When it comes to comprehension, there are two important parts to the puzzle that all teachers should know: the reader and the text. The most important of the two, as stated in Pardo's article, is understanding the reader. As teachers, we will know that each of our students have unique differences. So you may ask yourself the question how do we cater to each of their individual needs in order to ensure that they effectively learn reading comprehension? This article does a great job of showing that in order to best support your students in becoming competent comprehenders you must teach them decoding skills, help them build fluency, build and activate their background knowledge, teach vocabulary words, motivate them, and engage them in personal responses to the text. Of all of these skills, the one that stuck out to me as the most important is the reader's background knowledge. I feel this might be one skill extremely over looked by teachers today and it's interesting to learn that the more background knowledge a reader has that connects with the text being read, the more likely that reader will be able to make sense of what they are reading.
This link provides a great web database from the Virginia Department of Education and gives numerous videos on ways to teach reading comprehension.This site will be excellent to come back to when I am in my own classroom in the future.
What I loved most in Gregory and Cahill's article was the section about visualization and mind movies. This involves students listening to the story being read and visually imagining detailed mental pictures about what is happening. The students will then draw out what they visioned in their mind. This was so unique to me because what better way to get children engaged than allowing them to use their creativity! Through doing this, because it helps students to understand what they're reading by allowing them to draw out something to represent their understanding. This is also a great way for teachers to gauge the comprehension skills of their students without having to pull teeth. I will definitely be using "mind movies" in my classroom and could even create a center in the classroom dedicated to making mind movies!
Below is an example of mind movies using the book "Sideways Stories from Wayside School"
What activities can you use in your classroom to engage students in reading comprehension?
Fabulous website. Thanks for sharing. Background knowledge is so extremely important when discussing comprehension.
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