Heather Wall
Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:17:20 -0700
I've struggled with this too, but in the end only have my own experience to go on. I think back to what I knew about comprehension strategies before reading MOT and STW, and it was very little, but what I did teach was through the basal series. One week there'd be an emphasis on compare and contrast, then the next week it'd be summarizing, and then the next week something else. My students never got a true feel about what comprehension was about, and neither did I. One of the true benefits to teaching the MOT strategies in the beginning was having the luxury of really going deep into the strategy and taking it so much farther than I had before. For instance, once I'd taught the 3 types of connections, I still had a few weeks left that I'd planned to devote to that strategy, so I was able to reread RWM and go deeper by teaching schema for genre and schema for different authors. I didn't do that the first year I taught it, of course, but after I got the basics down that first year I was able to expand on my teaching. Now, I will say I may not have done that on my own, without the help of this listserv. To carry that over to other teachers, Jennifer, it may mean that in order for teachers to take their strategy teaching farther they'll need a "more knowledgeable other" (Vygotsky) to lead them there - either a wonderful listserv! or a literacy coach. Either way, a little push is good and needed.
All this is to say that, for me, it was very beneficial to go deeply into the strategies at first. Now that I've been teaching them more deeply for several years, I can see the benefits (and have the knowledge I need) to teach them more in concert with one another. I still teach them separately, devoting a big chunk of time to each strategy (more than a month, by the way - more like 6-8 weeks, depending on the strategy), but now that I know where I"m headed, I'll bring up other strategies as I teach. So that when I teach questioning, I naturally end up asking them to infer the answers. Or when we learn about using your schema to connect with books, I bring up visualizing the movie in your head as well. I know better about how to integrate the strategies, so I can teach it that way, but in the beginning I couldn't have done that. Heather Wall/ 3rd grade/ Georgia NBCT 2005 Literacy: Reading - Language Arts ----- Original Message ---- From: Jennifer Sampson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Stw2chat@literacyworkshop.org Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 1:15:57 PM Subject: [STW2Chat] An ongoing conundrum.....sequencing Hello everyone! First of all, I wanted to let you all know how much I am enjoying reading along with you and working through your posts! What a wonderful way to discover a book, especially one as thought provoking as the second edition :) I have a conundrum I'm working through - one that seems to come up on an almost daily basis. I am a school board consultant in Ontario, Canada - I work with 82 schools to support planning and assessment, as well as French language instruction. I feel very lucky to be working in a school district (and a province) where we have curriculum standards, but NO prescribed texts or published materials that are required for use. As a system, we do complete PM+ Benchmarks, and in the older grades, we use CASI (an alternative to DRA) for assessments. Many schools and teachers have embraced comprehension strategy instruction this past year. My fear is that they are in fact going overboard and teaching strategies as an end, not a means to an end. Let me give you a typical example..... Schools lay out a sequence for teaching the strategies: September = making connections, October = inferring, etc. There is a diagnostic at the beginning of the month, lessons are taught over the course of the month, and then an evaluation is completed (usually similar to the diagnostic) at the end of the month to chart progress. Then it's on to the next strategy. My fear is that the kids are learning strategies in isolation, but never really understand WHY they are being taught (do the teachers have a clear understanding of why they are teaching the strategies?) - and never have time to connect them to understand the importance of pulling out a combination of strategies required to comprehend any given text. So here's my conundrum..... When teachers (and schools) are first heading down the "comprehension strategies road" is there any benefit to teaching the strategies in a sequence - mainly to support teachers by getting their heads around what this "new-to-them" approach is all about? Or are we actually doing a disservice to them by supporting this approach, when there is a better way? It really rang true to me when I read page 35, "So rather than following a prescribed sequence, we consider what our kids need to learn, what they are reading, and which strategies will best facilitate their learning." How can a sequenced approach accomplish this? What approach are you taking in your different districts? Looking forward to continuing our learning together! Jennifer Jennifer Sampson Instructional Leadership Consultant: Assessment/Evaluation and FSL Kawartha Pine Ridge D.S.B. Peterborough, ON 1-705-742-9773 extension 2346 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Stw2chat mailing list Stw2chat@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/stw2chat_literacyworkshop.org. Search the STW2 Chat Archives at http://snipurl.com/stw2archives. _______________________________________________ Stw2chat mailing list Stw2chat@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/stw2chat_literacyworkshop.org. Search the STW2 Chat Archives at http://snipurl.com/stw2archives.