Blog #4 Routman (2003) Chapter 8: Teach Comprehension- Rosie Vargas

Blog #4 Routman (2003) Chapter 8: Teach Comprehension- Rosie Vargas

For this blog I chose the chapter on Teach Comprehension. I know that for me personally I often have to reread text in order to comprehend it well. Just like the students I can read the words in a paragraph and still question what it was about so I thought this would be a good chapter to help improve comprehension. It happens too often when students read a text flawlessly and can only state simple facts about the text but not analyze it. I thought it was interesting that the author explains that perhaps too much emphasis is given on word calling, automaticity and fluency in the early grades often at the expense of true comprehension (Routman, 2003). I think in our school with such a high percentage of ESOL students it is important that we don’t mistake fluent readers with high comprehension readers.  In other word, simply because a student can read words without mistakes it doesn’t mean they know the meaning of all the words well enough to apply them to a deep level of comprehension. According to Routman, another reason some students may not achieve full understanding is because they lack the background, prior experiences, or knowledge of the way texts and authors work. There have been many times where I have stopped a reading to show an image or explain about a word in order to clarify meaning for the students.

This chapter has a lot of great strategies that readers can use in order to become more proficient. The three that I found most useful are; make connections; visualize and make inferences (Routman, p.118).  However, the text does caution against excessive use of strategies and the amount of time spent teaching all of them. Routman explains that students are spending large amounts of time learning and practicing these strategies often without knowing how to apply them.  I learned that like most things we must find a balance between teaching strategies and application. For this Routman suggest a 20-percent to 80- percent rule: We learned that on average, dedicating about one fifth of each period to explicit strategy instruction was sufficient to provide students insight into comprehension skills, which they then applied and extended in the remaining four fifths of the period (Routman, p.120).

Lastly, from this reading I have taken away that interacting with peers about what you read can help increase comprehension and enjoyment. I think this is a great strategy for students because they enjoy working with partners and getting a chance to talk to each other. Routman suggest that we provide more opportunities for students to talk with others about what they read through interactive reading, shared reading aloud, reciprocal teaching, literature conversations and partner reading (Routman, p. 127). I’m looking forward to reading more about ways to use these in the next chapters.