Victoria Ferguson- Blog Post 2- Teach Comprehension

Blog Post 2: Routman

Teach Comprehension

            The first part of this chapter really made me think. I completely connected with the idea that we spend a lot of energy on word calling, automatically, and fluency. We make students think that reading is about the words rather than the meaning. We asses a lot of comprehension yet we do not spend much time teaching it. I have noticed just this when testing my students using Dominie. I started with my high students. Most of them had no trouble reading the words. They would make maybe 3 mistakes. However they could not answer the comprehension questions that required them to think. Each one of these students had to be tested at a lower level book due to comprehension. Routman then describes that we focus on low-level skills (often using a direct instruction program). The author suggest that by doing this, when the focus shifts from  learning read the words to comprehension we have lost a lot of years knowing what real reading is.

            This chapter discusses key strategies that we should teacher students that will have a major influence on reading comprehension: making connections, monitor your reading for meaning, determine what’s most important, visualize, ask questions, make inferences, synthesize. We have to implement instruction that will support these key strategies. We need to use text that will allow our students to be able to use these strategies. After we teach and model (and then re-teach and model) we have let students read books of their choice and implement these strategies. This chapter suggest that we make sure that our teaching time doesn’t over take the time that students need to be engaged in reading. The rule we need to keep in mind is a 20-percent to 80-percent rule. We have to make it clear why we are teaching this strategy. Just because a student can do the strategy doesn’t mean they are doing it in their independent reading. We have to model this and make sure they understand that these strategy will not go away. These are strategies that they should use daily when reading.

            The list on page 125 provided me with a list of things students should be doing while reading. ON page 127 the author suggest we make sure our leveled books are mostly authentic literature written by authors to delight children. We need to examine how the books are leveled. We need to not just rely on the books that we have but look for meaningful text to use to demonstrate, practice, and apply reading strategies. We need to make time in our reading instruction to have reading conferences, so that we can ensure our students have books that they can read independently. We want to make sure these books allow them to focus on the meaning.

Finally, as I continue to teach reading, I want to make sure that my teaching of a particular strategy doesn’t take over student’s time reading and understanding text. I want to make sure I am using meaning instructional strategies.