Lynn Flake Blog #3 --- Reading Essentials, Teach Comprehension

Teaching comprehension can be hard. I mean, after all, how do you really teach understanding? I think that I am probably guilty of teaching those comprehension strategies in isolation. I’d like to think that I’m not, and I do remind my students that “good readers are using a lot of different skills at once” – but truth be told, I’m definitely still isolating skills. I took quite a bit away from this chapter. Routman mentions how we are teaching our students to be superficial readers and we aren’t really digging into the analytical thinking about texts. This made me think about my high school and college literature classes. I adored those classes because I deeply enjoyed analyzing all aspects of the books we read. We would spend days and weeks just talking about a book, and from those discussions, I always felt like I walked away a more analytical thinker. I never felt that way after just having a simple Q&A session on the plot, setting, conflict, main character. Perhaps the key to some of that deeper thinking for our students is not necessarily in each of those strategies, but in the depth of our discussions surrounding the text.

I also liked what Routman said about explicit instruction and application time. The 20% and 80% rule made sense to me. I’m really trying this in my classroom this year (among all of the other things that I’m trying). I typically like to do literacy centers, but if our whole group instruction time runs long, then we just do independent/guided reading time because I am refusing to sacrifice their reading time this year. I’m trying to teach my students that this time is sacred. But I do have a confession to make… I’m scared that while my students are reading independently, they’re not actually using the skills or strategies that we talked about. I have them use sticky notes sometimes, I conference and have guided reading. However, I’m always wondering if that student over there reading is actually applying the new strategies. I can’t always be right there, and I can’t always be in their head or ear to make sure that they are.

I really liked the try it and apply it section of this chapter. I’m looking forward to trying some of these things and reworking some of my long and short range plans to include them. I found these to be great ideas, and they were super clear and simple.