Okay, the conversation has been amazing and it has me thinking such deep thoughts. All this talk about whether or not to interrupt reading with strategies has reminded me of a professor I had in my graduate program in reading. He said that there is no proven way to teach thinking or comprehension. This bothered me then and has always bothered me. This professor was terrific and everything else he taught was "spot on"...but this seemed hopeless to me. If you can't teach thinking then there is no hope for kids with comprehension problems. I can't teach or function that way! I have to believe that I can make things better for them... So...when I found Mosaic and strategies, I thought, AH HAH! We can teach thinking. I wonder about those kids who are already good comprehenders...are they always good thinkers??? While I understand that comprehension is the end goal, and that we should not overdo strategy instruction, I can't agree that we should abandon strategy instruction for them. Are we saying that they can never get better??? That they can learn to think by talking about books with others? While I believe that kids learn a great deal from talking to each other, isn't there some benefit in deepening their thinking through conscious use of strategies on text that is challenging? While I don't want to spoil their love of reading by doing this all the time, isn't their value in teaching them ways to think through any reading problems they might come across later? Maybe, once again, the key is balance. We need to remember that comprehension is the end goal, but comprehension doesn't just drop out of the sky. It is a process...a thinking process. Perhaps by bringing it to a conscious level for good readers now and then, we make good readers even better. Just my two cents... Jennifer Maryland
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