Chapter 8: Comprehension of Narrative Text This chapter discussed linguistic, syntactic, and semantic knowledge. These three concepts all need to be taught. Comprehension is complex. You must take the time to teach each individual piece in order to allow a child to fully grasp the concept. This has been a somewhat hard concept for me. Not teaching each individual part, but in what order. This chapter really was a big help. I loved the happy story face! I have never seen this before and think it is amazing! Comprehension is one of the areas that is a main focus in the NCLB act and is a main concentration and central goal in reading education! I feel prepared but I know that this is such a complex part of the reading process. I think we are lucky to have so many great resources to use! Question: When they talk about running records, do they keep them for the school year, or for their entire time at the elementary level? This changed my attitude about decoding. I have always loved decoding but found that it is hard for some students to follow and understand. But I think there are some great ideas that I plan to implement! I relate to the visualization. That was always a strategy that helped me an9: d I will for sure you this as much as possible! And what a great way to expand the imagination! Chapter 9: Comprehension of Informational Text This chapter was one I was particularly interested in. The majority of students that I have worked with in Title I Reading, completely shut down when they are reading information text. Most of the time, this was because it was a topic they were not at all interested in. I would like to say that we could teach reading only using texts that the students were interested in, but that would not be at all beneficial for the student. This chapter gave some great strategies to teach these informational texts and allow the student to stay interested. I also liked that the chapter discussed attitude! This is so true. A learners attitude is key in their success. As a teacher, I feel like I really need to focus on “What can I do to change the negative attitude?” This chapter gave some great ideas. This chapter made me see that even if a child is not interested in the topic, by adding visuals and implementing other strategies, you can really help the student become interested and be successful. I remember my third grade teacher teaching us about the depression. I was completely uninterested, and then she showed us old photographs and explained that our grandparents lived through it. She related it to my family and then I could not have paid more attention to what we were reading. It reminds me that it doesn’t take much to get a reader’s attention!
Lanewberry, I also found chapter 9 very interesting. Personally I would prefer fiction also however, as I get older I find informational text very interesting. I have noticed that books today are much better set up to enhance the learning experience. I especially love historical fiction. What a great way to get kids interested in history. I do think as much visual information given as possible will help spark interest for the children and myself for that matter. I look forward to discovering ways to make this type of reading come alive for my students. I also agree that our enthusiasm can definitely influence their attitudes towards the subject. I really liked the example you gave of your third grade teacher and how she made the subject personal for you. I can see how this would be a useful technique to get the children to sit up and listen.
First of all I am really getting into these graphic organizers, they make learning so organized and fun. I especially loved the Story Face strategy in chapter 8, so cool. I love that the event circles go up if the story is a happy ending and they go down if the story has a sad ending. Comprehension is definitely a higher level thinking process. I find it very interesting to watch children go through it. I was really noticing this when my students I tutor were retelling me the test passage they had read. Some of them found it easier to retell the story to me while others needed some coaxing to remember details. It was also very evident if the child actually understood what was happening in the story line. When the text in chapter 9 stated that having a positive attitude towards learning and reading will be a key to successful future learning, it made me really stop and think. I can see that this is true in members of my own family. Those of us who liked to read and read well didn’t have problems learning and enjoyed learning. I have a brother who as I mentioned in an earlier post struggled with reading continued to struggle through his education. I still notice that sometimes he is embarrassed or uncomfortable reading out loud or talking about certain subjects. My mother says that she believes the problem started when he transferred schools and the new school had already covered a lot of the phonics skills needed the year before. The teacher did not go back and cover these for him and help him catch up. My mother didn’t realize this until the end of the year. I’m not sure how education was set up then but he was not a child that qualified for special education and he always seemed to pass classes with C’s and B’s. I can definitely tell you that it has negatively affected his life. This makes me want to do whatever I can to make reading a fun, rewarding, and positive factor in my student’s lives. One example I loved in chapter 9 about having the child record himself reading and then have him correct his own errors, was to instead have the teacher record herself with errors and have the child listen to it. I can definitely see how this can make the experience much more positive. After becoming comfortable with this process I think listening to themselves would not be as intimidating.
Lacey Keller Finally, we get to the comprehension chapter! I say it that way because as a young reader, I could not comprehend well. Matter of fact, I strongly did not like to read because my comprehension level was so low. And, it wasn't until when I was is college that I started to enjoy reading. This is because when I read now, I am not receiving a grade, and I can choose what I want to read, not what someone else chooses for me.
There are so many skills needed before a reader can comprehend a text. For me, I had a strong vocabulary, I could sound out every word, but I just did not like the pressure of having so many accelerated reader points due at the end of the nine weeks on books that I didn't even get to pick out!
I liked the reading strategy of Reciprocal Questioning found on page 195. I have used this strategy on a former student who didn't comprehend and was starving for attention. I set up the situation where it was make-believe and she was the teacher and I was the student. She loved it, and she comprehended the stories! I also enjoyed seeing all the types of graphic organizers found in the book. As a teacher, I must remember that if I use a graphic organizer, I must take a few minutes extra so those struggling students can properly fill it out. I would like to first use the graphic organizer on a projection first, and then allow the students to do it on their own. Or maybe the students could model at their desks. Hmmm....so many choices!
I believe the bottom line in comprehension is getting the students to understand the reasoning behind the text while building on the students' background knowledge. From a young age children ask "why" and as humans, it is just one of those innate behaviors. When teachers answer these questions, children will become awed and want to learn more! The joy of teaching!!
Jenni P, From one graphic organizer to another: I'm not sure if you are aware of this neat website full of graphic organizers to print an use. It is www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer. I have found it to be very useful in my lesson plans. I can just copy the link right onto the plans, and "wa-lah!" I have a graphic organizer in my plans.
As a struggling comprehending reader myself, I can relate to your brother. I could decode and speak all the words, but I could not comprehend well. I did not like to read in front of the class because I feared that I was skip a line or mispronounce one of those contextual words like read (with a long e) or read (with a shore e). I however love to read, especially to my five year old! It just took lots of practice on my own without any of the school pressure.
Laceydk: I checked out that website! It is great, thanks for sharing! And comprehension is hard. I have worked with a student who reads clear as a bell with no errors, but he did not comprehend a word he read. He fell through the cracks a little because his other reading skills were so high. I think it is important to ensure comprehension because if a child cannot understand and put into context what they are reading, then we have not been successful as a teacher. This chapter gave some great strategies and I plan to take full advantage!
Comprehension is the purpose of reading. Without comprehension while reading no one knows what they read. I really liked the strategy the book suggested in chapter 8 about students who struggle with the main idea comprehension. The strategy was to use four index cards and on one card write “Where?”, on another write “When?”, “Who?”, and “Did What?”. After doing this over a period of time remove the cards and ask students to retell the story. Also, it is important to make sure students list the events in order of sequence. I always thought that comprehension was just retelling the story. I never thought about asking or even thinking about what is the author’s purpose for this story when I was in elementary school. One can always draw conclusions about a story after reading but never really thought about an intentional message the author may be trying to convey. I really liked the strategy of “And This Is The Rest Of The Story.” This strategy explains that a teacher is to read a story and stop at the climax. Either the students then can tell the rest of the story to a partner or another method is they can write the rest of the story. Then after everyone is done telling or writing, the teacher reads the rest of the story. This will test comprehension skills without the students realizing it. When trying to engage a child in reading. The child will be most receptive if there is a subject that he most interested about while reading. For example, I was asking a teacher who has taught for a number of years if she had any advice for soon to be teachers. As she was going through a number of suggestions, she told me a story of a child who was 2 grades below in reading. The child was very interested in planes. The child was also ADD. She started out by giving him a book on how to make paper airplanes. He made multiple paper airplanes with many different shapes. She then gave him a book that was about airplanes but was not an instructional book. After he was done with that she gave him another book and another. Each book she gave him was a little more difficult for him to read. By the end of the summer, the student was reading at his grade level and enjoyed reading. It is amazing how by finding a students interests, can reach new heights and begin to love to read. That is why is can be important to use a variety of texts in the classroom just as it is important to use different methods of teaching. Finding a way to meet students’ needs is important part of teaching and by using different types of texts can help improve student learning and reading ability.
Lacey, I was the same way. I could read fluently but I could not tell you what I read. It was very difficult for me to remember what I read. I think it was because I really did not want anything to do with reading. I always have had difficulty with reading. It could be like you said, there were so many assignments we had to hand in that we were going way too fast. I think also that we should remember how we felt and try to allow time for students to pick a book of their choosing and allow them to silently read.
I have noticed one of my students has a hard time re-telling me a story. The student needs to be prompted or aided while recalling information. This goes back to fluency. The student has a hard time fluently reading. There are many stops during the reading and sounding out of words. I am going to need to work with him on fluency first and then comprehension hopefully will come easier. I love to do read-alouds during my lessons. I always try to build background knowledge before reading a story. I try to find some way to relate the story to something that has happened in their lives. The predicting questions are great for getting students in the mood or in the right frame of mind for the activity. I notice it gets them thinking about what we are going to be reading. I have always read to my daughter. She now reads to me but I tell her she needs to visualize what is going on in the story. I tell her to play it out in her mind and watch it like a television. I emphasize this to aid in comprehension. I think it helps at times. Her fluency has recently gotten better and I see her comprehension skills improving. She was in Reading Recovery last year and at first that broke my heart. She has come such a long way. I thought this tutoring session would be great for her and it is. However, she is above the students in the class and to be honest I am not being biased. We have worked so hard on her reading. She and I read all school year long and so far all summer. The reason she needed to be in Reading Recovery was they wanted to build her confidence. She soared in the program. She is also the youngest in her class so we have done well getting her to where she needs to be. She worked hard and loved the program. She looked forward to school because of Reading Recovery. This week I am reading a few informational texts to my students. They are on weather and in one lesson I am showing hailstones. We had a hailstorm here and my husband, a roofer, saved the hailstones. Good thing because I think this helps build knowledge and interest in the students. Informational text may be boring to some but it depends on us to make them fun. I cannot wait till the lesson. We are going to break the hailstone in half and talk about the rings in the middle and what they mean.
~Joel~ I am currently ordering books for one of my students who hates to read and is lower than what he needs to be for his grade level. I feel if I can get him books he is interested in than we can go from there. Getting students interested is important!
I love listening to students predict what will happen in the story or in the next chapter. They have such great imaginations. I also like the idea of just reading the title if students depend too much on the illustrations for their predictions. That way they can just visualize the title without seeing any pictures. I was grateful for all the ideas to help children with comprehension. I would love to use the “Happy” and “Sad” story face with my tutoring students. Retelling the story with puppets would also be a fun lesson activity to do with my tutoring students. They would learn and have fun at the same time. I also liked the ideas for selecting narrative texts for ELL’s. Children need to have parents that talk with them not to them. I love showing and listing chronological events that have happened in the story. I think it is fun to do and it visually gives the student something to look at to help remember dates and order of events. For Reading and Language Arts I had to give a lesson using learning logs. I made up my own learning log for my students so that when I read the story they could fill it out. The third grade students that I taught learning logs to loved using them and put a lot of great information into their learning log. The books I am using for guided reading are leveled readers that I got from a first grade teacher. They have a strategy focus at the beginning, questions and making connections at the end. My mentor teacher in second grade used these same books, so I am using some of the strategies that I learned from her with my tutoring students.
Melissa My son has struggled with reading also. I am going to talk to him about visualizing the story as he reads. Good idea. He too has come a long way this year with his reading and I was hoping that this tutoring class would help him going into second grade. I am also going to work on fluency with my tutoring students.
Within my group of students, I have decided to work on their comprehension skills. As I read over these chapters, I’m relieved on the fact that I’m having these students predict, self-monitor, etc. Furthermore, now I have more activities and assessments to help the students focus and learn. Reading within chapter 8, the section of linguistic knowledge popped out at me. This is what one of my students is struggling with. I believe his comprehension is weak due to his lack of linguistic competence. There are many great ideas for improving students’ comprehension skills. I especially like the Investigator’s Report, but I can’t because they have troubles with retelling the story. From the chapter, I’m going to take the idea of making note cards with the prompt questions on them, at least until they understand what they needed to say for retelling or summarizing a story.
Chapter 9 hit on a very good point, children who have parents talk to them, but not with them, have poor comprehension and oral skills. As teachers, it is also very important to talk with them and just to them. I have seen teachers teach from both ways. I have observed that the teachers who talk with the students, their class is more academically advanced. With that in mind, I too want to talk with and not only to the students.
I also found the chapters useful because it states how a proficient reader should act and be able to retain information about a certain text. This book is definitely a great resource to have while teaching! Other than comments upon these chapters, I had no questions.
Response to Melissa G:
I love to listen to the students predict what will happen too! They are very creative and if one of the students has read the book, they beat themselves and try to remember what happens. It’s very interesting. Anyways, once I read the “Happy” and “Sad” story face web, I used it with my student. I only had one student at that time, but he still had fun with it. He tried to describe the characters as much as he could in order to have more eye lashes. It was very cute. By doing this web, he was able to retell the story in sequence order, which is what he is struggling with. So if you use it, have fun with it!
I found chapter 8 to be very interesting and helpful. The students I am tutoring are having some problems with comprehension so I loved some of the ideas in this chapter. I am so amazed at how well my students have been doing with comprehension when I read it to them and the lack of comprehension when they read to themselves. I’m also amazed at the ability to not recall things from day to day. It just comes to show that not all students can read something once and remember it. I believe that sometimes teachers expect students to read their textbooks, stories, etc. once and to remember what they read. I feel that sometimes teachers may need to have students read items more than once for them to truly understand what the text is about. I really like the “happy” and “sad” story face. I think that I am going to try to incorporate them into my lessons. I think the students will like it because they look like faces. I think it’s amazing how one little thing like a happy face can make the difference of how hard a student will work.
I also love that chapter 9 gave us so many different examples of graphic organizers. I feel like I’ve been a little stuck in using the graphic organizers that I know and now I have more examples of items I can use.
Melissa G~ I love listening to predictions also. It's so much fun to see what a student can see just from the cover and what they hear the title is. I also loved your idea about retelling the story using puppets!
I am working with fifth graders this summer. These chapters seemed to be going along with what is going on with my students. It was really nice to read these two chapters. In chapter 8 on page 178 under Components of reading Comprehension it said that “Just as a car needs more than its basic parts in order to function smoothly, readers need more than the fundamental reading skills in order to comprehend texts.” These sentences probably wouldn’t mean too much to some, but to me it hit home. When I was in grade school and high school I could tell you how a car worked but I could read something and I had problems. To me words in a book were just words. It wasn’t until college that I really started to understand. I missed out on reading while growing up and I want to make sure that it doesn’t happen to others. When I do my read aloud with my students this summer I am always asking questions and check to see about their predictions. Sometimes they add something to their predictions and other times they stay firm until the end. In chapter 9 under eye appeal it says “attractive books and websites can entice students to read them.” That is how I was and still am. If it doesn’t look interesting then I can’t get into it. When my students pick a book to read they will flip through three or four books and then they grab one and sit down.
Jessica C. The kids I am working with are having the same problem. When I read to them they can tell me all about the story. When they read something they seem to tell the first part and the end, but nothing in the middle. It is really strange to see this happen. I hope I can take some of the info out of these chapters and help them.
Chapter eight was about comprehension of narrative text. I agreed with the book 100% when it stated that teachers in primary classrooms should read and discuss books with children. It is important to begin this at primary grade levels so the children can get used to comprehending or understand what they have just heard or read. Another idea is having the children read together in small groups so help them comprehend. I have seen this done in 3rd grade up but not as much below third grade. It seemed to work out well in third because students know they need to understand what they are reading. I always wondered why we go so much time to read independently when going through grade school and high school. I thought it was just to take up time or for students to meet their SRC or AR goal. This time is for students to understand what they are comprehending and to better their comprehension skills. When tutoring my students this summer, I always ask the students to make a prediction about what the book is going to be about. This helps them in setting a purpose. I also always ask them in the middle of the story what they think will happen next. This is called making inferences. Some children nail what will happen next while other children's imaginations run wild. It's interesting to hear what they come up with. Visualizing is another important factor when comprehending because a child could be seeing something totally different than someone else, which is not always wrong. Having students draw a picture is a good comprehension activity. Chapter nine was about comprehension of informational text. We all know that narrative text is fun and enjoyable to read but reading that is giving information or facts can get quite boring and drag on. Graphic organizers work well when it comes to facts being presented in text. I love the octopus graphic organizer and the facts they put on each of its legs. The book went into great detail about each type of text that could be present in everyday reading. I feel it is important for teachers to go through the table of contents with upper grade levels and make sure they know how to use it. Usually after they read something out of a Science or Social Studies book, a worksheet follows. The table of contents is key for them to find answers. I have also seen many teachers have their students take notes so they can remember and study the new and important facts. This has been present for many years and it works. It helps for remembering items and studying for tests.
Chapter 8 discussed the process of reading comprehension. Linguistic knowledge is a reader's understanding of stress, pitch, and juncture. Syntactic knowledge involves language that deals with word order, punctuation, and paragraphs. I enjoyed learning about syntactic knowledge because I feel this is something my students struggle with. Semantic knowledge is the common meaning of words and their combinations. It is also important for readers to have decoding skills. These skills include the knowledge of letter-sound relationships, consonant blends, consonant digraphs, and vocabulary skills are essential to readers as well. All of these skills are necessary for comprehension. The section on comprehension strategies during reading really gave me some good ideas. Visualizing is so important to me. Good readers can picture vivid mental images in their minds while reading. There were some really cool graphic organizers that I haven't seen before. I re3ally like the one on page 204 figure 8.14.
The three factors that affect the comprehension process were discussed in chapter nine. The first factor was factors within the reader. This involves prior knowledge, experience, interests, and attitudes. Another factor involves the reader's environment. There are three environments in which students are more frequently involved: home, school, and community. The third factor comes from within the text. The chapter discussed organization structure of expository texts and key words that associate with it. Again, this chapter included a variety of graphic organizers to use for expository text.
Both chapters gave great insight on reading comprehension and strategies that students may use. However, as educators, we must decide which strategies are best for all types of readers.
Calee, you mentioned in your post about students making inferences and predictions. It is so fun to hear what their imaginations come up with and what they have to say! I agree with you about visualization as well. It is good for students to share or draw what they are picturing so maybe they can see other student's work and look at how they visualize what is being read.
George P-I agree with you on having difficulties comprehending things at a young age and even through college. I still find myself rereading a text selection several times before it is trying to say something I do not understand. New computer games and more interactive books are being created each day. It is important to have books that appeal to the age level you are trying to target. This will keep their attention throughout the whole book or computer game.
I am glad to see information on comprehension. The students I have are very lacking in comprehension. When the students did our leveled passages for diagnostic assessment, they were not able to tell me details of the story they had just read, even after being prompted. The two girls I have read very proficiently, but couldn’t recall any details from the story. One of the boys was a so-so reader but could recall a couple of details without being prompted. This would explain the part in the text of decoding skills. He’s spent a lot of time decoding some of the words therefore struggled in comprehension. But that doesn’t explain why the girls, who read proficiently didn’t comprehend the passage. My other student struggles with his words, he put others words in place of, like father he would say dad. He also struggled with comprehension but also with the decoding. From student teaching last semester I found that most all of the 4th grade students I worked with were poor when it came to syntax. Many of the students read without stopping at periods or any other punctuation. I find this a difficult strategy to teach to students. Going into this classroom I guess I assumed students had the ability to read text as it should have been read. This really came as a shock to me. I guess one thing we don’t consider as teacher, at least new teachers maybe, is the three factors the affect the reading comprehension process. This information would be viable in getting our students to comprehend text. None of my students are very well with predictions either. They all seem to come up with off the wall predictions. I’m not sure if this is because they really don’t know or because the boys goof off too much. With their lack of prediction they aren’t able to inference very well either. I like the different story webs and graphic organizers the text talked about. These are tools that could be beneficial for my students. I know another area I found 4th graders struggled in was cause/effect. I hope to be able to focus some on this area with my current students.
George- You hit on a very good point-how students can know how something works, but the words in the text are just words in a text. I have only been in the school system for about four years now but I am amazed at how smart so many of the students are but give them a book they have to read, it is like seding them to a foreign country. I find this so sad. I think as a teacher we need to focus on those things the students know and enjoy and incorporate it into reading. This is what we have been taught in our teacher education, right? So why do so many students struggle with text and especially comprehension? How are they falling through the cracks in the classrooms today? We have to make reading fun for them. They have to be interested in it. I hope I can accomplish this as a teacher. You had said that your students flip through several books before they sit down and read. Do they read a few pages then decide they don’t like it? I am just curious. A couple of my students are this way. I guess I am glad to see this. It means it doesn’t interest them, or maybe they haven’t given it a chance?
One of the things that stuck out for me was reading that good readers will go back and reread the sentence if it sounds obscure, but poor reader who lack basic reading knowledge will not realize that the sentence does not make sense.
I also did not realize the power of having students make predictions. According to the text it would seem like a good practice to always have the students make predictions from the title and occasionally the illustrations on the front of a book. I'm also glad that the text mentioned using "Why" questions in order to pull out the students background knowledge.
I really like the idea of doing retrospective miscue analysis. I wonder - Do struggling students benefit from hearing themselves or does it have a negative impact on their self esteem?
It's funny how the information in this text still applies to me. I'll be honest, while reading all these "informational texts" (FHSU class textbooks) I don't feel like I retain a whole lot or I often find myself reading the same paragraph more than once. I'm finally starting to become familiar with some of the lingo/vocab used (scaffolding, miscue analysis, cloze procedure). My prior knowledge has increased, therefore my comprehension is FINALLY increasing.
In response to Lacey... That was a great move for the student starving for attention - to make them the teacher. My son is part of my tutoring class. We have had a couple instances where he tries to control the group and desires my attention on him alone. I need to work that kind of an activity into a lesson plan. Thanks for the idea!
I love reading the quotes at the beginning of every chapter! They are very true and inspiring. Before reading chapter eight I knew to connect to prior knowledge before reading material but I didn't realize the components that are included in this task. I learned about connecting to literary knowledge, world knowledge, and life experience. I guess I always just focused mainly on life experience. The author gave good examples of how to incorporate world knowledge. Out of the six computer assessment programs I have only heard of one, accelerated reader. I wonder if this is the most popular one or just the one that I am familiar with. Is anyone familiar with the other programs? The text in chapter eight also mentioned presenting new material in small steps because that is how students learn best. I most certainly agree with this and feel that rushing will only confuse them more. As a Title Aide I had a teachers guide to use during Guided Reading and it was ridiculous what they thought you should cover in one setting. Most times we could connect to prior knowledge, cover the new vocab., and talk about what kind of book it was. After reading the story and completing the graphic organizers, if I feel the students weren't getting the concept we would keep working on it. I didn't want to move on when I knew they hadn't learned anything. I would rather spend a week one thing and make sure they remember it then to cover multiple things and they don't retain anything. That's just me though. By doing this the students knew I cared about their learning experience and wasn't going to give up on any of them.
Chapter 9 went along great with what I did today with my students! I took two of the boys to a local library to get a library card, check out books, and learn what the library has to offer. They had no idea that they could access computers, check out movies, etc. They both found the series of books that they enjoy and they took one home to start reading thier 20 minutes a day and I kept the others at my house for when we have ind. reading time or when students need something to pull out and read while waiting on others to finish up. I liked the cloze procedure in figure 9.11 to determine if a book is at a student's reading level. I'm hoping to challenge my fifth grade student and build his confidence in reading more challenging books. Today at the library he went for the easy readers and I was trying to find other books that sparked his interest in his reading level. It was a challenge but we left with a series of books that he really likes and is capable of reading because I had him read the back summary to me to make sure. I want to incorporate more non-fiction books into lessons and figure 9.13 is a really good way to figure out what books to bring in. Under "assessing readers' growth" the text said to let the student listen to themselves read on a tape recorder and identify their own errors. I really want to do this! One of the boys I am tutoring will try to say that he didn't make that mistake while reading and it would be so much easier to just let him listen and it would make him more aware of his errors. There were so many great ideas in these two chapters that I haven't heard or seen before! Definitely keeping this text!
I am also tutoring 4th and 5th. Your comment on eye appeal rang true to me! It's harder to keep older students interested I think, but the other day after looking so humdrum I introduced them to professorgarfield.org and their eyes lit up! It felt so good to see them excited while learning! I don't know if you are familiar with this website but the home page is so busy and colorful! It's like watching a kid in a candy store! Just thought I would share my experience and perhaps your students would enjoy this website as well!
Nöelle Pohl VC Chapters 8 & 9 DeVries Text Chapters touched upon narrative and informational text passages our student learners NEED to understand the different ways to approach comprehension in learning. As it is the MAIN purpose of reading building understand to that point through other areas (fluency, etc. is important too!) Comprehension is one of my favorite parts of the narrative/informational reading approach to teach and learn. As I am focusing on the Big 5; Comprehension in my lesson plan goal this approach of incorporating interpretive reading, critical, recognizing cause/effect, sequencing, prediction and visualization so interesting to me and the methods and ways to approach them are just as interesting, creative and quite understandable. The bases was to educate us upon the ways that comprehension is applied to reading, instruction and assessment, our semantic approach to learning is the most valuable way we can understand comprehension and all that is. The examination of different types of comprehension was touched upon. Higher-order, interpretative, critical and creative readings are all the bases of strategies for teaching comprehension. We may have to teach our students how to approach answering questions, this will in turn help students develop their skill of self-questioning. Usage self-questioning as a reader is building upon story structures and comprehension factors is a process we want our student learners to continue to use. However, remembering that some of our student learners lack comprehension factors and self-questioning techniques is a must in needing to ensure a successful approach, as we teach a variety of self-questioning techniques. Preparation of techniques for creative reading and visualization, along with literal and higher-learning comprehension can create a learning outcome for readers to grown and understand text structures with ease. My goal for my students is to focus on re-telling the passages correctly but effectively. Using a 4 square graphic organizer: problem/solution/character/setting and a Before/During/After comprehension triangle/pyramid is working well. Adding fun to the passages meaning by re-writing it has helped in the short time I have tutored.
Reply to Amanda Sie, As we are both applying the goal; comprehension in our lesson plans, I too feel that the linguistic approach for my 2nd graders is attainable but not where it needs to be…..The activities stated in chapters 8 & 9 and prompting with note cards as cues and context clues with summarizing the passage, are attainable techniques that my students could apply in their understanding and I in my teaching techniques. Nöelle Pohl
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the chapters. I really enjoyed your post because you gave personal examples about how reading and literacy have affected your life. The story of your brother who struggles with reading really inspires me to pay close attention to the needs of the students that I work with. I know that reading will have a tremendous impact on their lives, just like it has for you and your family. Keep that passion for helping students and you will be a spectacular teacher. Keep up the good work!
Aspen Rank – Chapters 8 and 9 I am so glad we read these chapters this week! Because I am tutoring kindergarten students, I don’t get to work with the concept of comprehension much or narrative and expository texts, I mostly work in the areas of phonics and phonemic awareness. Because of this, I feel that I am behind on my skills in teaching comprehension and the other areas of the Big 5. Right away from the beginning of these chapters, the authors talked about the idea that “comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill.” (Page 175) This sentence stands out to me for several reasons; to begin with, I feel that the ability to comprehend what you read is something a person will never grow out of, something they will always need. For example, I am currently reading a great series and I know that when I sit down to read, I am doing it to comprehend, not for any other reason, but to comprehend what the author has created and to engulf myself in it and, as the book says, visualize the characters of the story, the lands they are traveling and so on. It honestly makes me sad to believe that some students and adults struggle so much with comprehension when reading. I can’t imagine my own life without reading comprehension! Reading on through the chapter, there were so many different concepts that stood out to me. For instance, juncture – the pause that occurs in language, usually indicated with a comma. This is something I have always known about, yet when I am writing, I know I use commas WAY too much. I believe this is a skill I myself need to work on . It is amazing to me how the syntactic knowledge idea can make such a difference on what is being read. The example of the No Swimming signs on page 177 really demonstrated the weight the punctuation as in creating sentences and phrases. I also was glad to read the ideas and tips the authors had for helping ESOL students with comprehension and narrative texts. The ideas to browse the book by “reading” the pictures first seems to be an awesome idea, as well as to use picture clues, prediction, and retelling in order to best comprehend readings.
Chapter Nine was also chalked full of information about comprehension of informational text. I love how much emphasis is put on the child’s prior knowledge and outside environments to gain proper and accurate comprehension. As I sit and read these chapters, the thing that is greatly on my mind is the idea that I need to read to my own daughter more and more as she grows. I want her to have the opportunity to have good comprehension skills in her future. I want to also make sure I am giving my students the best abilities in these areas as well by using all the amazing strategies that are offered throughout this textbook. Reading through this chapter, I could not help to also think about the students that were in the first school and in fact the last school I worked in. These schools were both Title 1 schools, there having a very low SES among the students enrolled. Because of this, one could defiantly see the difference in the effect on the students reading skills from their home lives and other outside environments. While working in these schools, one of the main jobs of the teachers and me was to be that encourager for the student, to be the person that showed the students that reading is fun, necessary and something that a child will never grow out of. MY ultimate goal in the future is to be that person for students again, the person who shows them my own love for reading and hopefully is able to create that love for reading in them as well.
As I was reading in Chapter 8 I became more and more aware of just how much read alouds do for the students. I remember thinking, “Okay, maybe I am doing something right after all.” Last week I was so frustrated with my tutoring sessions, but the one thing that I think went well, was read alouds and even though I knew they weren’t just “time fillers” I needed to read this text and see all the different areas of comprehension that will benefit the student through the read aloud. Much of this chapter has been addressed in one way or another in the education process so far, such as the importance of using prior knowledge of the student to connect the text to them, but the chapter helped me understand how doing this will really help the struggling reading. I liked that the chapter did a fair amount of compare and contrast with proficient vs. struggling readers. This chapter delved into the why of things. We have been taught for awhile that cloze passages are a way to assess students, but chapter 8 shows us how it works and what questions to ask ourselves as teachers as we administer a cloze test. This chapter also takes a little time to give instruction on teaching ELL students and ways to help them. Chapter 9 also makes it simple to compare the proficient reader (skilled reader)and the struggling reader (unskilled reader) as it also have the lists of each in different areas of comprehension. I liked the introduction in these two chapter to the Maze technique. If we touched on this in Chapter 3, it didn’t stick out to me like it did tonight in both chapters 8 and 9. Once again, I found an overwhelming amount of information in the text. Some passages I had to re-read (the indicator of a skilled reader) and some areas were just overwhelming and I will have to go back and read them again.
Chapter 8 Chapter 8 was such an important read for me because my goal for my tutoring sessions. Comprehension has been challenging to think about because it is such an in depth and complex thing teach. There are many aspects to comprehension and important relationships, which we learned about in this chapter (linguistic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, etc.)I also really enjoyed reading about comprehension strategies during reading because I feel like that was an area that I need some help. I am very good and working with predictions and with summaries or asking questions afterwards - but I struggled with during. I also found the activities at the end of the chapter helpful and plan on using several throughout my lesson plans.
Chapter 9:
Another chapter that was written perfectly for my tutoring sessions! :) It really started out strong with the three main factors that affects the comprehension process. You have to understand how that works before you can correct it or make changes to it! I loved all the examples of the graphic organizers that they used in both chapters! They were creative and different and show how you can really make a graphic organizer fit into any type of read.
Re: Noelle
The big five I picked was also comprehension! It sounds like you really have a great plan for instruction and that you will be able to provide a wide variety of important information to your students. I also agree with your comment about how it is so important because it is the purpose of reading! We read so we can get an idea that is in written form and understand its message! Great post!
Let me start by saying, GREAT POST, I really enjoyed reading about the knowledge you gained from reading these chapters. It seems really cool that we can see what others have read in the text, it seems to help me COMPREHEND the information even better. It is so important for students to have the ability to understand, comprehend and read the many different types of texts. I also agree that after reading this chapter, comprehension is one my favorite areas of the Big 5. Although I don’t get to use this as my goal for our FPA, I plan to gain as much information as I can on the topic and store it all so that I can use it in the future. I enjoyed reading the part of your post about the preparation of techniques for creative reading and visualization. I think your focus on re-telling the passages is a great idea; maybe you could try to have them retell the stories using a readers’ theater as well! Great ideas overall!!!
Desiree Gin.~ Thank you for pointing out the quotes at the beginning of the chapters. I had overlooked them and went back and read what they said. In regard to AR (accelerated reading) and the other programs, I believe that my daughter's school does the Scholastic Reading Inventory. I know that AR is somewhat of a dirty word for educators, especially around FHSU, because it have too many "right there" questions and not enough questions that involve complex thinking.
Chapter 8 is great for me. The students that I am working with need help with comprehension. They read the text but can not do a proper retell or summary. They forget all the important information such as names, places, and key facts. Reading this chapter will help me better work with them. Starting on page 180 to 186 sections Comprehension strategies during reading and comprehension strategies after reading are going to be two section I will turn to regularly. I know that we have read this book in Reading and Language Arts, but going back and rereading is like the first time. Their is so much information in it that is so important and I enjoy reading this book. ON page 183 and 184 , the figures, I am going to try with the students, those two figures seem like they would be a lot of fun for a student.
Chapter 9 again as the same meaning to me for this summer because it deals with comprehension of text. This chapter will help the students with other subject because it is focused in informational text, not just narrative. In this chapter, what I think, is the most useful/helpful is the assessment section. I hope to be able to use all of this during the summer. I know that seems like a lot an most likely it wont happen, but I am sure going to try.
BOth of these chapters I will continue to return to for guidance, not just these two chapters but this whole book. It is wonderful and very useful.
Response to Threase Lass, I agree Comprehension is what I am working on with all of my students. They did great in everything else except this. I will defiantly be getting a lot of use from these two chapters.
The comprehension strategies that were listed in chapter eight stood out to me from the reading. I appreciated that the authors organized these strategies in concise paragraphs for easy reference. In addition, each strategy had a definition and examples of activities that would be beneficial for development.
These strategies from chapter eight have proven to be invaluable to my tutoring experience. As I have been working with my students, I’ve noticed that they each have very unique strengths and weaknesses. There are some areas of overlap, but as a new tutor, they all seem very different to me. I was starting to feel very overwhelmed because I didn’t know how to organize all of the information that I was learning as I was observing my students. Having read the comprehension strategies from chapter eight, I now feel like I have a more organized way of understanding my students strengths and weaknesses. With these comprehension strategies I can now better identify why the students are struggling with a specific aspect of reading and now it is easier for me to use different strategies to reach out to each of the students.
As I continue with my tutoring sessions, it will be easier for me to focus on specific literacy and comprehension strategies because I will be keeping this list in mind. I have already referenced it several times as I review results from my formative assessments and my students’ responses to different activities. I am excited to see what else I will discover in my sessions.
To me, reading narrative text has always been the easiest and quite possibly the most enjoyable. I absolutely loved this chapter and how it outlined the different strategies to incorporate in the classroom to help students succeed with reading narrative texts. One thing that I found to be interesting and sounds really important and motivating it to set a purpose. If the students have a goal or destination in my, it helps to improve their comprehension. On this same note, self-monitoring is also key. The students need to be able to know if something sounds right, did it make sense, and did it look right? After thinking about those, the student also needs to think about whether or not he/she is comprehending the text. I was a really fast reading in elementary school, but sometimes I would read so fast that when I got to the end, I realized that I had no clue what went on in the story at all! It also said in one of the sections to highlight and create journals to help comprehend. This chapter was informative and I am excited to teach my students these strategies.
Chapter nine was similar to chapter eight except the strategies and assessments listed were for reading informational text. Unfortunately for myself, this was my least favorite type of text to read. However, I have gotten much better and enjoy reading the newspaper often. On thing in my mind that is really going to affect comprehension of this text is whether the student has any prior knowledge and/or background information on the subject. A student can read a story that is a follow-up with lots of references to a previous article about war, but will probably have little understanding of what he/she read. Because of my lack of interest in reading this text, I really hope that I can incorporate more of this type of reading into my classroom. I really liked the graphic organizer in Figure 9.17 to help students understand and organizer facts in a informational text. And I would love to hear how any of you all are including this type of reading in your lessons!
Kelly: I also found chapter eight to organized well. I loved how it was broken down into before reading, during reading, and after reading strategies. And as with the following chapters, there are many activities and graphic organizers shown in these two chapters to help us as teachers. I am still so thankful for all of the resources in this book and am also excited to try out some activities from the fcrr.org website! Have a great week and thanks for sharing!!
Chapter 8: Comprehension of Narrative Text
ReplyDeleteThis chapter discussed linguistic, syntactic, and semantic knowledge. These three concepts all need to be taught. Comprehension is complex. You must take the time to teach each individual piece in order to allow a child to fully grasp the concept. This has been a somewhat hard concept for me. Not teaching each individual part, but in what order. This chapter really was a big help. I loved the happy story face! I have never seen this before and think it is amazing! Comprehension is one of the areas that is a main focus in the NCLB act and is a main concentration and central goal in reading education! I feel prepared but I know that this is such a complex part of the reading process. I think we are lucky to have so many great resources to use!
Question: When they talk about running records, do they keep them for the school year, or for their entire time at the elementary level?
This changed my attitude about decoding. I have always loved decoding but found that it is hard for some students to follow and understand. But I think there are some great ideas that I plan to implement!
I relate to the visualization. That was always a strategy that helped me an9: d I will for sure you this as much as possible! And what a great way to expand the imagination!
Chapter 9: Comprehension of Informational Text
This chapter was one I was particularly interested in. The majority of students that I have worked with in Title I Reading, completely shut down when they are reading information text. Most of the time, this was because it was a topic they were not at all interested in. I would like to say that we could teach reading only using texts that the students were interested in, but that would not be at all beneficial for the student. This chapter gave some great strategies to teach these informational texts and allow the student to stay interested. I also liked that the chapter discussed attitude! This is so true. A learners attitude is key in their success. As a teacher, I feel like I really need to focus on “What can I do to change the negative attitude?” This chapter gave some great ideas.
This chapter made me see that even if a child is not interested in the topic, by adding visuals and implementing other strategies, you can really help the student become interested and be successful.
I remember my third grade teacher teaching us about the depression. I was completely uninterested, and then she showed us old photographs and explained that our grandparents lived through it. She related it to my family and then I could not have paid more attention to what we were reading. It reminds me that it doesn’t take much to get a reader’s attention!
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ReplyDeleteLanewberry, I also found chapter 9 very interesting. Personally I would prefer fiction also however, as I get older I find informational text very interesting. I have noticed that books today are much better set up to enhance the learning experience. I especially love historical fiction. What a great way to get kids interested in history. I do think as much visual information given as possible will help spark interest for the children and myself for that matter. I look forward to discovering ways to make this type of reading come alive for my students. I also agree that our enthusiasm can definitely influence their attitudes towards the subject. I really liked the example you gave of your third grade teacher and how she made the subject personal for you. I can see how this would be a useful technique to get the children to sit up and listen.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I am really getting into these graphic organizers, they make learning so organized and fun. I especially loved the Story Face strategy in chapter 8, so cool. I love that the event circles go up if the story is a happy ending and they go down if the story has a sad ending. Comprehension is definitely a higher level thinking process. I find it very interesting to watch children go through it. I was really noticing this when my students I tutor were retelling me the test passage they had read. Some of them found it easier to retell the story to me while others needed some coaxing to remember details. It was also very evident if the child actually understood what was happening in the story line. When the text in chapter 9 stated that having a positive attitude towards learning and reading will be a key to successful future learning, it made me really stop and think. I can see that this is true in members of my own family. Those of us who liked to read and read well didn’t have problems learning and enjoyed learning. I have a brother who as I mentioned in an earlier post struggled with reading continued to struggle through his education. I still notice that sometimes he is embarrassed or uncomfortable reading out loud or talking about certain subjects. My mother says that she believes the problem started when he transferred schools and the new school had already covered a lot of the phonics skills needed the year before. The teacher did not go back and cover these for him and help him catch up. My mother didn’t realize this until the end of the year. I’m not sure how education was set up then but he was not a child that qualified for special education and he always seemed to pass classes with C’s and B’s. I can definitely tell you that it has negatively affected his life. This makes me want to do whatever I can to make reading a fun, rewarding, and positive factor in my student’s lives. One example I loved in chapter 9 about having the child record himself reading and then have him correct his own errors, was to instead have the teacher record herself with errors and have the child listen to it. I can definitely see how this can make the experience much more positive. After becoming comfortable with this process I think listening to themselves would not be as intimidating.
ReplyDeleteLacey Keller
ReplyDeleteFinally, we get to the comprehension chapter! I say it that way because as a young reader, I could not comprehend well. Matter of fact, I strongly did not like to read because my comprehension level was so low. And, it wasn't until when I was is college that I started to enjoy reading. This is because when I read now, I am not receiving a grade, and I can choose what I want to read, not what someone else chooses for me.
There are so many skills needed before a reader can comprehend a text. For me, I had a strong vocabulary, I could sound out every word, but I just did not like the pressure of having so many accelerated reader points due at the end of the nine weeks on books that I didn't even get to pick out!
I liked the reading strategy of Reciprocal Questioning found on page 195. I have used this strategy on a former student who didn't comprehend and was starving for attention. I set up the situation where it was make-believe and she was the teacher and I was the student. She loved it, and she comprehended the stories! I also enjoyed seeing all the types of graphic organizers found in the book. As a teacher, I must remember that if I use a graphic organizer, I must take a few minutes extra so those struggling students can properly fill it out. I would like to first use the graphic organizer on a projection first, and then allow the students to do it on their own. Or maybe the students could model at their desks. Hmmm....so many choices!
I believe the bottom line in comprehension is getting the students to understand the reasoning behind the text while building on the students' background knowledge. From a young age children ask "why" and as humans, it is just one of those innate behaviors. When teachers answer these questions, children will become awed and want to learn more! The joy of teaching!!
Jenni P,
ReplyDeleteFrom one graphic organizer to another: I'm not sure if you are aware of this neat website full of graphic organizers to print an use. It is www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer. I have found it to be very useful in my lesson plans. I can just copy the link right onto the plans, and "wa-lah!" I have a graphic organizer in my plans.
As a struggling comprehending reader myself, I can relate to your brother. I could decode and speak all the words, but I could not comprehend well. I did not like to read in front of the class because I feared that I was skip a line or mispronounce one of those contextual words like read (with a long e) or read (with a shore e). I however love to read, especially to my five year old! It just took lots of practice on my own without any of the school pressure.
Laceydk: I checked out that website! It is great, thanks for sharing! And comprehension is hard. I have worked with a student who reads clear as a bell with no errors, but he did not comprehend a word he read. He fell through the cracks a little because his other reading skills were so high. I think it is important to ensure comprehension because if a child cannot understand and put into context what they are reading, then we have not been successful as a teacher. This chapter gave some great strategies and I plan to take full advantage!
ReplyDeleteComprehension is the purpose of reading. Without comprehension while reading no one knows what they read. I really liked the strategy the book suggested in chapter 8 about students who struggle with the main idea comprehension. The strategy was to use four index cards and on one card write “Where?”, on another write “When?”, “Who?”, and “Did What?”. After doing this over a period of time remove the cards and ask students to retell the story. Also, it is important to make sure students list the events in order of sequence. I always thought that comprehension was just retelling the story. I never thought about asking or even thinking about what is the author’s purpose for this story when I was in elementary school. One can always draw conclusions about a story after reading but never really thought about an intentional message the author may be trying to convey.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the strategy of “And This Is The Rest Of The Story.” This strategy explains that a teacher is to read a story and stop at the climax. Either the students then can tell the rest of the story to a partner or another method is they can write the rest of the story. Then after everyone is done telling or writing, the teacher reads the rest of the story. This will test comprehension skills without the students realizing it.
When trying to engage a child in reading. The child will be most receptive if there is a subject that he most interested about while reading. For example, I was asking a teacher who has taught for a number of years if she had any advice for soon to be teachers. As she was going through a number of suggestions, she told me a story of a child who was 2 grades below in reading. The child was very interested in planes. The child was also ADD. She started out by giving him a book on how to make paper airplanes. He made multiple paper airplanes with many different shapes. She then gave him a book that was about airplanes but was not an instructional book. After he was done with that she gave him another book and another. Each book she gave him was a little more difficult for him to read. By the end of the summer, the student was reading at his grade level and enjoyed reading. It is amazing how by finding a students interests, can reach new heights and begin to love to read.
That is why is can be important to use a variety of texts in the classroom just as it is important to use different methods of teaching. Finding a way to meet students’ needs is important part of teaching and by using different types of texts can help improve student learning and reading ability.
Lacey,
ReplyDeleteI was the same way. I could read fluently but I could not tell you what I read. It was very difficult for me to remember what I read. I think it was because I really did not want anything to do with reading. I always have had difficulty with reading. It could be like you said, there were so many assignments we had to hand in that we were going way too fast. I think also that we should remember how we felt and try to allow time for students to pick a book of their choosing and allow them to silently read.
I have noticed one of my students has a hard time re-telling me a story. The student needs to be prompted or aided while recalling information. This goes back to fluency. The student has a hard time fluently reading. There are many stops during the reading and sounding out of words. I am going to need to work with him on fluency first and then comprehension hopefully will come easier.
ReplyDeleteI love to do read-alouds during my lessons. I always try to build background knowledge before reading a story. I try to find some way to relate the story to something that has happened in their lives. The predicting questions are great for getting students in the mood or in the right frame of mind for the activity. I notice it gets them thinking about what we are going to be reading.
I have always read to my daughter. She now reads to me but I tell her she needs to visualize what is going on in the story. I tell her to play it out in her mind and watch it like a television. I emphasize this to aid in comprehension. I think it helps at times. Her fluency has recently gotten better and I see her comprehension skills improving. She was in Reading Recovery last year and at first that broke my heart. She has come such a long way. I thought this tutoring session would be great for her and it is. However, she is above the students in the class and to be honest I am not being biased. We have worked so hard on her reading. She and I read all school year long and so far all summer. The reason she needed to be in Reading Recovery was they wanted to build her confidence. She soared in the program. She is also the youngest in her class so we have done well getting her to where she needs to be. She worked hard and loved the program. She looked forward to school because of Reading Recovery.
This week I am reading a few informational texts to my students. They are on weather and in one lesson I am showing hailstones. We had a hailstorm here and my husband, a roofer, saved the hailstones. Good thing because I think this helps build knowledge and interest in the students. Informational text may be boring to some but it depends on us to make them fun. I cannot wait till the lesson. We are going to break the hailstone in half and talk about the rings in the middle and what they mean.
~Joel~ I am currently ordering books for one of my students who hates to read and is lower than what he needs to be for his grade level. I feel if I can get him books he is interested in than we can go from there. Getting students interested is important!
ReplyDeleteI love listening to students predict what will happen in the story or in the next chapter. They have such great imaginations. I also like the idea of just reading the title if students depend too much on the illustrations for their predictions. That way they can just visualize the title without seeing any pictures. I was grateful for all the ideas to help children with comprehension. I would love to use the “Happy” and “Sad” story face with my tutoring students. Retelling the story with puppets would also be a fun lesson activity to do with my tutoring students. They would learn and have fun at the same time. I also liked the ideas for selecting narrative texts for ELL’s.
ReplyDeleteChildren need to have parents that talk with them not to them. I love showing and listing chronological events that have happened in the story. I think it is fun to do and it visually gives the student something to look at to help remember dates and order of events. For Reading and Language Arts I had to give a lesson using learning logs. I made up my own learning log for my students so that when I read the story they could fill it out. The third grade students that I taught learning logs to loved using them and put a lot of great information into their learning log. The books I am using for guided reading are leveled readers that I got from a first grade teacher. They have a strategy focus at the beginning, questions and making connections at the end. My mentor teacher in second grade used these same books, so I am using some of the strategies that I learned from her with my tutoring students.
Melissa
ReplyDeleteMy son has struggled with reading also. I am going to talk to him about visualizing the story as he reads. Good idea. He too has come a long way this year with his reading and I was hoping that this tutoring class would help him going into second grade. I am also going to work on fluency with my tutoring students.
Within my group of students, I have decided to work on their comprehension skills. As I read over these chapters, I’m relieved on the fact that I’m having these students predict, self-monitor, etc. Furthermore, now I have more activities and assessments to help the students focus and learn. Reading within chapter 8, the section of linguistic knowledge popped out at me. This is what one of my students is struggling with. I believe his comprehension is weak due to his lack of linguistic competence.
ReplyDeleteThere are many great ideas for improving students’ comprehension skills. I especially like the Investigator’s Report, but I can’t because they have troubles with retelling the story. From the chapter, I’m going to take the idea of making note cards with the prompt questions on them, at least until they understand what they needed to say for retelling or summarizing a story.
Chapter 9 hit on a very good point, children who have parents talk to them, but not with them, have poor comprehension and oral skills. As teachers, it is also very important to talk with them and just to them. I have seen teachers teach from both ways. I have observed that the teachers who talk with the students, their class is more academically advanced. With that in mind, I too want to talk with and not only to the students.
I also found the chapters useful because it states how a proficient reader should act and be able to retain information about a certain text. This book is definitely a great resource to have while teaching! Other than comments upon these chapters, I had no questions.
Response to Melissa G:
I love to listen to the students predict what will happen too! They are very creative and if one of the students has read the book, they beat themselves and try to remember what happens. It’s very interesting. Anyways, once I read the “Happy” and “Sad” story face web, I used it with my student. I only had one student at that time, but he still had fun with it. He tried to describe the characters as much as he could in order to have more eye lashes. It was very cute. By doing this web, he was able to retell the story in sequence order, which is what he is struggling with. So if you use it, have fun with it!
I found chapter 8 to be very interesting and helpful. The students I am tutoring are having some problems with comprehension so I loved some of the ideas in this chapter. I am so amazed at how well my students have been doing with comprehension when I read it to them and the lack of comprehension when they read to themselves. I’m also amazed at the ability to not recall things from day to day. It just comes to show that not all students can read something once and remember it. I believe that sometimes teachers expect students to read their textbooks, stories, etc. once and to remember what they read. I feel that sometimes teachers may need to have students read items more than once for them to truly understand what the text is about.
ReplyDeleteI really like the “happy” and “sad” story face. I think that I am going to try to incorporate them into my lessons. I think the students will like it because they look like faces. I think it’s amazing how one little thing like a happy face can make the difference of how hard a student will work.
I also love that chapter 9 gave us so many different examples of graphic organizers. I feel like I’ve been a little stuck in using the graphic organizers that I know and now I have more examples of items I can use.
Melissa G~
ReplyDeleteI love listening to predictions also. It's so much fun to see what a student can see just from the cover and what they hear the title is.
I also loved your idea about retelling the story using puppets!
I am working with fifth graders this summer. These chapters seemed to be going along with what is going on with my students. It was really nice to read these two chapters. In chapter 8 on page 178 under Components of reading Comprehension it said that “Just as a car needs more than its basic parts in order to function smoothly, readers need more than the fundamental reading skills in order to comprehend texts.” These sentences probably wouldn’t mean too much to some, but to me it hit home. When I was in grade school and high school I could tell you how a car worked but I could read something and I had problems. To me words in a book were just words. It wasn’t until college that I really started to understand. I missed out on reading while growing up and I want to make sure that it doesn’t happen to others. When I do my read aloud with my students this summer I am always asking questions and check to see about their predictions. Sometimes they add something to their predictions and other times they stay firm until the end. In chapter 9 under eye appeal it says “attractive books and websites can entice students to read them.” That is how I was and still am. If it doesn’t look interesting then I can’t get into it. When my students pick a book to read they will flip through three or four books and then they grab one and sit down.
ReplyDeleteJessica C.
ReplyDeleteThe kids I am working with are having the same problem. When I read to them they can tell me all about the story. When they read something they seem to tell the first part and the end, but nothing in the middle. It is really strange to see this happen. I hope I can take some of the info out of these chapters and help them.
Chapter eight was about comprehension of narrative text. I agreed with the book 100% when it stated that teachers in primary classrooms should read and discuss books with children. It is important to begin this at primary grade levels so the children can get used to comprehending or understand what they have just heard or read. Another idea is having the children read together in small groups so help them comprehend. I have seen this done in 3rd grade up but not as much below third grade. It seemed to work out well in third because students know they need to understand what they are reading. I always wondered why we go so much time to read independently when going through grade school and high school. I thought it was just to take up time or for students to meet their SRC or AR goal. This time is for students to understand what they are comprehending and to better their comprehension skills. When tutoring my students this summer, I always ask the students to make a prediction about what the book is going to be about. This helps them in setting a purpose. I also always ask them in the middle of the story what they think will happen next. This is called making inferences. Some children nail what will happen next while other children's imaginations run wild. It's interesting to hear what they come up with. Visualizing is another important factor when comprehending because a child could be seeing something totally different than someone else, which is not always wrong. Having students draw a picture is a good comprehension activity.
ReplyDeleteChapter nine was about comprehension of informational text. We all know that narrative text is fun and enjoyable to read but reading that is giving information or facts can get quite boring and drag on. Graphic organizers work well when it comes to facts being presented in text. I love the octopus graphic organizer and the facts they put on each of its legs. The book went into great detail about each type of text that could be present in everyday reading. I feel it is important for teachers to go through the table of contents with upper grade levels and make sure they know how to use it. Usually after they read something out of a Science or Social Studies book, a worksheet follows. The table of contents is key for them to find answers. I have also seen many teachers have their students take notes so they can remember and study the new and important facts. This has been present for many years and it works. It helps for remembering items and studying for tests.
Chapter 8 discussed the process of reading comprehension. Linguistic knowledge is a reader's understanding of stress, pitch, and juncture. Syntactic knowledge involves language that deals with word order, punctuation, and paragraphs. I enjoyed learning about syntactic knowledge because I feel this is something my students struggle with. Semantic knowledge is the common meaning of words and their combinations. It is also important for readers to have decoding skills. These skills include the knowledge of letter-sound relationships, consonant blends, consonant digraphs, and vocabulary skills are essential to readers as well. All of these skills are necessary for comprehension.
ReplyDeleteThe section on comprehension strategies during reading really gave me some good ideas. Visualizing is so important to me. Good readers can picture vivid mental images in their minds while reading. There were some really cool graphic organizers that I haven't seen before. I re3ally like the one on page 204 figure 8.14.
The three factors that affect the comprehension process were discussed in chapter nine. The first factor was factors within the reader. This involves prior knowledge, experience, interests, and attitudes. Another factor involves the reader's environment. There are three environments in which students are more frequently involved: home, school, and community. The third factor comes from within the text. The chapter discussed organization structure of expository texts and key words that associate with it. Again, this chapter included a variety of graphic organizers to use for expository text.
Both chapters gave great insight on reading comprehension and strategies that students may use. However, as educators, we must decide which strategies are best for all types of readers.
Reply to Calee:
ReplyDeleteCalee, you mentioned in your post about students making inferences and predictions. It is so fun to hear what their imaginations come up with and what they have to say! I agree with you about visualization as well. It is good for students to share or draw what they are picturing so maybe they can see other student's work and look at how they visualize what is being read.
George P-I agree with you on having difficulties comprehending things at a young age and even through college. I still find myself rereading a text selection several times before it is trying to say something I do not understand. New computer games and more interactive books are being created each day. It is important to have books that appeal to the age level you are trying to target. This will keep their attention throughout the whole book or computer game.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see information on comprehension. The students I have are very lacking in comprehension. When the students did our leveled passages for diagnostic assessment, they were not able to tell me details of the story they had just read, even after being prompted. The two girls I have read very proficiently, but couldn’t recall any details from the story. One of the boys was a so-so reader but could recall a couple of details without being prompted. This would explain the part in the text of decoding skills. He’s spent a lot of time decoding some of the words therefore struggled in comprehension. But that doesn’t explain why the girls, who read proficiently didn’t comprehend the passage. My other student struggles with his words, he put others words in place of, like father he would say dad. He also struggled with comprehension but also with the decoding.
ReplyDeleteFrom student teaching last semester I found that most all of the 4th grade students I worked with were poor when it came to syntax. Many of the students read without stopping at periods or any other punctuation. I find this a difficult strategy to teach to students. Going into this classroom I guess I assumed students had the ability to read text as it should have been read. This really came as a shock to me. I guess one thing we don’t consider as teacher, at least new teachers maybe, is the three factors the affect the reading comprehension process. This information would be viable in getting our students to comprehend text.
None of my students are very well with predictions either. They all seem to come up with off the wall predictions. I’m not sure if this is because they really don’t know or because the boys goof off too much. With their lack of prediction they aren’t able to inference very well either.
I like the different story webs and graphic organizers the text talked about. These are tools that could be beneficial for my students. I know another area I found 4th graders struggled in was cause/effect. I hope to be able to focus some on this area with my current students.
George-
ReplyDeleteYou hit on a very good point-how students can know how something works, but the words in the text are just words in a text. I have only been in the school system for about four years now but I am amazed at how smart so many of the students are but give them a book they have to read, it is like seding them to a foreign country. I find this so sad. I think as a teacher we need to focus on those things the students know and enjoy and incorporate it into reading. This is what we have been taught in our teacher education, right? So why do so many students struggle with text and especially comprehension? How are they falling through the cracks in the classrooms today? We have to make reading fun for them. They have to be interested in it. I hope I can accomplish this as a teacher.
You had said that your students flip through several books before they sit down and read. Do they read a few pages then decide they don’t like it? I am just curious. A couple of my students are this way. I guess I am glad to see this. It means it doesn’t interest them, or maybe they haven’t given it a chance?
One of the things that stuck out for me was reading that good readers will go back and reread the sentence if it sounds obscure, but poor reader who lack basic reading knowledge will not realize that the sentence does not make sense.
ReplyDeleteI also did not realize the power of having students make predictions. According to the text it would seem like a good practice to always have the students make predictions from the title and occasionally the illustrations on the front of a book. I'm also glad that the text mentioned using "Why" questions in order to pull out the students background knowledge.
I really like the idea of doing retrospective miscue analysis. I wonder - Do struggling students benefit from hearing themselves or does it have a negative impact on their self esteem?
It's funny how the information in this text still applies to me. I'll be honest, while reading all these "informational texts" (FHSU class textbooks) I don't feel like I retain a whole lot or I often find myself reading the same paragraph more than once. I'm finally starting to become familiar with some of the lingo/vocab used (scaffolding, miscue analysis, cloze procedure). My prior knowledge has increased, therefore my comprehension is FINALLY increasing.
In response to Lacey...
That was a great move for the student starving for attention - to make them the teacher. My son is part of my tutoring class. We have had a couple instances where he tries to control the group and desires my attention on him alone. I need to work that kind of an activity into a lesson plan. Thanks for the idea!
I love reading the quotes at the beginning of every chapter! They are very true and inspiring. Before reading chapter eight I knew to connect to prior knowledge before reading material but I didn't realize the components that are included in this task. I learned about connecting to literary knowledge, world knowledge, and life experience. I guess I always just focused mainly on life experience. The author gave good examples of how to incorporate world knowledge. Out of the six computer assessment programs I have only heard of one, accelerated reader. I wonder if this is the most popular one or just the one that I am familiar with. Is anyone familiar with the other programs? The text in chapter eight also mentioned presenting new material in small steps because that is how students learn best. I most certainly agree with this and feel that rushing will only confuse them more. As a Title Aide I had a teachers guide to use during Guided Reading and it was ridiculous what they thought you should cover in one setting. Most times we could connect to prior knowledge, cover the new vocab., and talk about what kind of book it was. After reading the story and completing the graphic organizers, if I feel the students weren't getting the concept we would keep working on it. I didn't want to move on when I knew they hadn't learned anything. I would rather spend a week one thing and make sure they remember it then to cover multiple things and they don't retain anything. That's just me though. By doing this the students knew I cared about their learning experience and wasn't going to give up on any of them.
ReplyDeleteChapter 9 went along great with what I did today with my students! I took two of the boys to a local library to get a library card, check out books, and learn what the library has to offer. They had no idea that they could access computers, check out movies, etc. They both found the series of books that they enjoy and they took one home to start reading thier 20 minutes a day and I kept the others at my house for when we have ind. reading time or when students need something to pull out and read while waiting on others to finish up. I liked the cloze procedure in figure 9.11 to determine if a book is at a student's reading level. I'm hoping to challenge my fifth grade student and build his confidence in reading more challenging books. Today at the library he went for the easy readers and I was trying to find other books that sparked his interest in his reading level. It was a challenge but we left with a series of books that he really likes and is capable of reading because I had him read the back summary to me to make sure. I want to incorporate more non-fiction books into lessons and figure 9.13 is a really good way to figure out what books to bring in. Under "assessing readers' growth" the text said to let the student listen to themselves read on a tape recorder and identify their own errors. I really want to do this! One of the boys I am tutoring will try to say that he didn't make that mistake while reading and it would be so much easier to just let him listen and it would make him more aware of his errors. There were so many great ideas in these two chapters that I haven't heard or seen before! Definitely keeping this text!
Response to George P.-
ReplyDeleteI am also tutoring 4th and 5th. Your comment on eye appeal rang true to me! It's harder to keep older students interested I think, but the other day after looking so humdrum I introduced them to professorgarfield.org and their eyes lit up! It felt so good to see them excited while learning! I don't know if you are familiar with this website but the home page is so busy and colorful! It's like watching a kid in a candy store! Just thought I would share my experience and perhaps your students would enjoy this website as well!
Nöelle Pohl VC
ReplyDeleteChapters 8 & 9 DeVries Text
Chapters touched upon narrative and informational text passages our student learners NEED to understand the different ways to approach comprehension in learning. As it is the MAIN purpose of reading building understand to that point through other areas (fluency, etc. is important too!) Comprehension is one of my favorite parts of the narrative/informational reading approach to teach and learn. As I am focusing on the Big 5; Comprehension in my lesson plan goal this approach of incorporating interpretive reading, critical, recognizing cause/effect, sequencing, prediction and visualization so interesting to me and the methods and ways to approach them are just as interesting, creative and quite understandable. The bases was to educate us upon the ways that comprehension is applied to reading, instruction and assessment, our semantic approach to learning is the most valuable way we can understand comprehension and all that is. The examination of different types of comprehension was touched upon. Higher-order, interpretative, critical and creative readings are all the bases of strategies for teaching comprehension. We may have to teach our students how to approach answering questions, this will in turn help students develop their skill of self-questioning. Usage self-questioning as a reader is building upon story structures and comprehension factors is a process we want our student learners to continue to use. However, remembering that some of our student learners lack comprehension factors and self-questioning techniques is a must in needing to ensure a successful approach, as we teach a variety of self-questioning techniques. Preparation of techniques for creative reading and visualization, along with literal and higher-learning comprehension can create a learning outcome for readers to grown and understand text structures with ease. My goal for my students is to focus on re-telling the passages correctly but effectively. Using a 4 square graphic organizer: problem/solution/character/setting and a Before/During/After comprehension triangle/pyramid is working well. Adding fun to the passages meaning by re-writing it has helped in the short time I have tutored.
Reply to Amanda Sie,
ReplyDeleteAs we are both applying the goal; comprehension in our lesson plans, I too feel that the linguistic approach for my 2nd graders is attainable but not where it needs to be…..The activities stated in chapters 8 & 9 and prompting with note cards as cues and context clues with summarizing the passage, are attainable techniques that my students could apply in their understanding and I in my teaching techniques.
Nöelle Pohl
Jenni P.,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts about the chapters. I really enjoyed your post because you gave personal examples about how reading and literacy have affected your life. The story of your brother who struggles with reading really inspires me to pay close attention to the needs of the students that I work with. I know that reading will have a tremendous impact on their lives, just like it has for you and your family. Keep that passion for helping students and you will be a spectacular teacher. Keep up the good work!
Aspen Rank – Chapters 8 and 9
ReplyDeleteI am so glad we read these chapters this week! Because I am tutoring kindergarten students, I don’t get to work with the concept of comprehension much or narrative and expository texts, I mostly work in the areas of phonics and phonemic awareness. Because of this, I feel that I am behind on my skills in teaching comprehension and the other areas of the Big 5. Right away from the beginning of these chapters, the authors talked about the idea that “comprehension is the main purpose of reading, yet many struggling readers lack this basic skill.” (Page 175) This sentence stands out to me for several reasons; to begin with, I feel that the ability to comprehend what you read is something a person will never grow out of, something they will always need. For example, I am currently reading a great series and I know that when I sit down to read, I am doing it to comprehend, not for any other reason, but to comprehend what the author has created and to engulf myself in it and, as the book says, visualize the characters of the story, the lands they are traveling and so on. It honestly makes me sad to believe that some students and adults struggle so much with comprehension when reading. I can’t imagine my own life without reading comprehension! Reading on through the chapter, there were so many different concepts that stood out to me. For instance, juncture – the pause that occurs in language, usually indicated with a comma. This is something I have always known about, yet when I am writing, I know I use commas WAY too much. I believe this is a skill I myself need to work on . It is amazing to me how the syntactic knowledge idea can make such a difference on what is being read. The example of the No Swimming signs on page 177 really demonstrated the weight the punctuation as in creating sentences and phrases. I also was glad to read the ideas and tips the authors had for helping ESOL students with comprehension and narrative texts. The ideas to browse the book by “reading” the pictures first seems to be an awesome idea, as well as to use picture clues, prediction, and retelling in order to best comprehend readings.
Chapter Nine was also chalked full of information about comprehension of informational text. I love how much emphasis is put on the child’s prior knowledge and outside environments to gain proper and accurate comprehension. As I sit and read these chapters, the thing that is greatly on my mind is the idea that I need to read to my own daughter more and more as she grows. I want her to have the opportunity to have good comprehension skills in her future. I want to also make sure I am giving my students the best abilities in these areas as well by using all the amazing strategies that are offered throughout this textbook. Reading through this chapter, I could not help to also think about the students that were in the first school and in fact the last school I worked in. These schools were both Title 1 schools, there having a very low SES among the students enrolled. Because of this, one could defiantly see the difference in the effect on the students reading skills from their home lives and other outside environments. While working in these schools, one of the main jobs of the teachers and me was to be that encourager for the student, to be the person that showed the students that reading is fun, necessary and something that a child will never grow out of. MY ultimate goal in the future is to be that person for students again, the person who shows them my own love for reading and hopefully is able to create that love for reading in them as well.
As I was reading in Chapter 8 I became more and more aware of just how much read alouds do for the students. I remember thinking, “Okay, maybe I am doing something right after all.” Last week I was so frustrated with my tutoring sessions, but the one thing that I think went well, was read alouds and even though I knew they weren’t just “time fillers” I needed to read this text and see all the different areas of comprehension that will benefit the student through the read aloud. Much of this chapter has been addressed in one way or another in the education process so far, such as the importance of using prior knowledge of the student to connect the text to them, but the chapter helped me understand how doing this will really help the struggling reading. I liked that the chapter did a fair amount of compare and contrast with proficient vs. struggling readers. This chapter delved into the why of things. We have been taught for awhile that cloze passages are a way to assess students, but chapter 8 shows us how it works and what questions to ask ourselves as teachers as we administer a cloze test. This chapter also takes a little time to give instruction on teaching ELL students and ways to help them.
ReplyDeleteChapter 9 also makes it simple to compare the proficient reader (skilled reader)and the struggling reader (unskilled reader) as it also have the lists of each in different areas of comprehension. I liked the introduction in these two chapter to the Maze technique. If we touched on this in Chapter 3, it didn’t stick out to me like it did tonight in both chapters 8 and 9. Once again, I found an overwhelming amount of information in the text. Some passages I had to re-read (the indicator of a skilled reader) and some areas were just overwhelming and I will have to go back and read them again.
Alexandra Westfall
ReplyDeleteChapter 8
Chapter 8 was such an important read for me because my goal for my tutoring sessions. Comprehension has been challenging to think about because it is such an in depth and complex thing teach. There are many aspects to comprehension and important relationships, which we learned about in this chapter (linguistic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, etc.)I also really enjoyed reading about comprehension strategies during reading because I feel like that was an area that I need some help. I am very good and working with predictions and with summaries or asking questions afterwards - but I struggled with during. I also found the activities at the end of the chapter helpful and plan on using several throughout my lesson plans.
Chapter 9:
Another chapter that was written perfectly for my tutoring sessions! :) It really started out strong with the three main factors that affects the comprehension process. You have to understand how that works before you can correct it or make changes to it! I loved all the examples of the graphic organizers that they used in both chapters! They were creative and different and show how you can really make a graphic organizer fit into any type of read.
Re: Noelle
The big five I picked was also comprehension! It sounds like you really have a great plan for instruction and that you will be able to provide a wide variety of important information to your students. I also agree with your comment about how it is so important because it is the purpose of reading! We read so we can get an idea that is in written form and understand its message! Great post!
RE: Nöelle Pohl
ReplyDeleteLet me start by saying, GREAT POST, I really enjoyed reading about the knowledge you gained from reading these chapters. It seems really cool that we can see what others have read in the text, it seems to help me COMPREHEND the information even better. It is so important for students to have the ability to understand, comprehend and read the many different types of texts. I also agree that after reading this chapter, comprehension is one my favorite areas of the Big 5. Although I don’t get to use this as my goal for our FPA, I plan to gain as much information as I can on the topic and store it all so that I can use it in the future. I enjoyed reading the part of your post about the preparation of techniques for creative reading and visualization. I think your focus on re-telling the passages is a great idea; maybe you could try to have them retell the stories using a readers’ theater as well! Great ideas overall!!!
Desiree Gin.~
ReplyDeleteThank you for pointing out the quotes at the beginning of the chapters. I had overlooked them and went back and read what they said. In regard to AR (accelerated reading) and the other programs, I believe that my daughter's school does the Scholastic Reading Inventory. I know that AR is somewhat of a dirty word for educators, especially around FHSU, because it have too many "right there" questions and not enough questions that involve complex thinking.
Chapter 8 is great for me. The students that I am working with need help with comprehension. They read the text but can not do a proper retell or summary. They forget all the important information such as names, places, and key facts. Reading this chapter will help me better work with them. Starting on page 180 to 186 sections Comprehension strategies during reading and comprehension strategies after reading are going to be two section I will turn to regularly. I know that we have read this book in Reading and Language Arts, but going back and rereading is like the first time. Their is so much information in it that is so important and I enjoy reading this book. ON page 183 and 184 , the figures, I am going to try with the students, those two figures seem like they would be a lot of fun for a student.
ReplyDeleteChapter 9 again as the same meaning to me for this summer because it deals with comprehension of text. This chapter will help the students with other subject because it is focused in informational text, not just narrative. In this chapter, what I think, is the most useful/helpful is the assessment section. I hope to be able to use all of this during the summer. I know that seems like a lot an most likely it wont happen, but I am sure going to try.
BOth of these chapters I will continue to return to for guidance, not just these two chapters but this whole book. It is wonderful and very useful.
Response to Threase Lass, I agree Comprehension is what I am working on with all of my students. They did great in everything else except this. I will defiantly be getting a lot of use from these two chapters.
ReplyDeleteThe comprehension strategies that were listed in chapter eight stood out to me from the reading. I appreciated that the authors organized these strategies in concise paragraphs for easy reference. In addition, each strategy had a definition and examples of activities that would be beneficial for development.
ReplyDeleteThese strategies from chapter eight have proven to be invaluable to my tutoring experience. As I have been working with my students, I’ve noticed that they each have very unique strengths and weaknesses. There are some areas of overlap, but as a new tutor, they all seem very different to me. I was starting to feel very overwhelmed because I didn’t know how to organize all of the information that I was learning as I was observing my students. Having read the comprehension strategies from chapter eight, I now feel like I have a more organized way of understanding my students strengths and weaknesses. With these comprehension strategies I can now better identify why the students are struggling with a specific aspect of reading and now it is easier for me to use different strategies to reach out to each of the students.
As I continue with my tutoring sessions, it will be easier for me to focus on specific literacy and comprehension strategies because I will be keeping this list in mind. I have already referenced it several times as I review results from my formative assessments and my students’ responses to different activities. I am excited to see what else I will discover in my sessions.
To me, reading narrative text has always been the easiest and quite possibly the most enjoyable. I absolutely loved this chapter and how it outlined the different strategies to incorporate in the classroom to help students succeed with reading narrative texts. One thing that I found to be interesting and sounds really important and motivating it to set a purpose. If the students have a goal or destination in my, it helps to improve their comprehension. On this same note, self-monitoring is also key. The students need to be able to know if something sounds right, did it make sense, and did it look right? After thinking about those, the student also needs to think about whether or not he/she is comprehending the text. I was a really fast reading in elementary school, but sometimes I would read so fast that when I got to the end, I realized that I had no clue what went on in the story at all! It also said in one of the sections to highlight and create journals to help comprehend. This chapter was informative and I am excited to teach my students these strategies.
ReplyDeleteChapter nine was similar to chapter eight except the strategies and assessments listed were for reading informational text. Unfortunately for myself, this was my least favorite type of text to read. However, I have gotten much better and enjoy reading the newspaper often. On thing in my mind that is really going to affect comprehension of this text is whether the student has any prior knowledge and/or background information on the subject. A student can read a story that is a follow-up with lots of references to a previous article about war, but will probably have little understanding of what he/she read. Because of my lack of interest in reading this text, I really hope that I can incorporate more of this type of reading into my classroom. I really liked the graphic organizer in Figure 9.17 to help students understand and organizer facts in a informational text. And I would love to hear how any of you all are including this type of reading in your lessons!
Kelly: I also found chapter eight to organized well. I loved how it was broken down into before reading, during reading, and after reading strategies. And as with the following chapters, there are many activities and graphic organizers shown in these two chapters to help us as teachers. I am still so thankful for all of the resources in this book and am also excited to try out some activities from the fcrr.org website! Have a great week and thanks for sharing!!
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