Beth Lovett Post #2: Routman chapter 8 comprehension

For my first post I read Miller’s section 2 which talked about teacher practices that are critical to successful independent reading in the classroom and I mentioned that I felt one of my weaknesses was the practice of giving students explicit instruction about what, why, and how readers read.  Therefore, for my second assignment I decided to jump into Routman’s chapter 8: Teach Comprehension.  The first piece of advice here is to balance explicit instruction of comprehension with lots of time for application.  I love that!  She suggests a 20% to 80% rule – one fifth of the period can be dedicated to explicit strategy instruction and the remaining four fifths is for application of the strategy while reading.  In the past I’ve sometimes felt guilty that I’m not giving enough time to instruction of strategies and that I’m allowing too much time for reading, however, I now feel better after having read this suggested rule.

We know the official reading strategies we should teach.  We’ve seen the research.  Proficient readers make connections, monitor for meaning, determine importance, visualize, ask questions, make inferences, summarize, and synthesize to generate new ideas. This author suggests that we should first evaluate what we do as a reader and then make that process visible to students.  Do we reread?  Do we highlight important text? Do you skim first?  Do you pause and think, read aloud, or talk to yourself?  Routman states “We need to think deeply about our own reading processes, and trust what we do as a reader to guide our teaching.”  What I love (again) is that she then  goes on to list several important strategies we should be acknowledging and teaching to our students PLUS gives us suggestions of things to do in the classroom to model them!  Her list includes

1.       Teach Rereading as the single most useful strategy.

2.       Use writing to help recall key points.  Show students what to underline or highlight.  Teach them to write about their thinking in the margins or on sticky notes.

3.       Teach students to survey text before they begin to read.

4.       Make connections.  Don’t teach this strategy in isolation.  It should be routinely demonstrated and practiced as part of the total reading experience.

5.       Teach self-monitoring.  Routman says students should constantly be asking Does this make sense?  Do I know what is happening in the text?  She even shares a 14 point questionnaire that students can use to monitor their own comprehension.

6.       Talk to yourself to aid understanding.

7.       Interact with peers to increase comprehension and enjoyment.  This was another area I felt was a weakness of mine as mentioned in my first article.  Chapter 9 is all about this.

8.       Use texts that are easy enough and meaningful enough to support comprehension.

9.       Keep fluency in perspective.

10.   Teach students how to ask significant questions.

As she ends the chapter, Routman points out that while it is useful to practice a strategy as students are learning it, we must make sure that most of our comprehension instruction uses strategies interactively.  We need to demonstrate how to use these strategies as a part of our unconscious reading process.  I found this chapter beneficial and I especially appreciate the “Try It/Apply It” sections after each strategy discussed.