I feel that as a senior at Michigan State University, my reading comprehension strategies come naturally to me and I do not typically have to work at using them. Once in a while I will notice myself becoming confused with the text I am reading so I will go back and re-read the section, or I will try to summarize a paragraph in my own words to make sure I have understood the text. Especially when reading books for classes, as opposed to reading books for enjoyment, it is very important for me to make sure that I am comprehending what I am reading and throughout my college career I have found various ways to successfully check my reading.
Strategies such as these are just as important for children to use but unless introduced to these strategies, children are unlikely to recognize and utilize them on their own. Modeling is a good way to show children new ideas as far as reading comprehension. Many times however, children will not realize that what you are modeling is something which they should be actively doing while reading to check their comprehension. The teacher can point out various methods which would be beneficial to their students such as making predictions, summarizing, and looking at the story from various viewpoints. Using these reading comprehension strategies in lessons and activities is a good way to show students how they can actively monitor their reading for comprehension.
In the first grade classroom I am working in, I have not seen the variety of reading comprehension strategies used that we have been introduced to in class, but there are a few the teacher tries to impliment regulartly. Many times when the students are reading, the teacher will ask them what they think will happen next. Often, the ideas are far-fetched and do not make much sense based on what the teacher has already read of the story, but she usually directs them to use the clues they have seen in the story to make a more accurate prediction. Also, the teacher asks the students to retell the sequence of events of the story to check their reading comprehension. She will ask the students about what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story and compile their responses as a class. Although more varieties of reading comprehension strategies could be utilized in the classroom, I feel that my CT does a good job of using some of the most important strategies.
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I do the exact same thing when reading course books. I find myself reading certain texts over and over again. I think a lot of it has to do with attitude about the text itself. When I chose a book to read, it is for pleasure and something I want to read. Books for courses are chosen for us and are often about topics in which we lack interest, making the text more difficult to read.
ReplyDeleteI have also seen he strategies that you mentioned. Predicting and summarizing seem to be common ways to check student's comprehension. However, I do not feel that they do these when they read on their own (which is very unfortunate). Silent reading does not seem to be an activity they many students enjoy and I find it very disheartening. But I often wonder if they dislike it so much because they do not have the proper comprehension skills.