First of all, thanks to each of you for this rich conversation! This is the type of talk that this listserv is made for, and I am so pleased to be thinking about all you have said.
I think it is important to explicitly teach the strategies to our young readers. I start with metacognition, so children have the awareness that they should be actively thinking and interacting with the text as they read. I teach fifth grade, in a school where teachers at all grades are supposedly teaching comprehension strategies. Still, my readers benefit from going through the strategic instruction, since there is a disparity in how much each has been taught. Besides, there is a spiral to this type of instruction and what a first grader understands about inferring or asking questions will be different than what a fourth grade reader understands. Give the children the opportunity to notice their own growth in understanding. I can’t see how children, or any reader, can be aware of using strategies to deepen understanding without first being aware of the “mini-me” voice inside their head, which is why I start with metacognition. Although I teach the word metacognition, I do so only to give them a label for the concept of active reading. Personally, ever since I read Mosaic of Thought, I have become a deeper and more thoughtful reader. I am aware of my own thinking as I read, especially when reading books for grad school or even book reviews in the New York Times! So I absolutely believe in the value of teaching our students the different ways we interact with text, and how doing so can improve our understanding of what we are reading. That being said, if the conversation that the children are having is centering on their strategies like, “I made a connection,” or “I could visualize this part,” we must push them to explain why that helped them to understand the story or text. Strategies serve the reader as a means to understand or deepen understanding of what we read. So “talking the talk” of strategies has to be linked to “walking the walk” of understanding what is being read. My fifth grade students finished the year with a focused study of synthesis as a comprehension strategy as we read two books by Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting and The Eyes of the Amaryllis . They used all strategies to understand the stories. The prologues of both stories can be very confusing, but the children were aware of their dissonance and used strategies, such as visualizing (so available to them thanks to Babbitt’s rich writing!), as well as asking questions. They inferred as they tried to figure out The Man in the Yellow Suit or Seward, since both characters leave the reader with many questions as to who they are and what they are up to. All I did at this point was to continually point out how good they were getting at using all strategies and how they were pulling all of them together to fully appreciate the story. They were able to use the elements of text, such as plot, setting, and character to not only synthesize the story, but after reading the two books, they could explain their understanding, their synthesis, of Natalie Babbitt as a writer. I can’t imagine how this kind of comprehension and rich conversation could have happened if we had not been having focused and lively practice with all of the strategies all year long. And I have students who came in as very strong readers; I know they took their reading to another level because I had explicitly modeled and they had practiced what strong readers do. Finally, yesterday I had a little girl come up to me and tell me about a book she is reading about a girl who goes to a new school where she doesn’t know anyone. My student told me how, even though she had never had this experience, she could feel nervous just like the girl did. I shared her excitement, since all year I tell my kids this is the joy and pleasure of reading: to go to new places, have new experiences, and live other lives in other worlds. We connect to the human experience by reading. To do this, we have to be “in the book.” Comprehension strategies are tools that allow our students to get there. Yes, it is a gradual release of responsibility. Explicitly teach the strategies, ask the children to apply them to rich literature, have thoughtful conversations about these books, and watch them soar! Maura 5/NJ _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
