Reading Comprehension {Chapter SEVEN Synthesis}

What I Do Right...

I think that the first important thing that I do when teaching comprehension is MODELING STRATEGIES. Students need to see some strategies over-and-over again to see how they really work. We create anchor charts together, investigate different texts, and then I give explicit instruction on how I use the strategy while reading. Once the students see how the strategy is utilized, it it time for them to practice it on their own.

I give each student a READING IS THINKING sheet each week. It has a box for each day of the week. In the box, the students have to practice the strategy independently that they learned during the mini-lesson. They might have to make a prediction, share their schema, write a connection, ask a "thick" question, or make an inference. I take these sheets up and grade them at the end of the week.

I try to give a variety of assessments so that I can see how students are comprehending the texts that they read. For example, this past week we studied the genre BIOGRAPHY. Each student read a biography of an African American during independent reading and then recorded important information from that person's life. The purpose was twofold: 

• to find the main idea of that person's life
• make connections from that person's life to our own

The students then wrote a paper about their famous person, and then presented what they learned to the class. They had to dress up or make a puppet. {This picture was being so stubborn and would NOT turn...but it was too cute not to include!! Sorry for the head tilting!}

What I Do Wrong...

I think that I need to work more on class-wide peer tutoring and cooperative learning models. I think that my students could help each other more with comprehension if they were placed within small groups. This way they are forced to share ideas, understand content, and internalize information. I know that, when I am teaching, I tend to talk too much. I really need to OBSERVE more. Observation would give me much more information so that I can truly gain a clear picture as to how my students are comprehending what they read. If students were forced to take a leadership role, then they would be able to implement strategies together, and I would serve as their facilitator. 

How I'm Going to Fix It...

I plan to grant more opportunities for collaborative groups during reading instruction. I do a lot of independent practice and small group instruction, but I very rarely let the students work together on the stories that they are reading. It would be very interesting for me to see what kinds of thinking would go on during their discussions. I would love to have groups of students complete an activity such as the Cooperative Story Map on page 177 in the text. This way, they can work together on understanding the stories they have read. They can then present their story maps to the class as an different way to retell what they have learned.