Comprehension Strategies

In Anne E. Gregory and Mary Ann Cahill's piece Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers I was shocked to discover that even children in Kindgergarten understood what a schema was, and that ultimately they were engaging in meaning construction. The teacher mentioned in this article implementing these ideas marvelously to her students, making the ideas accessible to her students.

There must be many things as teachers we think our students are not capable of. But I believe if we simply and modify the ideas, transforming phrases and ideas to fit what they already know, the information will be applicable, just as portrayed here with reading this book to Kindergartners. 

How do we do this though? Sharon Ruth Gill discusses strategies to comprehension in her article, The Comprehension Matrix: A Tool for Designing Comprehension Instruction. 

One way Gill discusses to assist students in comprehension is first, as a teacher, understanding different factors that affect comprehension. The three biggest factors of comprehension are the reader, the text, and the situation. However, your own personal views affect how you perceive comprehension also. For example, I believe learning is similar to a learning theory known as social cognitivism. This view that states the learners environment, behavior, and cognition all influence how they learn. My understanding, as brought up by Gill will be different because of this view I have on learning. So, personally, I believe that relating information back to the student, and making it relevant to them--whether that be to their current place in life, their behavior, or past experience--is a great way to further practice comprehension. 

Overall, as a teacher, it is important to not only form your own ideas about comprehension, but to continually seek new council and opinions on how best to achieve comprehension. One idea I found on Pinterest that I loved and thought was very creative was having students make a retelling bracelet (left). Each color has a specific purpose: the green bead is the beginning of the story, the blue beads are the story components in the middle, and the red bead is the end of the story. To help kids recall the story, have them slide a bead from right to left as they retell what they heard. Another idea is having a story board that is filled out as a class during reading or after reading of the story (upper right corner) to establish comprehension on the topic. 

Compentence

While reading What every teacher needs to know about comprehension by Laura S. Pardo, I found her definition of comprehension very interesting. She made this idea visible in figure one (below). Basically, Pardo believes comprehension is the connection between the reader and the text.

Pardo also discusses the fact that a very important aspect in students achieving comprehension is their world knowledge. It is very interesting to think that the amount a student knows about the world influences how well they can comprehend a particular story, but it makes sense.

This is why, just as it was discussed in Classrooms That Work, it is important to, "Develop thoughtful comprehenders". As teachers, we get the opportunity to open a whole new world to our students, and reading a great way to do this! Comprehending is a very large aspect of reading, as teachers we should encourage our students to engage more in the world around them. The more they know, the more they will discover while they read!

A great way to encourage readers in being conscience and aware of what's happening around them is by creating an activity for them to do where based off of their surroundings, they create and write their own stories, then pass them around to classmates to read. I remember doing this in elementary school and loved it. This is also a great way for readers to discover how reading can be fun and creative! One possible idea that may better engage readers is for students to create a story based off of world surroundings, but pretending they are super heroes. I love this idea because it combines world knowledge and creativity!

Poetry Performance

Poetry Performance:  The purpose is to have students learn the importance of varying the pitch, rate and volume of their voices. Emphasizing different words will alter the meaning of the poem that the students are reading.

Exercise #1:

1. Use the following poem by Bruce Lansky for this exercise.

My Baby Sister

My baby sister’s
really swell.
I love her smile,
but not her smell.

(Note: All poems used in this study guide are copyright by Bruce Lansky.)

2. Have students take turns reading the poem emphasizing one word over the others. For example the first student reads it emphasizing "My" and the second student reads the poem emphasizing "baby," and so on until the last student has read the poem emphasizing the last word "smell."

3. Reading the selected word with emphasis means to say it louder, slower and more dramatically than the other words in the poem. If you emphasize "My" it means my baby sister as opposed to yours. If you emphasize "baby" it may mean your baby sister as opposed to your older sister.

4. Discuss how the meaning of the poem changes as different words are emphasized.

5. Teach your students that as they practice other poems to present in class that they can decide which words to emphasize. They can underline these words so that they can identify these words as they practice their poems.

**This definition and exercise is found at http://www.poetryteachers.com/poetclass/performpoetry.htm 

Word Study

"Word knowledge is highly related to comprehension." This is as told by Yopp and Yopp in their article, Ten Important Words Plus: A Strategy for Building Word Knowledge. Yopp and Yopp believe that the degree of ones vocabulary is affected and built up by three main things:

1. Wide Reading

     2.  Explicit Instruction of words and word-learning strategies


     3.  Establishment of an environment that promotes word consciousness

To know words means to the reader can better understand the text. This seems like common knowledge, but the tricky part is applying this concept to gain an actual result. This is a widely addressed issue, as spoken of also in Cunningham and Cunningham's piece on Making Words.

Also mentioned in Cunningham and Cunningham's piece, it is stated that children's developmental spelling in kindergarten or beginning of first grade to be a strong predictor of their reading achievement by the end of the year. Also mentioned was the study of Nelson did in 1990 that left observers with the result that early exposure to phonics accelerates students development of correct short vowel spelling.

These results once again convince me of the importance teachers play in students education. Especially those who teach elementary education. In my classroom, to help readers achieve this, I would love to have a designated reading corner with a couch or bean bags and a lamp or two. I believe setting apart a space specifically for reading would encourage my students, even those who struggle with reading, to give it a try, thus hopefully creating space for them to widen their vocabulary to expand their word knowledge. The pictures throughout this post are some ideas I have found for inspiration of what that corner could look like.

The Challenge Of Fluency

Distinguishing between the ability to read certain words, but not comprehend them is a tricky place to be. As a student it's frustrating and disheartening, and as a teacher you are left potentially feeling inadequate, not quiet sure how to help that student achieve their goal. However, in Timothy Rasinski's piece, Creating Fluent Readers, a three step guideline is created to better equip teachers in this process. The first tip given by Rasinski is for teachers to help students with their accuracy by decoding words. After students can do this, the second step is automatic processing. Thirdly, after students are able to complete the first two steps, they will begin practicing prosodic reading, which means that, "The reader must parse the text into syntactically and semantically appropriate units."

By following these steps, one can distinguish where the student falls in their deficiency, and can meet the student where they are at--focusing on how to solve the problem rather than just stating they are falling behind.

It is good to keep in mind though, as discussed in Theresa A. Deeney's article on One Minute Fluency Measurements, that some researchers believe fluency is present in students even before they can show its connectedness to the text. This point of view argues that it's manifestation however, is what we see at a later date. This is accomplished when accuracy, automaticity, and many other small parts of reading strategies are combined.

Ultimately, regardless of how fluency happens, I think it is important for students to understand that while reading, balancing words accurately and quickly all the while connecting them to the context is challenging. A lot of time, fear and failure come from a place when students feel like they are the only ones on the planet struggling with something. So, as a teacher, it is important to encourage children in this stage of reading but  also bring to their attention that this knowledge will take time to achieve.

This process can be draining at times, repetitively reading phrases and passages. That is why I found this activity to the right, as fun and silly and a way to help kids enjoy this stage of reading more! Students could each be assigned a character, or we could draw as a class one a day, and one student could read aloud to the rest of his/her peers.

From Teacher To Coach: The Study of Encouraging Your Students

It is a very interesting idea to think about teachers as coaches. I have always found myself wanting to be an encourager to my students, but to call myself a coach? Well, I've never thought of that before.

But the more I read Kathleen F. Clark's article, What Can I say Besides, "Sound it out"? Coaching word recognition in beginning reading, this idea is becoming more of a reality. Clark distinguishes what she believes to be successful techniques to coaching students into using previously learned knowledge to read. By crafting instructional cues for students to pick up, Clark believes every student will have the capacity to excel in reading. By 'coaching' readers, teachers help students reach the five steps that Classrooms That Work by Cunningham and Allington describes. A successful coach helps readers achieve:

1. Recognizing that a word is unfamiliar, one looks at all the letters in order.
2. Searching mental word banks for similar letter patterns andy eh sounds associated with them.
3. Producing pronunciation that matches that of the real world the student knows.
4. Reread the sentence to cross-check the students possible pronunciation with meaning, and if the meaning confirms pronunciation, keep reading. (If not, try again!)
5. Lastly, if the word is unfamiliar, the student would look for familiar morphemes, and chunk the word by putting letters together that usually go together in the words the student knows.

One can achieve these steps as a teacher by applying a coaching technique. In order to complete these steps, a coach provides general cues to promote thought and cues to promote a specific action like producing a pronunciation or searching one's mental word bank.

Overall, one tip for helping students read that I found most helpful through the coaching technique was detecting a smaller word within a large unknown word. This helps students accomplish some ground, and makes the word not as intimidating, and from there, they can begin to use cues and coaching tips. One way to help encourage readers to discover new words, is by speaking them out loud. A great idea of how to do this, yet still manage your classroom volume level, is a whisper phone, pictured to the right and below. This allows students to hear themselves as they read, yet is quieter to their surrounding peers. These can be homemade out of pipes, or store bought, and is a great way to incorporate interactive reading!

You Were Born A Writer

In Donna Bell and Donna Jarvis’ article, “Letting Go of the Letter of The Week” new methods are discussed on how to introduce reading and writing to elementary aged students. One of my favorite topics discussed in this article was to affirm and validate that children are already writers. The example of Mrs. Jarvis with her class was such a great idea of how to incorporate creative writing into a classroom setting at an early age. To conduct this activity the teacher should take the following steps:

1. Explain to students that they are each already writers.
2. Give students the freedom to write whatever they want.
3. Conduct an exercise where the teacher frees students of a narrow-minded idea of what a writer is by discussing different types of writing. (chart to the right)
4. Tell children to write the way they know how to write, using the chart as their guide.
5. This encourages students to practice and accept many different forms of writing communication.             

                                             

The main thing I loved about this approach was freeing students from the growing pressure placed on writing. So often students enter into situations in their later years, believing that they are not ‘good writers’. If, as a teacher I have the ability to teach my students at an early age the importance of creativity, and instill a writer’s confidence in them, I believe it would travel far in their academic life.

This also ties into what IRA NAEYC says in their position paper about teaching children to read and write.  Many topics are taken into consideration, including the increasing diversity in classrooms. As a teacher, we must be aware of this shift and variety. This idea by Jarvis is a great way to incorporate each type of learner, whether highly skilled or in beginning stages, to feel equal and on the same page.

I believe that diversity is a great addition to a classroom, because with it comes many different opinions and life experiences. This would attribute to students learning to think outside the box of their own life, and I believe having students conduct a writing journal as Jarvis has done would be an excellent way to portray this idea, and encourage students that it is okay to be different!