Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Group 6, Discussion Leader 2 Katie Yardley, "What is Comprehension?"
The assessments we just completed with our tutees has really made me think a lot about comprehension. When my tutee first read to me I wondered why he neede tutoring because he is a pretty fluent reader. But, then I conducted the CRI and found out that he has trouble comprehending what he has read. He currently finished 3rd grade and is going into 4th. In "Literacy for the 21st Century, A Balanced Approach" the writer states "In the primary grades, developing reading fluency is an imprtant component of comprehension instruction because students need to learn to recognize words automatically so that they can concnetrate their attention on comprehending what they are reading (Samuels, 2002)" p. 227. I will be concentrating on helping my tutee learn the Eight Comprehnsion Strategies from the Tompkins text page 229. Comprehension is important because if a student does not understand what they are reading then reading will not be pleasurable for them and they will not continue to read. Comprehension is also important in writing. If students cannot clearly state their big ideas and relevent supporting detaiils in informational books and essays then the reader will not be able to understand what the writer has written. When this happens if means that comprehension has failed and the compositions are unsuccessful. Teaching comprehension will need to be a main focus in almost everything we do as teachers, from building background information, teaching minilessons on revising, and ecouraging students to ask questions to guide their reading.
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4 comments:
I really enjoyed reading the information that you shared about your tutee and comprehension. Since completing K-12 education and even now as a practicum student, I do not feel that teachers spend the necessary time making sure their students comprehend what they read. Since comprehension is the goal of reading instruction (Tompkins 223) as well as a thinking process, I think helping your tutee to learn the Eight Comprehension Strategies will be beneficial. Lastly, I agree with you that teaching comprehension will need to become a main focus in almost everything we do as teachers. If we want students to succeed in their studies, it will need to start with teachers establishing solid comprehension skills and strategies for their students.
I seem to be in the same area as you. My tutee is also a third grader going into fourth grade. When I first met with him, he was extremely verbal, which kind of said to me that he was going to be a smooth sailer. As he was reading to be in the beginning I wasn't really noticing very many problems. He was reading extremely fast and seemed to know most of the words. However, from the CRI, I also found out that his comprehension is extremely weak. It was very frustrating for me to give these assessments because I had to decide whether to go up or down a level. I ended up giving many different levels of the assessment just to give me a wide arrange of materials to evaluate. I was also noticing that my tutee reads the whole passage and then seems to forget or not understand it at all. He tends to look back at the pictures to get clues about what it was about, and then while he was summarizing he would even just read a line from the passage.
I think that the steps for comprehension would be extremely helpful. I am also planning to focus on comprehension. It really is an important part of reading and writing. Understanding what you are reading is important to knowing what around you and how to apply it later.
I am currently in the middle of my assessment process. I will assess my student using the CRI tomorrow. What you have written about his trouble with comprehension has got me wondering. I wonder how well my student will do with the reading comprehension assessment. I agree that reading comprehension needs to be at the center of elementary curriculum. Even now, as an adult, I experience trouble with reading comprehension. When reading textbooks, I often have to reread information because I am not understanding what I have read. I believe that I was not given sufficient instruction and training on how to concentrate, comprehend, and retain information when reading. I will use my trouble with reading comprehension as a motivator to commit myself to focusing greatly on reading comprehension when I teach.
Great post! I had just finished the testing with my student and was frustrated with the results. Words that I felt he should know he messed up on. Because we are having them read out loud is this giving us inacurate results? My student is already at the point where he doesn't enjoy reading :( and he is only in second grade. I don't think the teacher in the class does enough things to encourage reading.
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