June 21st Reading

Before doing the readings on comprehension for this week, I tried to think back to when I was in elementary school to determine if I remembered learning about comprehension. The only time that I could recall working on this topic in elementary school was for TCAP practice. I can remember my teachers working on comprehension but just in relation of how to mark the correct answer in the fastest time for the test. Today I have trouble comprehending some of the reading that I do and often find myself having to reread; I wonder if this would have been different had my teachers taught me comprehension strategies, like the ones mentioned in the readings.

I was shocked to learn that even though we have been made aware of how important teaching comprehension is, teachers are still not teaching it in the classroom. I found the readings to be extremely useful and they have informed me on just how to implement comprehension instruction in the classroom. All three articles mentioned the different areas that make up comprehension. In the article by Laura Pardo I learned how help children to become successful comprehenders by teaching decoding skills, helping students to build fluency, building and activating their background knowledge, teaching vocabulary words, motivating students, and engaging children in a personal response to a text. This can all be accomplished by providing children with interesting books and taking time out of the day for regular reading times, whether they be independent or in a group setting. Teachers should also provide explicit instruction of comprehension strategies and use multiple strategies. An important takeaway from this article was the Gradual Release of Responsibility model, I feel this is a good strategy to implement in the classroom.

In the article, Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers, I thought it was interesting how Mrs. Hope's class could distinguish between a connection to the story, a visualization, and meaning construction. I feel that this approach would definitely increase children's comprehension skills. I feel this would require proper instruction in order to help children be successful. I also liked the different comparisons that Mrs. Hope made, such as comparing schema to a picture of a human head surrounded by ideas. I also thought it was useful how she got the children to begin thinking about visualizations and asking questions.

I found the article, The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction and chapter seven from the text to have the most useful examples of how to implement effective comprehension instruction in the classroom. I feel that the Comprehension Matrix is an essential tool to use to determine prereading, during reading, and postreading activities for your class. Planning activities like these will help children to excel in comprehension. The Comprehension Matrix is something that I plan to use in my future classroom in order to help my future students be successful when comprehending what they have read. I also found some examples while reading the chapter in the Cunningham and Allington text that I would like to implement in my classroom. I would like to use the Oprah Winfrey interview; I feel that this is a great way to get children to practice literate conversations while they also practice comprehension skills because they must remember what happened to their particular character in the story in order to answer the questions. I feel this interview activity would also be engaging for the children. Another activity that I feel would be engaging and meaningful in the beach ball example. I think that this is an excellent strategy for helping students to practice retelling stories and comprehend what they learned from the story as well. Ultimately I feel that comprehension skills are important and should be given more attention during classroom instruction.