Colleagues: I've picked up some of your posts related to whether or not to teach comprehension strategies explicitly and, more recently, your discussion about Readicide and Atwell's The Reading Zone. I have not read the former, but have read the latter. I'd like to make a couple observations about explicit strategy instruction here, but because I respect Atwell so much, I read and carefully considered her arguments in The Reading Zone. I took the time, when the book came out, to get my thoughts into writing and should any of you want to read my responses, please feel free to email me separately - I would be happy to send you a document with my comments. On to explicit strategy instruction:
First, I fully agree that some teachers, but mostly publishers, have "basalized" strategy instruction, effectively dumbing it down and robbing from it what the original researchers and theoretical writers (myself, Zimmermann, Hutchins, Harvey and Goudvis, Miller, Tovani, and the list goes on and on. . .) tried to communicate about explicit strategies instruction. However, there really is no choice in terms of whether we teach comprehension strategies explicitly. We have decades and decades of research (Pearson, Dole, Pressley, Duke, Beck and the list goes on and on . . .) to show that children (all children) comprehend more deeply and effectively when they receive comprehension strategy instruction. To ignore such an enormous body of research would be irresponsible, at best. We absolutely do have a choice with respect to how we approach strategy instruction - how long we teach a strategy, whether we integrate all strategies simultaneously, teaching them cumulatively or one at a time (which we addressed in the second edition of Mosaic of Thought). We can choose to "basalize" the strategy instruction or we can observe students carefully, understand their comprehension needs within the fuller context of what they need as readers and use strategies as tools to help them enhance and deepen comprehension and thus their engagement in and excitement about reading - the "zone". Obviously, the original researchers and theoretical writers have tried to promote the latter, sometimes with greater success, in some cases, much less clearly. Secondly, as Suzanne Lee points out in a post today, the reason I wrote To Understand is to directly address some of the problems I've observed and colleagues have expressed here and elsewhere related to over-reliance on comprehension strategy instruction. In it I argue that we must consider, through conversation and instruction with children, where strategies lead when students apply them. Strategies are tools, so the question becomes, what do the tools help us do as readers? A quick response is that strategies, well taught, can almost always help children reflect more deeply, become more engaged, understand more subtle themes and topics and recall and reapply more from what they read. I certainly agree with Heather's post today: "if I had to stop every page to make connections, etc., it would probably make me hate reading", but there are two key issues she may not have addressed here: first, she is an adult proficient reader and does not need, but may certainly find that occasional, conscious use of the strategies might deepen her reading experience and secondly, that asking children to stop after every page (or anything like that practice) is simply poor comprehension instruction. It may well lead to students disliking not only the strategies, but reading! None of the writers I listed above has ever suggested that we ask children to do such a thing. This is one of many misinterpretations of the original research and theoretical writing. My attempt in To Understand was to address these questions and push us to think about what the new horizons might be in reading comprehension instruction. Jennifer Palmer, who moderates this list serv, conducted a superb discussion on To Understand last year - it might be helpful to return to the archives to see how some of your colleagues discussed these issues at that time. To Understand is a direct response to some of the concerns you all have raised because I've had them too!! Thirdly, with respect to children using the strategies automatically (subconsciously would be a better term) when they are reading text at their level, I would suggest that if we have children reading a more-or-less steady diet of texts at their level, we are not challenging them to become better readers!! Children need texts at their level for fluency and word identification work (particularly very young children and children who are learning English as their second language), but I contend that they also (desperately) need to be challenged by texts in which, because of the complexity of the concepts, they will greatly benefit from using the strategies. All children need strategy instruction and to be conscious of their strategy use in some texts. I'm concerned that we may not challenge children (not just our most proficient readers, but all children) enough with the conceptual complexity of the texts they read. Complex, well-written texts (expository and narrative) are a huge part of what introduces children to the life of the mind and helps them feel intellectually able. I would also argue that, if texts are well chosen to enhance students' understanding of the world, they will certainly benefit from being more conscious - intentional - in applying the strategies. Their reading experience will simply be more meaningful and memorable. It is also true that strategies are effective tools for students when they are learning to read and write in a new genre. Are our children reading a wide enough variety of genres? As someone pointed out in a post today, sometimes we have little (I wouldn't say no) schema for a topic - hence we need to teach children to create, not just activate schema. We have more research on this topic than nearly any other in comprehension and to fail to teach children to activate and create schema is again, not effective practice. As Heather questions in her post today, "is it enough to just let kids read? To talk about books with them? To have them recommend books with each other. . . . " The response is a resounding no and I'm delighted that she and others on this list serv have committed to such a thoughtful conversation about the effective, intellectually engaging strategy instruction I know we all value. Most respectfully, Ellin Keene Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:18:03 -0400 From: Heather Green <[email protected]> Subject: [MOSAIC] Just Finished Readacide and The Reading Zone What do you think the implications are... To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 .... for lower elementary grades? I wish there were a book written with a similar theme, but geared toward 1-2. There are plenty of teachers at our school, include me last year, who taught "comprehension strategies". I am contemplating now-- is it enough to just let kids read? To talk about books with them? To have them recommend books with each other? Is it enough in the younger grades to just get them to love reading? Do we teach the strategies just because we feel it gives us something to teach during reading workshop? In her book, Atwell mentions doing mini-lessons. I wonder what these are. SO MANY QUESTIONS....! _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. 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