June 21st Readings

I enjoyed reading the article, Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers, because I have never witnessed a think aloud activity. I liked learned about the process of the children using schema, make connections, visualize, ask questions, and infer when interacting with texts. I enjoyed how the article was set up because it ran the reader through all of the steps of the activity, it made it easier to come away with a technique that is easily applied. I also enjoyed that the author pointed out the fact that "all students within the classroom were able to engage with text to begin to negotiate meaning construction." Even though there is usually a large reading ability gap between the children, I think it's important for all of the children to participate in some activities together. 

The article, The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction, was helpful in explaining the difficulties that teachers face while trying to teach comprehension. It also gave a solution for how to teach reading comprehension called the comprehension matrix. This article reminded me how many factors affect comprehension, understanding and being aware of these factors can help teachers come up with effective reading comprehension activities. I found the chart on page 107 of the comprehension matrix very helpful. To me, the chart was very easy to read and the examples in each box were very helpful. This is a chart that I will refer back to while I am teaching reading comprehension in my classroom. Lastly, I also found the comprehension strategies useful. Some of the common strategies among all of the theorists were, connecting, questioning, purpose setting, visualizing, inferring, predicting, retelling, deciding what's important, monitoring, and evaluating. It amazed me with how many there were! Although I find teaching reading comprehension daunting, the fact that there are so many strategies is more settling. I know that if one strategy is not working for one child, there are many more to choose from.

The article, What every teacher needs to know about comprehension, is a good overview and introduction into comprehension. I wish I had read this article first because it explains all of the components of comprehension well. I liked how the article explained that for children to be competent comprehenders, they must master decoding skills, develop fluency, build and use their backround knowledge, learn vocabulary words, and respond to texts. This just illustrates the importance of stressing the importance of all of these areas and how they all impact one another. One thing I wish the article had were more examples in the classroom.

Lastly, I enjoyed the part of chapter 7 explaining classroom conversations. It has always been reiterated to me that as a teacher, I must ask children questions about the reading, but I haven't learned about the importance of children making connections. The three types of connections listed were a helpful framework to go off of. The connections are text to self, text and to world. I like that the book pointed out how some children find it easier to answer questions and some find it easier to make connections, I never thought of this alternative. I also LOVED the Oprah Winfrey Interview idea! I wish creative ideas like this were brought to my classroom in elementary school. I love the idea of the teacher playing the role as Oprah and having the students play the role of the characters in the book. This seems like such a fun way for the children to understand the characters on another level.