After reading both articles on comprehension, I was surprised at what I thought comprehension was and what it actually meant. Comprehension comes from understanding the text as well as several other factors. In includes the students background knowledge, their personal literacy skills and their feeling on reading. I think that part that surprised me the most was that a students literacy skills affects their comprehension the most. For example if a child is not a strong reader and their fluency is not that great they will have trouble with comprehending the material. They will be so focused on reading the words correctly that they will miss completely the main idea of what they are reading. How teachers present that main idea also surprised me. I never thought about I would present that to my students or how I would teach them to find the main idea of a story on their own. We must model how we gather it from the story as well as present several strategies for them to find it. I really learned a lot from these two articles and I feel as though comprehension, when presenting it to students, is more complex than the obvious of asking who, what, where, when and why?
When reading in the articles about comprehension a few of my own personal beliefs were confirmed. I agree that many elements go into comprehension and reading ability. The article discussed the need for background knowledge to understand text at times, but also how culture can play a role in comprehension. I believe that if parents read to their children at a young age, then they are more likely to enjoy reading in their own lives and are going to be more motivated. It discusses the fact that readers vary in cognitive development too. As teachers, I think it's really important to understand that all students are not in the same place when it comes to their thoughts and abilities in reading and comprehension. If we understand this, then we can help them more.
Additionally, the Pardo article discusses the importance of creating an environment that values reading and writing. I absolutely agree with this statement. In my own classroom I would like to develop a reading center that is appealing to my students. I also hope to have a large variety of books. Just as the article says, having a variety of books will be more beneficial for all types of readers.
I really enjoyed reading both of these articles. I feel like I learned a lot about comprehension. Comprehension is a process in which readers construct meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the stance a reader takes in relationship to the text. I really liked how the comprehension article broke up what a teacher needs to do in order to teach comprehension. The sections that really interseted me were about how teachers should teach decoding skills, teach vocabulary, and how to motivate students. I feel like it is really important for teachers in the intermediate grades to still make sure their students practice decoding. I feel like some teachers might overlook this process because they automatically assume that their students already know this process. However, some students might not have it down pat and it wouldn't hurt everyone to take a practice run in decoding. I like how the article mentions that teachers should teach a variety of narritive genres. All students like reading different genres and types of stories. If you read the same kind of story or genre all of the time then it will become boring for some students. I really liked reading the "bigger picture" article as well. I think that it brought out a lot of good points on what teachers sometimes forget to point out. I do agree that sometimes teachers get caught up in the smaller details that they forget to look at the bigger overall picture. I liked how the article said that teachers should model how children should figure out the big idea of a story because children, if not been properly exposed to "bigger ideas", might not understand how to do this process. Again, I thought that both of these articles were good reads I found beneficial information that I hope to practice in my future teaching profession.
Allison, I agree that when parents read to their children often, at an early age and then on, that children become more motivated to read. As a child I was read to often, almost every night before I went to bed. I like to read now as an adult, granted when I find time to do so. So, because I was read to and enjoyed it so much as a kid, that is a reason why I like to read now.I also liked how you said that you wanted to create your own reading center. I want to do that as well. I want to have bean bags and such set up so that it is appealing to kids and so they want to read. I liked reading your response!
After reading these articles, I realized that there is much more to a student's comprehension than asking questions about a book. I rarely thought before about first introducing a book and learning about students' prior knowledge, making text to text connections, and engaging students in responses that really get them thinking about what they read. I feel that most students really only see comprehension as, as Dana put it, answering who, what, where, when, and why. I also agree that students need to have a specific time set aside for independent reading. Although it is beneficial for students to real aloud together, and in groups with the teacher, I think that students truly grow in their literacy when reading alone. When they read alone they can really focus on their own progress, and don't feel pressure to compare themselves with the literacy of their classmates. As far as the the Walmsley article goes, I agree that teachers need to teach underlying messages in books rather than trivial lessons. I liked the example about the book Crysanthemum, where the true message is to not judge a book by its cover. While most teachers would create a lesson involving talking about each student's name and their uniqueness, I believe that the true message should be the center of the study.
Both articles seemed to prove the point that students are not involved in the "big idea" when it comes to reading. Comprehension is more than just thinking about what happened in the book. In the Walmsey article it said that most lessons cannot even be led to a big discussion in which students may pick up the big idea and develop skills for comprehension. I like that the article said that by focusing on the big ideas it promotes the understanding of smaller details within the story as well. I think that when you are trying to figure out what the meaning of the story is you have to pay attention to detail. The articles said that book selection is key to building comprehension in young students. By choosing books with easily spotted big ideas at first and reading aloud and modeling comprehension the students will be able to get a gist of how they should be thinking while reading a story. The Pardo article stressed the fact that teachers need to model how to choose texts to students. I especially liked the idea of teaching students how to find the "big idea" in a story through the use of daily conversation through current events and other types of media. In school I never thought of Current Events as a way to build my comprehension skills, and it was mostly done to fulfill a requirement rather than being used as actual class discussion. Depending on grade level I think it would be fun to discuss current events and show students how stories in the media can be bias, and finding the big idea is what is most important.
Kelly, I too had never really thought about 1st introducing a book then learning about student's prior knowledge then making text-to-text connections before ever diving into the story. I kind of assumed that you typically find the moral of the story AFTER reading it, not that you told the students before you read it. My cooperating teacher at CC Wright always asks the 2nd grade students after reading a story about text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections they can come up with. I think this is a great idea because it really gets students thinking about what the story means, therefore building their comprehension skills.
I definitely made a connection with the Walmsley article that was about "getting the big idea." I do not really recall throughout my schooling having to explain or find the big idea of anything I read. My teachers generally just said to read something and you did, and then you generally answered questions on a worksheet about the written work, or you did a book report. I think AP English in high school was one of the first times I had to describe the main idea(s). While reading this article I definitely decided that I liked the idea of doing this with younger students. I personally think I would have built better comprehension skills had I been taught to search for it. So I believe that working on finding the big idea, even with kinders, is an excellent idea that I intend to use with my students. The Pardo article had a lot of information that I guess I knew in the back of my mind but I never really took into consideration and looked at in depth. Like how comprehension is affected by a reader's culture. I know that everyone is different and that we all experience different things but I very really considered how culture affected our understanding. I guess it would be difficult for a student to understand what a big city is, if they've never been to one or seen pictures of what one looks like. As a teacher it is going to be very important to take that into consideration, since I have had a lot of exposure and access to many things in my life, I'll have to remember that not everyone else has. I'm with you Kelly, I never really thought about building comprehension by introducing a book and then finding out their existing knowledge before hand. I like most everyone just thought comprehension was the understanding of what you read, but it apparently goes much deeper than that.
Katie, I agree that if I had been given these comprehension skills in elementary school I would have done better in high school. I think it is true that many times students get to high school and they have no idea how to "get the big idea" and even if they do, they are not doing it effectively. I think that it is important, like to said, to begin teaching these skills as earlier as kindergarten. There were many ideas on how to approach this in both articles which leads be to believe that there are many resources we could use as well.
I really enjoyed reading these articles on comprehension. It was interesting and new to me because I was not taught these skills while I was in elementary school. The Pardo article says, "They teach decoding skills, help students build fluency,build and activate background knowledge, teach vocabulary words, motivate students, and engage them in personal responses to text." This really helped me to understand how important these comprehension skills are. The article did a really good job of stressing how important these skills are to elementary students. Pardo also did a good job of teaching us how to use the skills in a classroom. The Walmsey aticle was about getting "the big idea." The only time that I remember ever even talking about the "big idea" of a book was in high school in the novels that we would have to read in English class. In elementary school we didn't ever try to find the big idea when reading, we just read then took tests for comprehension skills. The article does a good job of telling us why we need to teach the big idea. The two article definitely gave me a new perspective on comprehension skills and how to use them. Because of my experience with only taking accelerated reader tests as comprehension I didn't have any ideas about what to do when teaching comprehension. I feel more comfortable with this.
I like how you said that comprehension is more than just thinking about what happened in the book. I feel like it is important for students as well as teachers to understand that there is more to comprehension. I also agree with what you said about details being important in comprehension. I also agree that book selection in so important because students need to be able to pick out the big idea easily at first, and then have it a little bit more difficult as the students get better at finding the big idea of the story. I like how Current Events can be put into comprehension curricula also. Good job on your response.
I found the Pardo article very informative especially when it came to comprehension. This article was very informative for upcoming teachers because even though I had a pretty good grasp on what comprehension was this article opened my eyes to what all is behind it. I never knew exactly how comprehension worked in the students mind and never realized all the characteristics behind accomplishing good reading comprehension. I agree with all of the things teachers must to do support readers. Without these different skills being taught how are our students going to learn about having good comprehension. In my opinion the most important thing for teachers to do to help their students is to motivate them and to push them to try their hardest and do their best. Without motivation some students may never strive to do their best, although some may, most need that extra boost of confidence to know that they are doing ok. The most helpful part of the article was when it talked about how teachers support the text because even though I know about comprehension and how it works if I don’t know how to teach it them I’m pretty useless. The advice and hints they gave towards making a good comprehension lesson was great and taught me a lot. Overall, this article was very informative and helpful in all aspects of comprehension.
The second article was a little more challenging for me personally because I wasn’t sure what the big idea was that they kept talking about. After reading the first couple of paragraphs though I quickly figured it out. I agree with the article that it is very important for students to learn what the big idea is because why read the book, article, or novel if you’re not going to get the point of it in the end. I agree with what the article said about when finding the big idea you also find the smaller details in the process. There have been many times when I was looking for the big idea in a story and in the process of it I found small details that I had originally forgot about. I loved the different suggestions that the article offered and found them to be very helpful. Like the first this article gave a lot of helpful information that will help me be a better teacher for my students.
After reading these articles, I realized that comprehension is much more than just what the book means. I never really realized how much of an affect prior knowledge has on a student's comprehension. Prior knowledge helps students to make connections with concepts about their reading. The teacher's job is very important in building students comprehension so that they can become very successful adults. In the Walmsley article, I found that it is important for teacher's to teach the underlying message of a book. Most of the time teacher's just ask what happened in a story. This really doesn't help students to understand the main meaning behind a book. Teacher's can provide multiple text books and begin to ask student's what the big idea in the story was. This will help the students later in life to become successful adults. I have learned a lot from both these articles. I now understand some important concepts and will use them in my future classroom.
After reading the two articles I discovered that comprehension is not simply being able to answer questions about a reading. It “is a process in which readers construct meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the stance the reader takes in relationship to the text”. In the article Getting the Big Idea the author suggests “holding regular conversations in classrooms about big ideas in general.” I think that this is a wonderful idea. It allows children to gain a deeper understanding of material discussed in the classroom as well as in the world around them. The author also said that he was surprised that such great literature was read to children in early grades but too often discussions were focused trivial aspects. I often remember having questions to answer after reading a book that were picky details. I feel like I missed the big idea on a lot of books the first time that I read them because I was too focused on trying to remember material that I might be asked about later. I think that it is so important to provide children with opportunities for critical thinking in order for them to be able to succeed in life.
Brooke, I think both me and you had the same elementary experiences because I was never taught most of the stuff that I learned from these articles. I also liked all the strategies that they gave teachers in order to help students get better comprehension. I agree that the Pardo article was very helpful to both the students and the teachers. I also never knew what the “big idea” was until high school where teachers were asking what a novel was about. In elementary school it was all about taking those tests and getting those high scores. I’m glad to see that I wasn’t alone in how I was taught reading growing up.
Allison, I believe that it is important for parents to read to their student as well. If parents do this, then their student will understand reading more. The environment is also very important. I agree that having a reading area is very important. This can be an area where there are no distractions and students can focus on their comprehension.
Kelly, I agree with the statement that it is beneficial for students to real aloud together, and in groups with the teacher but that students truly grow in their literacy when reading alone.I think that there is a time for reading with someone and from reading alone. Reading alone takes away the stress that a student may feel if they are struggling or are just shy. It allows students to try to develop their own understanding of the big idea of the text which could be discussed later with another student or teacher. A student knows what level they are at and can determine whether the text is a fit for them or not and from there can progress. They only way to improve reading skills is to practice, practice, practice and time spent alone reading is a great way to do this.
These articles both comment on how reading comprehension needs to be worked on more in elementary school. I agree with this statement, because I definitely did not get much reading comprehension in my elementary school curriculum. I know it was taught some, but it wasn't enough for me to really grasp the concept. Walmsley was talking about students "getting the big idea." It advised choosing books that have explicit "big ideas" to get students thinking about the text and model how to find out the "big idea". Then it says to work toward books that the "big idea" isn't as explicit. I plan to implement this into my classroom; choosing books that have "multiple layers of meaning" to get students to think more critically and have better reading comprehension. Pardo was talking about the order things have to happen for students to achieve at reading comprehension. Teachers need to choose books that students have background knowledge about so they will comprehend the text at a higher level. Teaching vocabulary words and helping students build reading fluency helps students have a higher understanding of the text. Also, when teachers choose books that relate to the students, the students will be more motivated to read it. I feel that I was not taught enough of this growing up. I dislike analyzing text because I never got a good grasp of how that was to be done. Pardo also showed examples of how to use these strategies in the classroom. These two articles definitely gave me a new perspective on how important it is to have students figure out the "big idea" of text and how beneficial it is to them in the future.
Allison, I also agree that parents reading to their children are a big motivation for students to read in the future. My sister and I enjoy reading and I can relate that to my mom reading to us as kids. We would go to the library each week to check out new books. The more children read, the more experiences and background knowledge they will have that can help them relate to future texts. I want my classroom to be open to reading so that if parents don't or can't read to their children, I can help the students get motivated to read.
I found it very interesting that there are different "definitions" of comprehension. I feel that comprehension needs to be stressed greater in elementary schools today as was addressed in the articles. I have noticed within my class that I am working with that the kids who are still struggling with their reading (having to exert a lot of energy to just sound out words) are also the kids who don't remember the story they read by the end of the day. I had never thought of the lagistics of comprehension previous to this article and the fact that long and short term memory play a role. The more background and word knowledge a reader has the more likely they are to easily comprehend something that they read and learn new things from a text that they can then add to their "bank" of knowledge. This is a cycle that continues and allows a reader to grow and move into higher levels of material but when a student struggles to read their progression is hindered greatly. I feel that it is very important to help students find level appropriate texts, like the Goldilocks method suggests, so that they may become confident and able in reading. One thing the text mentioned that i agree with is that independent reading can really increase a childs knowledge and aid them in starting to comprehend text on their own and increasingly need less assistance. It is our responsibility when we are teachers to build a childs word knowledge and reading ability because they may not be getting any assistance in this at home.
I felt the Walmsley article about comprehension was helpful. I liked how they were speaking about the big ideas of books, films, arguments, and magazine articles. They were not just narrowing it down to being important for learning the main idea of books. It is stated that it is important to understand the big ideas for full participation in life, work, and democracy. People should not only make these connections and understand these ideas. This is something that will help carry them through life. I also liked how these books were thought of as not having the big idea right there for the students to read. "Good" children's literature has the meaning beneath the surface where students have to make the connections and own understanding of the main idea. I liked the different ways that were told for teachers to have ideas of how to teach the big ideas. I will certainly use the modeling aspect to teach my students how to understand the big ideas. Three important ideas of questions to ask to see the main idea is making text-to-self, text-to-world, or text-to-text connections.
Allison, I really like how you mentioned having a classroom environment that is reading friendly. I want my students to gain the love of reading as I did when I was younger from my mom. Not all students have this environment at home and school is as good of a place to gain this love for reading. I want to have the majority of my space centered around reading just because I think that is one of the most important parts of school. It will take you far in life.
Barbara, I agree with you that there were a lot of good tips for future teachers in the Pardo article. I too appreciated that it was geared toward teacher tips rather than just telling us about comprehension and that many people lack a complete understading of how it works. I feel more prepared in teaching comprehension after reading this article. I too had a decent knowledge of comprehension but had never really thought about the interworkings behind it. Additionally I'm really glad you focused on the importance of motivation. I agree that wothout motivation a child is not going to have a drive to do much, especial struggle through reading a text. I feel that it is very important for a teacher to be there for their students and to always be a motivational support because as I mentioned in my post, you never know what they recieve at home and your motivation may make a world of a differance to a child.
I thought that the articles were very interesting, before reading the articles I had a completely different view on comprehension. There is a lot more that goes into comprehension than I thought. The articles brought up some personal connections for me because when I was younger I struggled a bit with comprehension, and now I know why. I liked how the Walmsley article talked about the big ideas of books, films, magazines etc, instead of narrowing it down to just the main idea of books. One of the elements I hadn’t thought of was the student using prior knowledge in order to successfully comprehend certain works we must be able to relate them to our real life experiences to more affectively comprehend the underlying ideas. Comprehension is more than just being able to regurgitate what the students have just read, which can happen, and what the students took from the story will be a short-term memory. Comprehension is much more meaningful when the reader brings what they know to the text, and relates the text to things that have happened to them, this allows the reader to make a connection with what they have read and more affectively comprehend it. This is why it is very important to pick texts that are appropriate for specific students. I really enjoyed the articles and thought that they were very helpful to myself as a developing teacher; I now have a greater and broader idea of comprehension.
Brooke, I also really enjoyed the articles and I also was not taught the skills they talked about when I was in elementary school. I thought that activating background knowledge was extremely important to comprehension. When I was in elementary school I we never talked about the big idea that was something we didn’t talk about until high school. In elementary school all the teachers seemed to care about was us regurgitating exactly what happened at any given time they weren’t concerned with the big picture or the main idea. The article made me feel more comfortable with the ideas of comprehension.
I found both readings to be very interesting and both touched on concepts of comprehension that I never considered. I always thought comprehension was just what you learned from the writing and that's it. Seeing comprehension as being a set of main ideas, thoughts, and attitudes about the reading goes farther then my original simple minded thoughts. Knowing this difference is very important to being able to teach children in a way that they will understand. Just thinking comprehension as a flat thought process that can be accomplished by asking the student to summarize the reading does not do any justice to what comprehension really is. I look forward to learning about different ways of teaching students and the ways that have been most effective during this semester. I hope to be able to see these things in CC Wright Elementary and the future school I will be teaching in.
The Pardo article really opened my eyes to what reading comprehension really is. I have always understood that comprehension is important because good readers need to be able to glean meaning from the texts they read, but I did not think about the interaction between the text and the reader. I found this article to be very practical because it lays out the ways that teachers can support their students as readers. I was very surprised to read that some research has shown that reading aloud to students is the most effective way to increase comprehension. Reading aloud helps build fluency, which is crucial for comprehension, so teachers can make a big difference for their students just by taking time to read aloud to them. I completely agree with what this article says about teaching vocabulary words. Giving students long lists of random words to look up is not going to help them with reading comprehension or increase their vocabularies. I wish that some of my teachers from elementary school would have realized that!
Sarah M, I am glad that you wrote about hoping to see these things at C.C. Wright. So far I have not noticed the teachers supporting their readers by using the methods outlined in the Pardo article. I think this might just be because I've only been in the classroom twice and it is the beginning of the school year. I hope that as the semester progresses, I can see more and more of these comprehension strategies in action. I really like the way you are connecting the information from the articles to our experiences in our internships.
Both of these articles were great sources to learn about how to integrate the “big idea” more often in our core curriculum. Before reading these articles, I do not think I realized how much the “big idea” has been pushed to the side and not used any more. I feel that the big idea needs to be a common practice in our everyday lives as teachers of young people. When I think back to elementary, middle, and high school, I remember reading articles or study concepts and my teachers focusing on the main idea of what we had just worked on so it is very sad to me that this is no longer in strong practice. We, as teachers, need to teach students about the “big idea” and how it can show up in many different ways: an underlying theme of a text, what an author or speaker is really trying to communicate, or the life lessons that readers are suppose to understand from a text. I really liked the example about the children’s book, The Itsy Bitsy Spider. The “big idea” of this story was not about all of the places that the spider traveled, but instead the big idea was “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That life lesson is very important and students need to completely understand the lesson, or they miss the point of the written text. I feel that we can help students build their understanding of the big idea by modeling and simply explaining to students how we found the big idea of a book and why it is so important. Another great way to model the big idea for students is to infuse important topics in daily conversation. As teachers we have to show students that big ideas come from all sorts of media and texts, and this is just the beginning of improving this teaching strategy and showing students the importance of what they see and read.
Kelly, I found this article very important too. I feel that if we read a book to students and ask them comprehension questions, then that means they understand the big idea….but this article proved that wrong. Students need to remember the small details, while they are still able to process the big details. Also, I like how you mentioned that we have to remember to consider students prior knowledge and making text to text connections, while engaging students in the big ideas.
There are many ideas and concepts about comprehension that are out there, but my thoughts about it are very similar to that in the article. It is not reasonable to think that a child who can not read or isn't that fluent to understand and retain what they are reading. The child is going to be so focused on trying to sound out the word and figuring out what it is that the child loses sight of what exactly it is that they are reading.
When discussing comprehension and how to teach it as a teacher, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do or to get across to your students. At the same time, it is something that is very important in a student's education. It all begins on how to read and how to comprehend things. Making reading in my classroom is something that I am going to strive for and I will keep modifying it until I feel that it is the best for my students. Having a variety of books and genres in my classroom would give many different outlets for my students to grab on to.
I agree with you about how when I was younger that I had a hard time understanding comprehension. I felt like, and still feel like it sometimes that I get caught up in trying to 'comprehend' that I forget about the main idea or focus of a book. It is very important to teach my students the right way to read a book and and to understand it but to also enjoy reading and to not think that it is a punishment.
After reading both articles on comprehension, I was surprised at what I thought comprehension was and what it actually meant. Comprehension comes from understanding the text as well as several other factors. In includes the students background knowledge, their personal literacy skills and their feeling on reading. I think that part that surprised me the most was that a students literacy skills affects their comprehension the most. For example if a child is not a strong reader and their fluency is not that great they will have trouble with comprehending the material. They will be so focused on reading the words correctly that they will miss completely the main idea of what they are reading.
ReplyDeleteHow teachers present that main idea also surprised me. I never thought about I would present that to my students or how I would teach them to find the main idea of a story on their own. We must model how we gather it from the story as well as present several strategies for them to find it.
I really learned a lot from these two articles and I feel as though comprehension, when presenting it to students, is more complex than the obvious of asking who, what, where, when and why?
When reading in the articles about comprehension a few of my own personal beliefs were confirmed. I agree that many elements go into comprehension and reading ability. The article discussed the need for background knowledge to understand text at times, but also how culture can play a role in comprehension. I believe that if parents read to their children at a young age, then they are more likely to enjoy reading in their own lives and are going to be more motivated. It discusses the fact that readers vary in cognitive development too. As teachers, I think it's really important to understand that all students are not in the same place when it comes to their thoughts and abilities in reading and comprehension. If we understand this, then we can help them more.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, the Pardo article discusses the importance of creating an environment that values reading and writing. I absolutely agree with this statement. In my own classroom I would like to develop a reading center that is appealing to my students. I also hope to have a large variety of books. Just as the article says, having a variety of books will be more beneficial for all types of readers.
I really enjoyed reading both of these articles. I feel like I learned a lot about comprehension. Comprehension is a process in which readers construct meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the stance a reader takes in relationship to the text. I really liked how the comprehension article broke up what a teacher needs to do in order to teach comprehension. The sections that really interseted me were about how teachers should teach decoding skills, teach vocabulary, and how to motivate students. I feel like it is really important for teachers in the intermediate grades to still make sure their students practice decoding. I feel like some teachers might overlook this process because they automatically assume that their students already know this process. However, some students might not have it down pat and it wouldn't hurt everyone to take a practice run in decoding. I like how the article mentions that teachers should teach a variety of narritive genres. All students like reading different genres and types of stories. If you read the same kind of story or genre all of the time then it will become boring for some students.
ReplyDeleteI really liked reading the "bigger picture" article as well. I think that it brought out a lot of good points on what teachers sometimes forget to point out. I do agree that sometimes teachers get caught up in the smaller details that they forget to look at the bigger overall picture. I liked how the article said that teachers should model how children should figure out the big idea of a story because children, if not been properly exposed to "bigger ideas", might not understand how to do this process.
Again, I thought that both of these articles were good reads I found beneficial information that I hope to practice in my future teaching profession.
Allison,
ReplyDeleteI agree that when parents read to their children often, at an early age and then on, that children become more motivated to read. As a child I was read to often, almost every night before I went to bed. I like to read now as an adult, granted when I find time to do so. So, because I was read to and enjoyed it so much as a kid, that is a reason why I like to read now.I also liked how you said that you wanted to create your own reading center. I want to do that as well. I want to have bean bags and such set up so that it is appealing to kids and so they want to read. I liked reading your response!
After reading these articles, I realized that there is much more to a student's comprehension than asking questions about a book. I rarely thought before about first introducing a book and learning about students' prior knowledge, making text to text connections, and engaging students in responses that really get them thinking about what they read. I feel that most students really only see comprehension as, as Dana put it, answering who, what, where, when, and why. I also agree that students need to have a specific time set aside for independent reading. Although it is beneficial for students to real aloud together, and in groups with the teacher, I think that students truly grow in their literacy when reading alone. When they read alone they can really focus on their own progress, and don't feel pressure to compare themselves with the literacy of their classmates.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the the Walmsley article goes, I agree that teachers need to teach underlying messages in books rather than trivial lessons. I liked the example about the book Crysanthemum, where the true message is to not judge a book by its cover. While most teachers would create a lesson involving talking about each student's name and their uniqueness, I believe that the true message should be the center of the study.
Both articles seemed to prove the point that students are not involved in the "big idea" when it comes to reading. Comprehension is more than just thinking about what happened in the book. In the Walmsey article it said that most lessons cannot even be led to a big discussion in which students may pick up the big idea and develop skills for comprehension. I like that the article said that by focusing on the big ideas it promotes the understanding of smaller details within the story as well. I think that when you are trying to figure out what the meaning of the story is you have to pay attention to detail. The articles said that book selection is key to building comprehension in young students. By choosing books with easily spotted big ideas at first and reading aloud and modeling comprehension the students will be able to get a gist of how they should be thinking while reading a story. The Pardo article stressed the fact that teachers need to model how to choose texts to students.
ReplyDeleteI especially liked the idea of teaching students how to find the "big idea" in a story through the use of daily conversation through current events and other types of media. In school I never thought of Current Events as a way to build my comprehension skills, and it was mostly done to fulfill a requirement rather than being used as actual class discussion. Depending on grade level I think it would be fun to discuss current events and show students how stories in the media can be bias, and finding the big idea is what is most important.
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI too had never really thought about 1st introducing a book then learning about student's prior knowledge then making text-to-text connections before ever diving into the story. I kind of assumed that you typically find the moral of the story AFTER reading it, not that you told the students before you read it. My cooperating teacher at CC Wright always asks the 2nd grade students after reading a story about text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections they can come up with. I think this is a great idea because it really gets students thinking about what the story means, therefore building their comprehension skills.
I definitely made a connection with the Walmsley article that was about "getting the big idea." I do not really recall throughout my schooling having to explain or find the big idea of anything I read. My teachers generally just said to read something and you did, and then you generally answered questions on a worksheet about the written work, or you did a book report. I think AP English in high school was one of the first times I had to describe the main idea(s). While reading this article I definitely decided that I liked the idea of doing this with younger students. I personally think I would have built better comprehension skills had I been taught to search for it. So I believe that working on finding the big idea, even with kinders, is an excellent idea that I intend to use with my students.
ReplyDeleteThe Pardo article had a lot of information that I guess I knew in the back of my mind but I never really took into consideration and looked at in depth. Like how comprehension is affected by a reader's culture. I know that everyone is different and that we all experience different things but I very really considered how culture affected our understanding. I guess it would be difficult for a student to understand what a big city is, if they've never been to one or seen pictures of what one looks like. As a teacher it is going to be very important to take that into consideration, since I have had a lot of exposure and access to many things in my life, I'll have to remember that not everyone else has.
I'm with you Kelly, I never really thought about building comprehension by introducing a book and then finding out their existing knowledge before hand. I like most everyone just thought comprehension was the understanding of what you read, but it apparently goes much deeper than that.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteI agree that if I had been given these comprehension skills in elementary school I would have done better in high school. I think it is true that many times students get to high school and they have no idea how to "get the big idea" and even if they do, they are not doing it effectively. I think that it is important, like to said, to begin teaching these skills as earlier as kindergarten. There were many ideas on how to approach this in both articles which leads be to believe that there are many resources we could use as well.
I really enjoyed reading these articles on comprehension. It was interesting and new to me because I was not taught these skills while I was in elementary school. The Pardo article says, "They teach decoding skills, help students build fluency,build and activate background knowledge, teach vocabulary words, motivate students, and engage them in personal responses to text." This really helped me to understand how important these comprehension skills are. The article did a really good job of stressing how important these skills are to elementary students. Pardo also did a good job of teaching us how to use the skills in a classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe Walmsey aticle was about getting "the big idea." The only time that I remember ever even talking about the "big idea" of a book was in high school in the novels that we would have to read in English class. In elementary school we didn't ever try to find the big idea when reading, we just read then took tests for comprehension skills. The article does a good job of telling us why we need to teach the big idea. The two article definitely gave me a new perspective on comprehension skills and how to use them. Because of my experience with only taking accelerated reader tests as comprehension I didn't have any ideas about what to do when teaching comprehension. I feel more comfortable with this.
Valerie,
ReplyDeleteI like how you said that comprehension is more than just thinking about what happened in the book. I feel like it is important for students as well as teachers to understand that there is more to comprehension. I also agree with what you said about details being important in comprehension. I also agree that book selection in so important because students need to be able to pick out the big idea easily at first, and then have it a little bit more difficult as the students get better at finding the big idea of the story. I like how Current Events can be put into comprehension curricula also. Good job on your response.
I found the Pardo article very informative especially when it came to comprehension. This article was very informative for upcoming teachers because even though I had a pretty good grasp on what comprehension was this article opened my eyes to what all is behind it. I never knew exactly how comprehension worked in the students mind and never realized all the characteristics behind accomplishing good reading comprehension. I agree with all of the things teachers must to do support readers. Without these different skills being taught how are our students going to learn about having good comprehension. In my opinion the most important thing for teachers to do to help their students is to motivate them and to push them to try their hardest and do their best. Without motivation some students may never strive to do their best, although some may, most need that extra boost of confidence to know that they are doing ok. The most helpful part of the article was when it talked about how teachers support the text because even though I know about comprehension and how it works if I don’t know how to teach it them I’m pretty useless. The advice and hints they gave towards making a good comprehension lesson was great and taught me a lot. Overall, this article was very informative and helpful in all aspects of comprehension.
ReplyDeleteThe second article was a little more challenging for me personally because I wasn’t sure what the big idea was that they kept talking about. After reading the first couple of paragraphs though I quickly figured it out. I agree with the article that it is very important for students to learn what the big idea is because why read the book, article, or novel if you’re not going to get the point of it in the end. I agree with what the article said about when finding the big idea you also find the smaller details in the process. There have been many times when I was looking for the big idea in a story and in the process of it I found small details that I had originally forgot about. I loved the different suggestions that the article offered and found them to be very helpful. Like the first this article gave a lot of helpful information that will help me be a better teacher for my students.
After reading these articles, I realized that comprehension is much more than just what the book means. I never really realized how much of an affect prior knowledge has on a student's comprehension. Prior knowledge helps students to make connections with concepts about their reading. The teacher's job is very important in building students comprehension so that they can become very successful adults.
ReplyDeleteIn the Walmsley article, I found that it is important for teacher's to teach the underlying message of a book. Most of the time teacher's just ask what happened in a story. This really doesn't help students to understand the main meaning behind a book. Teacher's can provide multiple text books and begin to ask student's what the big idea in the story was. This will help the students later in life to become successful adults.
I have learned a lot from both these articles. I now understand some important concepts and will use them in my future classroom.
After reading the two articles I discovered that comprehension is not simply being able to answer questions about a reading. It “is a process in which readers construct meaning by interacting with text through the combination of prior knowledge and previous experience, information in the text, and the stance the reader takes in relationship to the text”. In the article Getting the Big Idea the author suggests “holding regular conversations in classrooms about big ideas in general.” I think that this is a wonderful idea. It allows children to gain a deeper understanding of material discussed in the classroom as well as in the world around them. The author also said that he was surprised that such great literature was read to children in early grades but too often discussions were focused trivial aspects. I often remember having questions to answer after reading a book that were picky details. I feel like I missed the big idea on a lot of books the first time that I read them because I was too focused on trying to remember material that I might be asked about later. I think that it is so important to provide children with opportunities for critical thinking in order for them to be able to succeed in life.
ReplyDeleteBrooke,
ReplyDeleteI think both me and you had the same elementary experiences because I was never taught most of the stuff that I learned from these articles. I also liked all the strategies that they gave teachers in order to help students get better comprehension. I agree that the Pardo article was very helpful to both the students and the teachers. I also never knew what the “big idea” was until high school where teachers were asking what a novel was about. In elementary school it was all about taking those tests and getting those high scores. I’m glad to see that I wasn’t alone in how I was taught reading growing up.
Allison,
ReplyDeleteI believe that it is important for parents to read to their student as well. If parents do this, then their student will understand reading more. The environment is also very important. I agree that having a reading area is very important. This can be an area where there are no distractions and students can focus on their comprehension.
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteI agree with the statement that it is beneficial for students to real aloud together, and in groups with the teacher but that students truly grow in their literacy when reading alone.I think that there is a time for reading with someone and from reading alone. Reading alone takes away the stress that a student may feel if they are struggling or are just shy. It allows students to try to develop their own understanding of the big idea of the text which could be discussed later with another student or teacher. A student knows what level they are at and can determine whether the text is a fit for them or not and from there can progress. They only way to improve reading skills is to practice, practice, practice and time spent alone reading is a great way to do this.
These articles both comment on how reading comprehension needs to be worked on more in elementary school. I agree with this statement, because I definitely did not get much reading comprehension in my elementary school curriculum. I know it was taught some, but it wasn't enough for me to really grasp the concept. Walmsley was talking about students "getting the big idea." It advised choosing books that have explicit "big ideas" to get students thinking about the text and model how to find out the "big idea". Then it says to work toward books that the "big idea" isn't as explicit. I plan to implement this into my classroom; choosing books that have "multiple layers of meaning" to get students to think more critically and have better reading comprehension. Pardo was talking about the order things have to happen for students to achieve at reading comprehension. Teachers need to choose books that students have background knowledge about so they will comprehend the text at a higher level. Teaching vocabulary words and helping students build reading fluency helps students have a higher understanding of the text. Also, when teachers choose books that relate to the students, the students will be more motivated to read it. I feel that I was not taught enough of this growing up. I dislike analyzing text because I never got a good grasp of how that was to be done. Pardo also showed examples of how to use these strategies in the classroom. These two articles definitely gave me a new perspective on how important it is to have students figure out the "big idea" of text and how beneficial it is to them in the future.
ReplyDeleteAllison,
ReplyDeleteI also agree that parents reading to their children are a big motivation for students to read in the future. My sister and I enjoy reading and I can relate that to my mom reading to us as kids. We would go to the library each week to check out new books. The more children read, the more experiences and background knowledge they will have that can help them relate to future texts. I want my classroom to be open to reading so that if parents don't or can't read to their children, I can help the students get motivated to read.
I found it very interesting that there are different "definitions" of comprehension. I feel that comprehension needs to be stressed greater in elementary schools today as was addressed in the articles. I have noticed within my class that I am working with that the kids who are still struggling with their reading (having to exert a lot of energy to just sound out words) are also the kids who don't remember the story they read by the end of the day. I had never thought of the lagistics of comprehension previous to this article and the fact that long and short term memory play a role. The more background and word knowledge a reader has the more likely they are to easily comprehend something that they read and learn new things from a text that they can then add to their "bank" of knowledge. This is a cycle that continues and allows a reader to grow and move into higher levels of material but when a student struggles to read their progression is hindered greatly. I feel that it is very important to help students find level appropriate texts, like the Goldilocks method suggests, so that they may become confident and able in reading. One thing the text mentioned that i agree with is that independent reading can really increase a childs knowledge and aid them in starting to comprehend text on their own and increasingly need less assistance. It is our responsibility when we are teachers to build a childs word knowledge and reading ability because they may not be getting any assistance in this at home.
ReplyDeleteI felt the Walmsley article about comprehension was helpful. I liked how they were speaking about the big ideas of books, films, arguments, and magazine articles. They were not just narrowing it down to being important for learning the main idea of books. It is stated that it is important to understand the big ideas for full participation in life, work, and democracy. People should not only make these connections and understand these ideas. This is something that will help carry them through life. I also liked how these books were thought of as not having the big idea right there for the students to read. "Good" children's literature has the meaning beneath the surface where students have to make the connections and own understanding of the main idea. I liked the different ways that were told for teachers to have ideas of how to teach the big ideas. I will certainly use the modeling aspect to teach my students how to understand the big ideas. Three important ideas of questions to ask to see the main idea is making text-to-self, text-to-world, or text-to-text connections.
ReplyDeleteAllison, I really like how you mentioned having a classroom environment that is reading friendly. I want my students to gain the love of reading as I did when I was younger from my mom. Not all students have this environment at home and school is as good of a place to gain this love for reading. I want to have the majority of my space centered around reading just because I think that is one of the most important parts of school. It will take you far in life.
ReplyDeleteBarbara,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that there were a lot of good tips for future teachers in the Pardo article. I too appreciated that it was geared toward teacher tips rather than just telling us about comprehension and that many people lack a complete understading of how it works. I feel more prepared in teaching comprehension after reading this article. I too had a decent knowledge of comprehension but had never really thought about the interworkings behind it. Additionally I'm really glad you focused on the importance of motivation. I agree that wothout motivation a child is not going to have a drive to do much, especial struggle through reading a text. I feel that it is very important for a teacher to be there for their students and to always be a motivational support because as I mentioned in my post, you never know what they recieve at home and your motivation may make a world of a differance to a child.
I thought that the articles were very interesting, before reading the articles I had a completely different view on comprehension. There is a lot more that goes into comprehension than I thought. The articles brought up some personal connections for me because when I was younger I struggled a bit with comprehension, and now I know why. I liked how the Walmsley article talked about the big ideas of books, films, magazines etc, instead of narrowing it down to just the main idea of books. One of the elements I hadn’t thought of was the student using prior knowledge in order to successfully comprehend certain works we must be able to relate them to our real life experiences to more affectively comprehend the underlying ideas. Comprehension is more than just being able to regurgitate what the students have just read, which can happen, and what the students took from the story will be a short-term memory. Comprehension is much more meaningful when the reader brings what they know to the text, and relates the text to things that have happened to them, this allows the reader to make a connection with what they have read and more affectively comprehend it. This is why it is very important to pick texts that are appropriate for specific students. I really enjoyed the articles and thought that they were very helpful to myself as a developing teacher; I now have a greater and broader idea of comprehension.
ReplyDeleteBrooke,
ReplyDeleteI also really enjoyed the articles and I also was not taught the skills they talked about when I was in elementary school. I thought that activating background knowledge was extremely important to comprehension. When I was in elementary school I we never talked about the big idea that was something we didn’t talk about until high school. In elementary school all the teachers seemed to care about was us regurgitating exactly what happened at any given time they weren’t concerned with the big picture or the main idea. The article made me feel more comfortable with the ideas of comprehension.
I found both readings to be very interesting and both touched on concepts of comprehension that I never considered. I always thought comprehension was just what you learned from the writing and that's it. Seeing comprehension as being a set of main ideas, thoughts, and attitudes about the reading goes farther then my original simple minded thoughts. Knowing this difference is very important to being able to teach children in a way that they will understand. Just thinking comprehension as a flat thought process that can be accomplished by asking the student to summarize the reading does not do any justice to what comprehension really is. I look forward to learning about different ways of teaching students and the ways that have been most effective during this semester. I hope to be able to see these things in CC Wright Elementary and the future school I will be teaching in.
ReplyDeleteThe Pardo article really opened my eyes to what reading comprehension really is. I have always understood that comprehension is important because good readers need to be able to glean meaning from the texts they read, but I did not think about the interaction between the text and the reader. I found this article to be very practical because it lays out the ways that teachers can support their students as readers. I was very surprised to read that some research has shown that reading aloud to students is the most effective way to increase comprehension. Reading aloud helps build fluency, which is crucial for comprehension, so teachers can make a big difference for their students just by taking time to read aloud to them. I completely agree with what this article says about teaching vocabulary words. Giving students long lists of random words to look up is not going to help them with reading comprehension or increase their vocabularies. I wish that some of my teachers from elementary school would have realized that!
ReplyDeleteSarah M,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you wrote about hoping to see these things at C.C. Wright. So far I have not noticed the teachers supporting their readers by using the methods outlined in the Pardo article. I think this might just be because I've only been in the classroom twice and it is the beginning of the school year. I hope that as the semester progresses, I can see more and more of these comprehension strategies in action. I really like the way you are connecting the information from the articles to our experiences in our internships.
Both of these articles were great sources to learn about how to integrate the “big idea” more often in our core curriculum. Before reading these articles, I do not think I realized how much the “big idea” has been pushed to the side and not used any more. I feel that the big idea needs to be a common practice in our everyday lives as teachers of young people. When I think back to elementary, middle, and high school, I remember reading articles or study concepts and my teachers focusing on the main idea of what we had just worked on so it is very sad to me that this is no longer in strong practice. We, as teachers, need to teach students about the “big idea” and how it can show up in many different ways: an underlying theme of a text, what an author or speaker is really trying to communicate, or the life lessons that readers are suppose to understand from a text. I really liked the example about the children’s book, The Itsy Bitsy Spider. The “big idea” of this story was not about all of the places that the spider traveled, but instead the big idea was “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That life lesson is very important and students need to completely understand the lesson, or they miss the point of the written text. I feel that we can help students build their understanding of the big idea by modeling and simply explaining to students how we found the big idea of a book and why it is so important. Another great way to model the big idea for students is to infuse important topics in daily conversation. As teachers we have to show students that big ideas come from all sorts of media and texts, and this is just the beginning of improving this teaching strategy and showing students the importance of what they see and read.
ReplyDeleteKelly,
ReplyDeleteI found this article very important too. I feel that if we read a book to students and ask them comprehension questions, then that means they understand the big idea….but this article proved that wrong. Students need to remember the small details, while they are still able to process the big details. Also, I like how you mentioned that we have to remember to consider students prior knowledge and making text to text connections, while engaging students in the big ideas.
There are many ideas and concepts about comprehension that are out there, but my thoughts about it are very similar to that in the article. It is not reasonable to think that a child who can not read or isn't that fluent to understand and retain what they are reading. The child is going to be so focused on trying to sound out the word and figuring out what it is that the child loses sight of what exactly it is that they are reading.
ReplyDeleteWhen discussing comprehension and how to teach it as a teacher, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do or to get across to your students. At the same time, it is something that is very important in a student's education. It all begins on how to read and how to comprehend things. Making reading in my classroom is something that I am going to strive for and I will keep modifying it until I feel that it is the best for my students. Having a variety of books and genres in my classroom would give many different outlets for my students to grab on to.
Whitney,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about how when I was younger that I had a hard time understanding comprehension. I felt like, and still feel like it sometimes that I get caught up in trying to 'comprehend' that I forget about the main idea or focus of a book. It is very important to teach my students the right way to read a book and and to understand it but to also enjoy reading and to not think that it is a punishment.