Theoretical Discussion #3-Neufield, Pardo, Stahl

Comprehension- Pardo, Stahl, and Neufeld

Theoretical Discussion #3

Shannon Blackwell

           

            The articles we read this week all dealt with comprehension and its uses in the classroom.  Comprehension strategies are important to a reader because they have the potential to provide access to knowledge that is removed from personal experience.  My group (Krista, Lara, and myself) discussed how there is tremendous evidence that teacher questioning can play a key role in enhancing student comprehension.  We saw more of this evidence in the book Choice Words that we read last semester in Dr. Anne McGill-Franzen’s class. We know that the type of text talk, questioning, and what you say modeling and thinking out loud are very important in teaching kids to become strategic readers.  We all like the tables regarding prompts in Neufield’s article, “Getting Ready to Read” and “ While I’m Reading and When I’m Done.”  We plan on using these tables in our own classroom as an extra resource in our toolbox.  It explained in this article in great detail that question asking and answering can be viewed as the strategy that drives all the other strategies.  And we must have explicit instruction of individual strategies.  The process of explicit instruction is one in which the teacher must take an active role in teaching the strategy to be learned, rather than simply presenting it and hoping the students “catch on” and learn to use it effectively.  Again model, model, model. We also believe that comprehension should not be based in language arts alone but across all subject areas.  We found that the teaching of comprehension strategies does not always occur in classrooms but it can be done.  We have to teach our students to comprehend by teaching decoding skills, vocabulary words, motivate our students, and engage them in personal responses to text.  Teaching vocabulary is a very important part of comprehension. We have read the research where first-grade children from higher-SES groups know twice as many words in comparison to lower SES children. 70% of our children at our school are on free/reduced lunches.  We are implementing a Vocabulary program for this very reason.  Research also says that even if a child comes to school and learns to decode words and progresses in reading, if the vocabulary is not there, it will come back to them in 4^th or 5^th grade.  The texts are harder and they might can read the passage, but if they can’t comprehend it they won’t understand what they just read. Students must actively engage with the words-use them in written and spoken language in order for the words to become a part of the students’ reading and writing vocabularies.

Pardo pushes the research that Read Alouds are one of the most effective ways to increase comprehension.  We will be implementing interactive read alouds throughout our school this fall but I did a wiki in regards to reading aloud and have been doing a few interactive read alouds in my own classroom last semester and I believe he is right.  I felt like all of my students took something away from the read aloud and probably understood the story more than if I just read it to them.  Students need to be engaged and talked to about a text.  He also says informational books are a great way to add world knowledge/background info.  In Stahl’s article, we were surprised to see that she said Beck and McKeown’s interactive read-alouds actually limits discussion of background knowledge and extensive discussions of the students’ prior knowledge often led students far from the text.  I think students’ attention can be redirected and time limited to their discussion so they do not venture away from the idea.  I have used this program in my classroom and they started using the vocabulary effective in their reading, writing, and general conversation.    We all liked the idea literature webbing in Stahl’s article.  I am excited to use it in my own classroom this year.  It was also interesting that Stahl suggested video was advantageous for at-risk students.  She said they could re-tell twice as many statements as to the children who only heard the story and viewed the illustrations.  I feel like children watch too much TV and need to have more exposure to books in hand.  It may be useful tool, but the challenge as she states is finding quality videos. 

            The articles I read this week really helped my to look into my own teaching and see where I can improve teaching comprehension to my students.  When we started guided reading this past year, I thought there is no way they will be able to read these books and understand what they just read.  But I was proven wrong because I was able to give them strategies they could use to do just that.