Katy DeFouw December Post

I read Chapter 8: Teach Comprehension in Routman.  Reading comprehension was something that I always struggled with as a reader in school.  I strongly disliked reading in elementary school and middle school because I think that I never was taught the right strategies to comprehend.  This made it difficult for me to explain what I had just read.  So I really loved this chapter on teaching children to comprehend what they read. 

In the beginning of the chapter, Routman discussed that there is great emphasis on word calling, automaticity, and fluency in the early grades.  I would completely agree with this.  We are constantly assessing our students on their fluency.  However, how appropriate is it that a student can word call from the SRA manual or meet the fluency requirements in the SRA manual?  How well is this really assessing their comprehension? 

Students should be taught strategies to understand what they read.  We are always teaching strategies to decode words.  Making connections, determining the importance, visualizing, asking questions, and making inferences are all very important skills that must be taught in order to gain comprehension skills.  I use many of these skills when teaching my students how to comprehend what they are reading.