did this with my lowest readers. I had them read a couple pages at a time by themselves (with a book that was at their instructional level). Then I had them stop and draw a picture of what they read. They then continued to read then draw. At the end of the book I had each child summarize the story by using his/her pictures to help. They did fantastic. They were also feeling good about how well they had comprehended the story that was read.
I used the questioning techniques for assessing my students comprehension levels. Many of my students have Spanish as their primary language and have difficulties with the English language. By asking different types of questions and getting the students involved, it is easier to tell if the students understand what they have read. Many times they just re-read the section where they think the answer should be and never really understand the total story.
I chose the questioning technique. I went to a class that taught us the importance of questioning and how it helps students to become better readers as well as to comprehend better. In second grade we work with the accelerated reader program. I have noticed that my lower readers are having a difficult time with the questions and understanding what they are being asked. I sit down during our silent reading time and read the book to them and then have them ask me questions about what I have read. Then they read the book and I ask them questions and they have to show me where the question is answered in their book. If we do an worksheet that has a story on it, I have them practice by going back and highlighting or underlining the answer to the question. Just this month one of my lowest readers was able to make his goal on accelerated reader because he understood the questions that it was asking.
I chose to do a graphic organizer for my higher kids, with visual representation for my lower kids. I really like using venn diagrams to compare and contrast. The children were able to compare/contrast characters in our weekly stories. My higher kids were able to write wrords, where my lower kids were able to put pictures under words. All students could then feel successful. My kids enjoyed this. As did I.