Brandi Nolan: Blog Post 4: Routman Ch. 8

In Routman's chapter 8 "Teach Comprehension" they talk about how students view reading as all about words instead of about the meaning.  As teachers we stress so much about sounding out unfamiliar words, learning high frequency words, using miscue analysis, and so many others that our students think reading is all about the words.  They are not given the opportunity to think about what the story is actually about or what the author is trying to tell us.  I feel like this is related to project based learning and how we want our students to analyze and solve problems.  Students are going to have difficulty being critical thinkers if they are not given the opportunity to think about the story and analyze the characters.  The strategy I liked the best for teaching comprehension was to make connections.  This really helps all of my students especially my struggling readers.  They are so much more interested and focused when they can make a connection about the text.  As Routman said "If I asked you to read an article and only make connections as you read, you couldn't do it."  It is very difficult to teach a skill an isolation.  I think many teachers, myself included really struggle to teach comprehension because it is an invisible skill.  We cannot see what is going through the child's mind as they read the story and it is difficult to know where to steer their thinking.