Katherine Malmquist- Blog Post 6- Routman Ch 8

In the first few paragraphs of the text, Routman makes a couple of statements that really hit home:

       “…students get the message that reading is about words rather than meaning” (p.117).

       “We are turning out lots of superficial readers.  They look and sound competent” (p. 117).

       “We continue to focus on low-level skills…. They learn to read the words… they have lost            years of knowing what real reading is about” (p.118)

When I listen to some of my RTI students read, the first strategy they try is sounding out the word.  They (sometimes) can manage to decode letters but then they cannot always blend the sounds to create the correct word, much less the correct meaning.  Where I have the most trouble though, is when the students do not even take the time to question if the word they used makes any sense in the context they are reading.   On page 125, Routman says that “before students can monitor themselves and apply “fix-up” strategies, they need to know what understanding entails”.  I love the checklist on the second half of the page, about knowing if we understand what we are reading. 

I chose this chapter because I wanted to learn about teaching comprehension because I feel that is an area that I was never taught in school.  Instead of making me feel like I have missed out on a lot, I realized through reading this chapter that I know a lot more than I thought and as they said, there are a lot of strategies I use without realizing it.  The challenge is slowing down to verbalize those strategies while reading with students so they can learn, but doing it in such a way that it is not about one strategy or taking away from the reading experience.   

I have two take-aways from this chapter.  The first is twofold: we must take the time to model what we want our students to be able to do (this almost seems like a well, duh statement), but we must take the time for our students to be independent thinkers and collaborators.  Too often I think my students should be able to do things, or I get caught up in a really great lesson and do not leave enough time for my students to practice independently.  The second is that we focus on finding good fit books, but for students to practice comprehension they need to have authentic books where they know 95% of the words or more (p.127).  Since rereading is a commonly used strategy for comprehension, and we want students to have a text they can understand, it makes sense to let students read books that may be a little below their “reading level” because as long as they are reading they are learning.