Angelica Guevara Jan./Feb. Blog #6 CHAPTER 8: TEACH COMPREHENSION

Routman Chapter 8

In this Chapter Routman talks about how important it is to teach comprehension as early as preschool/kindergarten. She expresses her concern about teaching reading and emphasizing on fluency, automaticity, and word recall and not giving comprehension the same importance during the early school years. She says that has lead the children to focus on word recall not comprehension. That reflects their summarized form of retelling a story instead of teaching children to become critical thinkers which can allow the children to dig deeper into the meaning of the character’s behaviors and plots of the literature they read. 

I look at all these chapters and look at them from two points of views, the mom and the teacher in me. My two boys are 3 and 5 years old. I have been reading to them since before they were born. We have reading time every night and they love to have books read to them and love to discuss them during and after story time. The more the years go by the more detailed their questions, discussions and retelling skills become. As a mom, I can vouch for the importance of early literature comprehension.

Now, as a teacher I can tell who is read to and likes to read at home. I get so much out of my shared reading time. I can tell who is paying attention, who is really listening, who can sit still for 5 to 15 minutes etc. 50% of my shared reading time is used to read, but the other 50% I use to discuss and teach the children how to become critical thinkers in order to increase their reading comprehension. I ask a lot of questions while I read to them. I ask simple “right-there-in-the-text questions, prediction questions, and in depth comprehension questions. Routman says we need to ask and demonstrate how to ask questions that encourage in-depth reading. This year I have seen how much my students have learned from this strategy. Their questions and answers are now more significant in comparison to the first months of school.  Their confidence in answering is shown in their faces and their verbal responses. They compete to answer questions and give details to their answers by stating facts previously read or discussed.

I personally feel that the stronger the children’s literature comprehension is, the more they will enjoy reading.  I loved this chapter. One of my favorite parts of this chapter is when Routman advices us to “Use texts that are easy enough and meaningful enough to support comprehension.” It is our responsibility as educators to guide children to choose a book they will enjoy, a book that will allow them to grow as readers, critical thinkers, and maybe even future authors.