Comprehension and Think Alouds

The readings this week explored comprehension instruction, developing thoughtful comprehenders, and utilizing think alouds. In the chapter from our text book, Cunningham suggests that some children simply do not think while they read. This immediately stood out to me. I often read a section of text and, upon finishing the text, have no idea what I read. I must then reread and make a conscious effort to pay attention and comprehend the main ideas of the passage. Affording students adequate background knowledge about the topic and knowledge about the type of text (text structures and genres) are ways to increase comprehension. The book also touches on comprehension strategies which is very important to us as teachers. Knowing many different, engaging, and research-supported ways to carry out comprehension lessons will be key to helping your students gain comprehension skills. Literate conversations are a good way to assess student understanding and check for comprehension as well. Think alouds were also discussed in the chapter, which is a way of modeling the thinking process that goes on in your head while you read. Modeling for students will be essential throughout our teaching careers, and think alouds are a wonderful example. I really liked the idea of beginnging a book with my own think aloud for my students and ending by calling on students and asking for their personal modeling of a think aloud.
Gills article introduced ways that teachers can increase comprehension skills in the midst of the overwhelming amount of information on the topic. Gill made mention of the fact that a teacher's own understanding of what comprehension means is very important to devising the right instruction for your readers. The article also suggests that comprehension could be taught more easily if activities were broken up into three parts: prereading, during-reading, and postreading. In doing this, one is utilizing the Comprehension Matrix. This tool is intended to encounrage teachers to apply their knowledge of the effects on comprehension to design the aforementioned sets of activities for students. This will enable them to learn an abundance of comprehension strategies. I LOVED this idea because I am a very organized person, and the more things are separated into sections, the more I can focus on each section to ensure my students are understanding the comprehension strategy being used. I also liked this because it can be applied to any text and any group of readers.
Gregory and Cahill explored reading comprehension in kindergarten readers in their article. Though I do not intent to work with lower elementary grades in my teaching career, this article was quite interesting to me. The article talked about teaching comprehension early and explicitly. In doing this, students will be prepared for comprehension in their academic careers that follow (hopefully when I'll be teaching them!). I really liked the idea of using "I wonder" as a model to teach comprehension skills because young children so often wonder what things are, how they work, and how they can relate to themselves. I believe that this will make comprehension lessons relateable and fun for younger
students. The last article by Pardo explored the big picture of comprehension is afforded teachers with 'everything they need to know' about comprehension. I really enjoyed the section on teachers supporting readers as I believe this is essential to motivating children to learn. Giving students encouragement and the correct tools to comprehend (vocabulary, background knowledge, etc.) so that they can flourish academically is our job as teachers.