As a literacy support coach, when working with teachers in my schools, and we look at literacy diagnostic data, we focus on getting our students in the emergent grades (K, 1) to master decoding skills. We look at measures like phonological awareness, site word recognition, and nonsense word fluency to ensure they are make adequate progress as decoders, while simultaneously looking at their progress and growth in terms of reading comprehension. Somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade, we see that many of our students have essentially "mastered" decoding, but still struggle with reading comprehension. We often ask ourselves, why is it that many of our students can learn to decode, but not to comprehend?
In a recent Teachers College Record article titled "Are We Spending Too Much Time Teaching Reading Comprehension?" researchers Willingham and Lovette make the claim that the reason that some students aren't comprehending after they learn to decode come for three reasons which aren't mutually exclusive:
1.) These students are struggling with vocabulary and understanding the meaning of words within the text.
2.) These students are failing to stop and summarize as they read, or are not recognizing that they aren't comprehending, and they keep plowing ahead.
3.) They are failing to make inferences.
While focusing on building vocabulary and helping students to stop and summarize as they read are skills that can be taught in a relatively straightforward way, teaching students to make inferences as they read is much more difficult and complex, as it requires them to synthesize their experiences with hints that the text gives as to the underlining meaning of sentences.
Willingham and Lovette argue that in light of this information, teachers can best spend their time teaching vocabulary, and building background knowledge which will in turn help students start to put the pieces together in making inferences as they read. They also argue that teachers need to help students understand that reading is much more than just trying to read as many words on the page as fast as possible, but to actually try to understand what the author is trying to help you understand with their words and sentences. They argue that shifting students mindset in this way, paired with hundreds of hours of reading practice, is what will help struggling comprehenders become more proficient.
When I read this article, I got to thinking about the emphasis we often place on fluency and decoding with our younger readers, and wonder if that is having a negative impact on their ideas behind why we read text. I like the idea of constantly reminding students of the purpose of why we read--to undersand what the author is trying to convey, to learn, and to enjoy our new knowledge.
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Hi, Kristen! Your post also really made me think more critically about what I do as a second grade teacher to promote reading comprehension, while also focusing on fluency and decoding. Honestly, I believe with comprehension, especially with the difficult concept of inferencing, it is essential to focus on what students already know and what students need to learn explicitly from the teacher to be successful. This starts with asking students questions and building background knowledge, as you said. I think that the best strategy for this is using a KWL chart. Sometimes, however, that can be time consuming and for a 20 minute guided reading lesson, we need to get moving faster than that. So what I normally do is have my students think pair share about a concept they will come across in the story that they might not be familiar with and I listen to their conversation. Then I add on to what I hear they know by introducing vocabulary and by briefly explaining the topic/concept with a visual representation. Now this visual and explanation is KEY, especially for English Language Learners, who may not have had experiences previous to make the connections essential for inferencing. For example, I just did a guided reading lesson with my on grade level students about the Wild West. My students have no background knowledge on this concept, so together we brainstormed some words that came to mind when looking at the title and cover page of the informational book (there was a picture of a wagon on farmland). We came up together with our own word splash and then I told them that the setting was the wild west. I connected how people in the past went to the wild west because they were searching for a better place to live with my students' own experiences of leaving their home country to search for a better place to live in the United States (this helped them really understand why people would go to the wild west). Then I introduced them to vocabulary words such as praries and plains and wagons by showing them detailed photographs. Then I had them ask some questions about the wild west to perk their interest in reading the story. All of these strategies helped build my students' background knowledge and prepare them for reading the Wagon Wheel guided reading book. Then while my students were reading I asked them questions about what they were reading and try to answer one of the questions they asked themselves. This gets them to critically think about what they read and to focus on comprehension rather than just decoding the words. Furthermore, I find that especially with second graders, it is beneficial to have them take the book home and practice fluency at home as well, so that we can focus more on comprehension at school. I hope this example helps in deciding how help students make inferences when they don't have background knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAs a second grade teacher, your post certainly “spoke” to me. At the beginning of the school year, as I am making my small groups for guided reading, I arrange the students according to what level of books they can decode. However, there will be students in the same group whose comprehension skills are very different. Many of the students think their goal in guided reading groups is to finish the book I give them, as they exclaim, “I’m done!” Despite the fact that I provide the students with background information and go over vocabulary words when I introduce the text, many students ignore key details. I have found that sharing connections that I have made as I read helps the students see how I read carefully. Comprehension strategies, such as keeping a record of questions that students have as they read and searching for the corresponding answers, or using images to help clarify text, are useful in helping students break down the text as material they are supposed to interact with, rather than just fly through as quickly as they can. Sometimes I joke with my students and read like a robot. I want them to hear how stoic and boring it sounds. Then I model reading with expression, changing my voice for different characters and punctuation. I emphasize how much more I enjoy the story and how much more I understand when I read like the author intended.
ReplyDeleteOver the summer, I worked in a Title One Extended Learning Opportunity program, in which I taught upcoming second graders. Every day during the reading block, I read a few chapters from the story James and the Giant Peach. This fourth grade level chapter book is too difficult for most second graders to decode, but it was an excellent opportunity to work on their oral comprehension skills. Every time I read aloud to the students, I reminded them that good readers visualize or make pictures in their minds as they listen to the story. To make this strategy more concrete, the students had a graphic organizer divided in three boxes on their laps. Here they would draw what they visualized was happening in the beginning, middle, and end of what they heard daily. The students really enjoyed this reading experience and they had fun making meaning from what they heard. I would like to try this with my second graders in small group who are reading text with few images to help them attend to the details as they read.
Thanks, Kristen for your blog post. I agree that we focus way too much on teaching decoding and that our fluency instruction has become speed and accuracy. Students are utilizing too much of their cognitive energy to decode therefore, there is little room for comprehending. We need to free up some of the student's cognition to engage in meaning making.
ReplyDeleteI like you idea about getting back to why we read. I often let my students know why we are reading. When they understand the purpose, they can understand how the text might be arranged. All of which increases comprehension.
We do need to engage in think alouds and allow the students to witness our thinking. Our metacognition about reading. "Wait a minute, I don't understand that" and reread. Simplistic, but it works. Students are given the license to stop, think, return to the text, and to synthesize what it means to the reader.
In addition, I explicitly and directly teach the comprehension strategies. I use non-threatening, enjoyable picture books to teach the skill. For example, I use Good Dog, Carl, a book with very few words. I read and ask what is happening? How do you know? Students are very good a inferential thinking when given easy and understandable examples. They have guided practice, so that they may be able to do it on their own.
Yes, it is important to decode, but word calling is not reading. You are so right!
Thanks for sharing.
I was just having this conversation with a parent who was concerned because she has noticed that her son is reading chapter books fluently, but when she asks him about what he just read, he cannot tell her.
ReplyDeleteI teach third grade which is "intermediate", and when they say the shift from "learning to read and reading to learn" occurs. I have noticed that many students, regardless of reading level, have a hard time adjusting to this change in focus.
Something that my school has implemented this year across the intermediate grades, is teaching our students how to annotate formally. We have adopted a set of symbols, have various materials our students can use, and have explicitly instructed students on how to essentially record their inner conversation while they read.
Although, we have mixed feelings on the importance we are required to place on annotating, what it does provide is an opportunity to see how each student interacts with different texts and reinforces the idea that reading is more than "word calling" as Tamara stated. It shows strengths and deficits with their inner conversations so that we can better target why our students are struggling with comprehension.
Although some students have taken to annotation more than others, I am a fan because what it has done is help to reinforce that change in mindset the article mentions.
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteYour post is so important! So often in the younger grades learning HOW to read is made the biggest priority and UNDERSTANDING what is read falls by the wayside. I find that with my First Graders, this is most clear when we are working with non-fiction texts. So many of the reading comprehension strategies that we do focus on have to do with the reading of fictional stories. We talk about story structure elements, predictions, connections, inferring based on clues in the text etc. but we do not give as many strategies for comprehending non-fiction books. As students get older, the percentage of non-fiction reading that they do will greatly increase, and I am now trying to include more instruction in how to read and UNDERSTAND these texts. Do you find that the same is true with your students?
In reading non-fiction texts I really stress the importance of previewing a book with my students. I find that reading through the table of contents and taking a picture walk before they even start to read really allows my students to access any prior knowledge that they already have about the book's subject. I also have been teaching my students how to use basic non-fiction text features. These features can be very daunting for my students at first, but once they know how to use them, they greatly help in the students' comprehension of what they have read. Often, these features explain unknown vocabulary words and more accessibly connect text to pictures.
Comprehension strategies are so important for teachers to teach their students. However, even with our young readers, we cannot forget to include non-fiction comprehension strategies along with the more widely taught fictional comprehension strategies.