Maggie Delaney March/April Blog 7

"If we want kids to wind up with comprehension, we have to begin with comprehension." The opening to this chapter really hit home for me.  Eight years ago, I switched from being a 2nd grade classroom teacher to a part-time reading tutor/interventionist.  For six of those eight years, I basically taught word recall via various SRA programs.  The result.  Kids can call words.  But their comprehension is grade levels behind.  So many of our students believe that reading is about words, but they are unaware that reading is about meaning (thinking)!

I especially liked the section on making YOUR (the teacher) reading/thinking process visible.  So, for the past two years, I have worked with older kids and given them strategies to use while reading to help make meaning out of what they read!  Interestingly enough, a high percentage of our kids "sound" like good readers (thanks to SRA), but have little understanding of what they read.  I think comprehending and understanding are very abstract ideas for kids and difficult to grasp.  I have worked hard over the years to help make these concepts concrete ideas for my students to remember and use on a daily basis while reading.  I was excited to see the list of strategies that Routman included in this chapter.  Making connections, monitoring your reading for meaning, determining what's most important, visualizing, asking questions, making inferences, and synthesizing.  These are ALL my strategies that I have been teaching!  Yay!!

Comprehension.  I feel like it is my biggest challenge as a reading teacher today.  I plan to refer back to this chapter in the coming years to remind myself of what I need to provide to my students to best teach them this life changing skill.  When your reading has meaning, that is truly when reading becomes so powerful and a love of literacy begins!