Shayna Miller Post #3: Routman Chapter 8 (Teach Comprehension)

In chapter 8, Teach Comprehension, Routman made some great, thought provoking statements. The text made me take a step back and examine how I teach comprehension to my students. It was interesting that Routman 'called out' direct instruction programs since that is what our district has us using for our special education students. However, the points Routman made about using direct instruction programs were true when I examined the use of the programs we use in resource. Just as Routman pointed out, direct instruction programs for younger readers do focus heavily on learning how to read words and not how to understand what we read. I often find myself having to step back from the program in order to go more in depth on lessons for comprehension. The struggle I notice many of our students have both in my resource room and in the regular education classroom is applying all the strategies together. Our students are wonderful at practicing a strategy for a week and really mastering it, but are they able to apply this strategy later on when they really need it? I know I personally have to work on modelling how I read to my students and explain how I put multiple strategies to use. While reading the text I was brought back to an idea for a lesson I had learned at the most recent D6 University. I am now planning on making a 'Reader's Salad' to demonstrate that more thinking goes into reading than actual reading when it comes to comprehension. I will demonstrate to students how we make a reader's salad by adding leaves of lettuce for every time I think about what I am reading and tomatoes for every time I read a section between thoughts. In the end, the students will be able to see a visual of how much I am thinking about the text I am reading and they will have been able to hear my thoughts/strategies as I demonstrated the lesson. I hope this demonstration will be a good first step in helping my students understand all that goes into understanding text.