Comprehension

I found it surprisingly difficult to relate these readings about comprehension to my own comprehension processes. I have studied the topic of comprehension extensively in many of my classes here at MSU, but have never really reflected upon my own strengths and weaknesses with regards to comprehension. Using the chart on page 262 of the Tompkins book, I would say that the comprehension strategies that I use the most are connecting, evaluating, and monitoring. While I am reading, both for pleasure and for school, I like to think about the other things I know about the topic. Mostly, I make text-to-self connections, but this strategy really helps keep the material meaningful to me as I progress. I also enjoy evaluating the content of the text that I am reading. I really love being able to recommend books to other people, and being able to recognize what the author did well and what was not adequately illustrated throughout the book comes down to being able to critically evaluate the content while reading. I am also really skilled at monitoring how I am comprehending while I read. I am able to catch myself daydreaming or skimming after only about a paragraph of non-comprehension, which is crucial if I want to quickly complete books and articles. The two comprehension strategies that I struggle with the most are drawing inferences and predicting. I think I do poorly drawing inferences because I was always taught in elementary school that there was a "right" answer and a "wrong" answer. As I got older, adjusting to inference and interpretation was difficult for me. Also, I am very bad at predicting. Once I allow myself to sink into a good book, I rarely take the time to evaluate what I think will happen next throughout the story. Although I know that this is a very valuable skill to have, sometimes I simply cannot force myself to slow down enough to evaluate my thoughts about what I think will happen next.


In my placement, I spend most of my time working with the students who are at a lower reading level than most of their peers. They often struggle to answer the comprehension questions at the end of the text, and when I ask them questions about what they have just read, they cannot go into details about why they answer the way that they do. According to the article by Applegate, the students that I work with are minimalists. I believe that some of them are afraid of failure, so they fail to elaborate. However, many times I think that the students simply cannot remember what they have read adequately enough to respond to the most basic questions. What worries me the most about these students is that they do not have the strategies they need to become successful as readers in the future. Instead of looking back to the text to find the answers to the questions, they either look to me for what I think is the answer or simply guess. I believe that if they were taught some of the skills that are also discussed in the Applegate article, they could make gigantic progress and eventually match their peers' levels of understanding. One of the reasons that I think that these students are struggling with comprehension questions so much is that they are not yet fluent in their reading. The Tompkins book discusses this as a reason why students cannot comprehend; instead of focusing on understanding the story, these students are using all of their energy to decode the unknown words in the text. Related to this is the fact that most students who are not fluent do not have advanced vocabularies, so when they are finished reading the text, they may not understand some of the words that they have just finished reading. It is our job as teachers to teach students the comprehension strategies that they should use to become skilled readers. I cannot wait to relay some of the things that I read about for class this week to my future students!

Discussions

As a future teacher, I have mixed views on the roles of discussion within a classroom setting. I was very quiet throughout my schooling, and remember becoming upset and nervous about the prospect of being forced to share my opinion in order to get credit for participation once I reached college. Although many discussions focus on the students and the thoughts and ideas they bring to the atmosphere of the classroom, I believe that it is up to the teachers to build trust and engage the students in such a way that they will be willing to share.


Unfortunately, I have not seen many examples of group discussion in my placement. I am in a Montessori school this year, which means that students work independently to complete a set amount of lessons throughout the week. My collaborating teacher rarely gets up in front of the entire class to teach. The one time this happened while I was present, the students discussed bullying; what it looks like and how to react when it happens. The discussion was very teacher-centered, with students simply talking to her instead of letting their ideas develop without needing validation. I was reminded of this when I was reading the Almasi article and it said, "the teacher becomes the ultimate interpretive authority". Instead of letting their definitions and ideas about bullying build off of one another, the students had to get teacher approval before sharing additional ideas. During their normal "work time" they are allowed to talk to one another and collaborate, but there is no structured discussion in a large group setting. The lessons that occur take place in smaller groups, often with the teacher asking questions that have an expected answer from one of the students. The focus of these lessons is either mathematics or grammar, so they do not give the students a lot of opportunity to come up with and share their own opinion with others. I believe that the teacher in my placement is reading a book to the entire class, but I am never present when this activity is taking place, and the only times I hear the teacher referring to it is when she is asking the students comprehension questions.


A lot of good scaffolding ideas were mentioned in the Goldenburg article that I read for class this week. He talked about how important teacher preparation is to conducting quality discussions. The teacher must be aware of the theme of the chosen literature before presenting it to the class. Also, the teacher must provide students with the background knowledge that they need in order to understand the theme of the literature. For example, if the writing is about an event and how people from a particular culture respond to it, students must be aware of the basics of that culture, and they must be able to look at different points of view before reading the literature. This is an essential aspect of scaffolding with students who speak English as a second language, and also emphasizes the importance of knowing your students, as we have discussed at length in class so far this semester. Another part of scaffolding that was mentioned in the Goldenburg article was choosing appropriate texts for the age level and experiences of the students. This could be difficult to do in classes where multiple cultures, ages, and levels of knowledge are represented, but it is important nonetheless. Even choosing a picture book to discuss can lead to meaningful, deep discussions. We saw many examples of these types of books last week in class.


Another way that teachers must scaffold students takes place during the actual discussion. Sometimes students can get off-topic and need to be redirected so that they stay focused on the important content. I experienced this when I was teaching my social studies lesson last semester. I led a small group of students in a discussion about the first Thanksgiving, and they kept redirecting the topic of discussion to what they imagined the first Thanksgiving to be like instead of the facts that they were reading from the primary and secondary sources that I provided and how their views were shaped or changed as a result. Students can get off-topic in other ways as well. Teachers need to shape the discussions when too many topics are being introduced in a short amount of time. An example of this was given in the Almasi article as well. In that situation, the teacher had to remind the students to complete their current thoughts before moving onto a new idea.


Overall, I learned a lot about discussions through the readings that we did for this week. I believe that it is important not to minimize the role that a teacher must still play in discussion even if the students are shaping the flow of responses. With the correct teacher scaffolding, all students will be able to teach each other through their ideas about literature, and the classroom will become a safe, secure place for students to develop and grow.