Reading: Comprehension
Gary Obermeyer, Wed September 19, 2007, 08:46 AM
You have a choice of two articles for Session Six:
* Effective Practices for Developing Reading
Comprehension
Professional Article, by Nell Duke and David Pearson
* Metacognition and Self-Regulated
Comprehension, by Michael Pressley
As you read your selection note highlights and main points.
Post your summary in this thread. Include at least one concrete example of how what you learned from the article has or will affect your teaching and the anticipated benefit for student learning.
I picked Effective practices for deveoping reading comprehension to read. I found overall the article to be very informative and full of good views and ideas however it was VERY lengthy. I found the beginning portion about what good readers do when they read to be very insightful. i.e. good readers are active readers ect..As I am a very visual learner I very much liked the different charts within the article. The text versus the visual representation was great as well as the example of the semantic map of the concept of coyotes. As far as the affect to my own teaching, I would like to use the checklist for assessing the comprehension environment and instruction in the classroom. As I often push into other classrooms in the school environment it is a good tool to use and keep in mind as I travel from room to room within the school. The benefit of course of a good learning environment is hopefully good active learners within the class.
I also chose to read the article on effective practices for developing comprehension. As a special education teacher comprehension is often the weakest area of reading for my students. I did find it comforting that I am already teaching many of the strategies to my students. As Heather stated above, I also found the beginning portion of the article about active readers, very interesting. To be an active reader is much different than to just be a reader. To teach students what "good readers" do is helpful. Although many students claim that they don't like to read, I think the majority of them strive to be good readers. They just need to tools to help them get there. Figure 10.1 was also helpful to explain how to gradually release the responsibility of strategies. For example, when a teacher models the strategy of predicting to her students how should he/she begin to give the responsibilty to her students to predict on their own. I think that teachers tend to hang on to modelling too long or give it up too early and expect the students to know how to do it correctly. In my teaching I think that I tend to give up the responsibility too soon. I would like to to take a closer look of how long I tend to model a strategy and focus on a more organized schedule of each step in the figure. It would be interesting to see how long I actually model before I expect the students to perform. I will also be able to assess my students and see if I need to go back to the step of modelling.
I chose to read "Meta Cognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension". Some of the comprehension strategies the article talked about were very familiar to me.
1. Good readers predict. 2. Construct images while reading. 3. Summarize what was read. 4. Teaching the students new vocabulary. These are all strategies that I have been using in the classroom, during the reading block. I have noticed that the students have been doing it on their own, without me having to ask them. They open the story up and do a book walk/picture walk and then make predictions from what they saw and why they think that way.
One of the many things I learned from this article is that, "a typical high school senior can only hold approximately 7 pieces of information in mind at any one time" (Miller, 1956). If not fluent in word recognition or still sounding out words, than short term capacity is consumed be decoding. This is extremely true, with my low reading groups. They spend so much time stumbling on words and trying to sound them out, that they forget what the meaning of the story was. When I ask them a comprehension or prediction question, they have no idea and start looking back and what they just read.
After reading this article, I will have my lower readers reread information that they seemed to stumble over. This way the second time they read, they should be able to comprehend a little more, when they aren't focusing so much on the decoding of unfamiliar words.
I read "Metacognition and Self Regulated Comprehension". I felt this article had a lot of good material in it. One thing I found interesting is that the average high school student can only hold seven pieces of information in their short term memory. This means that if a student is having to focus on each word and letter combinations in order to read there isn't going to be any room for comprehension. In order to achieve reading comprehension the student must be "active" readers, (before, after, and during reading). There is a list of a variety of ways to increase reading comprehension. Teachers must relate the text to prior knowledge, use mental imagery, generate questions, and summarize. In my classroom, I have the students summarize as well as answer and form questions, but I would like to start spending more time on using mental imagery and relating the text to what the students already know.
I chose the article "Effetive Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension". This article gave a lot of beneficial information, but was quite lengthy in doing so. It began by stating that good readers are active readers. These types of students look over a text before they read it. Simply offering good instruction to these types of children is not enough. There are several features of good reading instruction that needs to be present. Some of the suggestions that this article gave were: spending a great deal of time on reading, letting children experience real texts for real reasons, reading a variety of genres, having an environment rich in vocabulary, and spending quality time writing texts for others to read. Teachers need to take into consideration several factors when practicing reading comprehension strategies with their students. For example student motivation and how often they are assessing (which needs to be ongoing). This article also gave several practices for helping to develop reading comprehension: using visual representation of texts, summarize, and question.
I chose to read Metacognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension. I thought that this article was outstanding. One main point brought up in the article is that poor readers spend so much time decoding that they do not have room for comprehension. I agree that we first need to give the skills to decode the words, which can open up wide opportunities for the students to focus on comprehension. This is why it is so important to focus on guided reading and permit the students to think aloud while they are reading. It is important to encourage the students to become self-regulated readers. Students need to develop comprehension strategies of their own so they can function not reading in a controlled classroom environment. When I am reading with my struggling readers the Harcourt series provides many of these opportunities for the students that are talked about in the article. The series allows for pre-reading and activation of prior knowledge, moderate reading to student's abilities, and opportunities to summarize the text in various ways when finished. I would like to spend some more time on students constructing their own mental image.
I am a ESL teacher at Dodson and I chose to read Chpt 17 on Multicultural Factors and the Effective Instruction of Students of Diverse Bckgrds . ..I Learned that 35% of students K-12 are from diverse backgrds in U.S. and only 13% of teachers in U.S. are of diverse ethnic backgrds. A Constructivism theory is used by the author ...which means learning takes place as the student constructs their own understanding of the world, based on their own experience. How can a teacher improve reading performance ? #1.Motivation w/ positive relationships,#2 instructional strategies,rereads,reciprocal teachings,#3 Focus on different life experiences and world views,#4 teach in a culturally responsive manner..The main pt I learned to think about and implement is to teach comprehension along with reading skills and allow the struggling reader to experience the rich literature usually available only to the stronger readers. Ultimate goal with students of diverse backgrds is to promote ownership of literacy by having a positive attitude toward literacy,valuing and making reading a part of their everyday life.
I chose chpt 17 Multicultural Factors/Effective Instructions ....I learned that 35% of k-12 students are of diverse backgrds and 13% of teachers in U.S are of diverse ethnic backgrds.How do we improve reading performance? #1 Motivation w/ positive relationship & literacy is powerful and meaningful,#2 Rich instruction w/ strategies,repeated reading,guided, and reciprocal teaching,#3 Focus on life experiences/ world views,#4 teach in culturally responsive manner and show daily how reading can be rewarding. The main point I learned to think about and implement is that it is important to teach comprehension along with reading skills and to allow struggling readers to read rich literature which usually is only for the stronger readers. The goal with students of diverse backgrd is to promote ownership of literacy which is a positive attitude toward using and having literacy and making reading a part of their everyday lives.
I read the Effective Practices article and i found it to be a good review and reminder of some methods and I also found it interesting. I liked the six strategies in comprehension, even though that is a main focus it was a good reminder to model thinking strategies, especially for my lower students that need that model. I also thought the part about the questions and making sure that we use a variety of questions so the students practice at finding different information. i will be looking forward to helping my students think of questions about the text, they are asked to do this in our core, but struggle with it. I too am a visual learner, so I found the link between visual and comprehension intersting. I have seen charts and organizers used in my classes and they really do help the students. The check list at the end can be useful and is a nice reference to see what is being done in the classroom.
I read "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension". It began with discussing what good readers do. I mention this a lot to my students, to make them aware if they're doing what good readers do or not. Balanced Comprehension Instruction was explained with using a supported classroom context and a model of comprehension instruction. The main idea is reading various texts often makes better readers. Effective individual comprehension strategies are predictions, think-alouds by teachers and students,knowledge of text structure, visual representations of text, summarization, and questioning. With small group or one-on-one instruction last year, I focused on all of these strategies. I tried to scaffold them as much as possible. My students did improve on using all of these strategies. I did not use think-alouds as much. Furthermore, effective comprehension routines were explained. These are a set of practices students can use regularly from one text to another. Effective routines proven by research are reciprocal teaching,SAIL and other transactional strategy approaches, and questioning the author. Reciprocal teaching has a structure I would like to use with my students because it is direct and is student-centered.
"Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension" was the article I read. I felt it explained the different comprehension strategies and the ways to teach them rather well. The efficacy of reciprocal teaching as a comprehension strategy was good to learn. Although I applied the questioning strategy this week in the classroom (and will continue to do so), I am now going to turn my attention to this strategy.
The article I read was "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension". I enjoyed this article. The piece I found to very validating for my teaching and a big reminder when I am teaching is ... a "balanced" approach is the key. After reading this article I have made the decision to spend more time with my ESL students on vocab. - because of the need for them to understand vocab. to get meaning from text. So this week that is what I did. It is amazing what just 5 to 7 minutes can do to help give clarity to text.
I chose to read "Metacognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension." Teachers cannot just assume if they have their students read, read, and read some more that they will develop good comprehension. We as teachers have to develop comprehension as a metacognitive skill, meaning our students need to be aware of how good readers comprehend text as they are reading it. We first have to do this my thinking aloud or modeling these comprehension skills. We do this so the students become aware of these skills. Then we need to set up practice for our students to practice these skills. Some of these skills are: relate what is being read to prior knowledge, predict what might be in upcoming text, ask questions while reading, construct images, summarize, and reread difficult or very important text.
I read "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension". It was a very informative article about the many different ways to teach comprehension. Throughout reading the article I was able to see the correlation of research with our Houghton Mifflin manual. Houghton's strategies are quite similar; phonics decoding, summarize, evaluate, predict/infer, question, and moniter/clarity. Within the article, I found ideas for centers and activities to add to my intensive support reading group. For example, I liked the model they gave us for prediction. It was a step by step process that would be a nice instructional fit with my lower students. The article also stressed the importance of think-alouds, which is modeled for the students often within the Houghton curriculum. Overall this was an educational article that showed the value of the different strategies students need to be successful in comprehension.
I read the article, "Metacognition and Self Regulated Comprehension". Comprehension is the reason that we read. The more we read the faster we get at decoding and therefor comprehending what we read. It is crutial that our students become good readers, using strategies to help comprehension. We want to make the students independent readers, using strategies when they get stuck on a word. We don't want children to stay stuck on a word and need the teacher to tell the student what the word is. The children need to: look at the picture, start at the beginning of the word and slide to the end (blend), does the word make sense, does the word look right, what is the story about? Independent readers make good readers and we need comprehension to make good readers as well. In the article I read that good readers read, read, read. I don't think that our youth reads like they used to because we now have TV, Movies, video games, and all the other kid stuff. It is not the main focus of our students today. Maybe I'm wrong, but that is my impression. The kids don't read like they used to before we had all of the activities to entertain us.
I read "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension." The beginning of the article has a comprehensive list of "what good readers do." I was glad to see this list because I use that phrase a lot in my classroom, and I am now able to share even more good reading strategies with my students. I have always struggled with comprehension, and even as an adult, I often find myself rereading a page several times before I realize what I was supposed to get out of it. Even in college, if the topic wasn't of interest to me, I could "read" an entire chapter and wouldn't be able to tell anyone what I just read. I now know how students feel, and hopefully I can help them early on. Because of our highly structured schedule, we don't have much extra time; however, I am going to make sure that my students have a few minutes per week to just read and try out their comprehension strategies with a variety of texts of their choosing. I agree with the author that students should "read real texts for real reasons" and that they should be exposed to a variety of genres. I liked the way this article gave specific examples of how to model the comprehension strategies. This was my favorite article so far! I will keep it handy and refer to it often!
I like the part that said picking a good text for this (unfamiliar, good sequence of events, provides sufficient clues, etc.) that is not overwhelmed with other heavy demands (such as background knowledge, vocabulary load or decoding)is best in the beginning. This makes sense, especially for my 1st graders. Six important strategies starts with prediction, which I think we do intuitively and then the research on think-alouds was enlightening, especially one that said this decreases their impulsiveness (jumping to conclusions, moving ahead in text w/o understanding what one just read, etc.) This happens all the time in first grade! Think alouds may lead to more thoughtful, strategic reading. We use story maps a lot, which include setting, problem, goal, action, outcome, resolution and theme. I will be using/modeling think-alouds more often which I think will lead directly to less impulsive reading and greater comprehension.
I chose the Duke and Pearson article. I liked what they had to say about Think-aloud and Teacher think-aloud activities. I do a lot of these types of activities with my students who are ages three through five. Many of my students have delays in their language skills and using teacher think alouds is a great way to model language. We do a lot of these types of strategies when reading and problem solving, particularly in science and cooking activities.
The information we chose to focus on was dealing with the "Meta-Cognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension." It is vital for teachers to understand the importance of modeling to students how to focus on their readings and enhance their comprehension of those readings. If our readers are too concerned with the decoding aspects of reading, they will never fully comprehend what is being revealed throughout the passage. This is especially true for our little ones in kindergarten. That is why it is so important to have students reading at independent and instructional levels (never frustration), because they will move beyond the decoding strategies and focus more on the comprehension of their readings. We are not saying that they will simply put aside their decoding skills, but will become more effective readers through the mastery of decoding and fluency. Students need to understand that if they do not comprehend information, they should go back and reread the text for enhanced understanding and comprehension. That is why we reread our stories multiple times during the week for increased comprehension and fluency. We also do a great deal of predicting with all of our reading groups. This builds their background knowledge and taps in to their schema.
The article discussed questioning as one of the componentsof good reading comprehension strategies to use with kids when reading. Different types of questioning needs to be done and some questioning needs to be implicit and explicit. Students need to also generate their own questioning during the reading process. I'm glad you quoted Yopp and the study that was done about questioning. The six reading strategies will give those new teachers and old refresher was to become a better teacher.
I really like the Reciprocal teaching by Palincsar and Brown. I loved having reading groups as centers and I feel it's really important to have students leading the groups so they can take turns practicing comprehension strategies: prediction, questioning, seeking clarification and summarizing.In this way they will become much better at self monitoring and using these stragagies for their independent comprehension.
I chose Effective Reading Practices for Developing Comprehension by Duke and Pearson. I have to admit that this was not new to me, comprehension is an area that I have done a lot of self study in, as well as presented to many schools on the topic.It is an area of great concern for me, and brings about a great deal of passion for me as a reading teacher. To me, comprehension is the icing on the cake. In my practice I would have to agree with the article in regards to the idea that comprehension strategies can not be used singly. However, as a classroom teacher how do we get that across to students? The metacognition of reading is not always an easy thing to teach. The trick is getting students to see and hear what you as the teacher see and hear inside your brain when you read. Thus Think Alouds have become a huge tool for me as a teacher, as well as slowing down my practice in such a way that it gives kids the time to soak it all in. As teachers we want kids to get it quickly, and if we are following a pacing calendar, where can we find the the time to slow down our teaching, to engage in questioning techniques with students, to really get them to stop and think about what they are reading,as well as enjoy it. As I think about Trophies and the 90 minute block, there doesn't seem to be enough time. We have to get more creative with our time and scheduling to allow students to have the opportunity to engage in the act of reading for a longer period of time, than outlined by our reading program, it is not sufficient. The other part of the article that I really enjoyed reading was the five phases of reading, or the gradual release model. For the last seven years that term has appeared in most professional books I have encountered, posibbly at times being called other things, like scaffolding. It was nice to discover who coined the phrase, gGradual Release, I have always wondered about that. I know that the strategy is based on the zone of proximal development based on the work of Vgotsky. As a classroom teacher I concentrated a lot on the five phases. It is essential that we explicitly teach and model the strategy, and as Gay Su Pinnel once said in a training, keep it simple. As teachers we bring too much into our modeled lesson, and kids shut down. We need to concentrate on one strategy at a time and provide the scaffolding that students require to get it. In my findings what I see a lot of is teachers teaching and modeling a strategy, and then skipping the guided practice of the strategy, and jumping straight into independent practice. Then we stand back and wonder why kids still aren't getting it. The five pahses as discussed in this article are the key that will unlock the comprehension door for students. As a reading coach, I want to help teachers learn how to feel more comfortable "thinking aloud", I also want to let teachers understand that it is okay to slow down their teaching practice, more is not necessarily better. I also hope to help teachers become more conscious in their own art of teaching,and at the end of the day as they are driving home, I hope that they are reflecting on how the lesson went. As Reading First schools it is imperative that we find more time within our school day to bring back read alouds, and sustained reading, not necessarily silent, but reading. Kids are not reading enought these days, we spend a great deal of time building the skills, and not enough time practicing them in real life situations.
The article "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension" was a meaty article. Although its 27 pages initally appeared daunting, it was quite an easy read. The information was very helpful and I can see it being a good resource when teaching comprehension strategies. It was nice that the article explained Reciprocal Teaching and the SAIL program. I had not heard of SAIL before so it is nice to be familiar with what programs are out there. Also, I liked how it broke the article down into bite size steps to be able to incorporate into the classroom. There are many things that I plan on incorporating into my classroom activities such as the flow charts and more visual representations of the texts. I was also particularly interested in summarization because I have felt like that was an area that I have been a little weak on in my teaching. This article gave some explicit instruction on how to teach summarization to the students and I think it was quite helpful. Overall I was very pleased with this article and its content.
I read the article "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension". It was quite a long article, but what I mostly got out of it was the many ways that we can develop great readers. It first talked about what good readers are and how they go about reading. Then it went into great length on how to construct a good reader. I think that a lot of these steps and strategies fortunately go along with our McGraw Hill. We spend lots of time working on predictions, and then spend a lot of time actually reading and working on comprehension strategies. What I also like that we spend time talking across texts which helps them connect different texts that we read. We also spend a great deal of time with different reading strategies and a lot of time reviewing vocabulary and concepts that we have put focus on.
I read Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. This article says that when taught, students can and do acquire the necessary strategies to become good readers. Instructional techniques that can be used to teach students a collection of comprehension skills and strategies are outlined. An important quote for me is"... good comprehension instruction includes both explicit instruction in specific comprehension strategies and a great deal of time and opportunity for actual reading, writing, and discussion of text." It says that a balanced comprehension instruction has a supportive classroom context and a model of comprehension instruction, which are to: * provide time for reading * read text beyond those of reading instruction * read a wide range of genres * provide a range of hands-on activities and experiences for vocab. & concept development * develop accurate and automatic decoding skills * provide writing opportunites * provide opportunities for text discussion, and * explicitly teach what reading comprehension skills are and how to use them by teacher modeling, collaborative use of strategy in action, guided practices, and expecting student independent use of the strategy
Teachers must be mindful and choose texts that are suitable for the application of the strategy learned. Teachers must also be concerned with motivating students to read indepently and with on-going monitoring students' use and success with the comprehension strategies.
Six specific strategies covered in this article are: Prediction/Prior Knowledge, Think Aloud, Text Structure, Visual Representation of Text, Summarization, and Questions/Questioning.
Comprehension instruction when taught routinely helps student understanding of the text and helps develop a process taht they can apply as an independent reader. Three routines outlined are: Reciprocal Teaching, Student Achieving Independent Learning (SAIL), and Question the Author. These routines incorporate most, if not all, of the comprehension instruction strategies in the process. They incorporate a high level of teacher-student, student-student discussions and are highly successful in helping student acquire the necessary skills and strategies for reading comprehension.
I have used reciprocal teaching before as a center activity in my 6th grader class. I plan to use this strategy with my 3rd and 4th ELL students, using the ELL readers (Harcourt) for their grades. It will be a good strategy to use as it applies all features of language acquisition: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Where will Reading Comprehension go Whom will teachers follow (broken question mark key). After reading this article, I sure do not know. And maybe, that is good. The article explains SAIL-Student Achieving Independent Learning, and another strategy-Questioning the Author. In use of both strategies, students are challenged to question, predict, read, look, listen for comprehension clues, and to relate the reading to thier own experience. Very much like scientific inquiry, students find interest and comprehension by asking themselves what they already know, what do they want to know, and how can they find out. As educators we need to be flexible in using strategies which fit the standards, and more important, meet the needs of our students.
Pages 1-4: It is well established that effective reading comprehension instruction is grounded in studies of good readers. Good readers: are active readers; have clear goals and constantly evaluate those goals; look over the text before reading; make predictions; read selectively (what to read again, slowly, quickly, etc.); construct, revise and question the meanings of text; determine the meaning of unfamiliar words and concepts; integrate their prior knowledge of text; think about the author(s) of the text; monitor their understanding of the text; evaluate the text’s quality and value; read different kinds of text differently; attend to the setting and characters; process the text before, during and after, and find reading satisfying and productive. In addition, comprehension instruction should be balanced. This includes a supportive classroom context and a model of comprehension instruction. Spending a great deal of time actually reading, to me, is paramount. Of course, the supportive classroom context as a whole is well balanced, but I think that the more we read to our students, and the more students read to themselves, family members, and classmates (friends), the better the comprehension.
pages 9-12: These sections brought forth two main points. First, it stressed the importance of semantic maps and webbing. This is right in line with our school improvement plan. We adopted Thinking Maps and are infusing it into instructional practices. Many of these webs/maps are found in Harcourt activites. When students can web or map out information especially from science and social studies, it helps them to see the big picture more clearly. In turn, they will begin to recognize the text structure the next time they pick up a content area book. Second, it discussed two approaches to teaching summarization. One way is to follow these steps:
Another approach is the GIST procedure. Basically, students using GIST create summaries of 15 or fewer words for increasingly large amounts of text, beginning with single sentences and working up to an entire paragraph.
The first method kind of reminds me of interactive editing whereby only important words are circled and used to rewrite a summary.
I chose to read Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. I found this article to be very informative. It began by stating what good readers do when they read and then went on to propose the question "Can we teach students to engage in these productive behaviors?". The article then gives information about key strategies in a balanced comprehension curriculum and discusses how these strategies are applied in the classroom. These strategies include: prediction/prior knowledge, think-alouds, text structure, visual representation, summarization, and questioning. I found this article to be a great reminder on key strategies to use in order to enhance comprehension. I particularly liked the section on think-alouds and gradual release of responsibility. It is so important that we as teachers demonstrate and model the strategies that we want are students to use and then give the students opportunities to practice using these strategies.
I chose the Effective Practices article. I liked their bulleted points regarding good readers and is good to keep in mind when you assess your students and their reading. The section on supportive classroom context has great points that are constantly in effect in my classroom and that administrators and observers look for when they walk through. I am also going to use Figure 10.6 regarding the checklist for assessing the comprehension environment in my classroom and with my students.
I read the Metacognition article. I think it is important to teach students the different things that need to be done not only during their reading, but also before and after. These are important times to practice applying skills that will in aid in comprehension. Predicting, constructing images, and summarizing are all very important parts of the process to include when striving for more meaningful comprehension.
Pages 20-22. I like all of the questions it was asking in my section. The question of "will our definition and fundamental understanding of comprehension keep pace with changing nature of text?" This makes my mind go in so many different places. I never thought that we skip ahead of sections of a text to the most relevant. Then I started to notice that I do that when I am reading. I find it funny that when you feel you have missed something important then you go back. But when you are skipping around you are missing probably important parts and you don't even know it. It would be easier if you would just read the whole section without skipping, you would gain so much more from doing this. You think you are short cutting things but when you need more answers you have to go back to the places you skipped. To me this is just more work.
On page 21 it gives good ideas for a teacher. It is like a check list to make sure your students are getting what they need. Good to have around.
It is interesting to read an article like this and watch yourself or your students do the same actions. It really opens up your eyes to what is really going on in the classroom.
I chose the article on metacognition. I really enjoyed this article, it had so much information. The article stresses the importance of vocabulary instruction in order to aide in the process of fluency. Like previous articles have said--a fluent reader, understands and comprehends what they read. I have seen this in my classroom, if a students struggles through a passage, they are unable to recall events in the story. I also think that the article does a great job focusing on the reader being 'active' before, during and after reading. I do a lot of the things that the article talked about as I read, and I hope through modeling and instruction I am able to instill these strategies in my students.
I read the article Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. In the article it stated that the following things need to be present to help increase reading comprehension: a great deal of time spend on reading, reading text for "real" reasons, reading different genres, a classroom that is rich in vocabulary and concept, the ability to accurately and automatically decode words, significant time spent writing texts for others to understand, and an "environment rich in high-quality talk about text."
What I also found interesting was the checklist that was provided to assess the comprehension environment and instruction in the classroom. I compared this checklist to the way our current reading program teaches comprehension and I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the components on the checklist were found in our reading program.
I read the wrong article but I did choose one that was more applicable to my job. I read about the importance of teacher training on students' comprehension. What the research showed was that when teachers were supported in their own learning about teaching children reading strategies the childrens' test scores increased. It was imperative to tell the students (and teaachers) why they were using the strategy, how to do it (model, model, model)and how important it is to practice with scaffolding. This is heartening because I am in a position to provide teacher support. Great article with lots of questions to investigate further.
I chose the article, "Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension." The authors begin by explaining what good readers do when they read. Some of these traits include: Being active readers, having clear goals in mind, looking over the text before they read, accessing prior knowledge, evaluating the text's quality and reading different kinds of texts differently. The question is then posed, "How can we teach students to use these strategies when they read?" Good comprehension instruction should be balanced. This includes, "A supportive classroom context(experiencing reading and writing and talking about texts) and a model of comprehension instruction(Connecting and integrating different learning opportunities)". "Other Teaching Considerations" include, Choosing a well suited text, motivating students as much as possible, and always including ongoing assessments. A teacher should modify the approach or use additional instruction to combat ineffective use of the strategies. The authors go on to explain, "Effective Individual Comprehension Strategies." These include: 1. Prediction- Making predictions and then reading to see how they turn out while activating prior knowledge, previewing, and overviewing. 2. Think-aloud- Saying what you are thinking when you are performing a task. 3. Text structure- "teaching children to use the structure of texts, both narrative and expository, to organize their understanding and recall of important ideas." 4. Visual representations of text- "A visual display that helps readers understand, organize, and remember some of those thousand words." 5. Summarization- Giving students time to practice summarize what they read. 6. Questions/questioning- Having students deal with questions that connect the text to their knowledge base. Teaching students to use these six strategies will help them become more effective readers. This article validates what I have been doing in the classroom. It is motivating to me to see that our reading program includes these six strategies.
I read the article Effective practices. I thought it was more reader friendly and that I could take some of the information and give it to students, such as: What good readers do", GIST, QAR's, and in Questioning the Author the Candidate Questions were good. I thought the article was good at laying out the information such as balanced comprehension instruction, a model of comprehension instruction, this was all new information to me. I already knew about Think alouds and GIST, using graphic organizers, Predicting and Summarizing, Questioning and(reciprocal teaching). Some of the article was a good refresher and a lot of it gave me new ideas to think about and to use in my groups.
I read: Metacognition and self-regulated comprehension. It really opened my eyes to the fact that many teachers do not teach comprehension, but expect students to comprehend what they are reading. The part that was an insight for me was when it said; decoding and comprehension depends on short term memory. The students that are decoding every other word will have less short term memory to remember what they read. If these students learned to recognize the words fluently, their reading comprehension would improve.
What I am going to do differently after reading this article is thinking aloud as I read. I will skim and scan the text prior to reading, tell the students my predictions, describe the pictures that I put in my mind as I read, and show them how I make notes about words to clarify or questions that I have, and generate a summary of my reading. After doing these things many times with my read alouds, I will have them practice in their guided reading groups together with me.
I'm sorry class to be getting information to you so late. I have read most of these articles but for some strange reason, did not post!! Could it be the stress of a first year teacher. Anyway, I found it very interesting to have students re-read the stories. It makes a lot of sense. The first time that my students read a story, they stumble over words and by the time they decode the words they forgot what they have read. Comprehension is gone. If we read a story a few times, they feel a sense of accomplishment for reading the story and understanding it. Can't believe that I didn't think about this earlier.
I read Metacognition and Self-Regulated Comprehension article. The part I focused on was the comprehension process that readers go through before, during, and after reading. It is great to see some of my readers already using most on the strategies. I am working with my lower readers one at a time. I did not realize that so much went into reading. When we do picture walks, predictions, and purposes for our books, our students are given the opportunity to activate prior knowledge to gain an understanding of the text. As students read, I really need to give my students more time to reflect. We take time to take notes and answer questions so they can identify the important information. Partner reading seems to help this process, but it is difficult to partner my lower groups. When my students reread, I see the progress they make in summarizing, reciting, and monitoring. Great read.
I chose effective reading process. I think this is a really hard concept toget across. Teaching he multiple aspects of reading. After discussing this with one of my team members I was given some ideas how to do this in centers. I am looking forward to trying it. I also think that enforcing the vocablualry of reading with the students helps them understand the different parts of reading.
I read the Effective Practices article. I really like the beginning were it talks about good readers. We are always telling our first graders what good readers do - I think there are some additions from this part of the article.
I have been following the plans in our reading books and after I read this article I realized that I need to talk more with my students about what a good reader is and teach them some more stratagies. There is just so much in these articles that you want to try everything and then it just becomes overwhelming.
I read Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension, by N.Duke and P. Pearson. First, I found it interesting that Duke quoted Pearson as if Pearson was a third party expert in their own article. However, I believe they are correct: comprehension instruction is best when it focuses on a few well taught strategies. I do think that if the authors would look at multiple grade levels in a unified school district, they would find many of the strategies , being used on many different levels, in different grade levels. In our kindergarten rooms time to read, responsibility, prediction, text suited to student, and as the year moves ahead, primary teacher to primary student is evident. As a primary teacher, I have always used the strategies of time to read, visualization, and prediction in my classes. Because of this article I am making a stronger point of each students need to think aloud. They are getting it, and are a little less loud and impulsive. Good article. I'm doing more strategy type instruction because of it.
I read Effective Practices for Developing Reading Comprehension. Bascially it said to implement the six reading strategies in your classroom to help students become bnetter readers. THe six being:Prediction,Think Alouds, Questionsing,Visual organizers, Summarizing,etc. Prediction meaning making predictions and then reading to see how they turn out while activating prior knowledge, previewing, and overviewing. Think-alouds meaning saying what you are thinking when you are performing a task. Visual representations of text aka graphic organizers to help with comprhension Summarization meaning giving students time to practice summarizing as they read.
Questioning asking students questions that connect the text to their knowledge base. Teaching students to use these strategies helps them to become better readers. This article supports what I have been doing in the classroom following the reading program.
What I also found interesting was the checklist that was provided to assess the comprehension environment and instruction in the classroom. I compared this checklist to the way our current reading program teaches comprehension and I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the components on the checklist were found in our reading program.