Blog Post #5: Lyndsey Gantt's Routman Chapter 8

I chose to read chapter eight from Reggie Routman’s Reading Essentials. The chapter is about teaching comprehension. It validated everything we are doing this year in reading. In the past we taught the direct instruction program, Reading Mastery also known as SRA. SRA taught students phonics, fluency, and word calling with very little comprehension on a deep level. Routman introduces this chapter discussing the emphasis on word calling, automaticity, and fluency in the early grades. He says that it is often at the expense of understanding. I have been saying this for the past nine years. I do believe Reading Mastery helps students learn to read but I don’t think it’s the best approach because students are not learning how to comprehend or understand text and especially not high interest, realistic text. I agree with Routman that in the past we were turning out lots of superficial readers. The key word here is past. This year we decided it was time to use a reading workshop model to meet each of our students individual literacy needs. So far it has been extremely hard and exhausting but very rewarding with lots of student growth. I know what I need to work on for next year after reading this chapter and that is teaching students to apply their strategies. It’s more than just teaching them a strategy, it’s about practicing and applying the strategy. Routman also discusses thinking deeply about our own reading processes, and trust what we do as a reader to guide our teaching. I think teaching for understanding will improve students reading comprehension further than in the past. I kind of thoughts students for the most part, read for meaning. Now I am learning that according to Routman, students do not automatically read for meaning. So reading for meaning has to be demonstrated and applied. Another topic touched on in this chapter that I want to really focus on in the future is making sure students are reading books that are authentic but also on their level. If students are struggling with words and concepts they can’t read for meaning. I loved this chapter because it states the things teachers should be doing to foster reading and help their student understand what they read. Reading this helped me feel good about the hard work we are putting in this school year. I will be setting my future goals based on this reading and I can’t wait to apply what I learned from this chapter to my classroom.