This week, I chose to focus on the Gregory and Cahill article, "Kindergarteners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers," because I am currently placed in a 1st grade classroom, and I am really interested in some ways to get my young students involved in literacy comprehension. First of all, I really liked how this article stressed the importance for students to create meaning from the texts that they read. Often times in my placement, I see the teacher read really great literature to the students; however, this is how the activity goes: the students sit down on the carpet, the teacher reminds them that there is NO talking during the story, the teacher reads the 5-minute story, and the children return to their seats. I just can't understand why my teacher is not taking it one step further and giving her students background information before reading or bringing up common themes, or allowing the students time to discuss and connect it to their own lives. It's frustrating because a lot of the stories have such great themes of friendship, adventure, telling the truth, etc. and they are not allowed time to apply it to their lives and really "examine the text critically."
I absolutely love to read, and I know that when I read a book, I follow some type of comprehension strategies in my head such as guessing what will happen next, connecting situations to my personal life, and summarizing things so that I understand better. It only seems natural that younger students should and can do the same things! The teacher, "Mrs. Hope" allows the students time for, "making connections, visualizing, asking questions and inferring," and I really want to do this with my students, even though my CT doesn't. I am both amazed and excited by Mrs. Hope's ability to teach her KINDERGARTENERS about text to text, text to self and text to world connections, and I want to do that with my students. However, because I only have about 2 days for my Literacy Lesson Plan, it might be difficult to introduce all of these new topics and ideas, but I think I might try. These readings for this week really gave me a lot of insight on how I want to help guide my students during our critical literacy lesson, and how I can make my book more meaningful and applicable to their lives!
I really enjoyed reading your blog Kelly, and I definitely agree that students (beginning at the Kindergarten and First Grade level) need to learn how to connect texts to their own lives, and the world at large, in order to construct further meaning to them. Just like you, I love to read. I have not done much personal reading this year, but strategies that I use are similar to those that the article discussed. I could not imagine reading a book and not applying strategies such as text to self, or text to the world. My article (Profiles in Comprehension) talked about 8 common profiles (or ways of thinking)that are at play when students are given higher order questions, which require higher order thinking. One of these profiles was the "literalists", in which the reader looks at the text with the belief that all the information and understanding will be found in the text. Now for some purposes of reading this is true, but for the type of thinking that we want to promote in our classrooms, further information or meaning can be taken from these texts, by teaching students to connect these texts to their own life, or to the world. These are the practices which we do in our own reading. Discussion becomes richer when higher order questions are asked, because we do not rely solely on the text to shape our opinion. The foundation of our opinion is the text, but our ability to connect it to other elements of our life/world enrich our answers.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read the different profiles of thinking that have come forth through this research. One of my favorites was the "left fielder", which would consist of a response that may in fact be clever or humorous, but comes from out of no where. I have personally seen a lot of this in my classroom. It always seems to be the more confident students too. When asked a question, especially in relationship to meaning, they come up with the most obscure answers.
In my CT's room, the students have been taught by my CT to make the needed connections in order to further create meaning. Kelly, I admire your passion to help these students read and walk away from the text with more meaning. It is just unfortunate that your CT is not capitalizing on the many opportunities she has with the students. I hope you are able to insert your insights and further help these students.
I really thought the Applegate article on comprehension was interesting. She talked about how teachers can use classroom book discussions to understand how students are comprehending and interacting with texts. She made a very important point by saying that teachers need to ask higher order questions to elicit deeper and more engaging responses from the students. After doing this though, teachers should evaluate student responses to come up with different strategies that would help the students gain a better understanding of the text. In the article, Applegate identified 8 different learner profiles. I thought the most helpful parts were the “interventions” where she named many specific strategies for teachers to use to try to deeply engage the different profiles of learners with the text.
ReplyDeleteI also liked what Tompkins talked about in chapter 8 of her book. For readers who have been reading for comprehension of most of their lives, it doesn’t always seem that complicated. But when I was reading this chapter, it really made me think about all of the different parts that go into comprehension. Tompkins describes them as “Prerequisites for Comprehension”. These prerequisites are: having adequate background knowledge about the topic and the genre, being familiar with most words in the text, and being able to read it fluently. And those are just the prerequisites; there are still other factors that affect comprehension.
These two articles, along with the article that Kelly described and other chapters in Tompkins, made me realize how much effort and knowledge goes into deeply comprehending a text. As teachers, we need to be aware of all of these factors and find ways to make sure the different needs and learning styles/profiles of our students are met. When planning a lesson, a teacher needs to make sure to build the students’ background knowledge. This can be done in many different ways, but just diving into the text doesn’t always provide the background that students need in order to gain a deep understanding of the book. Teachers should also incorporate strategies like think-alouds, concept maps, prediction making, small group reading circles, etc, to allow more time for the students to engage with the reading and create their own meaning of it. Sometimes, whole-group discussions are not always the best way for everyone to comprehend the material. Teachers should also plan some follow-up activity or a way to connect it to other areas of learning. This can deepen the students’ comprehension of the text by having them make more connections to it.
I decided to talk about these factors of comprehension in my post because my CT, like Kelly’s, often just reads a story to the class and then that is it. By planning out a lesson more thoroughly, it can help the students to reach deeper levels of comprehension with the text.