This is a chapter worth studying! First teaching a child phonics, sight words, blending sounds, to answering comprehension questions takes time, work and patience with students. Being a parent of younger preschool/5K children I have made myself conscience of looking for clues, asking question, and making them predict to help in this matter, as well as, see how well they are focusing on our own family read aloud time. Ultimately, I want my students and my children to enjoy reading for pleasure ,as much as I do for past time, but in the end it's important they can grasp the content read and the only way to do this is to know how to highlight main ideas and follow through with comprehension questions.
For the younger student this can be overwhelming to see the big idea while reading but as teachers we can break the process up so that it makes sense like a puzzle works. There are so many excellent books out there to use. The child could start by retelling their favorite story to you. Just knowing stuff doesn't make us smart.... we need to build connections to everything they learn. We learn how to spell so we can write better, etc. We want our learners to be able to facilitate their vocabulary within their education. I love to hear students "think/pair/share" their writing or summary of books. To hear their thoughts and how they tell each other is a great tool to use to communicate comprehension.
In the Horizons classroom, we do a lot of inquiry, logic, and researching skills, therefore, I use highlighting important terms, paraphrasing, and making relationship connections for strategies to comprehend the skill being addressed. We often pre-read the questions to know ahead of time what main parts are important. Extra details tie down my students and they can get off topic without narrowing down the focus. All in all, it takes time to know how to dig the text deep and finding the right strategy to approach it is a learning process. Making it a habit is the goal! We just need to keep reading, thinking aloud, discussions, small groups and our children will benefit from all our efforts to make them better readers.
Think-pair-share is such a useful strategy in our classrooms! Our students learn so much more by talking with one another and participating in discussion than they do with us standing in front of them talking TO them!
ReplyDeleteThink-alouds are such an important part to modeling "thinking" while reading. Many of our students think they should be reading to memorize details in order to pass an AR test. Imagine how much they miss if they aren't thinking and processing what they are reading. Using think-alouds when you read aloud can model for students what "good readers" do when they read!
Hi Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteI love that you found the strategies in this chapter helpful to you and to your students in GT. I love the think-pair-share strategy because it promotes collaboration and allows students to learn from each other. Thank you! Dawn