Chapter eight covers comprehension of narrative text. Comprehension is the main reason for reading. If we are unable to comprehend the material we are reading, there is very little benefit from actually reading. One of the students that I work with in my after school tutoring has a very difficult time with comprehension. Most often he will read or listen to a paragraph being read and as soon as we stop reading he is unable to tell me one thing that occurred in the text. He often makes up events that never occurred. I feel that this chapter gave me many strategies for helping students who have a difficult time comprehending the material. I was answering some of the questions at the end of the chapter and many of the before, during, and after strategies are great for helping students develop a better understanding of the material they are reading. Figure 8.1 on page 179 has a list of strategies for comprehension. All of these are essential for students to comprehend the material. I have always enjoyed reading, and I have never experienced any problems with comprehension. Although I feel very lucky, I also know this has put me in a position where I had never really thought about the fact that some of these skills do not come automatically for students. As teachers I think it will be very important to model and scaffold these strategies into our daily instruction while reading. Students need to learn to self-monitor, make predictions and inferences, sequence events, and consider the authors’ purpose before, during, and after reading. Graphic organizers are an excellent tool that I utilized during my internship with second graders last semester. We had many struggling readers who had a difficult time with comprehension. When students are given graphic organizers they are able to look at questions that they should be asking prior to beginning the reading. During the reading they are able to look back at the questions to self-monitor, predict, etc. After the reading the students are able to look back on the information they have filled in and complete the graphic organizer. This visual organization helps the students to see the information they have gathered from reading the book. English Language Learners make up a large number of the student population in public schools today. I thought the information that was written for teaching ELL students was very helpful. One point the text made was that we should give English learners plenty of time to ask questions and discuss what they have read. When students discuss, ask questions, make predictions, and draw conclusions they are constantly building onto their comprehension skills. We also must try to relate the text to their previous experiences. Choosing multicultural literature will help students culturally relate, show them that we feel their cultures are important, and it will benefit other students because they will be exposed to a wide variety of cultural literature.
Comprehension is the main purpose of reading. The sole purpose of reading is to understand the information that is being given in the text. Chapter 8 discusses comprehension and its elements. In order to comprehend a given text, a student must have the other reading knowledge and skills, such as: decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and prior knowledge. If a child can not decode the words, they are not going to understand what they say or what they mean. Just by a student missing one of the main components of reading, they are missing the meaning of the entire text. The question that I have about the text has to do with self-monitoring. Self-monitoring is the ability of readers to check if their reading looks right, sounds rights, and makes sense. How do you teach this to a student or how do you get them to do it on their own? If a student can read a sentence and then think about it realize that something was wrong, then they can go back and look at it. But what if you're a student who just wants to read the text and get it done, you don't want to go back and read a sentence because it didn't make sense. After reading this chapter, graphic organizer will be something that I will use in tutoring every day. After seeing the information on paper and in a way that is organized, my students may be able to understand the information in a better way. Having a background of being a poor reader, I noticed that I had some of the characteristics listed on page 187. I had a very limited vocabulary and would focus only on pronouncing words correctly. Reading is so important. You can not go one day without having to read something in our society, it is impossible. I eventually overcame by reading problems, but it was only because I was able to receive help.
In response to Jaclyn: I think that what you wrote about choosing multicultural texts is very important to all students, not just ELL students. We must ask questions and ask for predictions to build background knowledge for all students. While tutoring, I found that none of my students know what a National Geographic magazine is, so I've decided to bring one in to show them.
Brandy, Teaching self-monitoring can be very difficult. I have a student who I am tutoring who knows how to self-correct, but he doesn't want to. He will read through the material as fast as possible just to get it done. I am trying to find ways to incorporate activities that he enjoys and that help him to stop and think. I have found that reading together and stopping to discuss what we have read frequently has helped. He has actually become more aware of the errors that he makes when he misreads a word.
You might also try to incorporate think-alouds while teaching and reading. It may not help students who simply do not care, but it will help those who do and are struggling. It might help to try to find books that interest the student. They may have a greater desire to slow down so they can understand the material they are reading.
Comprehension is the main reason for reading. This process requires complex, higher-level thinking skills and is based on the ability to encode and retrieve the basic building blocks of sentences and relate the meaning within them to scenes and stories from a text. This chapter lays out how to teach and build comprehension strategies. I think that it is so important to teach students how to think about a story and the concepts in it. Using graphic organizer teaches students how to think of characters, setting, problems and solutions in a story and before long they will be able to do this on their own and comprehending will be much easier for them. It is essential for teacher to read and discuss literacy with students and to construct meaning. The best way that they chapter identifies to do this is through a think aloud. I think that many teachers do this without even knowing they are doing it because it makes sense. Making predictions and summarizing and retelling what happened in the story are also very natural steps in the comprehension process. This chapter lays out all of the elements that are needed for comprehension and this includes all of the building blocks of reading. This chapter provides concrete ideas on how to build students comprehension skills. There is more to comprehension then just understanding the plot, setting and characters of a story. Students need to infer the authors writing, visualize what the text is saying and being able to self monitors their reading. This is why the MSV is so important. This is a great modeling tool! In response to Jaclyn C: I too agree that graphic organizers give readers a purpose for reading. Many times I give the comprehension question before I read to also create a purpose for reading and comprehending. Many times poor readers can be unmotivated and creating a purpose for reading will spark their awareness. This chapter gave some great ideas for teaching comprehension strategies and in your response to Brandy I noticed that you have a struggling reader that is unmotivated. I think the think aloud suggestion is a great tool. For many readers seeing it on paper is difficult to understand they may be more auditory learners and need to hear the discussion. Taking notes while reading and jotting down questions and answers may also help the comprehension process. This is good for older readers.
I thought that the scenario at the beginning of the chapter was very informative. Some teachers do not bother to see where their students are at before they assign them specific books to read. If Mr. Long had taken the time to see what level his students were reading at then he wouldn’t have wasted class time on a book that was too hard for his students to read. Chapter 8 is all about how good and poor readers comprehend text and the problems that they might have if they comprehend text the wrong way. I thought that it was helpful on how the chapter would talk about a specific topic (making inferences) and then follow that up with an example of how a teacher might ask the students’ questions based on what was read. What I really liked was figures 8.2 and 8.3. These are two fun ways to have students do a web based on the book that they are reading. The part on assessment really clicked for because that was what we were doing during our first few weeks of tutoring. I also liked a lot of the activities that were at the end of the chapter.
I agree with you about comprehension. Without it people would not be able to read or read good enough to understand what they need to know to get by in the world today.
Janna, I agree that it is very important for teachers to try to find out the levels their students are at prior to selecting literature. When students struggle and are trying to work at their frustration level it leads to many issues, especially if students do not enjoy reading to begin with.
Comprehension is the understanding of what is read. This chapter gave a lot of information on how to work on comprehension. The figure on page 179 had a great list of strategies to help with comprehension. I love to read, I have a problem that when I am reading. I have to be in a completely quite area. I have trouble getting into the book and what is going on in it if there is any noise interrupting my reading. I think this chapter will help me understand how to work with students that are not able to comprehend and it will also help me learn how to comprehend things I read better. I think it will be good for students to get into the book and become one of the characters. I think that is what helps me comprehend what is going on. The part for the ELL students was very interesting to read about. I think the ELL students are becoming more popular in the schools today and we have to also be prepared to teach them to comprehend better. We need to give the students more time to read the material and ask questions to predict and make conclusions on what they read. We also need to relate the material they are reading to their previous experiences. Graphic organizers are great to help the students write notes or write the questions they are trying to find out in the story.
In response to Janna Colson– The scenario at the beginning was very interesting to read. We need to know the reading level before we give the students the material to read. When a student has a book that is too hard, they get frustrated easily and they give up on reading. I think the figures 8.2 and 8.3 were very cool and interesting. This book is always giving new ideas for us that are starting a career in teaching.
Chapter 8 deals with Comprehension of Narrative Text. The scenario at the beginning of the chapter was right on the money with how some classrooms operate. When I was in middle school my teacher was on maternity leave, so all the substitute did was have us read the chapter and fill out worksheets. I can honestly say I didn’t gain any information from that class. In Mr. Long’s defense, he was a first year teacher, but what I really liked was the fact that he was open to hear the students’ responses about the lessons. Mr. Long should have looked into the situation more, rather than just moving forward. As an educator, you sometimes have to go above and beyond the call of duty in order for your students to learn. The very first sentence sums up the whole chapter, “Comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill” (DeVries, 175). I liked how the chapter broke down the Components of Reading Comprehension; they were broken down by comprehension strategies before reading, comprehension strategies during reading, and comprehension strategies after reading. Under each section there were helpful tips/hints as to what you should do and ask the student as the story is being read. Figure 8.6 caught my attention because it lists habits and characteristics of a poor reader, and after reviewing them I realized I have had several students in previous years that have shown these characteristics. How do you prevent yourself from jumping to conclusions that one of your students may be a poor reader? How long do you let time go by before you finally realize they are a poor reader? I was also glad this chapter discussed assessments. As we are working through our tutoring course, I realized that assessing the students the whole time is very important.
I am the same way when it comes to reading; I have to be in complete silence. I think students sometimes struggle reading when they are in an environment that is noisy. I think as future educators, we need to prepare even more for ELL students. When I was in elementary school ELL students were almost unheard of, but now it is uncommon if you don’t have any ELL students. Every teacher that I have done my internships under all promote the use of graphic organizers. They all believe that is one of the best tools to help students with comprehension.
The main purpose of reading is to comprehend text and requires the use of higher think skills. I liked how this chapter broke up the skills needed to comprehend text. The chapter explained these skills very well and provided good examples of possible confusion for students. The most valuable portion of this chapter to me was the comprehension strategies for before, during, and after reading. This section provided not only details on these strategies, but great examples to help students comprehend text. I worked with several students in my reading internship course to help them develop better comprehension skills and this chapter reinforced some of the methods I used. The use of predictions prior to reading, inferences and visualization during reading, and retelling the story after reading are all methods that I used during these sessions. I think this chapter does a great job of outlining these specific skills that students need to develop in order to improve comprehension.
Response to April B: It is difficult to create a completely quiet reading area in the classroom and this can be a problem for students. I think it does help if the student is interested in the book that he/she is reading as they can become so involved in the story that they can block out potential distractions. I like allowing students to self-select books for independent reading in order to encourage them to read.
The further I read in our DeVries textbook, the more I learn about teaching students to read. I also find myself amazed at how complex reading really is. Each chapter adds a new concept that is needed to become a good reader. These concepts are then broken down into more detailed skills that are required for students to become an accomplished reader. Chapter 8 discusses comprehension of narrative text. The knowledge and skills needed to understand what is being read includes linguistic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, decoding skills, fluency skills, and vocabulary skills. When all of this is combined together with an understanding of the meaning of a text, the student has achieved the main purpose of reading: comprehension. If students are ever going to read for enjoyment or even read for information, they need to be able to comprehend text. I found the selecting narrative texts for English language learners guidelines on page 192 to be very helpful. I had not put much thought into selecting books for ELL students and I know feel that I have a better understanding of how this should be done.
I actually used the Story Lines activity from page 196 with my tutoring group last week. The students liked sharing their own predictions of the story and they are anxious to finish reading the story so they can compare the real story to their own. I also like the graphic organizer examples starting on page 203. They provide some good ideas for retelling after a story is read. Another activity I would like to try is the “And this is the rest of the story” activity on page 205.
In response to Tyler G… I also appreciated the comprehension strategies provided in the chapter. You seem to be using the right activities before, during, and after reading a story to help your students better comprehend what they are reading. My students seem to struggle with making predictions before the story. They might guess something obvious like the book “White Water” by P.J. Petersen is going to be about white water rafting, but they never make detailed or in-depth predictions. Through questioning techniques I try to probe my students to predict more about the story, but they say they just can’t think of anything because they have never read the story. I say that you can’t predict if you have already read the story but they just don’t seem to understand this concept. I don’t think that they have had to do much predicting before so I am going to continue to scaffold them in this area.
The scenario at the beginning of the chapter sounded way too familiar! I can relate with students about reading text that was way above our level of comprehension. We too could do the worksheets and put together projects but we didn’t really understand the book. In seventh grade we read George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm”. I re-read this book my senior year of high school for a class and I was surprised! While it still isn’t my favorite book, it made a lot more sense because I knew what the author was referring to and had the background knowledge to go with it. As middle school students we had the linguistic, syntactic, and semantic knowledge, and decoding and fluency skills necessary to read to book, but we did not have the vocabulary skills or background for it to be an appropriate text for us. I appreciated how the book went into detail about predicting, finding purpose, making inferences, self-monitoring, and visualizing. I already knew these were important parts of understanding the text, but I didn’t know the specifics of how they affected comprehension. I love it when I am doing a read aloud and children get very excited when they make a connection with the text, and can notice little things. As teachers it is very important to read various types of texts with our students so that they can not only have vicarious experiences and expand their vocabulary, but increase their literary and world knowledge. The graphic organizers the book suggested are very helpful in making sure students comprehend, especially for ELL or students with learning disabilities. I love the “Happy” story face graphic organizer on page 183. There are tons of ways to assess reading comprehension. Informal assessments occur every time we ask questions during a story or ask a student to share something form the reading. Being able to comprehend the story and label its parts is something that we learn to do throughout school. I learned a lot of the strategies in Library. Do children now days just go to library to check out the books or do the librarians serve as reading specialist type teachers?
I also really liked the ELL section too! I can only imagine how difficult it is for them to understand some of the books we read. This book is and the activities it has it in are going to be a great asset for when we are working with children!
Chapter eight was about comprehension in narrative texts. I liked the opening scenario because it made me think of how it will be when I start teaching and the possibility that I may have the “all by myself” feeling kind of like in the story. I like how the chapter pointed out right away that comprehension is the main reason for reading texts. The chapter also pointed out that comprehension is tied to other reading skills like fluency, vocabulary and decoding to name a few. There are also a variety of skills used during reading and teachers should incorporate before, during, and after activities to reinforce skills being learned. Predicting, visualizing, and elaborating on content are a few examples of before, during and after reading activities. Students also need to learn to connect prior knowledge to the material being read. I liked how the book also gave several different examples of informal and formal assessments to check reading comprehension as well as check the student’s progress in comprehension. This chapter really hit home with me. Now that I am working with students in my tutoring group, I finally understand just how difficult it can be to plan a variety of activities on a regular basis to help students progress in different areas of reading. Especially when those students are on different levels. Being an avid reader who has always loved books, it has always been hard for me to grasp how some people do not enjoy reading. I really appreciated how the book also talked about teaching ELL students in comprehension, finding narrative material, and different teaching strategies for comprehension. This chapter was a great resource and I am glad to have it for present and future reference!
In response to Janel…I also appreciated the detail the book went into throughout the chapter. It is so nice to have such an incredible resource at our fingertips that explains what to do and why it is important! I also enjoyed the scenario at the beginning of the chapter. I hope that I do not have the “all by myself” feeling at the beginning of the year like in the story! I also realize though that, as in the story, teachers are all different and do a variety of different activities but use reflection afterwards to determine how effective those activities were. Reflection is the key!
In response to Janna C...I agree with your thoughts on this chapter's scenario - I think Mr. Long is a good cautionary tale for all of us! I also appreciated the example of story mapping shown in figure 8.2. I plan to try story mapping with my tutoring group very soon. thanks for sharing! Julie
This chapter starts out with a great example of what not to do with Mr. Long in the scenario. I am a believer in often learning from mistakes, so I think this one will stick with me. This chapter is very timely for me personally, as my 4th grade tutoring group has comprehension as their goal. I appreciate figure 8.1 that outlines strategies for comprehension,and really liked reviewing the story mapping and venn diagram examles, both things I will be trying with my group soon. The section on assessments is crucial as we now begin creating our formatives to match our objectives- I am getting a lot of great ideas here. My favorite section of each chapter is always the final section listing intervention strategies and activity suggestions. I am grateful to have these to reference and plan to implement them with my tutoring group.
Once again this chapter was very insightful. The scenario at the beginning of the chapter was eye opening. I remember in several classes in high school where this is what we did. It is easy to just scan a chapter for the key words then find the correct answer, however, when you have to apply the information that requires a higher level of thinking and therefore if you are not prepared for this it won't be pretty. I loved the last part of the scenario, I have highlighted it and posted it on a note card.."answering literal questions does not prove that they comprehend the text." This one quote can sum of the entire chapter.
I like the "Happy and Sad Story Face" graphic organizers. I think that that would be a great way to help students connect with the story. I also found some great graphic organizers to use when discussion comprehension at the Florida website.
I tutor in the school district third graders and we are working on comprehension. It has been a struggle with some. I loved the instructional recommendations for ELL students. The majority of the class is ELL and I think having these ideas will allow me to bring a different approach to the students.
The strategies were fantastic as always, I can remember doing the story lines in school. I haven't seen a lot of teachers in the school I am at do them, however, I think that they can be beneficial.
The idea of using read along tapes for students when you are not able to get to them that particular day or time, is a great idea. I personally comprehend better when I see it and hear it. Therefore I think this would be a great idea to incorporate.
The last strategy that really stuck out to me was the prompts for writing a story summary on pg 202. I think that this is a great way to incorporate comprehension and writing. For most ELL students in our school district at least they are not able to exit from ESL until they can look at a picture and write a scenario. I think that all the practice a student can get in writing along with comprehension the better off they will be.
I agree my favorite parts of the chapter are the scenarios and then the interventions. It gives you so many different ideas to incorporate into the classroom. This is my second degree, and I have to admit the books I have received for any of my reading classes are far better and more worthwhile then any of the other texts I have purchased. Isn't it great when you need a little guidance in a particular subject and then here comes a chapter like this right when you need it the most. Good luck and tell me how those graphic organizers work for you. There are also some other great ones on the Florida website.
Teaching comprehension skills seems quite a bit trickier than some of the other Big 5, particularly when it is not an “obvious” issue. Students who read fluently and who decode words well do not always comprehend what they read. I gave an example last semester in the Reading and Language Arts methods course of the Serbo-Croatian language. This language is completely phonetic. If you understand the sounds each letter makes, you can read fluently. I could easily read off a sentence or sign written in Serbo-Croatian (as long as it was written in Roman script; if it was in Cyrillic, that was another story). However, just because I could “read” it fluently did not mean I understood it. It is difficult then to know if a student truly understands what they are reading when they appear to read well.
This chapter gave many good activities to use to evaluate comprehension skills. Before, during, and after any reading students should be engaged in discussion about the material. Predictions about the story, reading to confirm or refute those predictions, and being able to retell the relevant details of the story show comprehension. If a student is able to decode the story, but comprehension is missing, the chapter also provides relevant intervention strategies. In order to help my two students in the next few weeks, I plan to use the alternate writing activity on page 197, in which the student and teacher pair up to write a story together. This would probably work well even in a small group of no more than 3 or 4 students.
The most fascinating portion of the chapter was reading how students can sometimes rely too much on personal experience while reading, instead of not enough. I would suppose that by using personal experience to this extent the student is not understanding what the author intends.
In response to Shelby H. It's a shame that the sub relied on worksheets, although as a sub that is often all that is left. However, I knew of a high school history teacher of many years who did the same, with no such excuse. As a para of several students who took his class, it was frustrating to have them fail the end of chapter tests time after time because, although they could get through the worksheets with some help, they could not understand the test questions.
I thought the beginning scenario was a pretty good picture of what I see everyday. In the basal readers they have extended activities to enhance what the students read. It makes the student use what they have learned in other ways such as writing activities or even comparing the text with a previous read text. However, I don't see much of the extention activities being used. They seem to move on to the next story as quickly as possible. Sometimes I think the students would benefit more if the pace was a little slower and more comprehensive.
Chapter 8 talks about comprehension and all that it entails. There are so many different aspects that go along with teaching a child to read, that we, as teacher need to be aware of. I really like the fig. 8.6 on pg. 187 that talks about that habits and characteristics of a poor reader. We all know there are many students are proficient, but there are just as many who slip through the cracks.
My question was answered by the 9 habits and characteristics of a poor reader. I find that I use graphic organizers during my tutoring sessions to see how well my students comprehend what they read, but I am going to start asking them questions instead of always using these. If we just sit and discuss the story, instead of always making them write something down, they can comprehend the story just as well, or even better.
I am learning as I go along in my tutoring that my two students just needed a little more one-on-one time to finish learning what that didn’t quite understand. They have picked up so much so quickly in the few weeks that we have been working it is amazing.
I liked how the chapter broke down the comprehension strategies too. I also enjoyed how the chapter went into the details regarding the predictions, inferences and visualizations….I too am using these during my tutoring sessions and they are working wonderful. My students are really showing signs of understanding what is going on with reading.
Janna: I also thought it was helpful and interesting that it gave us example scenarios and it also gave us what the teachers would say and should say in certain scenarios.
I thought chapter 8 was a great chapter. It is also a helpful chapter for those who are concentrating on comprehension for their tutoring sessions. I like that this book gives us tips on all of the big 5 that we have learned about. I like that this chapter gave us tips on what to do before, during, and after a book to ensure that our students are learning comprehension the way they should. Another helpful thing this chapter gave me was it gave me activities on how to check for comprehension. Sometimes I feel like I run out of ideas, and I use the same activities too much, so it makes it nice to be able to refer back to my reading book for good, useful activities.
Chapter 8 over narrative comprehension helped me fully understand its reasons for being. I will admit I hated reading because I was terrible at comprehending when I was young. It probably wasn't until college that I could read and fully comprehend. Before, I was doing good at other aspects, such as fluency, but I wasn't understanding the words I was reading. Now after reading the chapter, there are so many strategies for comprehending. When I began to improve on my comprehension, I would imagine the story in my mind, like if it were a movie. The "happy" story face could be used after a reading to make sure students are comprehending. It could even serve the purpose of assessment. One other point in the reading I enjoyed was the section over selecting narrative texts. It gave different ways to chose narrative texts for your readers.
In response to Janna C.: I had a teacher in high school that pretty much does as the example in the book did. There were many kids in my class that weren't on the same level. The teacher still forced us all to read the same book and half of the class didn't comprehend. We didn't do anything out of the ordinary to fully understand. She didn't go out of her way to ensure we understood.
The breakdown of the chapter reading eight is that is having the students’ understand comprehension with using visual aids. I have been using visual aids with my tutoring which I feel that they have a better understanding of the material. Also in the chapter it gave different tests that can be used for your students such as maze test, think-alouds or rubrics. What I find to be helpful is the activities in reading. I had no questions or comments. I look at the reading material differently by was the part on “English Learners and Narrative texts” which I find the material very interesting. Living in a small town we aren’t diverse so it is interesting how to teach students. My own experience is that with my tutoring students I want them to enjoy reading and understanding the material that they read instead of just reading it. I think this chapter gave great ideas and with the visual aids is always helpful.
In response to Kiley A, I agree with on running out of ideas. It is great that we have this book just in case we feel that we having nothing we can always look back. Also I try not to use the same thing so my students aren't bored.
Chapter 8 focused on comprehension of narrative text. Linguistic knowledge includes a students’ understanding of stress, pitch, and juncture. Stress is the emphasis one word may receive over the other words in a sentence. Pitch refers to intonation. Juncture is the pause that occurs in language. Syntactic knowledge is the part of the language that deals with word order, punctuation, and paragraphs. Semantic knowledge is the common meanings of words and their combinations. I really liked the comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading. Things such as predicting, making inferences, connecting prior knowledge to texts, and drawing conclusions are all great tools that I will most definitely incorporate into my lessons. The assessments for comprehension were great. I never realized how many are available. I use retelling and rubrics a lot in my lessons and they are both wonderful assessment tools for my students. I really appreciated the 7 guidelines on page 192 for selecting books for English learners. Since I have two ESOL students in my group, it is always nice to find tips on what kind of material I should be bringing to our tutoring sessions. Once again, the activities at the end of the chapter were great and I will include some in my future lessons! Does anyone have any other comprehension tools or activities they have used that have worked well in their tutoring groups?
In response to Alisha G—I agree that the students’ comprehension levels increase drastically when I incorporate visual aids into my lessons. I have 2 ESOL students in my group, so including visuals with my activities really helps them with both vocabulary and comprehension. It is important that we get tips to help choose material for English learners because we never know what we may encounter in our future classrooms. I as well liked learning about all of the different assessments that are available to test a students’ comprehension of the material. I use rubrics and retelling a lot in my lessons and it seems to be wonderful tools for my tutoring students.
Chapter 8 and Comprehension of Narrative Text Reading the scenario about Mr. Long and his worksheets, I realized that I’ve come a long way from when I first began my degree in education. I substituted before going back to school to get my degree in elementary education and I use to think that worksheet were what teachers gave to students to assess their knowledge. Of course, after taking several classes and observing effective teachers I could identify where Mr. Long went wrong. I learned last year in Reading Methods about using questioning techniques in our read aloud and how before, during and after questions not only get them motivated about the story but it also helps them think about the story. I liked the paragraph on Linguistic Knowledge and the example of using three sentences and changing the intonation. I never thought about doing an activity like that but it totally makes sense. My two students are working on their comprehension skills and I like the activities in the back of the chapter as well as those on the Florida Reading website. There is an activity on page 201 – Wordless Books. I learned about these in my Children’s Literature class. I loved them. One I “read” for that class was called, “The Red Book,” by Barbara Lehman. I think this may be an upcoming activity for my students.
In response to Jen H., I liked the two “Happy/Sad Story Face” graphic organizers too. Although at first glance I didn’t see it. Sometimes graphic organizers can be boring, so these are two fun ones that would be great to use in the classroom as well as for our tutoring students. I also found a website for read aloud books. It is http://www.storylineonline.net/ . I forgot all about it until I saw the activity on page 198. Actors read the stories and there are also activities and lesson ideas included.
This chapter covered comprehension of narrative text. The main purpose for reading is comprehension. Comprehension allows us to understand what we read. All three of my students that I tutor have a difficult time with comprehension. None of my students struggle with reading but when we are done reading they have a difficult time recalling what occurred in the text. This chapter gave me some great ideas for helping my students with comprehension. One strategy I use with my students is graphic organizers. I have already seen an improvement in what the students retain from the reading. Graphic organizers are also great for visual learners. I had questions on how to help English Language Learners with comprehension. The book mentioned giving English learners plenty of time for questions and discussion of the text. Another point the text made was relating the text to their previous experiences. Mrs. Stoppel has made this point in class as well. By choosing multicultural literature will help these students relate to their own culture.
In response to Brandy, I think graphic organizers are a great tool for our students. All of my students struggle with comprehension and since I’ve started using graphic organizers, I have seen great improvement. My students went from answering maybe one comprehension questions to almost all of them. In response to Jen H., I LOVE the “Happy/Sad Story Face” graphic organizers too. Having a wide variety of graphic organizers are a great strategy for comprehension. I’ve also used some of the graphic organizers off of the FCRR website and my students really benefit from them.
Chapter 8 discusses comprehension specifically in narrative text. I really like the first sentence in the text. “Comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill.” It made me curious why is comprehension difficult for students. When I first started the tutoring sessions I thought comprehension was going to be my goal but after completing all the testing I realized that comprehension relies on phonics, vocabulary and fluency. So even though my students struggled with comprehension, their fluency scores were more worrisome than the comprehension because when the fluency is at its peak the comprehension will come. The students must understand how the words are made, what the words mean, and that how they are read effects their total understanding of the passage. I really enjoyed the three sentences we read aloud in class to demonstrate syntactic knowledge. I think it would be a good activity to do with my 5th graders. They tend to read very monotone and without expression. So by making them read the same sentence three different ways will help them read. I really liked the different story maps the book provided. The happy face and sad faces are awesome. Not only do they tell the story, but even at first glance the student will be able to know the outcome due to the sad or happy face. It also allows them to list the series of events in the story. I also really like the questioning discussed since we focus on higher level questioning its nice to see activities that incorporate the questioning.
I agree, I think learning from mistakes is important and the scenario at the beginning of the chapter really made me think of what I should and should not do when it comes to comprehension and my students. It is important to know at what level all of our students are reading at so that books may be chosen that will allow them to comprehend what they read and help them to build that comprehension skill as they move up in reading levels.
Chapter 8: Comprehension of Narrative Text: I found to be extremely helpful. In order for students to comprehend what they read they need to have all of the skills that make up reading. If one of the skills like decoding or fluency is missing, then comprehension is not going to take place. The chapter really broke down each skill or area and described how to be sure that the students are building the skills that they need to comprehend the text that they are reading. I also found the graphic organizers that the chapter included to great tools to help expand on the comprehension that we want our students to have.
There are dice cut outs in the IRC and I wrote comprehension questions on the sides then the students rolled the die and answered the question that came up. The students really seemed to enjoy it. And they have to pay attention because they never know what question they are going to be asked.
Chapter 8 covered comprehension. Comprehension is the entire purpose for reading. We read for comprehension. Chapter 8 really confirmed a lot of things that I had already knew about comprehension however I actually learned something from this chapter. I thought comprehension stood alone – in essence I thought comprehension didn’t really require any other skills but the chapter reveals that if other skills are missing then comprehension can be flawed. I’ve been teaching my students comprehension and I’ve had them used graphic organizers to organize the main ideas and events in the story. I have also been teaching them analyze and think past the print. I also use introduce narrative works with the vocabulary list and I notice that when we are reading a story in class out of the textbook students know exactly what the narrator or author is saying because they have an understanding of the vocabulary in the literature. I have no questions in regards to this chapter. Good chapter!
In response to Jacyln - I agree! ELLs need plenty of time to ask questions. I have a few ELs in my class for student teaching and they can read sight words but they don't understand what they are reading. So I let them ask me questions about words and I use pictures in the book with them ... it helps!
Chapter 8 is about comprehension of narrative text. I have, many times, read something and then have no idea what I read. I am not even sure how that is possible but I have done it numerous times. It is like I am reading the words but not paying attention to the meaning. This makes me wonder how many times students do this exact same thing. I think that a big part of the problem is that when I am not reading something that interests me then I tune it out. It bores me. I think the same thing applies to children. As teachers it is important to use literature that connects and interests the students. That is why we took interest inventories of our students at the beginning of tutoring. Of course, in a classroom, it will not always be possible to provide narrative texts that ALL students are excited about. Chapter 8 tells us how to better increase comprehension of narrative texts. Comprehending texts is a much more complicated task then what I have thought. The text compares it to a car and its many parts that are needed to make it work properly. According to the DeVries textbook, comprehension connects to linguistic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, decoding skills, fluency skills, and vocabulary skills. I really like how the textbook broke down the components of reading comprehension: BEFORE READING - predicting, setting a purpose, DURING READING making inferences, self-monitoring, visualizing, and AFTER READING – finding main ideas, drawing conclusions, and elaborating on the author’s intent. The graphic organizers in this chapter are all great ways to help students better comprehend the text. Venn diagrams, “sad” story face, and “happy” story face are all great ways to incorporate all the components of comprehension. I thought this chapter gave some great information! I also loved the lists on page 187 that listed the skills of a proficient reader and the skills of a poor reader.
I also love graphic organizers! There are so many creative charts that you can find on the internet! I used a hamburger graphic organizer in my science class last semester! I thought that Chapter 8 was a great resource! As teachers, it is vital for our students to excel in comprehension so that they have higher chances of success as they continue their educational journey!
Comprehension – this was great chapter, it had a lot of great information that will help those who are concentrating on comprehension for their goal. I found that I have really like to do a veen diagram on our read aloud. I have started using a chapter book for my read aloud and my students enjoy it and they are comprehending and retaining so much information. This week we will finish up chapter one and I will have them help me fill out our venn diagram. On page 179 I really appreciated the strategies that are given. I love the teacher made tapes activity. I actually considered doing that as part of my tutoring for my independent reading station. It is a great tool at any level.
Kiley, I also look forward to the activities that each chapter offers!
This chapter deals with comprehension of narrative text. Comprehension involves many different abilities. Retelling in sequential order, using context clues, decoding skills and others. It is important for students to be able to visualize the story as that is what makes the story more interesting. Every once in a while you will come across a reader who is very fluent but can not comprehend what they are reading. Others struggle so much with decoding that they can not process the content of the story because they are working so hard to read the story word for word. The student needs to have syntactic knowledge (word order, punctuation, and paragraphs), and semantic knowledge (common meanings of words and their combinations). I still struggle with the meanings of both of these. Comprehension of the story is what I believe will get a student to read. Once they can visualize the story and make sense of it, they will want to read for enjoyment. In my tutoring class I have a student who read fairly well but could not answer very many of the comprehension questions. This is the hardest part of reading for me to understand because comprehension of narrative text has always come fairly easily to me.
In response to Trisha W.- I agree that it is easy to tune out what you are reading. I am one that has to have a quiet place to read. I think it is important to find out how and where the students read when they are doing their independent reading. I often find my daughter trying to listen to music or watch t.v. while she is trying to read. I know some students like noise when they are reading but it is definitely not for me.
Comprehension for fifth graders is my goal for the students in the tutoring sessions, so I was excited to read through this chapter. “Comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill” (p. 175). I feel a lot of pressure after reading this statement because I know what I am trying to help my students with may truly help them succeed in their future educational experiences. Although, this statement is also really motivating to me as well! I want to know that I really helped my students out! The first step in deciding how to help students, besides creating a goal, is to decide what strategies to use during instruction time, so I really liked the list of strategies on page 179 in Figure 8.1. Graphic organizers come in so many varieties, and can be easily altered. I love incorporating these into my comprehension activities, and the students seem to really enjoy them more than multiple choice or essay worksheets. They are short, sweet, and to the point. The “happy” and “sad” face graphic organizers were really cute!
The section on assessments was helpful for me because of the formative assessments that are coming up. I don’t want to use the same old assessment strategies such as worksheets to determine the students’ skill levels, so I am really going to try hard to try out the cloze test for one of my formative assessments.
ALL the strategies in the back of the chapter were exciting to read, and I am eager to incorporate a few into my upcoming lesson plans! I really appreciated that the text broke the strategies into sections of before, during, and after. One of the strategies that seems more interesting to me is the Think-Aloud, I love knowing what’s going on inside the students’ head while we are reading the text, so I think this strategy would be a good one to try out. Also, I use retelling quite a bit during my sessions, and I think it really helps the students to recall the events later on after putting them into their own words, and not just using the book’s version.
Chapter 8 discussed reading comprehension of narrative texts. I enjoyed reading the scenario. It seems like an easy mistake to make and I've actually seen many teachers use the same teaching strategy as Mr. Long. They'd hand us a book and a worksheet and we'd fill it out. Even in high school some of the teachers did this and it was highly ineffective. I enjoyed reading about the different strategies. Predict, making inferences, self-monitoring, visualizing, connecting prior knowledge, finding main ideas, and drawing conclusions are all things we have talked about in Reading and Language Arts Methods and should be at least able to help a child work on them. I have never really put much thought into comprehension because I've never really had much of a problem with it. I remember being assigned to read Moby Dick when I was a freshman in high school for my advanced reading class. i spent a lot of time looking up the old words because I had no prior knowledge of them and it was difficult to read. I read it again when I was a senior for a different class and purpose and it was much more enjoyable. Teaching reading isn't just teaching the child how to read word but to string them together and make sense of them. Comprehension is a huge part of reading and I learned a lot from this chapter. The different intervention ideas were excellent. I have a young boy in my tutor group with very high level reading but absolutely no comprehension so I plan to test some of these out.
in response to Emily I liked the Think-Aloud idea too! I think it's a great way to get your students ideas out so that you can have a class discussion. I've seen a lot of teachers use similar ideas and they seem to work really well!
In response to Julie L., I appreciated the scenario at the beginning of the chapter. I know we have all learned that what he did was incorrect, but some days I know we’ll make mistakes when we are on our own, so for me it was good to see that mistakes are going to happen! But I do agree with you, his experience will definitely stick with me and teach me what not to do. This chapter was just as important to me right now too, due that my tutoring students are in need of comprehension skill building, and I know Figure 8.1 will become a great reference for ideas for me throughout the rest of my lesson planning! I, too, was grateful for all the examples shared in the text, the strategies at the end of the chapter and the assessment ideas are sure going to come in handy real quick as formative assessments quickly are coming! Good luck!
This chapter was an excellent read to kick-off my overarching goal: Comprehension! I was interested to learn that fluency must come hand in hand with comprehension and that fluency will usually lead to comprehension. I'm sure I will refer to this chapter many times while writing the lesson plans for the next ten sessions because it gives imperative activities to help students including: story webs, predicting, retelling, and directed listening-thinking activities. One activity that stood out to me was on page 196 entitled "Story Lines." I remember as a young student I loved to create my own stories, so I believe using this tool will be enjoyable.
I'm glad that teachers are recognizing that handing out worksheets to go with the text is highly ineffective. Too many teachers depend on the "survival" or "check-collector" technique and I believe that with the budget cuts...if you're not an effective teacher or if you depend on worksheets you will be fired. Teachers must recognize that textbook companies want your money more than they want to educate the child.. we cannot depend on the textbook alone in order to educate them over a subject area.
The chapter was about comprehension. The whole point of reading a book or material is to understand what the information is about. Some students read material so quickly that they don't understand what they just read. Not only does this affect their comprehension but it also affects fluency, vocabulary, and they way they say their words. There are several parts that make up comprehension; decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and prior knowledge. As I mentioned earlier, if children do not understand what it is that they are reading then they will have trouble understanding what the story is about. Having prior knowledge helps children understand reading material. For example, if a child has been exposed to farming all of his or her life, then they would be able to understand a book about life on the farm. Build their knowledge and expose them to different information and new reading material. When I was younger, I had to re-read certain material over and over until I understood what it was they were talking about. Sometimes I had to read it almost 4 times before it made since; this drastically changed the older I became but sometimes it is hard for younger children to read something and understand it if they don't have prior knowledge about what they are reading. The students I have in my tutoring group actually have good comprehension skills and I haven't noticed any real problems yet. I thought this chapter gave some good pointers and some helpful information to keep in mind later in the classroom.
In response to Brandy: I was wondering that same question. How would we teach self-monitoring in the classroom? Would we be able to have the students do something in partners to help them do a self-check? I thought this was an important strategy but how would we teach that to children who just want to read through the material fast or for those who have learning disabilities etc. like you mentioned. I think this was a good question and as I was reading I was thinking the same thing.
Chapter eight covers comprehension of narrative text. Comprehension is the main reason for reading. If we are unable to comprehend the material we are reading, there is very little benefit from actually reading. One of the students that I work with in my after school tutoring has a very difficult time with comprehension. Most often he will read or listen to a paragraph being read and as soon as we stop reading he is unable to tell me one thing that occurred in the text. He often makes up events that never occurred.
ReplyDeleteI feel that this chapter gave me many strategies for helping students who have a difficult time comprehending the material. I was answering some of the questions at the end of the chapter and many of the before, during, and after strategies are great for helping students develop a better understanding of the material they are reading.
Figure 8.1 on page 179 has a list of strategies for comprehension. All of these are essential for students to comprehend the material. I have always enjoyed reading, and I have never experienced any problems with comprehension. Although I feel very lucky, I also know this has put me in a position where I had never really thought about the fact that some of these skills do not come automatically for students. As teachers I think it will be very important to model and scaffold these strategies into our daily instruction while reading. Students need to learn to self-monitor, make predictions and inferences, sequence events, and consider the authors’ purpose before, during, and after reading. Graphic organizers are an excellent tool that I utilized during my internship with second graders last semester. We had many struggling readers who had a difficult time with comprehension. When students are given graphic organizers they are able to look at questions that they should be asking prior to beginning the reading. During the reading they are able to look back at the questions to self-monitor, predict, etc. After the reading the students are able to look back on the information they have filled in and complete the graphic organizer. This visual organization helps the students to see the information they have gathered from reading the book.
English Language Learners make up a large number of the student population in public schools today. I thought the information that was written for teaching ELL students was very helpful. One point the text made was that we should give English learners plenty of time to ask questions and discuss what they have read. When students discuss, ask questions, make predictions, and draw conclusions they are constantly building onto their comprehension skills. We also must try to relate the text to their previous experiences. Choosing multicultural literature will help students culturally relate, show them that we feel their cultures are important, and it will benefit other students because they will be exposed to a wide variety of cultural literature.
Comprehension is the main purpose of reading. The sole purpose of reading is to understand the information that is being given in the text. Chapter 8 discusses comprehension and its elements. In order to comprehend a given text, a student must have the other reading knowledge and skills, such as: decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and prior knowledge. If a child can not decode the words, they are not going to understand what they say or what they mean. Just by a student missing one of the main components of reading, they are missing the meaning of the entire text.
ReplyDeleteThe question that I have about the text has to do with self-monitoring. Self-monitoring is the ability of readers to check if their reading looks right, sounds rights, and makes sense. How do you teach this to a student or how do you get them to do it on their own? If a student can read a sentence and then think about it realize that something was wrong, then they can go back and look at it. But what if you're a student who just wants to read the text and get it done, you don't want to go back and read a sentence because it didn't make sense.
After reading this chapter, graphic organizer will be something that I will use in tutoring every day. After seeing the information on paper and in a way that is organized, my students may be able to understand the information in a better way.
Having a background of being a poor reader, I noticed that I had some of the characteristics listed on page 187. I had a very limited vocabulary and would focus only on pronouncing words correctly. Reading is so important. You can not go one day without having to read something in our society, it is impossible. I eventually overcame by reading problems, but it was only because I was able to receive help.
In response to Jaclyn:
ReplyDeleteI think that what you wrote about choosing multicultural texts is very important to all students, not just ELL students. We must ask questions and ask for predictions to build background knowledge for all students. While tutoring, I found that none of my students know what a National Geographic magazine is, so I've decided to bring one in to show them.
Brandy,
ReplyDeleteTeaching self-monitoring can be very difficult. I have a student who I am tutoring who knows how to self-correct, but he doesn't want to. He will read through the material as fast as possible just to get it done. I am trying to find ways to incorporate activities that he enjoys and that help him to stop and think. I have found that reading together and stopping to discuss what we have read frequently has helped. He has actually become more aware of the errors that he makes when he misreads a word.
You might also try to incorporate think-alouds while teaching and reading. It may not help students who simply do not care, but it will help those who do and are struggling. It might help to try to find books that interest the student. They may have a greater desire to slow down so they can understand the material they are reading.
Comprehension is the main reason for reading. This process requires complex, higher-level thinking skills and is based on the ability to encode and retrieve the basic building blocks of sentences and relate the meaning within them to scenes and stories from a text. This chapter lays out how to teach and build comprehension strategies. I think that it is so important to teach students how to think about a story and the concepts in it. Using graphic organizer teaches students how to think of characters, setting, problems and solutions in a story and before long they will be able to do this on their own and comprehending will be much easier for them. It is essential for teacher to read and discuss literacy with students and to construct meaning. The best way that they chapter identifies to do this is through a think aloud. I think that many teachers do this without even knowing they are doing it because it makes sense. Making predictions and summarizing and retelling what happened in the story are also very natural steps in the comprehension process. This chapter lays out all of the elements that are needed for comprehension and this includes all of the building blocks of reading. This chapter provides concrete ideas on how to build students comprehension skills. There is more to comprehension then just understanding the plot, setting and characters of a story. Students need to infer the authors writing, visualize what the text is saying and being able to self monitors their reading. This is why the MSV is so important. This is a great modeling tool!
ReplyDeleteIn response to Jaclyn C:
I too agree that graphic organizers give readers a purpose for reading. Many times I give the comprehension question before I read to also create a purpose for reading and comprehending. Many times poor readers can be unmotivated and creating a purpose for reading will spark their awareness. This chapter gave some great ideas for teaching comprehension strategies and in your response to Brandy I noticed that you have a struggling reader that is unmotivated. I think the think aloud suggestion is a great tool. For many readers seeing it on paper is difficult to understand they may be more auditory learners and need to hear the discussion. Taking notes while reading and jotting down questions and answers may also help the comprehension process. This is good for older readers.
I thought that the scenario at the beginning of the chapter was very informative. Some teachers do not bother to see where their students are at before they assign them specific books to read. If Mr. Long had taken the time to see what level his students were reading at then he wouldn’t have wasted class time on a book that was too hard for his students to read.
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 is all about how good and poor readers comprehend text and the problems that they might have if they comprehend text the wrong way. I thought that it was helpful on how the chapter would talk about a specific topic (making inferences) and then follow that up with an example of how a teacher might ask the students’ questions based on what was read.
What I really liked was figures 8.2 and 8.3. These are two fun ways to have students do a web based on the book that they are reading. The part on assessment really clicked for because that was what we were doing during our first few weeks of tutoring. I also liked a lot of the activities that were at the end of the chapter.
In response to Tara:
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about comprehension. Without it people would not be able to read or read good enough to understand what they need to know to get by in the world today.
Janna,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is very important for teachers to try to find out the levels their students are at prior to selecting literature. When students struggle and are trying to work at their frustration level it leads to many issues, especially if students do not enjoy reading to begin with.
Comprehension is the understanding of what is read. This chapter gave a lot of information on how to work on comprehension. The figure on page 179 had a great list of strategies to help with comprehension. I love to read, I have a problem that when I am reading. I have to be in a completely quite area. I have trouble getting into the book and what is going on in it if there is any noise interrupting my reading. I think this chapter will help me understand how to work with students that are not able to comprehend and it will also help me learn how to comprehend things I read better. I think it will be good for students to get into the book and become one of the characters. I think that is what helps me comprehend what is going on. The part for the ELL students was very interesting to read about. I think the ELL students are becoming more popular in the schools today and we have to also be prepared to teach them to comprehend better. We need to give the students more time to read the material and ask questions to predict and make conclusions on what they read. We also need to relate the material they are reading to their previous experiences. Graphic organizers are great to help the students write notes or write the questions they are trying to find out in the story.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Janna Colson–
ReplyDeleteThe scenario at the beginning was very interesting to read. We need to know the reading level before we give the students the material to read. When a student has a book that is too hard, they get frustrated easily and they give up on reading. I think the figures 8.2 and 8.3 were very cool and interesting. This book is always giving new ideas for us that are starting a career in teaching.
Chapter 8 deals with Comprehension of Narrative Text. The scenario at the beginning of the chapter was right on the money with how some classrooms operate. When I was in middle school my teacher was on maternity leave, so all the substitute did was have us read the chapter and fill out worksheets. I can honestly say I didn’t gain any information from that class. In Mr. Long’s defense, he was a first year teacher, but what I really liked was the fact that he was open to hear the students’ responses about the lessons. Mr. Long should have looked into the situation more, rather than just moving forward. As an educator, you sometimes have to go above and beyond the call of duty in order for your students to learn. The very first sentence sums up the whole chapter, “Comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill” (DeVries, 175). I liked how the chapter broke down the Components of Reading Comprehension; they were broken down by comprehension strategies before reading, comprehension strategies during reading, and comprehension strategies after reading. Under each section there were helpful tips/hints as to what you should do and ask the student as the story is being read. Figure 8.6 caught my attention because it lists habits and characteristics of a poor reader, and after reviewing them I realized I have had several students in previous years that have shown these characteristics. How do you prevent yourself from jumping to conclusions that one of your students may be a poor reader? How long do you let time go by before you finally realize they are a poor reader? I was also glad this chapter discussed assessments. As we are working through our tutoring course, I realized that assessing the students the whole time is very important.
ReplyDeleteIn response to April B:
ReplyDeleteI am the same way when it comes to reading; I have to be in complete silence. I think students sometimes struggle reading when they are in an environment that is noisy. I think as future educators, we need to prepare even more for ELL students. When I was in elementary school ELL students were almost unheard of, but now it is uncommon if you don’t have any ELL students. Every teacher that I have done my internships under all promote the use of graphic organizers. They all believe that is one of the best tools to help students with comprehension.
The main purpose of reading is to comprehend text and requires the use of higher think skills. I liked how this chapter broke up the skills needed to comprehend text. The chapter explained these skills very well and provided good examples of possible confusion for students. The most valuable portion of this chapter to me was the comprehension strategies for before, during, and after reading. This section provided not only details on these strategies, but great examples to help students comprehend text.
ReplyDeleteI worked with several students in my reading internship course to help them develop better comprehension skills and this chapter reinforced some of the methods I used. The use of predictions prior to reading, inferences and visualization during reading, and retelling the story after reading are all methods that I used during these sessions. I think this chapter does a great job of outlining these specific skills that students need to develop in order to improve comprehension.
Response to April B:
It is difficult to create a completely quiet reading area in the classroom and this can be a problem for students. I think it does help if the student is interested in the book that he/she is reading as they can become so involved in the story that they can block out potential distractions. I like allowing students to self-select books for independent reading in order to encourage them to read.
The further I read in our DeVries textbook, the more I learn about teaching students to read. I also find myself amazed at how complex reading really is. Each chapter adds a new concept that is needed to become a good reader. These concepts are then broken down into more detailed skills that are required for students to become an accomplished reader. Chapter 8 discusses comprehension of narrative text. The knowledge and skills needed to understand what is being read includes linguistic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, decoding skills, fluency skills, and vocabulary skills. When all of this is combined together with an understanding of the meaning of a text, the student has achieved the main purpose of reading: comprehension. If students are ever going to read for enjoyment or even read for information, they need to be able to comprehend text. I found the selecting narrative texts for English language learners guidelines on page 192 to be very helpful. I had not put much thought into selecting books for ELL students and I know feel that I have a better understanding of how this should be done.
ReplyDeleteI actually used the Story Lines activity from page 196 with my tutoring group last week. The students liked sharing their own predictions of the story and they are anxious to finish reading the story so they can compare the real story to their own. I also like the graphic organizer examples starting on page 203. They provide some good ideas for retelling after a story is read. Another activity I would like to try is the “And this is the rest of the story” activity on page 205.
In response to Tyler G…
ReplyDeleteI also appreciated the comprehension strategies provided in the chapter. You seem to be using the right activities before, during, and after reading a story to help your students better comprehend what they are reading. My students seem to struggle with making predictions before the story. They might guess something obvious like the book “White Water” by P.J. Petersen is going to be about white water rafting, but they never make detailed or in-depth predictions. Through questioning techniques I try to probe my students to predict more about the story, but they say they just can’t think of anything because they have never read the story. I say that you can’t predict if you have already read the story but they just don’t seem to understand this concept. I don’t think that they have had to do much predicting before so I am going to continue to scaffold them in this area.
The scenario at the beginning of the chapter sounded way too familiar! I can relate with students about reading text that was way above our level of comprehension. We too could do the worksheets and put together projects but we didn’t really understand the book. In seventh grade we read George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm”. I re-read this book my senior year of high school for a class and I was surprised! While it still isn’t my favorite book, it made a lot more sense because I knew what the author was referring to and had the background knowledge to go with it. As middle school students we had the linguistic, syntactic, and semantic knowledge, and decoding and fluency skills necessary to read to book, but we did not have the vocabulary skills or background for it to be an appropriate text for us.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated how the book went into detail about predicting, finding purpose, making inferences, self-monitoring, and visualizing. I already knew these were important parts of understanding the text, but I didn’t know the specifics of how they affected comprehension. I love it when I am doing a read aloud and children get very excited when they make a connection with the text, and can notice little things.
As teachers it is very important to read various types of texts with our students so that they can not only have vicarious experiences and expand their vocabulary, but increase their literary and world knowledge. The graphic organizers the book suggested are very helpful in making sure students comprehend, especially for ELL or students with learning disabilities. I love the “Happy” story face graphic organizer on page 183. There are tons of ways to assess reading comprehension. Informal assessments occur every time we ask questions during a story or ask a student to share something form the reading.
Being able to comprehend the story and label its parts is something that we learn to do throughout school. I learned a lot of the strategies in Library. Do children now days just go to library to check out the books or do the librarians serve as reading specialist type teachers?
In response to April B:
ReplyDeleteI also really liked the ELL section too! I can only imagine how difficult it is for them to understand some of the books we read. This book is and the activities it has it in are going to be a great asset for when we are working with children!
Chapter eight was about comprehension in narrative texts. I liked the opening scenario because it made me think of how it will be when I start teaching and the possibility that I may have the “all by myself” feeling kind of like in the story. I like how the chapter pointed out right away that comprehension is the main reason for reading texts. The chapter also pointed out that comprehension is tied to other reading skills like fluency, vocabulary and decoding to name a few. There are also a variety of skills used during reading and teachers should incorporate before, during, and after activities to reinforce skills being learned. Predicting, visualizing, and elaborating on content are a few examples of before, during and after reading activities. Students also need to learn to connect prior knowledge to the material being read. I liked how the book also gave several different examples of informal and formal assessments to check reading comprehension as well as check the student’s progress in comprehension.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter really hit home with me. Now that I am working with students in my tutoring group, I finally understand just how difficult it can be to plan a variety of activities on a regular basis to help students progress in different areas of reading. Especially when those students are on different levels. Being an avid reader who has always loved books, it has always been hard for me to grasp how some people do not enjoy reading. I really appreciated how the book also talked about teaching ELL students in comprehension, finding narrative material, and different teaching strategies for comprehension. This chapter was a great resource and I am glad to have it for present and future reference!
In response to Janel…I also appreciated the detail the book went into throughout the chapter. It is so nice to have such an incredible resource at our fingertips that explains what to do and why it is important! I also enjoyed the scenario at the beginning of the chapter. I hope that I do not have the “all by myself” feeling at the beginning of the year like in the story! I also realize though that, as in the story, teachers are all different and do a variety of different activities but use reflection afterwards to determine how effective those activities were. Reflection is the key!
In response to Janna C...I agree with your thoughts on this chapter's scenario - I think Mr. Long is a good cautionary tale for all of us! I also appreciated the example of story mapping shown in figure 8.2. I plan to try story mapping with my tutoring group very soon. thanks for sharing! Julie
ReplyDeleteThis chapter starts out with a great example of what not to do with Mr. Long in the scenario. I am a believer in often learning from mistakes, so I think this one will stick with me. This chapter is very timely for me personally, as my 4th grade tutoring group has comprehension as their goal. I appreciate figure 8.1 that outlines strategies for comprehension,and really liked reviewing the story mapping and venn diagram examles, both things I will be trying with my group soon. The section on assessments is crucial as we now begin creating our formatives to match our objectives- I am getting a lot of great ideas here. My favorite section of each chapter is always the final section listing intervention strategies and activity suggestions. I am grateful to have these to reference and plan to implement them with my tutoring group.
ReplyDeleteOnce again this chapter was very insightful. The scenario at the beginning of the chapter was eye opening. I remember in several classes in high school where this is what we did. It is easy to just scan a chapter for the key words then find the correct answer, however, when you have to apply the information that requires a higher level of thinking and therefore if you are not prepared for this it won't be pretty. I loved the last part of the scenario, I have highlighted it and posted it on a note card.."answering literal questions does not prove that they comprehend the text." This one quote can sum of the entire chapter.
ReplyDeleteI like the "Happy and Sad Story Face" graphic organizers. I think that that would be a great way to help students connect with the story. I also found some great graphic organizers to use when discussion comprehension at the Florida website.
I tutor in the school district third graders and we are working on comprehension. It has been a struggle with some. I loved the instructional recommendations for ELL students. The majority of the class is ELL and I think having these ideas will allow me to bring a different approach to the students.
The strategies were fantastic as always, I can remember doing the story lines in school. I haven't seen a lot of teachers in the school I am at do them, however, I think that they can be beneficial.
The idea of using read along tapes for students when you are not able to get to them that particular day or time, is a great idea. I personally comprehend better when I see it and hear it. Therefore I think this would be a great idea to incorporate.
The last strategy that really stuck out to me was the prompts for writing a story summary on pg 202. I think that this is a great way to incorporate comprehension and writing. For most ELL students in our school district at least they are not able to exit from ESL until they can look at a picture and write a scenario. I think that all the practice a student can get in writing along with comprehension the better off they will be.
In response to Julie,
ReplyDeleteI agree my favorite parts of the chapter are the scenarios and then the interventions. It gives you so many different ideas to incorporate into the classroom. This is my second degree, and I have to admit the books I have received for any of my reading classes are far better and more worthwhile then any of the other texts I have purchased. Isn't it great when you need a little guidance in a particular subject and then here comes a chapter like this right when you need it the most. Good luck and tell me how those graphic organizers work for you. There are also some other great ones on the Florida website.
Teaching comprehension skills seems quite a bit trickier than some of the other Big 5, particularly when it is not an “obvious” issue. Students who read fluently and who decode words well do not always comprehend what they read. I gave an example last semester in the Reading and Language Arts methods course of the Serbo-Croatian language. This language is completely phonetic. If you understand the sounds each letter makes, you can read fluently. I could easily read off a sentence or sign written in Serbo-Croatian (as long as it was written in Roman script; if it was in Cyrillic, that was another story). However, just because I could “read” it fluently did not mean I understood it. It is difficult then to know if a student truly understands what they are reading when they appear to read well.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter gave many good activities to use to evaluate comprehension skills. Before, during, and after any reading students should be engaged in discussion about the material. Predictions about the story, reading to confirm or refute those predictions, and being able to retell the relevant details of the story show comprehension. If a student is able to decode the story, but comprehension is missing, the chapter also provides relevant intervention strategies. In order to help my two students in the next few weeks, I plan to use the alternate writing activity on page 197, in which the student and teacher pair up to write a story together. This would probably work well even in a small group of no more than 3 or 4 students.
The most fascinating portion of the chapter was reading how students can sometimes rely too much on personal experience while reading, instead of not enough. I would suppose that by using personal experience to this extent the student is not understanding what the author intends.
In response to Shelby H.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that the sub relied on worksheets, although as a sub that is often all that is left. However, I knew of a high school history teacher of many years who did the same, with no such excuse. As a para of several students who took his class, it was frustrating to have them fail the end of chapter tests time after time because, although they could get through the worksheets with some help, they could not understand the test questions.
In response to Janna:
ReplyDeleteI thought the beginning scenario was a pretty good picture of what I see everyday. In the basal readers they have extended activities to enhance what the students read. It makes the student use what they have learned in other ways such as writing activities or even comparing the text with a previous read text. However, I don't see much of the extention activities being used. They seem to move on to the next story as quickly as possible. Sometimes I think the students would benefit more if the pace was a little slower and more comprehensive.
Chapter 8 talks about comprehension and all that it entails. There are so many different aspects that go along with teaching a child to read, that we, as teacher need to be aware of. I really like the fig. 8.6 on pg. 187 that talks about that habits and characteristics of a poor reader. We all know there are many students are proficient, but there are just as many who slip through the cracks.
ReplyDeleteMy question was answered by the 9 habits and characteristics of a poor reader. I find that I use graphic organizers during my tutoring sessions to see how well my students comprehend what they read, but I am going to start asking them questions instead of always using these. If we just sit and discuss the story, instead of always making them write something down, they can comprehend the story just as well, or even better.
I am learning as I go along in my tutoring that my two students just needed a little more one-on-one time to finish learning what that didn’t quite understand. They have picked up so much so quickly in the few weeks that we have been working it is amazing.
In response to Tyler….
ReplyDeleteI liked how the chapter broke down the comprehension strategies too. I also enjoyed how the chapter went into the details regarding the predictions, inferences and visualizations….I too am using these during my tutoring sessions and they are working wonderful. My students are really showing signs of understanding what is going on with reading.
Janna:
ReplyDeleteI also thought it was helpful and interesting that it gave us example scenarios and it also gave us what the teachers would say and should say in certain scenarios.
I thought chapter 8 was a great chapter. It is also a helpful chapter for those who are concentrating on comprehension for their tutoring sessions. I like that this book gives us tips on all of the big 5 that we have learned about.
ReplyDeleteI like that this chapter gave us tips on what to do before, during, and after a book to ensure that our students are learning comprehension the way they should.
Another helpful thing this chapter gave me was it gave me activities on how to check for comprehension. Sometimes I feel like I run out of ideas, and I use the same activities too much, so it makes it nice to be able to refer back to my reading book for good, useful activities.
Chapter 8 over narrative comprehension helped me fully understand its reasons for being. I will admit I hated reading because I was terrible at comprehending when I was young. It probably wasn't until college that I could read and fully comprehend. Before, I was doing good at other aspects, such as fluency, but I wasn't understanding the words I was reading. Now after reading the chapter, there are so many strategies for comprehending. When I began to improve on my comprehension, I would imagine the story in my mind, like if it were a movie. The "happy" story face could be used after a reading to make sure students are comprehending. It could even serve the purpose of assessment. One other point in the reading I enjoyed was the section over selecting narrative texts. It gave different ways to chose narrative texts for your readers.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Janna C.: I had a teacher in high school that pretty much does as the example in the book did. There were many kids in my class that weren't on the same level. The teacher still forced us all to read the same book and half of the class didn't comprehend. We didn't do anything out of the ordinary to fully understand. She didn't go out of her way to ensure we understood.
ReplyDeleteThe breakdown of the chapter reading eight is that is having the students’ understand comprehension with using visual aids. I have been using visual aids with my tutoring which I feel that they have a better understanding of the material. Also in the chapter it gave different tests that can be used for your students such as maze test, think-alouds or rubrics. What I find to be helpful is the activities in reading. I had no questions or comments. I look at the reading material differently by was the part on “English Learners and Narrative texts” which I find the material very interesting. Living in a small town we aren’t diverse so it is interesting how to teach students. My own experience is that with my tutoring students I want them to enjoy reading and understanding the material that they read instead of just reading it. I think this chapter gave great ideas and with the visual aids is always helpful.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Kiley A,
ReplyDeleteI agree with on running out of ideas. It is great that we have this book just in case we feel that we having nothing we can always look back. Also I try not to use the same thing so my students aren't bored.
Chapter 8 focused on comprehension of narrative text. Linguistic knowledge includes a students’ understanding of stress, pitch, and juncture. Stress is the emphasis one word may receive over the other words in a sentence. Pitch refers to intonation. Juncture is the pause that occurs in language. Syntactic knowledge is the part of the language that deals with word order, punctuation, and paragraphs. Semantic knowledge is the common meanings of words and their combinations. I really liked the comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading. Things such as predicting, making inferences, connecting prior knowledge to texts, and drawing conclusions are all great tools that I will most definitely incorporate into my lessons. The assessments for comprehension were great. I never realized how many are available. I use retelling and rubrics a lot in my lessons and they are both wonderful assessment tools for my students. I really appreciated the 7 guidelines on page 192 for selecting books for English learners. Since I have two ESOL students in my group, it is always nice to find tips on what kind of material I should be bringing to our tutoring sessions. Once again, the activities at the end of the chapter were great and I will include some in my future lessons! Does anyone have any other comprehension tools or activities they have used that have worked well in their tutoring groups?
ReplyDeleteIn response to Alisha G—I agree that the students’ comprehension levels increase drastically when I incorporate visual aids into my lessons. I have 2 ESOL students in my group, so including visuals with my activities really helps them with both vocabulary and comprehension. It is important that we get tips to help choose material for English learners because we never know what we may encounter in our future classrooms. I as well liked learning about all of the different assessments that are available to test a students’ comprehension of the material. I use rubrics and retelling a lot in my lessons and it seems to be wonderful tools for my tutoring students.
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 and Comprehension of Narrative Text
ReplyDeleteReading the scenario about Mr. Long and his worksheets, I realized that I’ve come a long way from when I first began my degree in education. I substituted before going back to school to get my degree in elementary education and I use to think that worksheet were what teachers gave to students to assess their knowledge. Of course, after taking several classes and observing effective teachers I could identify where Mr. Long went wrong.
I learned last year in Reading Methods about using questioning techniques in our read aloud and how before, during and after questions not only get them motivated about the story but it also helps them think about the story.
I liked the paragraph on Linguistic Knowledge and the example of using three sentences and changing the intonation. I never thought about doing an activity like that but it totally makes sense.
My two students are working on their comprehension skills and I like the activities in the back of the chapter as well as those on the Florida Reading website. There is an activity on page 201 – Wordless Books. I learned about these in my Children’s Literature class. I loved them. One I “read” for that class was called, “The Red Book,” by Barbara Lehman. I think this may be an upcoming activity for my students.
In response to Jen H.,
ReplyDeleteI liked the two “Happy/Sad Story Face” graphic organizers too. Although at first glance I didn’t see it. Sometimes graphic organizers can be boring, so these are two fun ones that would be great to use in the classroom as well as for our tutoring students. I also found a website for read aloud books. It is http://www.storylineonline.net/ . I forgot all about it until I saw the activity on page 198. Actors read the stories and there are also activities and lesson ideas included.
This chapter covered comprehension of narrative text. The main purpose for reading is comprehension. Comprehension allows us to understand what we read. All three of my students that I tutor have a difficult time with comprehension. None of my students struggle with reading but when we are done reading they have a difficult time recalling what occurred in the text. This chapter gave me some great ideas for helping my students with comprehension. One strategy I use with my students is graphic organizers. I have already seen an improvement in what the students retain from the reading. Graphic organizers are also great for visual learners. I had questions on how to help English Language Learners with comprehension. The book mentioned giving English learners plenty of time for questions and discussion of the text. Another point the text made was relating the text to their previous experiences. Mrs. Stoppel has made this point in class as well. By choosing multicultural literature will help these students relate to their own culture.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Brandy,
ReplyDeleteI think graphic organizers are a great tool for our students. All of my students struggle with comprehension and since I’ve started using graphic organizers, I have seen great improvement. My students went from answering maybe one comprehension questions to almost all of them.
In response to Jen H.,
I LOVE the “Happy/Sad Story Face” graphic organizers too. Having a wide variety of graphic organizers are a great strategy for comprehension. I’ve also used some of the graphic organizers off of the FCRR website and my students really benefit from them.
Melinda S.
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 discusses comprehension specifically in narrative text. I really like the first sentence in the text. “Comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill.” It made me curious why is comprehension difficult for students. When I first started the tutoring sessions I thought comprehension was going to be my goal but after completing all the testing I realized that comprehension relies on phonics, vocabulary and fluency. So even though my students struggled with comprehension, their fluency scores were more worrisome than the comprehension because when the fluency is at its peak the comprehension will come. The students must understand how the words are made, what the words mean, and that how they are read effects their total understanding of the passage. I really enjoyed the three sentences we read aloud in class to demonstrate syntactic knowledge. I think it would be a good activity to do with my 5th graders. They tend to read very monotone and without expression. So by making them read the same sentence three different ways will help them read. I really liked the different story maps the book provided. The happy face and sad faces are awesome. Not only do they tell the story, but even at first glance the student will be able to know the outcome due to the sad or happy face. It also allows them to list the series of events in the story. I also really like the questioning discussed since we focus on higher level questioning its nice to see activities that incorporate the questioning.
In response to Julie L....
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think learning from mistakes is important and the scenario at the beginning of the chapter really made me think of what I should and should not do when it comes to comprehension and my students. It is important to know at what level all of our students are reading at so that books may be chosen that will allow them to comprehend what they read and help them to build that comprehension skill as they move up in reading levels.
Chapter 8: Comprehension of Narrative Text: I found to be extremely helpful. In order for students to comprehend what they read they need to have all of the skills that make up reading. If one of the skills like decoding or fluency is missing, then comprehension is not going to take place. The chapter really broke down each skill or area and described how to be sure that the students are building the skills that they need to comprehend the text that they are reading. I also found the graphic organizers that the chapter included to great tools to help expand on the comprehension that we want our students to have.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Kelsey M.
ReplyDeleteThere are dice cut outs in the IRC and I wrote comprehension questions on the sides then the students rolled the die and answered the question that came up. The students really seemed to enjoy it. And they have to pay attention because they never know what question they are going to be asked.
Chapter 8 covered comprehension. Comprehension is the entire purpose for reading. We read for comprehension. Chapter 8 really confirmed a lot of things that I had already knew about comprehension however I actually learned something from this chapter. I thought comprehension stood alone – in essence I thought comprehension didn’t really require any other skills but the chapter reveals that if other skills are missing then comprehension can be flawed. I’ve been teaching my students comprehension and I’ve had them used graphic organizers to organize the main ideas and events in the story. I have also been teaching them analyze and think past the print. I also use introduce narrative works with the vocabulary list and I notice that when we are reading a story in class out of the textbook students know exactly what the narrator or author is saying because they have an understanding of the vocabulary in the literature. I have no questions in regards to this chapter. Good chapter!
ReplyDeleteIn response to Jacyln - I agree! ELLs need plenty of time to ask questions. I have a few ELs in my class for student teaching and they can read sight words but they don't understand what they are reading. So I let them ask me questions about words and I use pictures in the book with them ... it helps!
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 is about comprehension of narrative text. I have, many times, read something and then have no idea what I read. I am not even sure how that is possible but I have done it numerous times. It is like I am reading the words but not paying attention to the meaning. This makes me wonder how many times students do this exact same thing. I think that a big part of the problem is that when I am not reading something that interests me then I tune it out. It bores me. I think the same thing applies to children. As teachers it is important to use literature that connects and interests the students. That is why we took interest inventories of our students at the beginning of tutoring. Of course, in a classroom, it will not always be possible to provide narrative texts that ALL students are excited about.
ReplyDeleteChapter 8 tells us how to better increase comprehension of narrative texts. Comprehending texts is a much more complicated task then what I have thought. The text compares it to a car and its many parts that are needed to make it work properly. According to the DeVries textbook, comprehension connects to linguistic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, decoding skills, fluency skills, and vocabulary skills.
I really like how the textbook broke down the components of reading comprehension: BEFORE READING - predicting, setting a purpose, DURING READING making inferences, self-monitoring, visualizing, and AFTER READING – finding main ideas, drawing conclusions, and elaborating on the author’s intent. The graphic organizers in this chapter are all great ways to help students better comprehend the text. Venn diagrams, “sad” story face, and “happy” story face are all great ways to incorporate all the components of comprehension.
I thought this chapter gave some great information! I also loved the lists on page 187 that listed the skills of a proficient reader and the skills of a poor reader.
In response to Irv:
ReplyDeleteI also love graphic organizers! There are so many creative charts that you can find on the internet! I used a hamburger graphic organizer in my science class last semester!
I thought that Chapter 8 was a great resource! As teachers, it is vital for our students to excel in comprehension so that they have higher chances of success as they continue their educational journey!
Comprehension – this was great chapter, it had a lot of great information that will help those who are concentrating on comprehension for their goal. I found that I have really like to do a veen diagram on our read aloud. I have started using a chapter book for my read aloud and my students enjoy it and they are comprehending and retaining so much information. This week we will finish up chapter one and I will have them help me fill out our venn diagram. On page 179 I really appreciated the strategies that are given. I love the teacher made tapes activity. I actually considered doing that as part of my tutoring for my independent reading station. It is a great tool at any level.
ReplyDeleteKiley, I also look forward to the activities that each chapter offers!
This chapter deals with comprehension of narrative text. Comprehension involves many different abilities. Retelling in sequential order, using context clues, decoding skills and others. It is important for students to be able to visualize the story as that is what makes the story more interesting. Every once in a while you will come across a reader who is very fluent but can not comprehend what they are reading. Others struggle so much with decoding that they can not process the content of the story because they are working so hard to read the story word for word. The student needs to have syntactic knowledge (word order, punctuation, and paragraphs), and semantic knowledge (common meanings of words and their combinations). I still struggle with the meanings of both of these. Comprehension of the story is what I believe will get a student to read. Once they can visualize the story and make sense of it, they will want to read for enjoyment. In my tutoring class I have a student who read fairly well but could not answer very many of the comprehension questions. This is the hardest part of reading for me to understand because comprehension of narrative text has always come fairly easily to me.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Trisha W.- I agree that it is easy to tune out what you are reading. I am one that has to have a quiet place to read. I think it is important to find out how and where the students read when they are doing their independent reading. I often find my daughter trying to listen to music or watch t.v. while she is trying to read. I know some students like noise when they are reading but it is definitely not for me.
ReplyDeleteComprehension for fifth graders is my goal for the students in the tutoring sessions, so I was excited to read through this chapter. “Comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill” (p. 175). I feel a lot of pressure after reading this statement because I know what I am trying to help my students with may truly help them succeed in their future educational experiences. Although, this statement is also really motivating to me as well! I want to know that I really helped my students out! The first step in deciding how to help students, besides creating a goal, is to decide what strategies to use during instruction time, so I really liked the list of strategies on page 179 in Figure 8.1. Graphic organizers come in so many varieties, and can be easily altered. I love incorporating these into my comprehension activities, and the students seem to really enjoy them more than multiple choice or essay worksheets. They are short, sweet, and to the point. The “happy” and “sad” face graphic organizers were really cute!
ReplyDeleteThe section on assessments was helpful for me because of the formative assessments that are coming up. I don’t want to use the same old assessment strategies such as worksheets to determine the students’ skill levels, so I am really going to try hard to try out the cloze test for one of my formative assessments.
ALL the strategies in the back of the chapter were exciting to read, and I am eager to incorporate a few into my upcoming lesson plans! I really appreciated that the text broke the strategies into sections of before, during, and after. One of the strategies that seems more interesting to me is the Think-Aloud, I love knowing what’s going on inside the students’ head while we are reading the text, so I think this strategy would be a good one to try out. Also, I use retelling quite a bit during my sessions, and I think it really helps the students to recall the events later on after putting them into their own words, and not just using the book’s version.
Chapter 8 discussed reading comprehension of narrative texts. I enjoyed reading the scenario. It seems like an easy mistake to make and I've actually seen many teachers use the same teaching strategy as Mr. Long. They'd hand us a book and a worksheet and we'd fill it out. Even in high school some of the teachers did this and it was highly ineffective. I enjoyed reading about the different strategies. Predict, making inferences, self-monitoring, visualizing, connecting prior knowledge, finding main ideas, and drawing conclusions are all things we have talked about in Reading and Language Arts Methods and should be at least able to help a child work on them. I have never really put much thought into comprehension because I've never really had much of a problem with it. I remember being assigned to read Moby Dick when I was a freshman in high school for my advanced reading class. i spent a lot of time looking up the old words because I had no prior knowledge of them and it was difficult to read. I read it again when I was a senior for a different class and purpose and it was much more enjoyable. Teaching reading isn't just teaching the child how to read word but to string them together and make sense of them. Comprehension is a huge part of reading and I learned a lot from this chapter. The different intervention ideas were excellent. I have a young boy in my tutor group with very high level reading but absolutely no comprehension so I plan to test some of these out.
ReplyDeletein response to Emily
ReplyDeleteI liked the Think-Aloud idea too! I think it's a great way to get your students ideas out so that you can have a class discussion. I've seen a lot of teachers use similar ideas and they seem to work really well!
In response to Julie L., I appreciated the scenario at the beginning of the chapter. I know we have all learned that what he did was incorrect, but some days I know we’ll make mistakes when we are on our own, so for me it was good to see that mistakes are going to happen! But I do agree with you, his experience will definitely stick with me and teach me what not to do. This chapter was just as important to me right now too, due that my tutoring students are in need of comprehension skill building, and I know Figure 8.1 will become a great reference for ideas for me throughout the rest of my lesson planning! I, too, was grateful for all the examples shared in the text, the strategies at the end of the chapter and the assessment ideas are sure going to come in handy real quick as formative assessments quickly are coming! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteThis chapter was an excellent read to kick-off my overarching goal: Comprehension! I was interested to learn that fluency must come hand in hand with comprehension and that fluency will usually lead to comprehension. I'm sure I will refer to this chapter many times while writing the lesson plans for the next ten sessions because it gives imperative activities to help students including: story webs, predicting, retelling, and directed listening-thinking activities. One activity that stood out to me was on page 196 entitled "Story Lines." I remember as a young student I loved to create my own stories, so I believe using this tool will be enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Shaina G,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that teachers are recognizing that handing out worksheets to go with the text is highly ineffective. Too many teachers depend on the "survival" or "check-collector" technique and I believe that with the budget cuts...if you're not an effective teacher or if you depend on worksheets you will be fired. Teachers must recognize that textbook companies want your money more than they want to educate the child.. we cannot depend on the textbook alone in order to educate them over a subject area.
The chapter was about comprehension. The whole point of reading a book or material is to understand what the information is about. Some students read material so quickly that they don't understand what they just read. Not only does this affect their comprehension but it also affects fluency, vocabulary, and they way they say their words. There are several parts that make up comprehension; decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and prior knowledge. As I mentioned earlier, if children do not understand what it is that they are reading then they will have trouble understanding what the story is about. Having prior knowledge helps children understand reading material. For example, if a child has been exposed to farming all of his or her life, then they would be able to understand a book about life on the farm. Build their knowledge and expose them to different information and new reading material.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger, I had to re-read certain material over and over until I understood what it was they were talking about. Sometimes I had to read it almost 4 times before it made since; this drastically changed the older I became but sometimes it is hard for younger children to read something and understand it if they don't have prior knowledge about what they are reading. The students I have in my tutoring group actually have good comprehension skills and I haven't noticed any real problems yet. I thought this chapter gave some good pointers and some helpful information to keep in mind later in the classroom.
In response to Brandy:
ReplyDeleteI was wondering that same question. How would we teach self-monitoring in the classroom? Would we be able to have the students do something in partners to help them do a self-check? I thought this was an important strategy but how would we teach that to children who just want to read through the material fast or for those who have learning disabilities etc. like you mentioned. I think this was a good question and as I was reading I was thinking the same thing.