Gerald Steven Mills

Teach Comprehension #3

                I enjoyed reading this article and I think it made several great points in regards to comprehension, and the approaches that are taken. It was stated that if comprehension is the goal, then it must be taught starting in kindergarten. I think it is important that we take the time to look at what kids are reading independently and use the texts as comprehension practice. I thought the first section Start with the Texts Students are Reading made a great point: If we want readers to be critical thinkers, inquirers, and problem solvers, we need to introduce them to challenging, interesting texts.  There was a list of strategies that proficient readers use, and I think it’s important for us teachers to make sure that I children understand what it means to make a connection, monitor your reading for meaning, determine what’s most important, visualize, ask questions, make inferences, and synthesize. I guess this stood out to me because I have a poster in my classroom that states theses same things, but I have yet to cover each strategy. It is important to understand that when teaching comprehension there is not just one thing that you can do to make a difference for everyone in the class. You have to teach multiple strategies and be willing to model the strategies for students to see. Several strategies are given in this text. Rereading is a common strategy that I personally know work for me, and as suggested this is a good way to for students to comprehend information. I often use this strategy in my class room, I often direct my students to go back and reread sections to get a better understanding of the material. For me as I read it the second time, I often come away with a clear understanding of the material or directions.

                In this Chapter I found the Try it/ apply it sections to be very helpful. I was able to make notes on different comprehension strategies that I would like to apply with my students. I feel that it is important that the texts selected by the teacher should be easy enough and meaningful enough to support comprehension. Students must be able to read the text without student’s struggling over every other word. As stated in the passage, “students that are reading for understanding, should know 95% of the words that they are reading. It is important that we give students an opportunity to be successful while practicing comprehension strategies. Another strategy that I found useful for comprehension is teaching students to ask significant questions. These questions are in depth and require the readers to think. A lot of questions that are generated on computer test, just scratch the surface and does not really give a true understating of comprehension of the text. By teaching students to ask and answer open ended questions that could lead to a discussion or require logical responses. Overall there are lots of comprehension strategies that should be reviewed and explored by educators looking to improve comprehension strategies in the classroom. There are Lots of resources and strategies that can be applied, I found this article to be very helpful.