Comprehension strategies: what is the state of comprehension instruction in your school? How well is comprehension being taught? What can teacher leaders do to help improve practices?
I am thrilled to reply to this question. My small district in Northern California was an early comprehension strategy follower--they even paid for Ellin Keene to spend a day speaking to us and sent many teachers (not me, I was new to the district then) to Colorado for training. Alas, California went the way of the politicians and we were given a choice of using Houghton Mifflin or Open Court. Our district chose HM and we were expected to teach it "with fidelity." I did so for one year and then I returned to comprehension strategies (occasionally using the text from HM for shared reading). THE GOOD NEWS is that finally, this year, our principal has sanctioned a return to comprehension strategies (hmmm, seems those basals weren't the answer to test scores). Of course, I never gave them up, but it's nice to be working in the open again. So now we have a lot of training and retraining to do. It's hard to believe, because my district (and boy, was I proud of it) was once so entrenched in MOT, we have teachers who have never even read Mosaic. We do have a coach and a MOT committee and we've been given 3 Learning Communities for teaching comprehension strategies. At the first one, I brought in students and modeled a think aloud (I want to grow up to be Ellin Keene) and we discussed a piece of literature thinking about how adults use comprehension strategies. At the second we again discussed literature and shared how our work is going. The third (a whole afternoon on a staff development day) is yet to be determined. I am thrilled to be an official comprehension strategy teacher again. Judy P.S. All your questions are excellent. May I reply to more than one? _______________________________________________ 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.
