Monday, March 2, 2009
Chapter 7--Jessica Thelen
Teaching comprehension is very important at every grade level. I was happy to see a chapter that would offer strategies for teaching this. I just wish they would have included examples of how to modify these middle school strategies for lower elementary. Being in a kindergarten placement, everything is pretty basic. The students have just started learning about how to make self to text connections. Other than the sequence of events that is about all the comprehension they have done. I think there needs to be more comprehension strategies used in this classroom because this is their first year of school and they need to see the importance. I know it is hard to teach comprehension when everything the students are reacting to is something that has been read to them. They do not have the option of picking out a book that is interesting to them, which makes comprehension easier.
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I agree with you about this very much. I was glad to see so many examples of how to teach comprehension in the classroom but, like you, was left wondering how these could be modified for lower grade levels. I am in a 2nd/3rd grade split and many of these students are even functioning below their grade level so it would be hard to apply a lot of these strategies to my field placement.
ReplyDeleteI too think that the chapter could have talked more about how those specific strategies could be modified for lower grades. However, I don't know if I necessarily agree that students in a lower level elementary class (your kindergarten class, for example) don't really comprehend much. I was in a kindergarten class last year, and I saw a lot of ways that the kids demonstrated their understandings. They were able to pick out main parts in a story, possibly a couple main characters; some students were even able to retell the story in their own words. I think it depends on the class and the comprehension strategies the teacher uses.
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