Kristin Roddy-Routman Chapter 8-Blog # 3

Chapter 8 in the Routman text has by far been the most helpful chapter to read. I feel this way because comprehension has been one of the hardest things to teach. I work with my students one on one or in small groups with shared reading, and I listen as they breeze through a text without any trouble. They read smoothly, accurately, and confidently. Immediately a teachers thought is, "YES" they have it! When really I have noticed in several of my students that they do not. I have watched and listened to a student read without pause and without error, but that same student will not be able to tell me what they had just read. Why is that? As a teacher it is our job to discover what problem our students have as a reader and to fix it, but how do you fix that? Routman gave many examples of strategies we can use to help better teach comprehension. This was tremendously helpful. A lot of times we as teachers pay so much attention to vocabulary, and word recognition that maybe we forget the real reason for reading. What good will reading every word correctly do if you don't understand what you have just read? When students are not comprehending a text then information is not being learned. We teach strategy after strategy with how to read a text, but do we really emphasize to students that these strategy will not be beneficial if they do not learn to use them on their own. I like how Routman compared this to students who study and learn how to spell a word on a weekly test, but then once the test was over that same student will misspell that word in their writing. It's important for teachers to teach comprehension in a way that students can learn how to use strategies when reading that will help them understand the text. One thing I plan to use in my classroom is thinking marks and post-it notes when reading. I hope that these strategy will act as a place holder for my students's thoughts.