Karen Parker/Blog Post 6: Teach Comprehension (Routman Ch.8)

"The current emphasis on word calling, automaticity, and fluency in the early grades is often at the expense of understanding."
This sentence grabbed in the first paragraph of the chapter.  Reading is about comprehending, not about saying written words.  I've often called it "spitting words off the page."  By the time students are in fourth grade, the gap between good readers and poor readers really widens.  Some students appear to read well and can give details about their reading, but cannot go deeper into the text to derive meaning. 
The chapter lists the strategies that successful readers need:  making connections, monitor your reading, determine what's most important, visualize, ask questions, make inferences, and synthesize.  We discuss these strategies continuously in my classroom, through discussions about their own reading, my read alouds, and passages that we read together.  Comprehension can be lost in too much emphasis on the strategy, so I also make sure that we discuss how the strategy helps our understanding. 
Time for applying strategy is critical.  The book suggests that only about 20% of the time devoted to reading instruction should be spent teaching strategy, and the rest of the time should be for application.  When I conference with my students, we discuss strategies that they used and how it helped their comprehension.  I've also implemented a self evaluation tool do they can monitor themselves and how they are using strategies. 
It is also important to model use of the strategies.  Students often do not know that they are not comprehending so teaching them to monitor themselves and reread if necessary.  I have found this to be a big part of my instruction this year.  My students can often recall details from what they have read, but can not determine what is important and how to summarize.  I remind them to stop frequently, even as much as each page, to think about what they have read and what is important to remember.  I am pleased to see progress!  The chapter also gives a helpful checklist for students for "I Know I Understand When I Can."  I can't wait to add this to reading conferences!