I thought this chapter on comprehension contained a lot of useful information. The examples they gave which were used in Mrs. Donnelly's classroom were very helpful in showing me many practical ways comprehension strategies can be taught to students. I was left wondering how these examples from her 6th grade classroom could be used in lower level elementary classrooms.
I know that in my field placement (2nd/3rd grade) much of the focus in the language arts instruction seems to be on spelling and vocabulary. I thought it was interesting that on page 224 in the chart, it says that spelling is not an important component of comprehension. This left me wondering why then so much focus is put on spelling in elementary classrooms? Tompkins made it clear through this chapter that the whole point of decoding and learning how to read is to gain meaning from the text. This seems to me then, that more focus should be put on comprehension rather than on spelling. Reading further, the section on fluency explained that in the primary grades "fluency is the focus of instruction because students need to learn to recognize words automatically so that they can focus their attention on comprehending what they are reading". This makes sense as to why vocabulary would be such a big portion of instruction so that more and more words can become site-words. I still however do not understand why there seems to be so much focus on spelling when the end goal of reading is meaning/comprehension.
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I agree with you and also wish there was more for lower elementary grades. I think my field experience is opposite from yours. In the kindergarten class that I'm in, my CT won't allow us to tell the students how to spell words. She would rather have her kids try to figure it alone or try to spell it any way they can. At first this was hard for me because I wished they knew how to correctly spell the words they were writing, but as far as comprehension, I think this method is very helpful. The students are able to spell a word the best they can and if they don't know it, they at least write the first sound they hear. They are able to write complete thoughts and sentences and are not stressed out with spelling.
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